Whatever you thought of it at the time, the fate of Tel Quel - the journal, the group and the theoretical orientation - concerns us all in one way or another, for the fate of the avant garde (was this really the last one?) has something to say about our society, our history, our politics and our relationship to the future. Given Tel Quel's essentially literary orientation, its history can also tell us something about the place of Literature in the new televisual age.

LRB 12 December 1996 | PDF Download