Récits à bascule, Les cas de La villa de César Aira et Embassytown de China Miéville

Abstract

Even though projects and experiences of alternative management and life are on the rise, visions of the future still tend to fall back on schemes inherited from the narrative of progress. In this essay I suggest that «collapse» (effondrement) as a horizon of expectation can avoid the automatisms and dead-ends that block the imagination on certain scenarios of the future. In this essay I focus, firs, on the implications of Pablo Servigne’s and Raphaël Stevens’ vision of collapse and of the hypothesis that it is possible to «decolonize the imaginary» by means of «beautiful stories». In order to understand what such a «decolonization» could consist in, I focus on the process of disconnection (débranchement) they recommend, and I compare it to that of epistemic de-linking (desprendimiento) developed in the context of decolonial thinking. I then analyze the complementarity of these two processes through the reading of Embassytown by China Miéville and La villa by César Aira, two texts that show the potential toggle effect of small gestures and daily re-positionning on this imagination « out of work ».