Qui est le contemporain? Jean Ristat

The work of Jean Ristat, poet, director of Digraphe and executor of Louis Aragon's estate, offers an example of the experience of recent avant-garde writing in a period of political crisis, and contrasts notably with that of Philippe Sollers and Tel Quel. Ristat's poetics, inspired by Derrida and other theorists of ecriture, expresses political revolt and sexual freedom. However, the crisis of Communism and the AIDS epidemic enforce shifts in form and content and make contradictions arise in Ristat's practice: an explicit thematics of loss and decline, a rehabilitation of "the poet" and of lyricism. From being an active figure of the contemporary avant-garde, Ristat becomes, by the beginning of the 21st century, an anachronistic, spectral presence.