Troubling Memories

Abstract

Although mourning commonly inspires cathartic creativity, the desire to render presence exposes the fault-lines of any mode of expression. This paradoxical ‘presence of absence’ is what links the literary and filmic texts by Camille Laurens, Marie Darrieussecq and Nadine Trintignant that this article addresses. Each of these works give the photograph a privileged position: it is cited as a source of anxiety, a trace of the real alongside other ‘écriture de corps’. Alongside inter-textual and other intermedial references, these photographs are drawn upon when single words seem to falter. Their role can be elucidated with reference to the Derridean supplement, revealing the ‘absence’ that subsists in all attempts to remember.