Abstract
Hervé Guibert (1955–1991), a French writer and photographer, began developing a double artistic practice in 1977. In 1988, he discovers he has HIV and his literary and photographic works begin to reflect each other in an attempt to tell the story of a disease whose progression proves uncontrollable and ultimately fatal. Hervé Guibert then undertakes an intensive self-examination of his body and of the changes imposed on it by the disease, using both writing and images (photography and video). At the same time, he carries out a theoretical reflection on the limits of the image and on the limits of writing, both complementing each other in an attempt to convey the experience of disease. His work thus offers a valuable ground for exploring the relationship between literature, photography and the story of disease and, most of all, the need to resort to these two modes of expression in order to communicate the intimate experience of illness. In Hervé Guibert, this experience can be understood through the tension between unveiling and exposing oneself. While the former is creative, the latter seems to be the result of the illness loss of control. This article aims to analyze this dialectical tension in light of three artistic mediums used by Guibert.
Highlights
Hervé Guibert (1955–1991), a French writer and photographer, began developing a double artistic practice in 1977
This article will focus on the changes that came about in the representation of the self and of the body when Guibert learned of his seropositivity in 1988. It is a question of merely observing how autofiction and self-portraits are modified by the experience of disease and the changes it imposes on the body, and of trying to understand how the reality imposed by AIDS profoundly troubled an
In Guibert’s imaginary realm, there is a desire for unveiling that goes through writing and the body, as well as the imbrication of each and the other in what Ralph Sarkonak called Hervé Guibert’s “textual body” (“corps textuel”) (Sarkonak 1997)
Summary
In Guibert’s imaginary realm, there is a desire for unveiling that goes through writing and the body (its performance), as well as the imbrication of each and the other in what Ralph Sarkonak called Hervé Guibert’s “textual body” (“corps textuel”) (Sarkonak 1997). Thereby, for example, in his first story, the young writer exposes his fantasized desire to unveil his body to others: “Mon corps est un laboratoire que j’offre en exhibition” This definition of autofiction is inspired by the work of Guibert, in its relation to fantasy deployed in his texts These lines are troubling when we think of the scene played out by Guibert in the documentary La Pudeur ou l’impudeur (Guibert 1992c) in which he pretends to take his own life on camera, playing out a youth fantasy, even though in reality, the writer’s death is imminent This correspondence, like many others, links the beginning of his work to the end, and confirms that fantasies have a chronological continuity and coherence in Guibert’s work, despite the different experiences the artist endures.
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