“Petits traités” du ravissement. Lire Pascal Quignard avec Marguerite Duras

Abstract

“Ravishing” occurs fairly rarely in Pascal Quignard’s work, but the phenomenon and its related mechanisms are at the heart of the thinking and logic underpinning the Petits traites. These “treatises” describe ravishing by language, by the body, by Otherness, but also, more strangely, by reading or writing. They contrast these violent experiences of destitution with sudden absences from the self, sudden dispossession, illustrated by the key scene of the songearts villants. In this case, ravishment becomes a fascinating encounter. The Petits traites, which are perhaps a contemporary form of the mystical fable, build up lists of the mechanisms likely to result in an encounter with such terrible and yet also fruitful effects.