Fonctions du Cliché : du Banal à la Violence

The first meaning of the word "cliché" is "positive": in typography a cliché is a metal plate upon which an image is reproduced in relief. In photography, however, cliché is a "negative" and, indeed, its most current acceptation is that of commonplace, banality, cultural stereotype, repetition. It makes reproduction possible and authorizes it. Bearing the positive and negative poles in mind, together with the dynamic of their potential inversion, one arrives at the core of the concept of cliché. The aim of the conference was to look at the various forms of manifestation of the cliché as well as the roles played by the cliché in discourse and text, while attending to the relations of the commonplace with banality and violence. As such, it was a logical follow up on our previous reflexion on cultural, historical and textual breaking points ("Usure et rupture").