The Writing of the Body : Death Wish in the Work of Amélie Nothomb

Abstract

This article studies the role of specific corpographies, that is to say manifestations of body representations and perceptions in the work of Amélie Nothomb, and how they relate to the death drive. The world Nothomb creates in her novels is heir to the philosophy of Plato, Zoroaster and Nietzsche, as well as to the vision of literature expressed by Lacan. We focus on the analysis of a number of characters, in their physical and relating moral aspects, as well as in their own vision of themselves. The novel is structured according to a constant dualism: youth and old age, life and death, thinness and obesity, beauty and ugliness, all of them taken in their most extreme condition. A celebrity author, Nothomb transforms our modern world by screening reality through one the great traditions of Western thought; she adapts the facts to fiction in order to paint an exceptional world of her own, full of humour and derision.