RETVRN

35. The reasoning is as follows: "asserting one's freedom" in art makes sense only referentially ― it is an act of destroying traditional artistic methods. After these crises of freedom ― they are often creative and enriching in their opposition to the fossilized relics of tradition ― it finds sustenance only in a parrotlike repetition of the original gesture, a self-parody that immediately becomes irrelevant.  One then finds oneself confronted with an increasingly weak, sad, and bitter involvement with the unconscious leavings of tradition. 

This is from Jacque Roubaud's introduction to the Oulipo Compendium, edited by Harry Mathews and Alastair Brotchie. 

Oulipo, sometimes styled as OuLiPo, is short for Ouvroir de Litterature Potentielle, "Society for Potential Literature." They attempted to get around the dilemma that Roubaud describes above by thinking of new restraints. The restraints were there to be overcome, to show that the artist wouldn't be defeated by them.

The group, with some obvious turnovers in membership, is still around. You don't hear as much about it. In the 20th century there was more of an appetite to play with and rearrange literary tradition, as demonstrated by Calvino (an Oulipian himself), Nabokov, and Borges. In the 21st the assumption seems to be that nobody reads anyway, so it will all fall on deaf ears.

I think this is too defeatist, though. Enrique Vila-Matas has continued. to play into the present. That's where the hope is.