“A New Historic Youth”: Lettrism, Delinquency, and the Fait Divers in Postwar France

I. Curtis
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Abstract

This essay seeks to historicize Lettrist activity in France and to situate Lettrist aesthetic productions and destructions in relation to the memory of German Occupation of France during World War II, and to the violent outbursts and acting out of the Lettrists’ contemporaries. Isidore Isou and others belonged to a rather unique generation in the history of France—a generation that caused adults a great deal of concern as young men and women committed crimes and acts of violence at unprecedented rates. Attending to the cultural historical specificities of the Lettrists and other young troublemakers in postwar France, I argue that Lettrism, as an aesthetic idea, could never have gained or sustained momentum without the mid-century fait divers, a specific genre of miscellaneous news story. In the years immediately following the end of World War II, the raison d’être of the young Lettrists in France could perhaps be defined as the construction of situations that would generate banal news items of a very specific nature. Reframing Lettrist activity as essentially compatible with the raw material for faits divers, as defined by Roland Barthes, helps us to appreciate the somewhat-surprising interest the group generated at a historic moment when France had never been more concerned with the gratuitous misdeeds of young men.
“一个新的历史青年”:战后法国的字母主义、犯罪和公平潜水员
本文试图将莱特家在法国的活动历史化,并将莱特家的美学作品和破坏与二战期间德国占领法国的记忆,以及莱特家同时代人的暴力爆发和行为联系起来。伊西多尔·伊苏和其他人属于法国历史上相当独特的一代——这一代人引起了成年人的极大关注,因为年轻男女以前所未有的速度犯罪和暴力行为。我关注着战后法国的乐体派和其他年轻麻烦制造者的文化历史特殊性,认为乐体派作为一种美学理念,如果没有本世纪中叶的fait divers(一种特殊的杂项新闻故事类型),就不可能获得或保持势头。在第二次世界大战结束后的几年里,法国年轻的文学家们之所以“être”,或许可以被定义为构建一种情境,这种情境会产生非常特殊性质的平庸新闻。按照罗兰·巴特(Roland Barthes)的定义,将莱特主义者的活动重新定义为与“事实潜水者”(faits divers)的原始材料本质上是一致的,这有助于我们欣赏这个团体在一个历史时刻产生的多少令人惊讶的兴趣,当时法国从未像现在这样关注年轻人的无来由的不当行为。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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