The Rag and the Sign: Speech, Memory, and the Counter-Monument in Madeleine Chapsal’s Les Chiffons du rêve

Abstract

This article analyzes the clothing lexicon in Les Chiffons du rêve by Madeleine Chapsal, showing that it goes beyond mere description to function as a fully-fledged poetic operator. The analysis is organized around three perspectives applied to a collection of fifteen short stories set in the world of Parisian haute couture, nine of which are analyzed in depth for the density of their technical vocabulary. The first perspective establishes that couture constitutes a Foucauldian regime of discourse, in which technical terms exert a performative power over the characters, drawing on Austin’s speech act theory and Bourdieu’s notion of linguistic capital. The second one demonstrates that textile materials embody Bakhtinian chronotopes, preserving an intergenerational feminine memory transmitted through the body rather than through narrative, and analyzed in light of Merleau-Ponty and Ricœur. The third one interprets the “chiffon” as a counter-monument in Young’s sense, denoting a deliberate aesthetics of the ephemeral and creative anonymity, in dialogue with Benjamin’s concept of Jetztzeit. The study thus offers a reading of clothing as a poetic agent and embodied memory, inviting a reconsideration of the role of technical lexicon in literary fiction.