Sabine Macher et le chantier du poème

Abstract

This article analyses the trope of the ‘chantier’, a key paradigm of modernity, in the poetry of Sabine Macher as she ‘transgresse les barrières de chantier’ so as to be able to write in direct contact with the building site and on it, taking charge of its plurilingualism and inscribing it within the ‘chant’ of the poem. I draw from Barbara Johnson’s reading of Mallarmé and from the conception of the referent as a process in order to shed light on the politics of Macher’s poem and its encounter with a milieu that is traditionally composed of men and marked by structures of domination inherited from colonisation. Through its dealing with the waste generated by the building site, but also because of its proximity with the archaeological dig and by means of operations of recycling and of fusion, Macher’s writing offers an original relationship to history and memory, both individual and collective.