Utopia and Atopia - the literary and theoretical avant-garde in the wake of 1968 : Theoretical mediation, circulation and controversies from France to Scandinavia in four periodicals : Tel Quel, Poetik, Profil, Kris.

The year 1968 has come to symbolise the culmination of political, social and cultural protests in many Western countries. Half a century later, memories and narratives are still vivid and conflicted. Among all the institutions of power and knowledge challenged by the young generation, universities in particular became the sites of cultural and intellectual wars. As a result, both the fields of literature and philosophy have undergone profound changes in the wake of the massive influx of new theories that occurred in the late 1960s and 1970s, with Paris as a major centre. There, a new paradigm emerged as a critique of both institutionalised literary studies and structuralism. Many studies have since established the processes by which this new paradigm was mediated, received and “rebranded” in a North American context, resulting in so-called “French Theory”. As new historicism and comparative criticism remind us, such processes illustrate how cultural phenomena are shaped and transformed through contacts across national borders. This study examines these processes of mediation and reframing in a Nordic context, with particular emphasis on the transnational dimension. This dissertation focuses on the central role of four literary magazines – Tel Quel in France, Poetik in Denmark, Profil in Norway and Kris in Sweden – in the process of producing, transmitting, discussing, and reformulating avant-garde theory, both in their local cultural contexts and within international research networks. Combining a hermeneutic approach with the historical framework, the study uses this sample of periodicals as actors at the intersection of the different subfields of cultural life (academic, intellectual, artistic, mediatic and political) to analyse the evolutions and shifts of theoretical production and circulation. The concept of utopia is used as an interpretative key to understand these avant-garde projects at the intersection of science, arts, and politics, and their various reconfigurations across time and space. In particular, the study proposes the concept of “atopia” to pinpoint a specific form of critical utopianism that underlies theoretical as well as aesthetical works. It is understood not so much as the discourse of another space or space outside, but rather as a movement of drift between spaces. The thesis shows that diverging forms of utopianism, following the respective profiles and positionings of each periodical, have acted as filters in the mediation processes and have thus impacted the significations and uses of theory in local contexts. In doing so, this study highlights the relative stability and continuity of theoretical production beyond the different ideological investments and trends in intellectual life, especially the transition from revolutionary to critical intellectuals. An in-depth analysis of these periodicals contributes to a better understanding of the dividing lines that have shaped current intellectual and academic fields both in France and in Scandinavia. It also invites us to reflect anew on the meaning of both artistic practices and theories of art in a contemporary society that seems to have lost its utopian drive