The Traumatic Structure of the récit de mort: Camille Laurens’ Philippe

Abstract

One year after the perinatal death of her son through medical negligence, Camille Laurens published Philippe (1995), a brief récit de mort detailing the conditions which led to his loss, and her own grieving process. This article proposes that the immediacy of the scriptural act gives the reader direct access to the traumatic scene. Through pronounced hybridity and fragmentation, Laurens reproduces in textual form her own experience of trauma. The text is a site which replicates the incomprehensibility of the traumatic encounter in a twofold manner, for both writer and reader. The death of a child as a “limit-experience” (Wilson) exceeds the bounds of representation and challenges the strictures of a flowing narrative.