Revolution, melancholy and the limits of constituent power: François Cusset’s À l’abri du déclin du monde (2012)

Best known as an intellectual and cultural historian, François Cusset is also a novelist whose understudied debut work, À l’abri du déclin du monde, offers nuanced engagement with the question of revolution and its aftereffects. This article is the first comprehensive analysis of À l’abri. The author shows how the novel is especially worthy of closer scholarly examination because it is an exemplary case study of how putting fictional invention and critical thought into dialogue broadens the scope of interpretive possibility, allowing for consideration of how À l’abri significantly contributes to discussions on the question of revolution in the fields of contemporary French literature and political theory. What obtains through a close reading of À l’abri is a critique of the limits of constituent power—the overthrow and replacement of political power—as a predominant mode of revolutionary activity. If À l’abri ultimately links the limits of constituent power with political melancholy, the author argues that the novel invites exploration of destituent power, a form of revolutionary activity grounded in the notion that sociopolitical change can be accomplished through the refusal of seizing power. In closing, the author situates À l’abri within an expanding corpus that expresses contemporary French literature’s destituent potential.