From Zero to Neo: Ivo Michiels, Book Alpha and the Neo-Avant-Garde

Ivo Michiels (1923-2012) is a towering figure of the neo-avant-garde in Dutch literature. His five-volume The Alpha Cycle (1963-79) is a pivotal part of his work. The chapter discusses how Michiels associates himself with the artists of the Zero movement and how he integrates the topoi of the avant-garde in Book Alpha (1963), the first part of The Alpha Cycle. The book ties together the rhetoric of the new and of rupture, radical skepticism toward language, and a tendency towards abstraction. Against the background of theories of the neo-avant-garde, the contribution argues that Michiels uses the performative power of language to turn harmful, oppressive speech into a creative and original literary language.