Code de lecture: la tete en bas

Abstract

The present issue proposes a possible reading key, which might allow a new deciphering mode of Michel Tournier’s novel « Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique » (Friday or the Virgin Islands of the Pacific). We will try to prove that the code one should use in the comprehension and interpretation of this bizarre author is a myth, but a myth turned upside down, overturned, and reversed. Tournier’s goal is neither to re-write and re-invest of new significations in the myth of the « bon sauvage », nor to destroy the modern myth of the « homo faber »; by changing the fundamental vectors of the story, Tournier wants to ‘force’ his reader to ask himself several questions and to reflect upon some post-modern problems such as tolerance and difference (according to Derrida’s concepts). Against the myth of the ‘homo faber’, who dominated the 18th, 19th, and more than half of the 20th centuries, Tournier opposes the model of what we called the ‘homo contemplatives’, which, of course, is never as efficient as his predecessor, but corresponds better to the aspirations of the post-industrial and post-modern era.