Ne pas mêler les genres.
Je ne pas mêler les genres.
Je repit: ne pas mêler les genres. Je ne les mêlerai pas.
As soon as the word genre is sounded, as soon as it is heard, as soon as one attempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn. And when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far behind: "Do," "Do not," says "genre," the word genre, the figure, the voice or the law of genre. And this can be said of all genres of genre, be it a question of a generic or a general determination of what one calls "nature" or phusis (for example a biological genre, or the human genre, a genre of all that is in general), or be it a question of a typology, designated as non-natural and depending on laws or orders which were once held to be opposed to phusis according to those values associated with technē, thesis, nomos (for example, an artistic, poetic or literary genre)*. But the whole enigma of genre springs perhaps most closely from within this limit between the two genres of genre which, neither separable nor inseparable, form an odd couple of one without the other in which each evenly serves the other a citation to appear in the figure of the other, simultaneously and indiscernibly saying "I" and "we," me the genre, we genres, without it being possible to think that the "I" is a species of the genre "we." For who would have us believe that we, we two for example, would form a genre or belong to one? Thus, as soon as genre announces itself, one must respect a norm, one must not cross a line of demarcation, one must not risk impurity, anomaly or monstrosity.
* Genre in French carries the general sense of "genus," "kind," or "type," (le genre humain means "the human race"); the sense of artistic or literary genre; and the sense of "gender," especially grammatical gender.
