Hagiographie profane et contemporanéité dans Vies minuscules de Pierre Michon

According to Giorgio Agamben, being contemporary suggests an oblique relation to time, where the author must be both modern and anachronistic. This understanding of contemporaneity implies that a critical distance must be achieved by the individual vis-à-vis his or her own time in order to have a better overview of it. In Vies minuscules, Pierre Michon seems to adopt a reactionary position by going back to a traditional form of storytelling, by using extremely flowery language and by creating a literature devoid of any explicit experimental devices, thereby differentiating himself from the Oulipo and Tel Quel schools, which dominated the literary world in France at the time. However, this article aims to show that Michon’s novel is still very contemporary, in the sense that Agamben gives to this word: by focusing his writing on insignificant or reprehensible characters, by putting his journey as a writer at the center of his story, and by deciding to write in an archaic language, he travesties the medieval genre of the vita and therefore achieves a truly contemporary style. Between hagiography and autofiction, Vies minuscules offers an original conception of modern writing that is, as the author puts it, “always new, always from yesterday.”.