JULIA KRISTEVA
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give in where your singularity is at stake."
JK: Absolutely, but this message is precisely the ethical message of psy–
choanalysis. In a manner even more singular, Stephany writes that she is
"a detective in search of emptiness." "The emaciated hand still holds the
stiletto and I make out the word 'Nada.' Nothing. Nothingness crept into
me with the smile of a father whose pain made him sing. I am nothing–
ness." And again, "Atheism, which is said to be inaccessible to women,
who are always in quest of illusions, that is, of a father-mother lover,
opens up for the one who is inhabited by the desert bequeathed her by
the dead father. The choice is henceforth restricted and dangerous.
Seeking childhood - a kind of madness. Or wandering - independence
played over and over again."
BS: What strikes me about the couple Alba and Vespasian is both the ex–
treme violence that is brought into play within them, a potentially crim–
inal violence, and at the same time the violent image of the man as pre–
sented by the woman, without her removing herself from the picture, so
that as a result we have a reduction, through fiction, of two singular
symmetrical manifestations of violence.
JK: With respect to "the couple," as to all the other configurations in the
novel, the bottom line is to know whether fiction can aim for truth ef–
fects (this obviously implies that it take charge of the death drive and its
expressions), or whether it should, on the contrary, reassure us by rein–
forcing some communal illusion. "Always protest against the domestica–
tion pact," says the Old Man. I have obviously chosen the first alternative.
Vespasian not only stands for a caricature of masculine violence; he is also
an individual without inner life, almost psychotic, "either an active mon–
ster or monstrously insigificant" - one can't tell which. You have surely
met people who are like that.
In opposition to a certain kind of feminism that idealizes the victim–
ized spouse, Alba doesn't give in to Vespasian and his destructive, mur–
derous tendencies. Moreover, the story of this imaginary couple comes
close to assuming in its entirety what I happen to have heard from the
couch, for instance about murder wishes and attempted poisonings. Quite
simply, the novel tells what one most often conceals. We thus encounter
once more the question: can a novel tell the truth? If so - and this has
nothing to do with "being seduced" - who can accept that truth without
feeling unmasked, betrayed, exposed? Must we then consider a metamor–
phosis of the novel? Not really. Police investigations, mystery thrillers
make the unveiling of cruelty plausible, almost bearable. That is why I
intend to pursue the mystery genre - a game. A way of continuing analy-
