Into the COLAverse – Episode 15: Hervé Picherit

Frederick: [00:00:00] It’s my great honor to be here talking with Herve Picherit, professor in the Department of French and Italian.

Welcome Herve.

Herve: Hi Frederick.

Frederick: I am so excited to be here with you to learn more about you, your life, your work. Um, Ave I see that, you know, we both share Stanford in common. Um, even if you are, uh, younger than me. Uh, and um, but yeah, tell me, ave you, you work on some of the kind of great French authors as well as Avant Garde cinema.

Arts, you also kind of pull from areas like narrative theory, [00:01:00] narratology, but also aesthetic theory and, and con other big, big concepts, um, around aesthetic self fashioning. How did Herve and France, and maybe you can tell us a little bit about where you grew up. Like, was there something in the water that brought you to literature to, to wanna study cinema mm-hmm.

um, in the way that you do. Um, and then what was your path? How did you end up at UT.

Herve: Sure. So, so in terms of literature, I think like a lot of people, um, it, it was in high school that I realized that books did different things than just entertain me, and that that was the first time I had the experience of reading books that were.

Really meaningful to me. So I think I’m the or, or I was the, the audience by design for books like Catcher in the Rye. And that’s what I discovered at the right time, right place in high school. And, uh, from there it was really looking for an excuse to keep reading books. And that took me through college [00:02:00] and, and designed my, my majors in, uh, French and English.

And, um, For a long time, I thought I’d, I’d go on in English. Uh, since the, the books, those books were my first loves. Uh, in college I discovered, uh, James Joyce a again write book at the right time for me at that age. Um, but it was when I took, uh, a course on, uh, French Canadian literature that, that it, it, it spoke to me in terms of being a French speaker who grew up in, in North America, and that, that opened up French literature to me and, uh, I started discovering authors, uh, in this field and ultimately that, that’s what I chose to do for graduate school.

Mm-hmm. , ,

Frederick: where did you end up going for your undergraduate?

Herve: So, uh, undergraduate, uh, I stayed in the, the hometown that I grew up in, uh, Laramie, Wyoming. So I went to the University of Wyoming. Oh,

Frederick: wonderful. Yeah. And you ended up actually taking a position there, is that right after your [00:03:00] PhD?

Herve: I did. Yeah. So, um, it was kind of a funny arc that I, um, finished up my PhD at a time when, uh, university of Wyoming was looking for position.

And it was, it was the very strange, uh, strange and unexpected ways, uh, experience of. Taking up this very different role than I’d had going there. So I, I had, I got to be a student and a professor at the, at the same university, in the same department where I majored and it was, I think it maybe sped up part of the, the learning curve about being new faculty to have seen both ends and to realize how they’re different.

Hmm.

Frederick: Very, yeah. Very, very much so. So let me ave you. You mentioned Catcher in the Rye or Salinger, and you mentioned Joyce French. Like tell me, how did you come backward? Was it always there or like how did you, because that’s is, that’s you, this is your met, I guess, if you will.

Herve: Yes. [00:04:00] So, um, French for me was, uh, our home language and um, growing up I had this kind of big divide between.

Home life and out outside life because I had different languages, uh, speaking French at home with my parents and I, you know, going to an American high school and then an American university. , it was English language literature that I discovered first, and I think that at the tail end of college, I started discovering French literature and it spoke to me to, to the family part of me as well.

Right? So I think that bridge, the interest in literature as a broad interest and the language, uh, of French kind of spoke to this family part of me. And I, I suppose that it was because it spoke to the most parts of me, that that’s the, the field I chose to go on in rather than English or American Litera.

Frederick: And you chose, I mean, I, I know you have so many things that you study, you do research and write on, but it’s interesting to me [00:05:00] that Proust and Celine have, have certainly, Proust are very, very, um, kind of, uh, sort of centrifugal force in your work. Mm-hmm. , um, um, tell me like. But you also, the French Canadian literature you mentioned, how, how does the French Francophone France and the French Francophone Canadian literature connect, or did it start to part ways for you?

Herve: So, un unfortunately, I haven’t had an occasion to revisit French Canadian literature, but I, it was one author in particular, you, who is a real weirdo, and I, I confess, I like weirdo writers. And, um, he played with language in a way. I’d been really excited about with some like James Joyce, and that opened up to me the, the idea that you can do things with language in these very exciting and surprising ways.

And, um, in terms of Proust and Celine, again, for me, [00:06:00] these were the, the right authors at the right time. And, uh, they were both, I was able to spend years and years with them because they. Use language a apparently the same language, but in such radically different ways. And I was excited about inhabiting that spectrum of what Proust does with language, with his very pu pushing to its very limits.

