Entre catharsis et pharmakon : sur Fils de Serge Doubrovsky
The subject was traditionally defined by pure consciousness, but current narcissistic closure is the basis for a return of the repressed. Identity is thus no longer founded on the cogito, but on the elementary truth of the body. As a result we see now many hypochondriac writers being obsessed by the...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Institut du Monde Anglophone
2008-06-01
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| Series: | Etudes Epistémè |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/906 |
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| Summary: | The subject was traditionally defined by pure consciousness, but current narcissistic closure is the basis for a return of the repressed. Identity is thus no longer founded on the cogito, but on the elementary truth of the body. As a result we see now many hypochondriac writers being obsessed by their body disorders, such as Serge Doubrovsky, whose autofictions, focused on disease, turn his illnesses into words. In Fils (1977), the author’s life appears as a medical chronicle: his diseases undergo constant transformation and are reactivated when he reads the medical dictionary or narratives of Freudian cases. Doubrovsky’s book is thus close to Plato’s pharmakon, since it is both a purgation and a poison. It leads to the acknowledgement that there is no remedy for the disease, and that one must accept the irremediable. |
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| ISSN: | 1634-0450 |