Camelia Elias
Southern University of Denmark

Louis Aragon and the redundant potential

"I call well written that which is not redundant", Louis Aragon declares in his work Treatise on Style, which is not so much a work on style per se, but on style which emerges by itself in a context that denounces redundancy generated by stupidity. Beginning with deliberations on who is a clown and who is a stable boy in the literary arena of the 20s, Aragon exercises his activist literary skills to help him distinguish between normative truth and authoritative text. The work culminates with a denouncing of "the dragon Not-confirming-your-acts-to-your-words" as the monster which controls the out-of-control writings, as it were, of the surrealist writers. Reserving his right to ultimately "shit on the entire French army" Aragon’s rally against ‘stupid writing’ hinges on the importance of eliminating redundancy from the activism involved in the surrealist project. As, however, Aragon himself remains true to surrealist ideas of writing, this paper will argue that good activism is activism which is not redundant. The question of redundancy will be seen from three angles: (1) to what extent is a redundant discourse powerful? (2) what is the role of the particular in literary activism? (3) can redundancy lend authority to the text which denounces it?