Overproximity. L’inconsistance de la frontière entre protagoniste et prochain dans les romans d’Amélie Nothomb

Abstract

The paper focus on the ‘scénario-type’ of Amélie Nothomb’s novels, which consists in a dialectic confrontation between the Protagonist and the Neighbor. This confrontation dramatizes what Slavoj Zizek calls overproximity which is the effect and the sign of the inconsistency of the symbolic order in contemporary societies. In Nothomb’s novels, the Protagonist has to handle the massive and unbearable presence of the Neighbor threatening its subjective structure. With Jacques Lacan, Slavoj Zizek and René Girard, we propose an interpretation of the ontological and ethical meanings of the necessary border between the Protagonist and the Neighbor in the novels of the most popular Belgian writer. The suppression and the resurgence of the border are understood in the larger framework of the antinomic tension between desire and enjoyment (jouisance), which affects the stability of the subjective and social structures.