Le racontage Réflexions sur l’oeuvre de Malika Ferdjoukh

This paper considers, firstly, the unexpected force of Walter Benjamin's essay, The Storyteller, using the poetic works of so-called children's literature—though all literature might rediscover its relational force here. We only have to take up Benjamin's observation about "the tale, which, still today, remains childhood’s first counselor," for it to seem possible to easily upend the backward-looking readings often given to this work. And, since we cannot reflect on poetics without engaging in as close a critical reading as Benjamin himself performs with that of Nicolas Leskov, we must also consider a contemporary body of work, that of Malika Ferdjoukh. Here, however, we’ll evoke only two novels by this author: Minuit-Cinq and Fais-moi peur. This writing and reading experience comes as close as possible to storytelling, which is to say, a passage of voices, in which we can try to grasp decisive moments of Benjaminian poetics, in order to draw the contours around a poetic anthropology of storytelling. This endeavor would obviously require continuing with the work of Malika Ferdjoukh, who does not fail to delve deeply through scope and plurality of voice in each of her literary experiences, creating relational writing that holds together impossible experiences, as in Aggie change de vie and Quatre sœurs... who are five.