DURAS (re) NAISSANCE BY WILLIAM N. ARTZ, JR. This is an introduction of Marguerite Duras. Who was Marguerite Duras? What was Marguerite Duras? How was Marguerite Duras? Marguerite Duras was, is, and will forever be a Writer¹, par excellence. This current study on Marguerite Duras, is the culmination of nine graduate credit hours of work, investigation, argument, bafflement, misunderstanding, illumination. It was clear, from the very beginning, that this would be a quagmire, and a maelstrom of some density, by orders of magnitude. Like any good philosophic examination, however, the answers are within the asking of the questions, not in actual answers. Yet, this is not an exercise, exclusively, on Durassian philosophy. It is any number of things, akin to a notion Michel Foucault gave in an interview at the University of Vermont, in 1982. The interviewer, Martin Rux, asked Foucault about all of the categories used when someone tries to give Foucault an identity, e.g, Marxist, Structuralist, Historian, and so on. Foucault responded, “I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am” (Rux 9). As it is, in essence, with Duras. Duras is Duras. It really is no more complicated than that, and difficult to further implicate. The study of Duras is not founded on some obtuse mathematical formulae, for example, because of that Duras is both misunderstood and classified as something Duras is not. I will, however, add at this point, rather briefly, the following: my approach is transdisciplinary in nature, and it is a way of having a fresh understanding through the history of ideas, intellectual history, philosophy, philology, sociology, pedagogy, digital pedagogy. It is very much a holistic approach to the way, in essence, Duras understood her œuvre, and its evolution. As an aside, the following does not go without some explication, given the conclusive nature of this study. The thoughts and arguments herein, on Marguerite Duras, are no different than if I were giving these ideas and notions to a group of Duras scholars. As the meaning of Duras, is not the same understanding for those who study Duras, and for those who only
experience the literary aspects of Duras. There is very much an affordance aspect to Durassian scholarship, and that is always reflected by those who write about Duras, and those who knew Duras AND write about Duras. From Laure Adler, Jean Vallier, Dominique Noguez, Didier Éribon, Édouard Louis, Gilles Philippe, Patti Smith, Ocean Vuong, to name but a few, top literary figures and scholars, whose works reflect Duras. If I were writing this essay for the aforementioned, I would change nothing. This is MY understanding of Duras, this is MY interest in Duras, this is MY research on Duras. Any errata and lacunae are indeed my own. There is a multimodal aspect to Duras, most especially because Duras, is a mode in and of herself. Duras is not autobiography, Duras is within each of her texts, because Duras is a part of the text, her life is a text, her life is the text. It did not end, the reworking of the text, the (re)fashioning of the text took place, until her death 3 March 1996. Through an investigation of the way in which Duras understood technê, of writing: It is possible to affront this notion in a clear and precise manner; attempting, therefore, possible answers to the aforementioned inquiries. This is both a writing exercise, and an excursus, as well. An essay, that is a means of an ultimate assessment and progression for a given class. An excursus, in that it should give further detail as to the study on Marguerite Duras qua Writer, and that given output, i.e., Writing. It is, therefore, an exercise that has a two-fold purpose; it is about a very specific topic, around which the “I” qua researcher, must argue, both objectively and subjectively. More than any of this, however, it is about a writer. A writer who has had a profound influence on my life, from many different perspectives, Duras. Again, why Duras? My interest in Marguerite Duras started very early on in my life as a college student, after watching the
Duras is less concerned about structure/syntax/grammar than she is about actual words, there is the word, and the sentence then builds itself around that word; writer qua Writer, upper-case ‘w’ Writer.
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