Antonin Artaud and the Healing Practices of Language: How Life Matters in Artaud’’s Later Writings

The life of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) was tormented by physical and mental illnesses. Already in his earlier works, Artaud tried to express his physical and mental suffering, but perceived, in describing his feelings, the obstructive and illness-inducing role of language. This is the first book written in English that analyses the role of a healing language with which Artaud engaged in his later writings.

Joeri Visser guides us through the years in which Artaud suffered increasingly from mental instability and considered the act of writing his only means of survival. In doing so, Visser unfolds a literary and a philosophical analysis of how language and life work together and how a creative play with language can help us to reengage sustainably with the joyous as well as the terrible forces of life.

Joeri Visser is Chairman of the French Department in secondary education at a school near Rotterdam. He has been a lecturer at Utrecht University where he also obtained a PhD on Artaud in 2019. He has written on French philosophy and literature, and published translations of articles from Michel Serres.