Christine V., or lectures illimitées Duras and the poetics of the social

“Sublime, forcément sublime Christine V.” is a high point in Duras’ exploration of the fait divers. Duras turns this particular news story into the ultimate fait divers, the anomalous force of which responds, like a scattered echo, to the singular power of Duras’ writing. A far cry from any notion of repletion, Duras’ is a literature that cuts like a knife, giving us the image of an infanticidal mother whose murdered child embodies a single demand of men: social justice for women.