L'expérience de la limite dans La Nausée de Jean-Paul Sartre et Aurora de Michel Leiris
This study proposes a joint reading of Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre and Aurora by Michel Leiris. More precisely, following a tradition that considers the dysphoric infinite-unlimited (apeiron) ― in other words, the moving, the chaos, the indeterminated ― as a first and passive reality from which we most remove ourselves to ex-ist ― to enter a world of differentiation, of limitation ―, we would like our inquiry of the aforementioned novels to examine the dysphoric relationship towards limitlessness and, correspondingly, the constitutive role of limitation in the human experience. To this purpose, we will use Julia Kristeva’s abjection theory (Powers of Horror : An Essay on Abjection) to analyze Sartre’s fiction and Gilbert Durand’s anthropological knowledge (The Anthropological Structures of the Imaginary) for the study of Aurora. The theory of abjection, which is a nausea caused by the experience of indistinction, describes an effort made by the subject ― in its earliest years and throughout its life ― to get out of a state of limitlessness (ex. : symbiotic relationship with the Mother) and Durand’s thesis defines imaginary as a universal attempt from human to organize the moving chaos associated with death. This theoretical framework will allow us to understand Roquentin’s episodes of nausea (Nausea) as frightful experiences of dissolution and liquefaction of the subject and Aurora’s unbridled imaginary as a ternary reaction (portray ; deny ; minimize) against degeneration, alteration.
Aurora Sartre Leiris Limite Abjection Psychanalyse Nausea Aurora Sartre Leiris Limit Indetermination Unlimited Abjection Psychoanalysis Anthropology of the imaginary