Writing as a crime and absence in La disparition

Abstract

La disparition by Georges Perec, is a detective novel with plenty to be revealed – from the vanishing of the protagonist, Anton Voyl, to the disappearance of vowel E, not to be found in the book. Such violence against language is trickery against the algorithms of the system, duped within its own combinatory rules. Likewise, a vanished protagonist jeopardizes the narrative in the expression level, by creating an absence that paradoxically says something by not saying anything – a performative crime committed by literature. Voyl’s disappearance is a black hole – or a white gap – which gulfs everything into the unknown, in a novel structured by the idea of absence. This suggests that any semiotic possibility, no matter how instable it is, lies in a gap, a silence, a difference in the so-called language continuum. Thus, we herein analyze how the semiotic notion of absence can empower reflection on the writing process as a crime in La disparition.