French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Vouilloux, Le Geste followed by Le Geste ressassant.
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Bibliographic reference: B. Vouilloux, Le Geste followed by Le Geste ressassant, 2018.

Just published:

B. Vouilloux, Le Geste followed by Le Geste ressassant, Paris, La Lettre volée, 2003, 96 p., 15 Euros.

Back cover blurb:

"For a long time I would have given the name of gesture to the expansion of a formula whose structure should immediately confer stature upon my project and bend to its rhythm everything that might come to be superimposed upon it, so that its future would be contained in germ within its initial impulse, even if I had not been ready to articulate it. Choppy, broken, discontinuous, perhaps interrupted, the unity of the gesture is nevertheless ensured by what reactivates it, by what welds and readjusts the moments of negation and rectification through which it continually passes, thus experiencing its very own time. All that proceeds from the labor within us accomplished by time, and wherein we fulfill ourselves unwittingly until a chance occurrence places us in a position to take its measure (and thus to recover ourselves), never completely frees itself from its tutelage. That time passes, and that certain things never cease to return, things that do not pass—this is what always remains new to us, scandalously new."

Read a review by D. Vaugeois on Acta Fabula: "The gesture & its double: forms of repetition" (Spring 2004)

The publication of Bernard Vouilloux's volume invites reflection on the shifting definitions of physical and conceptual movement in artistic and literary expression. Within French and Francophone critical traditions, studies of the gesture frequently intersect with inquiries into temporality, repetition, and the mechanics of creation. Scholars in these fields often examine how bodily and linguistic actions retain traces of earlier impulses while adapting to new formal constraints.

Readers interested in contemporary aesthetics, continental philosophy, and literary theory may find this publication relevant to their inquiries. The text presents reflections on how internal temporalities and iterative processes shape artistic projects, exploring the intersections of philosophy and artistic practice.