A01=Aubrey Gabel
Algerian War
Anaik Frantz
apoliticism
Author_Aubrey Gabel
Bourbaki
Category=DS
Category=DSBH
College of 'Pataphysics
critical fabulation
degagement
dictionaries
documentary literature
Editions Maspero
engagement
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eq_biography-true-stories
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eq_isMigrated=2
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feminization
Foulipo
Francois Maspero
French communism
French feminism
game theory
Georges Perec
history of avant-gardes
international communism
Jacques Jouet
Juliana Spahr
Klavdij Sluban
Les Guerilleres
lesbian materialism
literary ludics
literary Marxism
literature and photography
Louis Aragon
ludicrous literature
Maoism
Maurice Audin
May '68
May 1968
Michele Audin
militantism
Monique Wittig
Moulin d'Ande
multidirectional literature
open secrecy
oral history
Oulipo
play theory
postwar French literature
postwar literature
procedural literature
projects
Raymond Queneau
Sande Zeig
sociology of literature
Stephanie Young
textual genealogy
travel writing
travelogues
Product details
- ISBN 9780810149274
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Oct 2025
- Publisher: Northwestern University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Showing the political importance of play in postwar French literature
In postwar France, authors approached writing ludically, placing rules and conditions on language and on the context of composition itself. They eliminated “e’s” and feminized texts; they traveled according to strict rules and invented outright silly public personas. The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics is a comprehensive examination of how and why French authors turned to these ludic methods to grapple with their political moment.
These writers were responding to a range of historical upheavals, from the rise and fall of French feminist and Third-Worldist groups to the aftermath of international socialism both at home, in the former Parisian Belt and in France more broadly, and abroad, in post-Yugoslavia Balkan states and elsewhere. Juxtaposing an array of case studies and drawing on cross-disciplinary methodologies, Aubrey Gabel reads three generations of the formalist literary group Oulipo, including Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and Jacques Jouet, alongside writers not traditionally deemed ludic—or sometimes not even conventionally known as novelists—such as the lesbian activist-writer Monique Wittig and the editor FranÇois Maspero. Gabel argues that literary ludics serve as both an authorial strategy and a political form: playful methods allow writers not only to represent history in code but also to intervene creatively—as political actors—in the fraught social fields of postwar France.
In postwar France, authors approached writing ludically, placing rules and conditions on language and on the context of composition itself. They eliminated “e’s” and feminized texts; they traveled according to strict rules and invented outright silly public personas. The Politics of Play: Oulipo and the Legacy of French Literary Ludics is a comprehensive examination of how and why French authors turned to these ludic methods to grapple with their political moment.
These writers were responding to a range of historical upheavals, from the rise and fall of French feminist and Third-Worldist groups to the aftermath of international socialism both at home, in the former Parisian Belt and in France more broadly, and abroad, in post-Yugoslavia Balkan states and elsewhere. Juxtaposing an array of case studies and drawing on cross-disciplinary methodologies, Aubrey Gabel reads three generations of the formalist literary group Oulipo, including Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, and Jacques Jouet, alongside writers not traditionally deemed ludic—or sometimes not even conventionally known as novelists—such as the lesbian activist-writer Monique Wittig and the editor FranÇois Maspero. Gabel argues that literary ludics serve as both an authorial strategy and a political form: playful methods allow writers not only to represent history in code but also to intervene creatively—as political actors—in the fraught social fields of postwar France.
Aubrey Gabel is an assistant professor in the Department of French at Columbia University.