Proper structures, grammatical sentences, and Celine on the other hand, who, who breaks grammar, who breaks the sentence, who, uh, creates a more musical kind of version of it. It was the same language, but ultimately it was so different that, that it wasn’t, and that was something that was very interested in exploring and, and figuring out better.

Mm. You

Frederick: talk in your work about an aesthetics of self fashioning, and I imagine this comes out of your, your interest in how language shapes , not just personal trauma, but trauma on a, um, [00:07:00] social level, um, with the Great War and so on. Can you talk to us about what is this aesthetic self fashion?

Herve: Sure when I started out was the revelation.

A again, uh, that literature does something more than than just tell stories or recount or convey, and that someone like Proust is looking to u use language, use his, uh, stories to square his relationship with his family. So, uh, Proust had had kind of a difficult relationship or, or unique relationship with his mother and.

And literature is a way for him to kind of resolve tho those, those situation, those angles, and f figure out who he was. He was very much in between two worlds, uh, with a Jewish mother and uh, um, Non-Jewish father, but both parents who looked to him to integrate into French society. There, there was, he was part of this generational plan where mother and father would, uh, work together to have sons who could fully access [00:08:00] French society.

And, uh, unfortunately for Proust he just wasn’t that person. Right. He, uh, identified more with his mother. He was gay, he. Sick in ways that didn’t correspond with his father’s theories on medicine. He, he just didn’t fit into this family plan. And his use of literature is squa that for himself. And then my intuition, or, or what I argued is then he goes on to do that for all of French society.

When he sees that World War I is, is damaging the, the sense of society in the same way that he lived for himself with his family.

Frederick: Really fascinating. and you pair Proust with Celine, which for some of us who you know, have read both seem like an unlikely kind of match. Can you talk about, maybe first Celine a little bit, um, and what you found there and then how the, the kind of bringing the two together revealed something for you and for us?[00:09:00]

Herve: Sure. Well, uh, first of all, I did it because as a graduate student starting out, I didn’t know any better and I didn’t know how difficult it would be and how big of a project it would be, and I’m thankful that I, I didn’t realize what it was because I wouldn’t have tried it otherwise. But yeah. Celine and Proust are, I, in many ways a poor match in that they’re, they’re diametrically opposite.

Celine is, Famous as a stylist, but, but also as a notorious anti-Semite who wrote deplorable, uh, anti-Semitic pamphlets during World World War ii. So in a moment when he really occupied the, the position of, of the winners at the time, and if I paired the two together, it was because I had the, the sense that they offered.

Two completely different answers to the problem of what to do after the first World War. And my interest in the First World War was really as, as a moment where Europe, as it had [00:10:00] seen itself, as it had conceived of, of itself, is broken and it has to come up with something to do next. Uh, a way of imagining itself as a society, Proust on his side works toward.

Conserving what he can and creating readers who are able to carry within themselves what might be lost. I, in the outside world, so for Proust, I see it very much as a move of the, the outer marks of a society that become internalized in, uh, group of individuals who carry within them the entirety of a past that might be lost.

And Celine on his. Sees World War I as almost as the end of the world. So in, in many ways my sense of Celine is of a post-apocalyptic writer. He, his problem is figuring out what you do to survive in a world that is a, after the world is over. And a lot of that has to do with this [00:11:00] sort of, Musical self fashioning.

And I think he saw himself as someone who might stand in as a kind of cultural or or spiritual leader. So, uh, very much a fascist position at odds with priests. And so, yeah, these two appear to me as the two alternatives that present themselves to French society, European Society after World War I.

Frederick: That’s a really interesting concept. The skin also being for you, you are really doing the work to tease out the sort of stylistic theological shapings in these different, in these different works. Can you talk about. Well, this theoretical concept, um, and how it was able to kind of generate new knowledge about these writers and the time that they’re kind of responding

Herve: to.

Sure. Yeah. Um, so the, the idea of, of or, uh, of fla, [00:12:00] uh, was a way for, wait. It, it ended up being the unifying language that I used to talk about, both the, the style of the two authors. That function as a kind of skin in very different ways. And also the, the social function that they try to carry out, um, in, in relationship to their style.

So for Proust, again, the idea is that, The, the social body has been flad by this, this trauma that affects the winners of the Great War as much as it affects the, the defeated. And for Proust, the idea is that he will cultivate the interiority of the individual so that the personal, individual skin, and that’s what will contain what, what was once, uh, societal.

