Gérard Genette: la philosophie de l’art comme «pratique désespérée»

Abstract

During his whole career, Gérard Genette has developed and honed the intuition that founds his whole thought—that there exists a world of art, a real world of artworks apart from the ordinary world which he made it his task to explore in all its dimensions, describing its laws, probing its ontology, trying to grasp its vitualities and all the ways in which it may be activated or embodied. This infinitely polymorphous world of art, which has no metaphysical or transcendent dimension has always been his one and only object of interest.