A Derridian Exploration into Allen Ginsberg's Archive(s)

Résumé En

The importance of the archive regarding literary studies has been emphasized by the field of genetic criticism, emerging in the 1970s, as a way to explore the genealogy of a text, and, as Pierre De Biasi put it, to study it as a product of "hard work, historicity and desire". 1 The aim is to reveal and to display a visible part of the creative process; Arlette Farge summarized it with the expression "to touch reality". 2 But this active part played by the archive is also a challenge to the very idea of "final text". In that sense, Pierre de Biasi wrote that "one of the main interests of diving into the past of a text is to introduce the critic to a mobile universe where nothing is ever final" 3. Of course, this idea of a mobile universe is at the heart of Allen Ginsberg's poetry, and it must be added that Allen Ginsberg had a specific relationship with his archives: he hired his own archivist and he also published several books of journals and letters in his lifetime, including a genealogical study of his famous poem "Howl". But in addition to the preservation of the historical value of his archives, his interest was also motivated by his very method of composition. This paper offers then to analyze a few examples of Allen Ginsberg's poetry in the light of his archives, as a way to explore his acts of composition with a genealogical and psychological focus. Jacques Derrida, another "rebel" in the literary world, will play the role of a guide in this exploration: his theories and definitions will shed light on the mechanisms at work in Allen Ginsberg's poetry.