Knowledge for Celine is very much the opposite. And I, my sense of him is that he sees his own musical language as kind of prosthetic skin that he uses, first of all [00:13:00] to cover himself. Uh, he was wounded in the great war, and I think for him music is kind of way to. To recover himself in kind of bo both sense of that word.

And then he, he seems to realize that maybe as the potential to do that for a whole society. So for Celine, he produces this kind of music and he, he, he dabbles in a sort of mysticism where his music has a unifying power and those who would let themselves be carried away by his music will become part of a social body that he’s recreated through this music, that, that serves the function as a, as a skin.

Wow.

Frederick: Yeah. A very generative concept and one I’m sure that could be brought into or seen in other pairings. Right? Unusual pairings of authors and literature, right? Um, in response to great, um, world traumas. Um, like the Great War. So you [00:14:00] also write. Sci-fi. Um, will you write on avant garde cinema figures?

Others? I don’t know. Give us a little bit of a, what is going on in Herve’s mind? What are the things that are exciting to you? Why sci-fi and then avant garde, um, French cinema, um, stylistics.

Herve: I, I think what they might have in common is a, again, this, this capacity to do things with language. Um, so for, for the avant garde, I guess just the, the sheer, um, the sheer hubris of thinking that these authors can create.

A new way of being in, in the world. Right. thinking that they can access the, the shape of thought through, through their use of language. And, um, working on these different authors in different fields. I’m struck by [00:15:00] different movements and different authors really engaging in different fantasies about language.

So for. Celine, his fantasy about language is that he can somehow access a form of language. That is what it represents. Uh uh. Celine doesn’t think that language points to something else. He wants to create language. That is the thing that it says it is for. Someone like . He seems to imagine he, he has the metaphor of the, the magnetic field.

And I think for him, that’s, that’s his vision of how language functions, that it throws these invisible waves that, that connect people one to one to another. And for someone like Ri Babo who is, uh, essentially an an unknown. Author, I was struck by the fact that he comes from a place of, uh, Catholic mysticism, but adopts a lot of the same figures as the surrealists do.

So he, his, his. I guess proto science fiction book has [00:16:00] all, all this stuff about herk and waves, and I think none of it really squares with how, how the science of it works. But I think he’s really taken by the metaphor of this, this force that can penetrate and unite. And I, I think that’s his vision of, of language as well.

Really fascinating.

Frederick: Yeah. I’ve never thought about authors that where you could kind of almost declare. Their use of language is a langu, is that, you know, language refers to the object and then authors that are actually using language to kind of push beyond the reference the object, and even possibly anticipate or.

you know, a, a future, um, object, right? That doesn’t exist in the, in the proximate. Really interesting of a really, what do we do with, I don’t know if you’ve thought about this much, but gosh, sometimes I wonder, maybe this is just me, grumpy me, but where [00:17:00] is the like avant garde today? Like where, where are our writers, our artists, our filmmakers that are actually not just.

Turning out the formula and pushing or thinking in the, in the ways that, you know, we had with Platon or even Chris Marker, um, and others about the visual language, language in general as precisely in the ways that you’re kind of articulating it.

Herve: Yeah. So, so it’s not something I’m ne necessarily thought about research wise or work-wise, but de definitely working.

Students and undergraduate students in particular. Last semester I taught, of course on cinema and memory, and we, we watched a mix of high art films and more popular films. And I’m struck by the insights that the students have between, you know, they, usually, the films they haven’t seen are the, the French films.

And they, they tend to be more overtly avant-garde. [00:18:00] And I, I’m really appreciative of them finding connections with, um, similar. Similar stories or similar moves in popular culture. So I think it might’ve moved into plain sight in a way that mm-hmm. these conversations happen, but maybe in more disguised, I don’t think it’s, Inaccurate talk about a golden age of television.

I think TV is doing some, some much more, uh, heavy lifting than, than it’s done in the past. And maybe because that’s happening, there’s less need for a separate category of, of high art or avant garde, um mm-hmm. , but yeah, that’s, that’s a bit beyond my, my period.

Frederick: Mm. Yeah. No, I mean, really, I think, I think you’re right actually, that the envelope is getting pushed.

Harder and harder, like you said, in plain sight. And we don’t have to go to these sort of niche areas for us to feel, say, excited about those who are pushing the envelope on [00:19:00] aesthetic form. Just a few words about, and then I want to return to, you know, your students and your classrooms. You’re working on a project that’s set in the Second World War?

Yes. And, um, tell us a little bit about that and maybe some of the, the, the novels that you’re excited about there and Yeah.

