**HIPPOLYTE, Jean-Louis, Fuzzy Fictions, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2006.**

11: L'auteur affirme que la littérature postmoderne est caractérisée par la dénaturation et il cite à ce sujet les propos de N. Katherine Hayles :\\  
« not as a mimetic representation of the world of objects but a sign system generating signifiance internally through a series of of relational differences.» (//Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science//, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 265-285)\\ 
Hippolyte poursuit: « Foremost in this process of denaturing the denaturing of self has become a process of disassembly and reassembly, an ongoing deconstruction of identity markers, from gender to nationality. What is cardinal in this process of denaturingis the fact that the postmodern novel is marked by a prevalent sense of "vagueness", a vagueness that appears both resilient ad pervasive, affecting objects as well as concepts, the observer and the observed, and finally offering a paradoxical coincidence of presence and absence, a ubiquity of being and not-being. » À partir de cette « vagueness », l'auteur arrivera au terme « fuzziness » – qu'il applique autant au champ littéraire qu'aux oeuvres elles-mêmes –, puis plus loin aux « Fuzzy Fictions »

18: « Thus the typology of fuzzy characters ranges far and wide in today's fiction, from the transient pairings of Redonnet to the recycled figures of Volodine, through the uquitous and metephoric heroes of Chevillard, the dispassionate characterless protagonists of Toussaint, and the multilayered polyphonic ensembles of Bon. But in spite of their differences all these figures end up sharing the same epistemological uncertainty and are permeated by the same fuzziness. All engage the truth-building capacity of the text; all address the problematic relationship between the speaking subject and the world.
The problem raised by the fuzzy subjects is that they testify both to a lack and to profusion, to the absence and ambiguity of "specific" physical and biological trends, of definite sociocultural markers. In short, they point to the absence of referentiality in character development, while at the same time they underscore the inescapable need for heroes in literature. »

L'auteur clarifie également son approche: il souhaite étudier les problèmes d'identité du sujet dans la fiction postmoderne/contemporaine/fuzzy. En général, il s'intéresse au personnage lorsque celui-ci est narrateur, mais certaines de ses réflexions s'appliquent aussi au personnage « tout court ». J'insère maintenant quelques extraits de l'ouvrage, dans lesquels Hippolyte analyse les personnages des romans de Toussaint (très intéressant) et Volodine. 

48-49: « Not surprizingly, Toussaint's apathetic protagonists are often __at pains to make the world signify__, despite their cultural and scientific competence. Indeed, all the protagonists have the same sociocultural status in common: they are intellectuals, scholars, business-people, and writers, in other words, they think for a living. But their privileged position in society in general, and in the intellectual community in particular, seems inversely proportional to their ability to map out and understand their respective environments. […] Rather than ferreting out the truth, or a truth, the protagonists fulfill a subversive role, one that frustrates the reader's expectations and foils the process of identification with the characters, who at best remain vague and always (partially) out of sight.\\ 
Likewise the cold, detached, and quasi-scientific observations that each of Toussaint's narrators shares with the reader are meant to stand in contrast to the human drama that fills each page of his novels, as if fiction must take the form of confessional literature to hide the fragility of the narrator behind a facade of impassivity. But these narrators [autodiégétiques, donc aussi des personnages] are alienated figures, __hovering between presence and absence, unwilling or unable to physically affect the course of the narrative__. Mieke Bal reminds us that "characters resemble people. That remains a truism, so banal that we often tend to forget it... The character is not a human being, but it resembles one. It has no real psyche, personality, ideology or competence to act, but it does possess characteristics which make psychological and ideological description possible."(//Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative//, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1985, p. 80) One would think that Toussaint's refusal to psychologize in his fictions defeats the process of identification, but that is not the case. Because Toussaint's protagonists enjoy a wide range of emotions and feelings, they still allow readers the luxury of partial identification. In fact, these protagonists may seem quite "realistic" to a contemporary readership, as their feeling of estrangement from the world and from themselvs comes across as an earnest rendition of postmodern anxiety, while their overriding sense of dismay and distress brings to mind a number of contemporary worries. Among these, "man" only exists as a social being. What's more, knowledge proves to be at best limited, at worst ineffectual, and most if not all instances of cross-cultural and multilingual encounters lead to frustrating and disappointing results ».

50: « Each individual is hopelessly alone in Tousaint, a solitary figure lost among peers, for whom knowing the other proves to be as frustrating as knowing the self. »

149-150: Les personnages d'Antoine Volodine :
« the multiplication of characters and their overlapping in the process of characterization – several may share one voice or exchange physical traits or personalities – hinders or completely prevents identification.» L'auteur montre ensuite le nombre généralement élevé de personnages que contient chacun des romans de Volodine. « And yet even the dearth of characters in some texts doesn't aid toponomical legibility. Rather, the greater legibility that a smaller cast would normally provide fails to apply within the Volodian archive, because of the unremitting fusion and permutation of the characters' identities (names, physical traits, personalities, narrative voices). »\\ 
Hippolyte avance ensuite que les noms des personnages de Volodine contribuent à les rendre difficiles à définir: « the names of characters seldom function metaphorically, and even less so in Cratylic manner […]. Neither do they symbolize a clear, specific sociocultural status or geographical origin. Instead linguistic heterogeneity charts an unspecified space, a semantic Babel, where the defamiliarization engendered by toponymy generates, for the reader, an estrangement from (linguistic and cultural) familiarity. »

158-159	: « Across the Volodian oeuvre pieces of the charaters' complete semantic puzzle find themselves recycled from nomvel to novel, like attitudes, opinions, and even names, but transmission of these semes is never patent, and at best readers experience a certain feeling of déjà-vu. […] Individuals do not disappear, or cease to matter; they simply become interchangeable, exchanging roles, trading names, but in due course they allow the story to be told.»