Considerations Around the Experience of Loss in Girodian Production

Abstract

The aim of this article is to reveal the ontological mutation undergone by the characters in three literary productions by Ryad Girod, an Algerian author of the extreme contemporary. Ravissements, Les yeux de Mansour and La fin qui nous attend are three texts revolving around the experience of loss: loss of speech in Ravissements, loss of life in Les yeux de Mansour and loss of humanity in La fin qui nous attend. The subjective experience of immaterial loss is examined in the light of a poetics of detachment capable of revealing to the characters the vital dimensions of their existence. Withdrawal reveals itself to be a vector of knowledge, founding a modified relationship with oneself and the world. The reconsideration of the spoken word is a decisive step in the discernment of characters to establish a new approach to the world, in resonance with the contingencies shaking their logical understanding of facts. The rationality governing the contemporary world is gradually replaced by an intuitive approach, leading to a new relationship with oneself, with others and with the world. This change in existential posture also engenders a new perception of time, understood in terms of duration rather than in terms of its decantation into divisible units. It also leads the characters to ontological and axiological reflections, revealing the intense philosophical potential of Ryad Girod's works. The strictly cerebral approach is gradually giving way to a more immediate, intuitive knowledge, in an attempt to make a deep connection with the quintessence of inanimate and animate beings.