Oulipo

Definition

Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, "Workshop of Potential Literature") is the Paris-based group founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais, "dedicated to the study of literary form based on systems of rigorous constraint, appropriating formal patterns and strategies from domains like mathematics, logic, and chess." Its forms include "the acrostic, spoonerism, the lipogram, and the palindrome" (Perec composed an entire novel, La Disparation, without the letter E). The group had "two key research areas": Anoulipism — analysis, "the identification and recuperation of older experiments in form, such as the sonnet" — and Synthoulipism — synthesis, "the invention and elaboration of new forms." Its warrant is the claim Rachel Carley carries into design theory: "systems of formal constraint – far from restricting a writer – actually affords a field of creative liberty." Its ambition is anti-muse: "to systematically introduce new forms of literary expression that operated against the myth of literary inspiration, offering an alternative to types of literature produced by force of habit" — with success dependent on "the difficulty of the problem and the elegance of the solution." The group also worked text into three dimensions: "poems for Moebius strip, anaglyphic text (a three-dimensional verbal text), and holopoems," in which the reader discovers "new words or verses" by moving "in, over, under, or around them."

Key Thinkers

• Raymond Queneau & François Le Lionnais — the founders (1960); Le Lionnais's Second Oulipian Manifesto names the preeminent concern: "Creative expenditure on the formal aspects of literary production: alphabetical, consonantal, vocalic, syllabic, phonetic, graphic, prosodic, rhymic, rhythmic, and numerical constraints, structures or programs" (not yet paged — see log).
• Georges Perec — the group's most consequential member for spatial theory: Life A User's Manual as the novel built from a knight's tour and an orthogonal Latin bi-square order 10 — "420 'things' to distribute, forty-two to a box (and never the same forty-two twice)" — with a deliberate missing chapter (66) as its clinamen.
• Warren Motte — the group's historian and defender: Oulipo: A Primer of Potential Literature (1986), the source of the wiki's quotes; "accusations of literary madness were targeted at the members of Oulipo 'in order to suppress innovation and thus maintain the hegemony of the canon'" (not yet paged — see log).
• Rachel Carley — the transposer (2018): Oulipo's method proposed as the interior architecture studio's design method.
• Luc Etienne — elaborated the Moebius-strip text process (not yet paged — see log).

Related Concepts

• Voluntary Constraints — the group's core method generalized to design: the "second order" constraint superimposed on primary constraints.
• Clinamen — the group's required error: "when a system of constraints is established, there must also be anticonstraint within it… it must 'creak' a bit."
• Potential Space — the group's horizon: Potential Literature seeking "new forms and structures that could be appropriated by writers to advance the discipline" — the design analogue being "a space of creative inquiry guided by voluntary constraints."
• Play — Perec's defense of the method: writing "as practice, as work, as play" — the artifices the establishment "relegate[d] to the registers of asylums for literary madmen."
• Assemblage — the combinatorial method: pre-established lists of forty-two heterogeneous elements elaborated through twenty-one algorithms.
• Montage — the Situationist-adjacent technique Perec combined with Oulipian procedure: "detournement and collage, sampling existing texts and organizing them into new formal relationships."
• Détournement — the Situationist strand Perec absorbed alongside Oulipian procedure: "detournement and collage, sampling existing texts and organizing them into new formal relationships."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Puzzle (Carley 2018) — the concept's source: the founding (Queneau & Le Lionnais, 1960), the two research areas (Anoulipism/Synthoulipism), the form-taxonomy, the three-dimensional texts, the anti-inspiration program, the difficulty/elegance criterion, the canon's "literary madness" charge (via Motte), and Perec's constraint apparatus in Life (knight's tour; orthogonal Latin bi-square order 10; the missing chapter 66) as the group's most architecturally resonant work.

Open Questions

• Oulipo's forms are literary; the chapter appropriates its method rather than its forms. What would a design Oulipo's form-taxonomy be — the acrostic, lipogram, and palindrome of interior architecture? (Carley's twenty-five-model exercise and compulsory-list armature are first candidates.)
• The group split its critics between "innovative" and "pretentious" (the "asylums for literary madmen" charge): is the equivalent design charge — formalist gimmickry — avoided by the constraint system's acknowledgment of "the life of the interior of a building in time," or merely deferred?
• Perec's La Disparation (the lipogram novel without E) demonstrates maximal constraint in one dimension. Is there an interior equivalent of writing a whole apartment without one element — and what is gained (elegance) and lost (the element's shadow-presence) by it?