Vues imprenables ; suivi de Paradoxes du voir et de l'aveuglement dans Ceux d'à côté de Laurent Mauvignier
Vues imprenables is a fictional narrative that explores the standpoints of six characters residing as guests in a luxury hotel for the weekend. Through discursive detours, and textual devices used by each character to avoid facing up to his faults and confronting the reminiscence of past sins, the questions of sight and blindness are closely intertwined with actions being carried out [passage à l’acte]. What are the characters’ failings ? Are they truly able to “see” through their own self? What part did the gaze play in their past actions? Inspired by the game Clue, The Ten Commandments and the aesthetics of the movie The Shining, Vues imprenables explores the notion of repentance, and by doing so attempts to determine to what extent the veil of words can conceal certain acts, and how sight reveals itself to be forever elusive. The essay entitled “Paradoxes du voir et de l’aveuglement dans Ceux d’à côté de Laurent Mauvignier” also establishes close ties with Vues imprenables, as it probes the limits and possibilities of the seeing in the storytelling. Moreover, the study analyses the meanders in which the advent of sight takes place in Mauvignier’s story, how it always foresees its imminent loss, and also traces the many ways by which the criminal act “turns a blind eye” at the very moment it is perpertrated. Revisiting some of the great tales of Greek mythology (Œdipus, Tiresias, Medusa), the analysis focuses on the particular aspects of the alter ego—“the other I,” at times guilty, at times a witness, who haunts Mauvignier’s novel. The multiple paradoxes of vision are thus scrutinized through a close reading of major writers and philosophers, such as Hélène Cixous, Georges Didi-Huberman, J.-B. Pontalis and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
Voir Aveuglement Crime Paradoxe Laurent Mauvignier Sight Gaze Blindness Crime Paradox Guilt Laurent Mauvignier French Contemporary Literature