"Differences of potential" DifdePo History, poetics and aesthetics of Oulipo – DifdePo

The project aims at creating an international federation of researchers working on Oulipo. It is a matter of implementing synergies which will allow an overview of the group and its productions under their various aspects. Once the project is completed, we will have a better grasp of a relatively unknown melting pot within the history of the 20th century literature. From a theoretical point of view, the project will induce us to reflect on the manner with which Oulipo makes us redefine our concept of literature (what remains of an author when a text is written under constraint? How do we interpret such a text?). Finally, we wish to complete the researchers’ documentation about the group by putting at their disposal new texts (paper and on-line databases), in particular with the creation of a website. Thanks to the trusting relationship between Oulipians and several project members, most notably the coordinator, we have Oulipo’s total support: they agreed to give us unlimited access to seven boxes full of unpublished archives and a few unpublished letters. We wish to focus on interdisciplinary perspectives, since Oulipo’s very project is such (mathematics, computer science and literature).

Six months after being launched, the program has already yielded excellent results. At least one determining activity has taken place on each partner site (Paris, Lille, Poitiers, Oxford). Coordination has quickly been implemented by several meetings in Paris and Oxford. The table of contents of the collective works has been established by Christelle Reggiani; the index of notions of the Oulipo Dictionary by Dominique Moncond’huy. Three one-day work-study meetings and one three-day colloquium have already taken place. The website has been activated by Camille Bloomfield, and is constantly being enriched with various relevant resource. A fruitful and congenial understanding among partners and all team members allows for swift and efficient work. The archives inventory is in progress and will soon be finalized, thanks to the recruitment of an assistant, Paula Klein. The search for and selection of a service provider for the digitalization has been completed: negotiations are in progress with the BnF to host the funds on Gallica. The ALGORITM seminar (Archives littéraires du groupe Oulipo, (re)créations informatiques, techniques et mathématiques) is being implemented, under the responsibility of Camille Bloomfield, Hélène Campaignolle-Catel and Alain Schaffner (for Paris 3), Philippe Roussin and Lou Burnard (for Oxford).

Three years of exploration and the final completion of the Dictionary—systematic inventory of acquired knowledge—should result in an increased understanding not only about the literary group Oulipo and their practices, but also about the great stakes of French Literature (and even Literature at large) during the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century. The project should allow upper-level instructors to access much richer and complete information on Oulipo with ease. A host of on-line material will certainly support an educational, if not vocational objective. Reflection upon literary genres thus includes youth literature, of which Oulipians are great providers (Roubaud, Fournel, etc.). High-School teachers will therefore find there a very rich material for their curricula. Lastly, the involvement of the group in writing workshops naturally shifts the Oulipo forays toward a didactic dimension, which the project will not overlook.

Three one-day work-study have been held, and also a colloquium (see appendix). Collective books are in preparation ; members have individually pronounced some presentation of conferences.

Oulipo, “Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle” was founded a little over fifty years ago, in 1960, by the mathematician François Le Lionnais and the writer Raymond Queneau. This group specializes in the study of all of the possibilities offered to literature by structures born of mathematics and informatics. The success of the group has generated an impressive following in and outside France. A systematic analysis of Oulipo will allow us to scrutinize what may be the last avant-garde literary group existing in France, with an obvious international dimension (26% of its members are not French). The Oulipo group, whose works touch on all literary genres, seems to play for literature of the second half of the twentieth century a federating role equivalent to that of surrealism for the first half of the century.

Fifty years after its inception, in the midst of the “great digital conversion”, Oulipo appears to be one of the best sites for reflection and creation in the face of the current technological transition of literature. As a matter of fact, new technologies have not only revealed the relevance of Oulipian questioning, but also its productivity and necessity in the daily lives of millions of readers, be it on the internet, on tablets or in e-books. The “potential” dimension of Oulipo therefore represents also the potential for the renewal of our vision of literature as well as our methods of teaching it, ideally in large part devoted to humor and creativity.

The project title, “Différences de potentiel” (“DifdePo”), underlines the variety of possibilities provided by Oulipo’s research, the diversity of literary approaches typical of its members as well as the creativity resulting from the confrontation of opposing polarities… The project aims to create an international federation of researchers, all already working on Oulipo. We wish to put in place synergies that will allow us to get an overview of the group and its production in its different forms. We will emphasize interdisciplinary perspectives, since the very foundation of Oulipo is interdisciplinary (mathematics, informatics and literature). Once completed, the project will lead to a better knowledge of this relatively ignored hotspot within the history of 20th century literature (Oulipo has much influence over non-Oulipian aspects of contemporary art and literature). On a theoretical level, at issue is also a reflection on the manner with which Oulipo causes us to redefine our own conception of literature (notably by questioning such notions as the author and inspiration, inherited from romanticism). Finally, we wish to fill out the documentation on Oulipo available to researchers in the field by permitting access to new texts (paper editions as well as on-line databases), and creating a website devoted to that database. Thanks to the trust established between Oulipians and several members of this project, including its coordinator, we have obtained full support from Oulipo, including access to unpublished archives and several sets of correspondence not yet published.

The project is entirely innovative as no such international research group devoted to Oulipo presently exists. The exceptional size of the research team (about thirty members, including ten foreigners), the high caliber of partner teams (under the double framework of universities and the CNRS), and the rich diversity of the expected results make for a very ambitious project. Fifty years after its inception, we have begun to understand that Oulipo is a potential source of wealth for the literary heritage of France and the world. We believe it is time to honor this heritage and make it better known. Such are the goals assigned to this project.