Herve: Sure. Um, what, so the, the stakes of this project are, for me personally, the, the, the way I got to this new project was, Being very disturbed, like, like many of us, about the, the, uh, emergence of authoritarian and, and fascist discourses and really thinking about.

The kind of work that I do and how to engage and resist these forces in a way that rise on my work. Um, and, and that, that actually calls on, on the tools that I have. And it was in this mode of thinking that I became very [00:20:00] interested in looking at the, the, the period of the French occupation in metropolitan France and looking at the kinds of books that were being written in that moment and thinking about.

The political movements of collaboration and resistance and seeing if there weren’t formal or neurological structures that underpin each. Um, so the, the question I’m asking in this new project is, Is there a way that collaborationist fascist writers write in their use of form that defines that political opinion?

Right? Does the form match the content? And can the same be said about, uh, of course Sheva the much more rare, uh, resistance texts written in the same period, so it’s. Very much a, a, a return to the question of form. Um, li like it was for Proust and Celine, and it engages with f fewer classics. Um, a a lot of these texts are forgotten [00:21:00] texts.

Um, you know, thankfully on the Collaborationist side, a lot of these texts are, are, are texts that have, uh, not been read since then. Um, unfortunately also it’s, uh, a reading. Text that are still very popular from the collaboration and that trade in these fascist, um, tropes and ideologies. So, uh, Lu is, is probably a, a big figure who wrote what was framed as the best seller of the collaboration and, and yet anti-Semitic diatribe very much a fascist text, but a, a text.

One has to respect, even if you deploy the ideas and respect the way that you respect something that’s very dangerous. HOK has a way of using his substantial talent to frame ideas that absolutely make n no sense, uh, in way that finesse, that, that lack of sense. And, um, Celine does very [00:22:00] much the same thing in a different, in different tone.

So I’m interested in stylists who. Are able to seemingly justify these ideologies that, that are, we know, are, are unjustifiable. And on the flip side, I’m interested in seeing how resistance authors use their writing when so many tropes and figures were already taken by the, the collaboration and there seems to be, you could almost call it a shadow war that happens in the literary sphere during, during this.

Really interesting,

Frederick: you know, after the Cuban revolution mentioned famously that we, there will be, there will not be a great Cuban, a no great novel of the Cuban Revolution until we have time to have distance on. Mm-hmm. the event. Mm-hmm. . And I wonder how you might agree or complicate something like that.

Herve: No, I, I think. [00:23:00] That feels very much like the, the inverse of my project in that I take a, as much as I can, I try to take the view without the distance, uh, of, of time. So in a way, the, the beginning of, of, of the project is a thought experiment of what was it like to read during this period in France. So I, I limit myself to the books that, that were available.

And it’s, yeah, there, there is no great novel. There is no great narrative. But there are very talented authors who write these books that were popular within this very brief moment in time. Yeah. Yeah.

Frederick: No, really, really, and of course, I’m sure this has tons of ripples and resonances with our contemporary kind of moment, right?

yeah.

Herve: Unfortunately. Even if, even if the mediascape has changed, I think the, the rhetoric is very similar. . Mm-hmm.

Frederick: French. Cinema Memory. You’d [00:24:00] mentioned already as one of your classes that you, you know, you learned so much from your students. What kinds of movies are you watching there, or, or college, movie, American Myth.

Tell tell, tell me a little bit about the

Herve: classroom. Well, so, so this semester, uh, for my undergraduate course, I have the, the good fortune of teaching. Uh, A Plan two freshman course, signature course, and we’re doing the, the college movie, which, um, you know, this is environment I’ve, I’ve lived in for, for a very long time, and I’m fascinated.

I’m also really fascinated by. The ways in which these films presume to tell students what their experience should be. So we, we started with very early silent films. Uh, this week we’re working on Animal House, which is, it has for, for all of its many, many flaws. It has staying power because it’s, it remains very polemical film for the course and the students.

[00:25:00] And, um, there is a secret pleasure to, again, using the tools we have to do this. To films that aren’t necessarily great works of art, so that, that’s a different kind of pleasure than working on higher brow material.

Frederick: No, absolutely. In many ways, I want to spend my intellectual energy and time on films, novels, comic books that are discomforting in some way, right?

You know, yes, there’s the, the stuff that we love , but, um, but. Sometimes we generate most understanding and knowledge in and around things that make us feel uncomfortable.

Herve: Mm-hmm. a absolutely. And I, you know, if, if I could give, uh, this group of freshmen o one thing that they walk away with, uh, I would think it’d be that because they, they’re very good at identifying what’s.

