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styles: critiques de nos formes de vie

marielle macé, review by jérémy poitier

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review of her book


the point is not to define style, but to highlight all the differences of style both in critical discourses (derrida, bourdieu, simmel, etc.) and in literature (balzac, proust, etc.)

she intends to reach well beyond the boundaries of aesthetic considerations so as to extend the study of style to all those commonplace manners, habits, bodily movements and rhythms that are part and parcel of any form of lived experience.

“le style ne s’oppose pas au banal, ni au commun, mais à l’indifférence” -> having style means you care. but also, it’s a system of forms, of forms that matter. it’s also a matter of values

“[La littérature] est une entrée en lutte contre toutes les façons, y compris savantes, d’être inattentif au « comment »”

three different theories of style:

Individuating thinking therefore defines forms as points of struggle for a subject, who is invited to appropriate a style while rejecting another. It follows that individuation is a fundamentally ethically-engaging stylistic bias.

the last part is about more ethical reflections on the work of style.