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Raymond Roussel
El ensayo de Michel Foucault -insuperado análisis del conjunto de la obra de Raymond Roussel- encuentra en la producción del autor de Impresiones de África la repetición de la misma forma: el juego del doble y el mismo, de la diferencia y la identidad, del tiempo que se repite y que queda abolido, de la palabra que se desliza sobre sí misma para decir otra cosa distinta a la que enuncia. La obra de Roussel aparece, en el agudo estudio de Foucault, como el primer inventario, en forma de literatura, de los poderes desdobladores del lenguaje.
Del autor, Siglo XXI ha publicado El nacimiento de la clínica, Las palabras y las cosas, La arqueología del saber, Historia de la sexualidad (3 vols.) y Vigilar y castigar.
Del autor, Siglo XXI ha publicado El nacimiento de la clínica, Las palabras y las cosas, La arqueología del saber, Historia de la sexualidad (3 vols.) y Vigilar y castigar.
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1963
About the author
Michel Foucault
812 books6,845 followersPaul-Michel Foucault was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationships between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
Born in Poitiers, France, into an upper-middle-class family, Foucault was educated at the Lycée Henri-IV, at the École Normale Supérieure, where he developed an interest in philosophy and came under the influence of his tutors Jean Hyppolite and Louis Althusser, and at the University of Paris (Sorbonne), where he earned degrees in philosophy and psychology. After several years as a cultural diplomat abroad, he returned to France and published his first major book, The History of Madness (1961). After obtaining work between 1960 and 1966 at the University of Clermont-Ferrand, he produced The Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The Order of Things (1966), publications that displayed his increasing involvement with structuralism, from which he later distanced himself. These first three histories exemplified a historiographical technique Foucault was developing called "archaeology".
From 1966 to 1968, Foucault lectured at the University of Tunis before returning to France, where he became head of the philosophy department at the new experimental university of Paris VIII. Foucault subsequently published The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969). In 1970, Foucault was admitted to the Collège de France, a membership he retained until his death. He also became active in several left-wing groups involved in campaigns against racism and human rights abuses and for penal reform. Foucault later published Discipline and Punish (1975) and The History of Sexuality (1976), in which he developed archaeological and genealogical methods that emphasized the role that power plays in society.
Foucault died in Paris from complications of HIV/AIDS; he became the first public figure in France to die from complications of the disease. His partner Daniel Defert founded the AIDES charity in his memory.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 26, 2007
Michel Foucault's only literary criticism in English, and what a great subject matter: Raymond Roussel. The uber-eccentric wealthy self-published writer of the early 20th Century. A man who traveled around the world, yet never left his stateroom on the luxury liner. Yet he has seen the world through his port hole and is truly one of the amazing visionaries in the literary world. A major influence on DADA, especially Marcel Duchamp, whose life was turned around by going to see a stage version of 'Impressions of Africa."
This book is one of the first studies on Roussel, and is sort of required reading if one wonders into the world of this slightly mad genius.
This book is one of the first studies on Roussel, and is sort of required reading if one wonders into the world of this slightly mad genius.
November 14, 2014
http://conclusionirrelevante.blogspot...
(...) Este libro, del que he intentado apuntar sus ideas más importantes, muestra a un Foucault extremadamente estructuralista, desentendido de todo nexo con la realidad, en un análisis puramente interno, composicional, de la obra de Roussel (...) Resulta inevitable pensar que la imagen que nos presenta del poeta francés está sesgada por las bondades de su propio análisis o, en términos más llanos, por aquello de "no dejar que la realidad te arruine una buena historia". El Roussel de Foucault no es un poeta, y desde luego no es un poeta rarito. Es un poeta, geómetra, urbanista, cosmólogo y metafísico del lenguaje. Es un superhombre, un titán. Apuesto a que el Roussel de Foucault sería capaz de estornudar con los ojos abiertos y dar por comenzado el universo. Desde luego, la interpretación de Foucault es sugestiva, eso es innegable, ¿pero realmente habla de Roussel? ¿No estará hablando de un Roussel inventado por Foucault? ¿Una especie de Doppelgänger o una imagen filtrada por Foucault del propio Roussel, como en esos espejos convexos que amplifican la imagen? Es difícil afirmar una cosa o la contraria (...). En cierta forma, da la sensación de que así como el lenguaje de Roussel según Foucault es autocontenido, así el Roussel de Foucault es un personaje autocontenido dentro de la imaginación de Foucault. Sobre todo cuando el propio Roussel dedicó una obra, publicada póstumamente, a la elucidación de su obra, del procedimiento soterrado en ella. Elucidación que, lejos de ser completa, solo pudo llegar a ser parcial. (...)
