Blowing Up the Archive: Paul Valéry’s Course in Poetics

Abstract

This essay was written in the context of the APCG 16^th Congress on the “Arquivo Expandido: conexões e processos de criação” and seeks to demonstrate how this notion is crucial for shaping a broader vision of genetic criticism, especially when considered within the also-expanded dynamics of cultural practices. That is, if we take the contributions of genetic criticism to literary theory to their ultimate consequences, we will see how the very concepts of process, of the work, and, of course, of the archive, undergo significant transformation. We will explore this with and through Paul Valéry’s Course in Poetics, recently published by Gallimard (2023). Our aim, therefore, is twofold: (1) to present some of the issues surrounding the publication of Valéry’s Course in Poetics; and (2) to take Valéry’s positions on the anthropology of writing, developed in the course, as a provocation to how we conceive of writing and archives.