Mécaniques évocatrices

Claude Simonʼs world is haunted by technology. In his novels, the protagonist often finds himself confronted with machines, either means of communication such as the cinema­tograph or the tape recorder, or means of transport such as the tramway, the train or the aeroplane; and the narrator is constantly returning to similar experiences, borrowing metaphors from technical objects or making them the model for his writing. This book explores this little-studied dimension of the Nobel Prize winnerʼs work. Since most of the "mechanics" he describes in it refer back to war, it might seem that Simon is denouncing an anonymous and alienating machinery. But if we read carefully the many pages in which he evokes technology, we discover that he sees it above all as an indispensable supplement to the human being, as proposed by the cultural technology inspired by Mauss, and even as the concrete engine of a transgressive imagination that contributes to the singular impact of his novels.