L'Art, expression de la Société, est précurseur et révélateur : The Heterogeneity of the Notion of Avant-Garde

In this article, I shall try to shed some new light upon the notion of avant-garde, with the purpose of showing its different national use and heterogeneity of meaning. This pluralism is overlooked today because of the hegemony of English in academic studies, which leads one to believe that a consensus exists in the use of the term avant-garde, since so many academics write their articles and books in this language. This article, therefore, is an attempt to recuperate the notion of avant-garde to stringent use and gain a deeper insight into the aes-thetic movements of modernity and late modernity. I hope to show that, despite the fact that many writers believe that there exists only one recognition of the notion of avant-garde, the understanding of the Anglo-American centre is actually as peripheral as that of other coun-tries which are normally regarded as peripheries. Instead of retaining the logocentric dichot-omy of centre-periphery, an understanding of the heterogeneity forces us to realize that this dichotomy is of no value, since all understandings are equally peripheral when it comes to the notion of avant-garde in an international perspectiv