Ce mémoire s’emploie à cerner les contours de la pensée incréative telle que la précise Kenneth Goldsmith dans les essais Uncreative Writing (2011) et Wasting time on the Internet (2016). S’appuyant sur un corpus de textes qui vise à analyser les conséquences de ce nouveau rapport au monde instauré par l’avènement du numérique, notre réflexion s’applique à révéler comment cette redéfinition de nos pratiques s’accompagne d’une transformation de notre rapport au texte, au langage et à la création. Le numérique ne doit plus se définir en termes d’outils ou d’avancées technologiques. Il est un espace qui nous entoure et dans lequel nous évoluons. Cet espace a favorisé la mise en place d’un nouveau rapport envers le savoir et ses moyens de production, de diffusion et de réception. À la base de cet écosystème numérique réside du langage : du code binaire. Des images, aux sons et aux vidéos qui sillonnent le Web, tout procède du langage. Internet propose de se confronter à l’abondance textuelle qui structure l’espace numérique en inondant la page de mots et de leur matérialité. Cette série de textes qui se divisent en section dont les titres reprennent les noms de mèmes célèbres est le résultat d’un travail de création employant des méthodes littéraires issues d’une pensée incréative telle que développée par Kenneth Golsmith. Ainsi, basées sur le concept de postproduction (Bourriaud), ces compositions font appel à des stratégies de copie et d’appropriation et usent des mots comme des matériaux de construction. Le lecteur est invité à les lire/non-lire en redonnant leur sens à des blocs de langage décontextualisés. / This dissertation seeks to identify the contours of uncreative thinking as articulated by Kenneth Goldsmith in the essays Uncreative Writing (2011) and Wasting time on the Internet (2016). Based on a corpus of texts that aims to analyze the consequences of this new relationship to the digital world, our reflection applies to reveal how this redefinition of our practices is accompanied by a transformation of our relationship to text, language and creation. Digital should no longer viewed only as tools or technological advances. It is a space that surrounds us and in which we evolve. This space has favored the establishment of a new relationship with knowledge and its means of production, dissemination and reception. At the base of this digital ecosystem lies language: binary code. From images, to sounds and videos that crisscross the Web, everything proceeds from language. Internet proposes to confront the textual abundance that structures the digital space by flooding the page with words and their materiality. This series of texts, which are divided into sections whose titles take up the names of famous memes, is the result of a creative work employing literary methods stemming from uncreative thinking as put forward by Kenneth Golsmith. Thus, based on the concept of postproduction (Bourriaud), these compositions call upon strategies of copying and appropriation and use words as building materials. The reader is invited to read/decode them by giving back meaning to decontextualized blocks of language.

This essay investigates the prospect of Romantic Irony’s potential resurgence in contemporary poetics and discusses its relevance and likeness with metamodernism. The internet has by now not only seeped into, but fully permeated, the process of literary production and distribution. The effect of this has been the birth of a new kind of poetic discourse which can broadly be called metamodernism, The New Sincerity or Alt-lit. This movement is characterized by its self-reflexive metacommentary, fragmentary nature and an oscillation between of irony and sincerity. Vermeulen and Akker, among others, have hinted at metamodernism’s relation to Romanticism, but research into the specifics of its tendency towards Romantic Irony is scarce. By viewing the writings of Steve Roggenbuck (a central figure in the new poetic movement), alongside the philosophy of Friedrich Schlegel, I propose a comparative framework for discussion of sincerity, irony and the instrumentalization of contemporary metamodernist writing. I demonstrate that Roggenbuck’s writing displays narratological, tropological and thematic tendencies commonly associated with both Romantic Irony and metamodernism. Apart from broader structural comparison, I attempt a comparative analysis between Roggenbuck’s poetry (2010-2015) and Thomas Carlyle’s novel “Sartor Resartus” (1833-1834) in order to provide a visualisation of the rhetorical and narratological strategies of Romantic Irony. I aim to frame Romantic Irony as a sensibility, or mode of discourse - rather than a strict system of thought - which may still be at work today. In extension, the sensibilities of Romantic Irony may shed further light into the philosophical potential of the seemingly incomprehensible and contradictory tendencies of metamodernism. By ironicizing its poetic form, literary ambition and desire for sincerity in a post-postmodern era, Roggenbuck’s poetry celebrates ambiguity and literary failure, ultimately framing irony as a constructive and potentially democratic operation.