(...) Este libro, del que he intentado apuntar sus ideas más importantes, muestra a un Foucault extremadamente estructuralista, desentendido de todo nexo con la realidad, en un análisis puramente interno, composicional, de la obra de Roussel (...) Resulta inevitable pensar que la imagen que nos presenta del poeta francés está sesgada por las bondades de su propio análisis o, en términos más llanos, por aquello de "no dejar que la realidad te arruine una buena historia". El Roussel de Foucault no es un poeta, y desde luego no es un poeta rarito. Es un poeta, geómetra, urbanista, cosmólogo y metafísico del lenguaje. Es un superhombre, un titán. Apuesto a que el Roussel de Foucault sería capaz de estornudar con los ojos abiertos y dar por comenzado el universo. Desde luego, la interpretación de Foucault es sugestiva, eso es innegable, ¿pero realmente habla de Roussel? ¿No estará hablando de un Roussel inventado por Foucault? ¿Una especie de Doppelgänger o una imagen filtrada por Foucault del propio Roussel, como en esos espejos convexos que amplifican la imagen? Es difícil afirmar una cosa o la contraria (...). En cierta forma, da la sensación de que así como el lenguaje de Roussel según Foucault es autocontenido, así el Roussel de Foucault es un personaje autocontenido dentro de la imaginación de Foucault. Sobre todo cuando el propio Roussel dedicó una obra, publicada póstumamente, a la elucidación de su obra, del procedimiento soterrado en ella. Elucidación que, lejos de ser completa, solo pudo llegar a ser parcial. (...)
September 13, 2014
Much of this was over my head mostly because I haven't read the works of Raymond Roussel. I did find the discussion of language in the last three pages of the book and the postscript afterward to be the best part. I am now well aware of the works of Roussel, and look forward to revisiting this work after I've given myself some time to acquaint myself with them. Hopefully I will have more to say on this topic at that time.
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February 7, 2018Doktorat in progress.
September 10, 2026
According to Foucault, Roussel highlighted the fact that language does not coincide with itself; that it does not rest upon the fullness of meaning or upon a smooth correspondence between language and the world, but upon a certain lack, upon a central absence, an emptiness that shines at its very center, filled with a terrifying muteness, making language radically porous and uncertain while at the same time enabling it altogether. Precisely because there are fewer words than there are things to be named, precisely because there is a gap between the signifier and the signified — a gap which is also what enables the sparkling play of literature — language can at once describe the world and create new worlds; it can be productive in the fullest sense. Roussel teaches us that what is missing is not “meaning,” but complete correspondence between the sign and what it signifies, and that signs acquire their capacity to signify precisely through this fundamental discrepancy. This gap is Roussel’s “sun”: an empty center that cannot be filled, but from which all the light of language emanates.
Roussel’s subtle games with language reveal precisely this: that language is ultimately and above all a medium of uncertainty; the fact that there are fewer speech sounds that signify than there are things to be signified defines the word in its essence as a kind of cunning knot, in which figures that seem as distant from one another as possible can unexpectedly meet. In these fissures, language moves away from itself, or more precisely from its signifying function, so that its essential poverty turns into its reverse: instead of presenting the presence of the things signified, it begins to mark their absence.
Roussel is thus, according to Foucault, the inventor of a language that expresses nothing but itself, a language that in its doubled being is absolutely simple, a language referring to language and enclosing its own sun within its sovereign and central failure. What this means is that it does not represent the author’s interiority, intention, or world, but instead foregrounds its own conditions, its functioning driven by a mute instrument capable of striking or disassembling chords, now terse, now breathtakingly rich, whose rhythms and harmonies are continually renewed and doubled. It makes visible an invisibility that, until the author’s death — a death that constitutes the threshold of revelation — was so radiant and blinding that it could not reveal itself to us as that which had always already been present here as its own condition.
