Redefining Resistance (The Poetic Wartime Discourses of Francis Ponge, Benjamin Péret, Henri Michaux and Antonin Artaud)

The study of resistance developed here, by Dr Esther Rowlands, consists of a fresh interrogation of the notion of resistance discourse. Here, for the first time, this detailed study of selected, wartime texts produced by Francis Ponge, Benjamin Péret, Henri Michaux and Antonin Artaud, compiled between 1936 and 1946, presents a specific critique of resistance which investigates the possibility for opposition and subversion to take place without direct allusion to the object of resistance. This investigation questions the criteria according to which literature is perceived as being ‘resistant’ and suggests that historical and political referentiality may be deemed retaliative and reactionary, thereby risking replication of the dominant order. The relationship between language and power structures is elucidated through allusion to modern theorists Michel de Certeau, Michel Foucault, Ross Chambers and Françoise Proust. The necessary framework for a study of the poetic voice draws upon aspects of the post-structuralist work of Jacques Derrida and Giles Deleuze, incorporating specific theories expounded by the Surrealist leader, André Breton. The works of the above theorists are foundational to this new critique of poetic discourse which, when applied by Dr Esther Rowlands, to the wartime works of the four named writers, suggests that language itself may be recognised as a locus of resistance. This book is designed to be of interest both to undergraduates and to researchers studying Surrealism, Second World Wartime Literature and Critical Theory.