Fluid Boundaries: The Violence of Non-Identity in Marguerite Duras's Representations of Female Relationships

Abstract

The fictional heroines in the work of Marguerite Duras are typically compelled by their desire to transcend the self and to identify, often to the point of merging, with other female characters, in texts such as Moderato cantabile (1958), Le ravissement de Lol V Stein (1964) (The Ravishing of Lol Stein), India Song (1975) or Ddtruire dit-elle (1969) (Destroy, She Said). This fusional element in her portrayal of relationships, particularly between women, has become a hallmark of Duras's writing, reflected in the frequent mirroring and doubling of female characters and voices. As Raylene Ramsay has remarked, the Durassian heroine is on a journey towards selfdispossession, that is essentially in a relationship of death to self. .. .1 Such self-abandonment is often accompanied by the female character's progressive descent into alcoholism or madness, for example in Le marin de Gibraltar (1952) (The Sailor of Gibraltar), Dix heures et demie du soir en etd (1960) (Half Past Ten in the Evening) and Emily L. (1987). Viewed from the psychoanalytic perspective adopted by French feminist theorists, this aspect of Duras's work can be seen as representing a challenge to the patriarchal construct of the fixed unified self in opposition to an equally immutable and separate other. Within this paradigm the Durassian desire for unity between self and other may thus signify a return to the polymorphous pre-oedipal world of the mother/child dyad, celebrated as synonymous with the feminine in the work of Luce Irigaray, Helkne Cixous and Julia Kristeva. Similarly, the lack of clearly differentiated