Roussel’s subtle games with language reveal precisely this: that language is ultimately and above all a medium of uncertainty; the fact that there are fewer speech sounds that signify than there are things to be signified defines the word in its essence as a kind of cunning knot, in which figures that seem as distant from one another as possible can unexpectedly meet. In these fissures, language moves away from itself, or more precisely from its signifying function, so that its essential poverty turns into its reverse: instead of presenting the presence of the things signified, it begins to mark their absence.
Roussel is thus, according to Foucault, the inventor of a language that expresses nothing but itself, a language that in its doubled being is absolutely simple, a language referring to language and enclosing its own sun within its sovereign and central failure. What this means is that it does not represent the author’s interiority, intention, or world, but instead foregrounds its own conditions, its functioning driven by a mute instrument capable of striking or disassembling chords, now terse, now breathtakingly rich, whose rhythms and harmonies are continually renewed and doubled. It makes visible an invisibility that, until the author’s death — a death that constitutes the threshold of revelation — was so radiant and blinding that it could not reveal itself to us as that which had always already been present here as its own condition.
June 29, 2022
Throughout his bibliography Michel Foucault tended to either be a philosopher or a historian. But not in Death and the Labyrinth: The World of Raymond Roussel. Here he's a fanboy.
In his analysis of Raymond Roussel, Foucault takes European literary analysis back to an almost proto-structualistic state. As nice as it was for Foucault to give Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille a shoutout in the interview included in the English edition of this book, I don't think a lot of what Foucault did here owes anything to the two.
Instead, this is much more a precursor to Foucault's deconstructivist future, where words don't adhere to signs or base materialism, but where words weave a web of their own; where words create meaning through discourse.
As such this is a stark outlier in Foucault's bibliography, as it is in some ways a foundational work for the work he would later do by philosophizing about how discourse as shaped our understanding of history.
In his analysis of Raymond Roussel, Foucault takes European literary analysis back to an almost proto-structualistic state. As nice as it was for Foucault to give Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille a shoutout in the interview included in the English edition of this book, I don't think a lot of what Foucault did here owes anything to the two.
Instead, this is much more a precursor to Foucault's deconstructivist future, where words don't adhere to signs or base materialism, but where words weave a web of their own; where words create meaning through discourse.
As such this is a stark outlier in Foucault's bibliography, as it is in some ways a foundational work for the work he would later do by philosophizing about how discourse as shaped our understanding of history.
August 3, 2022
This was a first reading of this text, and I’m not very familiar with Roussel’s work, so I’ll have to return to this and study it in much more detail. As it is, Foucault’s only book on literature demonstrates an enormous talent for literary analysis. The amount of times this book blew me away is too large to count. Further, its content makes its position in Foucault’s work make perfect sense, with chapter 8 very much highlighting the transition from The Birth of the Clinic to The Order of Things, while also explaining Foucault’s resurgent interest around this time in literature, exhibited in his miscellaneous texts from the period. As a final bonus, the subject matter allows Foucault to make a number of linguistic flourishes, producing his most stylistically tasteful book.
April 9, 2019
It's a critical work of Roussel's works that I'm not acquainted with. The mot intriguing parts that were helpful in understanding the point of Foucault's criticism are the interview and the postscript. M. F studies these works from a formalists, process, linguistic items and structural point of view. Owing to this work, I'm looking forward to study the books of Roussel, Cocteau and Proust.
Enjoy your reading.
Enjoy your reading.
July 8, 2025
Pas le plus gros banger de Michael Crazycault à mon humble imo
September 25, 2025
Skimmato in 3 ore
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June 27, 2008As complex in its readings of Roussel's (notoriously difficult) fictional work, as Roussel's work itself. An invaluable explanatory critical work, that along with poet John Ashbery's earlier pioneer critiques, illuminate the complex literary art of Roussel.
September 4, 2009
Beautiful! thanks Lia (and JB) --illuminating in my favorite way; i now see how much i do not know
November 12, 2011
I will be revisiting Roussel's oeuvre this winter with a reread of Locus Solus and some time in all the others. Again Foucault has added to my reading list.
December 20, 2019
raymond roussel'ı hiç tanımadığım için foucault'nun analizine de yabancı kaldım. resmen kapkaranlık bi labirentteydim sanki.
March 19, 2020
İlginç bir kitap, şaşırttı. Dinlendirici, kafa dağıtıcı. Ne olursa olsun sonuna kadar Foucaultcuyuz. Ne hakkında yazarsa yazsın 5/5
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews