I know why the philosopher sings: exploring the work of Fabrice Hadjadj

Abstract

Fabrice Hadjadj (1971-) is a prolific contemporary French Catholic author whose work is largely unacknowledged by the international academy. This article proposes ways of classifying his creative work, analyzing his distinctive literary gestures and relating these to his religious vision. Hadjadj can be situated as a writer of fullness in the Taylorian sense. Nevertheless, he moderates the transcendent dimensions of fullness by a celebration of the clownesque. At a textual level, Hadjadj's literary art is one of disruptive hybridization and experimentalism. At a linguistic level, however, we observe an integrative exploration of what he terms the ineffable and the indicible. Hadjadj's work is only growing in complexity and importance and deserves more scholarly attention.