Objectionable, uh, about [00:26:00] a film like Animal House and that there’s plenty that is, um, my hope is to convey that that is a, a perfect starting point to begin analyzing and taking apart and going into the deeper structures that usually yield something much more interesting and, uh, if not more disturbing as well.

Frederick: It’s interesting, you know, with my students that do Latinx pop culture, media, tv, comics, you know, one of the biggest things that we talk about is, well, yes, there’s the low hanging. I’ll be honest. There’s the low hanging fruit. There’s the stuff that’s easy to say, this is good, this is bad, this is terrible, this is et cetera.

But now let’s. Acquire the tools. And often for me, and I don’t know if this is the same for you, narrative theory has been a kind of bedrock. Mm-hmm. for that, let’s, let’s acquire the tools so that we can understand how these good or say bad things are [00:27:00] sh given shape. Mm-hmm. and what they, how their shape.

Affects us, how it triggers, you know, thoughts or makes you our perception thought and feeling in and around the object. Um, so yeah, yeah, there’s the kind of, there’s that low hanging fruit and it is important to be talking about that. But I think for me anyway, Taking students, and even in my own work onto that, into that deeper level of, you know, how, how these things are built.

Mm-hmm. is, um, significant.

Herve: Yeah, no. A a, absolutely. Yeah. And for, for Animal House, for example, um, and th this is, I discovered this, um, only this time around, it’s set in, in 1962, which is when, um, uh, ol Ole Miss is trying to integrate. So the, that’s the, the unspoken background of the film, and that illuminates a lot of the scenes in a very [00:28:00] different light and adds different stakes to the, to the.

I didn’t know

Frederick: that either. Very

Herve: interesting. No. Yeah. And I think I, I don’t know if the film knew that either, but it’s, uh, .

Frederick: Interesting. Well, it’s there. It’s a sign. It’s a sign post for us. Um, so ve as we wind this down, what are you excited about? I mean, I know you’re doing your work on literature of collaboration and resistance, but.

What does Herve do, you know, for pleasure? What movies are you watching? ? What’s exciting for you? What novels, if you have time to even be reading novels, um, are you reading? Yeah. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what you’re

Herve: up to. Sure. Uh, well, I, you know, I am a. Big, not so big now because I have a, I have a toddler and that, that eats up a lot of what used to be, um, extra time.

But, uh, you know, I enjoy popular culture very much. Um, [00:29:00] so right now my wife and I are catching up on, uh, RuPaul’s Drag Race. That’s a, a big show that we like to watch also. Uh, Big suckers for kind of, uh, grand narrative, uh, TV series. The, the, the sort of TV series that does work, that film can’t really do in, in the two hour period.

We recently got through a better call, Saul, which uh, You know, was really amazing for us in terms of novels. I kind of jump on when, when I do a, a more difficult course. So the, the graduate course I’m teaching is, um, about Holocaust and World War II testimony, uh, text, which is heavy reading in all senses of the word.

So when I do a course like this, The kind of reading I do for myself tends to be more genre, novel, sort of science fiction, fantasy, just, just to get as far as away I can from the, the serious reading I have to do.

Frederick: Mm-hmm. I’ve been [00:30:00] watching, um, speaking of francophone and, uh, self fashioning, or more precisely fashioning, I’ve been.

I binged Emily in Paris. I have to admit. I know, I know. I’m embarrassed to admit it, .

Herve: No, that’s fine. I, uh, I did the first season with my wife and a friend of mine. Uh, and I honestly, I think they watched it just to hear me complain bitterly through the whole thing. So I think I was the, the source of entertainment for this.

Frederick: As, uh, many, uh, people, many folks in France have been complaining about this sort of fairytale fantasy of, you know, what Paris is all about. But in any case, yeah, no, and The Policiere, and there’s something about the French. Um, France set police drama. That just gets me like, oh yeah, yeah. It’s brutal. It’s brutal.

It’s like, anyway, yeah, I’ve been [00:31:00] watching a lot of that stuff too.

Herve: Uh, . Yeah, there’s, I, I forget the title in fresh, but there’s a, um, it’s in, in Dutch, but, and from Belgium. Uh, police procedural. Yeah. It’s along these lines too. Uh, European police procedurals do do the job in a different way. . They

Frederick: certainly do.

Um, ve it’s been an absolute pleasure learning from you, um, taking us on this journey and through aesthetics and the importance of. Sort of self fashioning in and through both the self, the family, society, big, big world events, your classes, your interests in all sorts of really wonderful objects of study.

Thank you .

Herve: Thank you for inviting me, Frederick.