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"Céline"
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Lawless Exuberance: Céline and Roth
What did Philip Roth mean when he announced in a 1984 interview that “My Proust is Céline?” Could he have meant that the anti-Semite, collaborator, criminal, and disgraced writer triumphed over Proust in literary, thematic, and even moral purpose? If so, how? This paper investigates the origins of Roth’s statement, his reading of Céline through Kristeva’s concept of abjection, and his incorporation of Célinesque elements in his fiction and criticism, notably in his short story, “On the Air” (1970). Céline essentially permitted Roth to embrace transgression, which, in turn, allowed Roth to expand his candid writing about topics that violated social and sexual norms in America of the late sixties and beyond. Roth successfully avoided the negative aspects of Céline by deciding to celebrate his language and style rather than admit his failings. He effectively separated the literary from the political and overlooked how race determined Céline’s poetics. Ironically, Roth’s acceptance of Céline reflected some of his own values: directness, clarity of purpose, and descriptive detail. This literary approach allowed Roth to suspend his “Jewish conscience” in his reading and writing practices and understanding of literary inheritance.
Journal Article
Nihilism and modernity: Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the end of the night
This paper explores Louis-Ferdinand Céline's 1932 Journey to the end of the night within the context of growing work on the literary geographies of modernity. The paper argues that Céline's novel can be productively aligned with other texts such as Ulysses or Heart of darkness as a way of thinking about the experiences of modernity in terms of a spatial disorientation that provokes new kinds of writing. At the same time, Céline's novel is distinctive because it presents the experience of modernity as one of nihilism. In particular, the novel diagnoses the 'creative-destructive' project of modernity through a narrative of abjection and disenchantment, asking readers to question the dialectical promise, and idealist pretensions, of the term. This paper explores how this nihilistic writing is expressed spatially through the parodic 'journey' that structures the narrative, and the different nihilistic landscapes dramatised across the novel. The paper proceeds by examining understandings of modernity within literary geographies, and interpretations of nihilism, before exploring some of the central spatial moments of the novel: the deathscapes of World War I, French Colonial Africa and New York. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways in which Céline's writing could be said to make manifest the spatial experiences of modernity.
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Le teen film, c'est ma culture: Céline Sciamma and the American Teen Movie
On the release of Naissance des pieuvres ( Water Lilies , 2007), director and screenwriter Céline Sciamma likened her tale of female sexual awakening to American sex quest romp American Pie (Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz, 1999). With Bande de filles ( Girlhood , 2014), Sciamma continues her engagement with le teen film . I examine the various ways in which Sciamma's films invoke elements of the American teen movie. I argue that Sciamma's films call to be read alongside and as examples of the transnational teen movie, thus decoupling the category from its predominant association with American cinema.
Journal Article
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of the most innovative novelists of the twentieth century, and his influence both in his native France and beyond remains huge. This book sheds light on Céline's novels, which drew extensively on his complex life: he rose from humble beginnings to worldwide literary fame, then dramatically fell from grace only to return, belatedly, to the limelight. Céline's subversive writing remains fresh and urgent today, despite his controversial political views and inflammatory pamphlets that threatened to ruin his reputation. This biography explores new material and reminds us why the author belongs in the pantheon of modern greats.
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The Eye and the Flesh: Céline, Bataille, and the Fascination with Death
This paper argues that Louis-Ferdinand Céline and Georges Bataille use voyeurism as a transgressive mechanism to confront death through the female body, a paradoxical site of life and decay. Though Céline’s clinical, disenchanted gaze contrasts with Bataille’s erotic, metaphysical quest, both employ the act of seeing to reveal death’s presence within vitality. In Céline’s works, voyeurism shifts from erotic curiosity to cold observation, framing the female body as a sterile emblem of mortality. In Bataille’s, it becomes participatory, merging ecstasy with dissolution in a sacred yet destructive form. Drawing on Freud and Sodom motifs, this study shows how their gazes transform the female body into a lens for existential finitude, challenging life–death boundaries in 20th-century French literature.
Journal Article
The Construction of the Girl and the Teenager in Céline Sciamma’s Cinema
Cinema is still a men’s field more than women’s, something that studies from the New York Film Academy, the Media, Diversity and Social Change Initiative or the Bechdel Test Movie List have backed up. However, statistics are slowly showing optimistic results, and Céline Sciamma is one of the women who are making them improve. She is a young French director, whom trilogy (Naissance de Pieuvres, Tomboy y Bande de Filles) is focused in women, specially little girls and teenagers, and how the puberty process affects their feelings and the discovery of their identity and sexuality. These pages will analyze how Sciamma is contributing to the seventh art with her films and how she transforms woman into an active subject, not a passive one, changing this way the established narrative structures in the prevailing cinema.
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On the Appoggiatoʼs Crescendo as a Phenomenon of Establishing the Predicate of ʽBeauty’ in Céline Dion’s Lying Down – a Kantian-Husserlian Perspective
In the album Courage from 2019, Céline Dion released the song « Lying Down ». We found this song special because here we see some similarities between Sia’s vocal stamp in some songs and Céline Dion’s. We know, thus, a Céline Dion that combines a classic line with innovative pop elements, as we are already used to. What surprises in this song is the “strength” of the voice, which can easily send you to some philosophical perspectives. It is about the insistent ascendancy of the word “trust”, these coincidences often being found in Sia Furler. In our case, we want to use the Kantian perspective to talk about the predicate of beauty existing in all these “throws” and withdrawals vocalized from the same word – “trust” – which, from a philosophical point of view, we can call, without mistaking, “hermeneutic returns to words” (Maria-Roxana Bischin). We will try to analyze the words in this song and translate them into a literary-philosophical, but also a musicological perspective. Current research on Céline Dion is scarce, which is also due to the fact that the actress is still alive. But, as Dario Sarlo managed to write a rich Ph.D. thesis about the violinist Jascha Heifetz, our goal is to publish a scientific article based on this song signed by Céline Dion. We will also point out the elements of symbolism existing in these verses, we will focus on fermata’s modulations that make up the Kantian predicate of Beauty (see, in this sense, the Critique of Pure Reason) in the hypostasis of an infinite judgment.
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Céline au Congo / Céline in the Congo
If Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s influence on 20th century French literature is widely acknowledged, one is less aware of the influence left by his Journey to the end of the night on contemporary postcolonial Francophone Literature. In spite of the racist nature of his ideology, Céline’s profoundly “oralized” body of works showed the way to later generations on how to combine the written and the spoken word—a question which is at the core of contemporary francophone literature, as produced in Africa and in the Caribbean Islands. This is why writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau and Alain Mabanckou secretly refer to Céline; but in the case of Mabanckou we would argue that his interest for Céline has been sparked by readings of his compatriot and fellow writer, Daniel Biyaoula who blatantly made use of Journey to the end of the night to structure his novels.
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