Vieux alphabets, nouvelles espèces

The paper examines two albums in which the creators, writing less against than with the genre of the alphabet book, where the taxonomic and pedagogical functions remain primary, invent new bestiaries from A to Z, and even beyond Z. Combining text and image, order and disorder, familiar and unheimlich, these (anti-)alphabet books invest the potentialities offered by the fixed form, very effective in its minimalism and simplicity, and thus question linguistic, generic, gendered or speciesist conceptions and conventions. Focusing on forgotten, unattractive, invisible or marginalized animals, disrupting the ‘anthropological machine’ (Agamben), the books lead to a shift of perspective and decentering, that are not without ambivalence. The comparative perspective in particular, analysing issues of circulation and translation, reveal the process of normative destabilization and its troubles.