Ethics of vulnerability and poetics of care for Paul Chanel Malenfant

In Paul Chanel Malenfant's poetic works, we find numerous writing of mourning, exploring the changing and familiar figures of death and loss, as well as all the tiny details that build any possible relationship to others. His recent elegy, entitled La petite marieé de Chagall (2012), explores the precarious relationship between the poet and his mother suffering from a fatal illness. This poetry collection combines lyrical tones with an ethic of vulnerability (Ricoeur, 1990, 2001, 2007) which allow us to open a fertile dialogue between poetics and the ethics of care (Gilligan, [1982] 2008; Paperman and Laugier, [2006] 2011). The melancholy of the poet is combined with a philosophical doubt, through an elegy en mode mineur, that also deploys a poetic of accompaniment. In this paper, we will explore how this increased awareness of our common and intimate fragility may offer an echo to the new forms of care by analyzing Malenfant's finely orchestrated recent poetry.