THE COLLAPSE OF LANGUAGE: AESTHETICIZING MORAL DISINTEGRATION IN BERNARD-HENRI LÉVY’S LE DIABLE EN TÊTE
Keywords:
Collapse of language, fragmentation, existential nihilism, stylistic strategies, le Diable en Tête, Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL)Abstract
The philosophical aftermath of May 1968 witnessed a profound reckoning with the ideals and illusions of revolutionary thought, ushering in a shift in the rhetorical and stylistic modes through which French intellectuals expressed dissent and disillusionment in literature and life. Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Le Diable en Tête is an example of literary texts in this category. This paper, therefore, critiques the novel with a multidisciplinary theoretical framework which combines post-structuralism literary theory, Nietzschean philosophy, and Jacque Derrida theory of différance to interrogate its representation of the collapse of language and moral disintegration. The paper explores the stylistic strategies through which the text linguistically constructs and aestheticizes the protagonist’s moral and psychological collapse while debating how the text transforms destruction and disintegration into a compelling and beautiful narrative experience. Through textual analysis, the study finds out that Lévy deployed lyrical diction, syntactic fragmentation and philosophical abstraction, introspective narrative voice which is punctuated by aphoristic sentences, abrupt shifts in tone, and elaborate syntactic constructions, to reflect the protagonist’s inner turmoil and moral ambivalence. Lévy’s linguistic aestheticization raises critical questions about the relationship between style and morality, challenging readers to consider how beauty can mask, amplify, or complicate representations of evil and downfall. The paper concludes that rather than depicting collapse with straightforward despair or horror, Lévy positions the failure of language as a linguistic rebellion against ideological closure and as a performative expression of modern existential malaise making the readers confront with the paradox of beauty in ruin and engage with ethical decay as a complex, seductive process.
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