DÉCLARATION

Et pour préciser : selon le constat perplexe, désabusé – et que je trouve pour ma part même déprimant si on le mesure à la réalité des écrits dans ce domaine (words, words, words)– de Paul de Man au début de son essai « The Resistance to Theory » (The Resistance to Theory, University of Minnesota Press, 2009 [1986], 8^th printing, p. 3) : « It was written at the request of the Committee on Research Activities of the MLA as a contribution to a collective volume entitled Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures. I was asked to write the section on literary theory. Such essays are expected to follow a clearly determined program: they are supposed to provide the reader with a select but comprehensive list of the main trends and publications in the field, to synthesize and classify the main problematic areas and to lay out a critical and programmatic projection of the solutions which can be expected in the foreseeable future. All this with a keen awareness that, ten years later, someone will be asked to repeat the same exercise.» How boring, I should add…