En finir enfin avec l’in-fini&#8239?

Abstract

How do we follow the progression of a text from its very first rough draft, going through its wanderings, its mistakes, and its corrections, right through to its publication, when we have been brought up reading and studying nothing but completed works? For just one of these works admired by generations of pupils or students, how many texts by the same author have been abandoned, incomplete, unfinished?Is the right to rewrite these texts, a right which Barthes acknowledges for every author, without limit? If not, what limits can be imposed upon it? What right exists for those who have legal authority over the works of a writer?At the end of the day, all these questions can be reduced to a single one: how can any creative process, of its very nature un-finished, be analysed in the light of the finished work?

Keywords

• génétique textuelle
• avant-texte
• réécriture
• inachèvement
• texte
• ouvrage