Madness is written from the underworld: reading the works of Angéline Neveu

Authors

DOI: https://doi.org/10.6018/analesff.658731
Keywords: poetry, avant-garde, Madness, antipsychiatry

Abstract

Angéline Neveu (1946-2011) was a French poet and performer known for her political activism during May 68. Her struggle with mental illness appears in both her poetry and her autobiography. She uses the metaphor of the underworld to describe her life, particularly her dysfunctional family and her drug addiction. Her sense of belonging to the margins, whether to the community of psychiatric patients or to the artistic avant-garde, resonates throughout her work and allows her to reflect on madness and its medical treatment. Her work can be read as a constant rebellion against authority, first against the family which she sees as the nexus of bourgeois conformism and the primary source of her alienation, and then against the medical discourse. We will analyse the literary treatment of mental illness in her writings as well as the performative dimension of her poetry, which uses madness not only as a poetic theme but also as a praxis.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    16
  • PDF (Français )
    15

References

ARTAUD, Antonin & Simone MALAUSSÉNA (éd.). 2015. Lettres: 1937-1943. Paris, Gallimard.

BRETON, André. 2010 [1928]. Nadja. Paris, Gallimard.

BÜRGER, Peter & Jean-Pierre COMETTI (trad.). 2013. Théorie de l’avant-garde. Paris, Questions théoriques.

BURROUGHS, William & Jean CHOPIN (trad.). 2025 [1970]. Révolution électronique. Paris, Éditions Allia, 2e éd.

COOPER, David & Férial DROSSO (trad.). 1972. Mort de la famille. Paris, Seuil.

DEBORD, Guy. 1992 [1967]. La société du spectacle. Paris, Gallimard.

DELEUZE, Gilles & Félix GUATTARI. 1973. Capitalisme et schizophrénie. 1, L’anti-Œdipe. Paris, Éditions de Minuit.

DIDI-HUBERMAN, Georges. 1994. Invention de l’hystérie: Charcot et l’iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière. Paris, Macula.

DREYFUS, Charles. 2012. “Angéline Neveu 1948-2011: la poésie comme opératrice d’images” in Inter, n°112, 100-101.

GUATTARI, Félix. 2004. Écrits pour l’anti-Œdipe. Paris, Lignes.

JUGNON, Alain. 2011. Révolutions nous!: d’un Rimbaud à l’autre. Paris, Éditions d’Ores et déjà.

LAING, Ronald David & Claude ELSEN (trad.). 1976. La politique de l’expérience: essai sur l’aliénation. Paris, Stock.

MURPHY, Timothy S. 1997. Wising up the marks: the amodern William Burroughs. Berkeley, University of California Press.

NEVEU, Angéline. 2019a. L’enragée de Nanterre, ou, le mensonge intime. Dijon, Presses du réel.

NEVEU, Angéline. 2019b. Synthèse/Désir: poésies 1975-1985. Dijon, Presses du réel.

SARTRE, Jean-Paul. 1960. Critique de la raison dialectique. Paris, Gallimard.

WINKIN, Yves. 2000. La nouvelle communication. Paris, Seuil (coll. Points).

Published
16-12-2025
How to Cite
Marie-Apolline Joulié. (2025). Madness is written from the underworld: reading the works of Angéline Neveu. Anales De Filología Francesa, 33. https://doi.org/10.6018/analesff.658731
Issue
Section
Littérature et maladie mentale