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# Is it possible to apply resistance in literature to immunity?

Louis Mühlethaler

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Louis Mühlethaler. Is it possible to apply resistance in literature to immunity?. ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) 2024 Annual Conference, Maebh Long (University of Waikato); Martin Willis (Cardiff University), Mar 2024, Montréal (Québec), Canada. hal-04793199

HAL Id: hal-04793199

https://hal.science/hal-04793199v1

Submitted on 25 Nov 2024

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IS IT POSSIBLE TO APPLY RESISTANCE IN LITERATURE TO IMMUNITY ?

(Louis Mühlethaler)

If the critic Pierre Bayard (2004) has attempted to *apply literature to psychoanalysis*, the literature-immunology-psychoanalysis entanglements have already been explored by Johannes Türk (2011). Thus, the possibility of applying the resistance in literature to resistance in immunology has yet to be explored. Resistance can be deemed as a model of the immunity of literature. This latter represents resistance through testimonial survival and political struggle, but also as a spontaneous mechanism of resistance. This comparatist explores the dialogue between resistance in literature and immunological resistance, especially through Metchnikoff's first immunological models. To what extent is this model of immunity taken up in the narratives, placed under the sign of representational and epistemic inflection? More specifically than the analysis of these functions of resistance, we will study patterns of resistance *through* illness and disease resistance by studying the adaptation mechanisms of literary characters in the community We will focus on the second half of the twentieth century, with some works of Svetlana Alexievitch, Antoine Volodine, and Christa Wolf influenced by resistance against communism.