The Don de langue and the archival pledge: Dado's Les Oiseaux d’Irène and Némirovsky's Suite française

Abstract

This article considers the underlying archival poetics of the collaboration between the artist Dado (Miodrag Djuric) and the author Claude Louis-Combet. In particular I consider the collaborative work Les Oiseaux d'Irène (2007), in which a specific archival encounter is documented: Dado appeals to the imaginary figure of Irène Némirovsky while simultaneously engaging with the unique history of the manuscript of Némirovsky's Suite française. Dado's illustrations of Némirovsky's manuscript folios point to a deep ethical engagement with the archive which recalls the function of the manuscript as pledge and legacy in Némirovsky's biography. The archival function is related, via Derrida's account of the archive, to the late phase of Dado's work in which the creation of an internet archive, L'Anti-musée virtuel, is accompanied by the creation of a second Dado archive, at IMEC.