Christelle Reggiani turns toward the text « Je me souviens » (I remember) published in 1978. She questions the subject “I” and explores his relevance today. Espèces d’espaces/Species of Spaces (1974) has become a required text for architecture and urban planning students as well as fine arts students in France. Several major exhibitions took place in France pointing to a convergence of interests between contemporary visual artists and his work. The effects Perec has on contemporary writers remain open with the Oulipo group (an acronym for the "Workshop of Potential Literature"), which Perec belonged to. It is indeed a difficult heritage that Harold Bloom has characterized as the ‘anxiety of influence’. With Perec, it might also address the loss of memory, that for him was about the Shoah and exile as much as it was about producing ‘language’ under constraint.
Christophe Reig attributes the permanence of the Perec œuvre to three factors outside of its own essence: First, the constant work of his friends at the Oulipo that can be found in a volume Le Voyage d’hiver et ses suites (Perec et Oulipo, 2013).They maintain the link with his work over different generations. Two, university criticism has managed to publicize Perec’s unique and eclectic work. The Pleïade collection coordinated by Christelle Reggiani attests to this. Third, the themes and motifs that are typical Perecquian constraints, by non-Oulipian writers, participate in this work about memory. They contribute to keep the person alive, despite the fear of erasure and disappearance. Perec has become a reference. Reig examines the texts of Philippe Vasset, Yves Pagès and Thomas Clerc as they are preoccupied by lists, cartography of places, and memory acts in the footsteps of Perec.
Dominique Raymond traces the Perec intertext in Quebecois literature, in search of quotes, allusions, references that are more of less explicit. She invokes a memorial interest, specific to remembrance, forgetfulness and knowledge. The privileged format of the list will be addressed, with its use by Quebecois artist M.A. Phaneuf. This comparison is articulated around the mathematical perspective of the 'fractal' figure, signifying break and fragment, repeating itself indefinitely. The question asked is what constitutes the sample, the fragment, the visible trace, and the archive.
Caroline Laurent examines the presence of Perec’s Je me souviens in Francophone literature with Diogène Ntarindwa’s Carte d’identité (play, 2007), Zeina Abirached’s Je me souviens – Beyrouth (graphic narrative, 2008), Rithy Panh’s L’Image manquante (documentary film, 2013), and Minh Tran Huy’s Voyageur malgré lui (novel, 2014). In all these works, the authors use Perec’s phrase “Je me souviens...” to point to people’s relation to traumatic events such as wars, genocide, and the Shoah. This literary memory is a nexus of references and traces that are part of our daily lives (de Certeau); it comes to define our relation to the past. The recurrence of “Je me souviens...” in various works produced in and about different geographical places illustrates the complex interactions between history and memory, between private and public, as well as between self and others.
All topics addressed are part of the on-going critical discourses surrounding the writer, and three panelists are top scholars of Perec, actively contributing to the study of all his texts, in various key publications, such as the two Pleaïde volumes and the Cahiers Perec. Most of them have collaborated with each other in terms of publications and essays. They all address the contemporary literary and artistic influences that are informed by Perec's writing and prolong it in its aftermath on the international scene. One of them proves that Perec affects not just literature but the field of mathematics and computer sciences.
The format will be a session of 15 minutes given for each paper/ participant, allowing over 15 minutes for discussion with the audience.