Breaking down the Thesis of Human Exception in French Novels of the 21st Century: Chevillard, Message and Brunel

Abstract

Starting from the book by Jean-Marie Schaeffer on the end of the human exception, it is analyzed how ontological dualism and ontic rupture—which postulate, respectively, the division of the human being and his separation from the rest of the world—are questioned in contemporary French novels. The corpus consists of three works that represent three different ends of the world with fantastic or science fiction elements: Sans l'orang-outan by Éric Chevillard from 2007, Défaite des maîtres et possesseurs by Vincent Message from 2016 and Les métamorphoses by Camille Brunel from 2020. It is studied how the traditional hierarchy of the myth of human exceptionality—human-reason above the animal-body—is broken in these stories: with the inversion of the hierarchical order in the case of Chevillard, with the displacement of the human down in the hierarchical order for Message and in the elimination of the hierarchy in Brunel's novel. It will also be shown that these changes can be observed at the level of isotopies as well, and specifically at that of isotopy breaks. Finally, the common element in these stories is the ecological commitment to animals and the reinterpretation of the place of the human beings on Earth: it is remembered that everyone, regardless of the species, is part of the same web of life.