L’espace dans Désertde J.M.G. Le Clézio
The Spance in J.M.G. Clézio’s novel – “Désert“
This paper is based on the analysis of the representation of space in J.M.G. Clézio’s novel Désert(Desert). In this novel, published in 1980, Le Clézio sets against the western civilization and the modernity of the desert world, the place of a possible return to mythical origins. By following the route of Lalla, the girl of the desert who will leave in search for a place to work in Marseille, our analysis will be an attempt to describe the main lines of this opposition whose main articulations reveal all their meanings in the relationship of the individual to the space. By criticising the colonialism, Le Clézio denounces the materialism of the western civilization exclusively interested in the economic exploitation of a certain territory. For the inhabitants of the desert, this is, on the contrary, a spiritual reality, the space of freedom itself. It is what allows them to become almost physically identified with this space. By contrast, western civilization does not allow identification, it is the world par excellence of the „non-lieu“ (Marc Augé). The second part of the analysis is dedicated to the space of writing where different methods (typographic techniques, insertion of narratives, practice of the image, rhythm of the story) resume and qualify the land antagonism of the western city and the desert as two different types of thinking the relation with space.
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«Magazine littéraire», no. 362, février, 1998
