Les tableaux vivants dans l’œuvre de Pierre Klossowski : quels lieux pour l’érotisme ?

Abstract

Eroticism and the role of the tableau vivant in the work of Pierre Klossowski : Which Spaces for Eroticism ? This paper examines the role of the tableau vivant in the emergence of the erotic dimension in the works of Pierre Klossowski. I show how the tableau already structures the author’s mental vision, before ever finding expression in his fiction and drawings. My first section is dedicated to the theatrical dimension of the work of Klossowski, as well as to the presentation of the principle of the ‘Laws of hospitality’ operating in the different works of fiction which surround the Roberte character. I then turn to the question of the place granted to body movement in the anatomy of the tableaux. Gulliverian viewpoint, solecistic gesture, as well as the suspension of gesture and attitude are each studied as so many different spaces of the libidinal and fantasmatic economy of Klossowski ’s tableaux. The tableaux are thus examined as being a structuring and compositional element, but also as a deliberate commitment to inactuality. This is especially visible, I argue, in the close proximity between Klossowski’s pictorial output and that of the 19th century painter which he represents in his narratives.