Cent prises de position et œuvres malgré moi – Un essai de philosophie par l’ordre des images

For years, the author has been amassing photographs that nod to art history. Since 2024, he has been taking a stand in front of some of them, making philosophy from the perspective of art. Taking a stand, he believes, is an affirmation of the singularity that philosophy has too often evaded—while it is now the images that question the text.

"This book began with the photograph reproduced on page 123—taken inadvertently during the renovation of my house—where the sheets meant to protect the bathroom fixtures seemed to evoke actual enigmas, even. I then created a folder on my computer titled "Works in Spite of Myself" (Œuvres malgré moi), to which other photos were gradually added over time. In 2024, I began to take a stance regarding them, convinced that an artist is not someone who produces images, but someone who takes a position facing them, through them, or perhaps thanks to them; in this way, these Works in Spite of Myself become my works (or something like that). For two years, I wrote this manifesto while engaging with the images through which art—as I had internalized it over fifty years—spontaneously manifested itself. Instead of exhibiting works, I exposed myself. Rather than commenting on the images, I invented the situations they interrogated, inviting readers to reconstruct the reasons behind a particular stance taken regarding a specific "Works in Spite of Myself." It is another way of doing philosophy, given that these "Works in Spite of Myself" refer—albeit indirectly—to the history of art and culture as I have experienced them. The sequence of texts was thus driven by the sequence of images—the latter being the only element determined by my choice. Yet certain stances refer back to others, immediately suggesting that Cent prises de position… is not intended solely for linear reading: the table of contents, the index, and cross-references between pages can accommodate a reader's impulse to pause here or there. To read is already to take a stance, whereas voting for or refusing represent a stance detached from its underlying reasons. Saying no is a good start, but asserting the interpretation that leads to it is even better. Engaging in debate also means naming those one opposes (not out of a taste for conflict, but out of a need for clarity) and those one incorporates into one's own thinking; for refusing to name them can sometimes mean leaving intact the very thing one seeks to challenge."