Chapter 4 - Crimes of Passion

Summary

Chapter 4 studies what have come to be known as Duras’s “erotic texts:” L’Homme assis dans le couloir (1980) and La Maladie de la mort (1982). In these brief but provocative works, Duras combines the lurid sensationalism of the tabloids with the transgressive philosophy and literature of writers such as Sade or Bataille. After a close reading of the intricate interplay between gender, violence, and erotics, this chapter argues that Duras takes advantage of these audacious texts as springboards to expose her own personal sexual scandals in the media and to make provocative public remarks about sexuality more broadly. She even goes so far as to deride homosexuality as a diminished form of desire as she attacks Roland Barthes, among others, in a series of unsettling homophobic remarks in the media.