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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.iws5sx

>

Where these data come from
Prostitution in the Works of Marguerite Duras. Writing distance

Abstract

This dissertation analyses the different meanings of prostitution in the writings of Marguerite Duras. Through the intersecting analytical lenses of literary history, philosophy and psychoanalysis, our research shows that prostitution, far from being a simple subject, is inherent to the creative art and act of the author. Writing, for Duras, is the product of a creative tension shaped by distance : the very margin (away from the doxa, the language itself) from which the author crafted her work is the creative force that informs her desire to diverge from the norm and effectively strive to overturn rather than follow it.We will first consider the thematic of prostitution – prevalent from her earliest texts – throughout Duras’s work and how it weaves a veritable fantasy matrix proposing a body of work that reverses the common axiology by sacralizing profanity and placing the margin at the center. Prostitution becomes a melting pot of the writing process and reveals the agenda of the potentialities within creation (it shapes writing itself). Nevertheless, beyond the idealization of giving oneself to another, prostitution runs deeper than the skin : it has ametaphysical sense. Indeed, we demonstrate how offering one’s body is linked to an infinite quest or thirst that only the Absolute of life can quench. Offering one’s body is a tense act situated between desire and mourning and that can be interpreted as the quest for Aletheia(truth through unveiling), rather than a simple transaction free of any eroticism. In any case,to prostitute oneself is above all, a staged performance deeply rooted in theatricality, and this point is analyzed in the last part of our work. After the 1980s the rapport between the prostitute and the truth changes and distance, far more than the rapprochement between bodies and beings, is then paid in cash.

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