French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Dericquebourg, Le Deuil de la littérature
History, Politics and Society
Le Deuil de la littérature
Baptiste Dericquebourg
Allia, September 2020
112 p. — price: €7
ISBN: 979-10-304-1283-3
“The preference for literary studies is perhaps instinctively motivated by a rejection of the labor market, a refusal of the subjugation that wage labor in the private sector entails. It is an educational choice, an ‘orientation,’ often experienced as a form of passive resistance: teaching, the primary outlet for humanities graduates, has come to resemble the choice of entering the priesthood two or three centuries ago—a fallback option for those who did not inherit wealth, cannot live off independent means, and know that the working world is (no longer) particularly welcoming to intellect, even for university graduates.”
The university institution has today become a gigantic machine whose ultimate purpose remains increasingly obscure. This is the fault of teaching methodologies that show little concern for awakening a genuine critical consciousness in students. Behind the cult of “Great Literature” and “Great Philosophy,” nothing remains except false schools and false debates; fictitious quarrels pitting researchers against one another whose only concern is to survive within a rusted institution.
In the interest of precision, the essay traces the genealogy of this pedagogical disaster, from the process of the commodification of literature that took place in the 19th century to the triumph of structuralist thought and its apostles. The result is the sanitized culture we know today—a Culture no less debasing than mass culture.
With a fierce and often hilarious pen, Baptiste Dericquebourg spares no one and delivers a harsh diagnosis. Faced with this situation, he puts forward several proposals, both aesthetic and pedagogical, to revive students' critical spirit. Chief among them is the rehabilitation of the study of rhetoric: “learning to read through writing and to write through reading,” in the hope of shaping independent and original minds…
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An article about this work can be read on nonfiction.fr…
Discussions concerning the state of the humanities and the commodification of intellectual life have long engaged scholars and educators across Europe. Within French intellectual discourse, critiques of academic bureaucratization frequently examine how pedagogical shifts and institutional demands alter the transmission of culture. Such reflections often question the relationship between literary education, professionalization, and the broader socio-economic conditions governing intellectual labor in contemporary society. Readers interested in contemporary debates surrounding educational institutions and the transmission of letters may find this study relevant.
Baptiste Dericquebourg examines the institutional mechanisms and historical shifts shaping literary pedagogy, tracing a genealogy from nineteenth-century developments to structuralist methodologies. The text addresses the standardization of academic culture and proposes aesthetic and pedagogical approaches, including the rehabilitation of rhetorical study, aimed at fostering critical independence among students.
“Are Humanities Studies Nothingness?”, by Benjamin Caraco (online September 4, 2020)