The Writing Of Body In Michel Tournier’s Works

With Robinson’s rebirth at the beginning of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique,Michel Tournier raises the most basic question about the body: what is the body? To really distinguish Tournier’s story from the others becomes impossible without response to this question.The confrontation between the body and the desert island is gradually replaced by a gentle integration along with the deepening of Robinson’s island survival.The instinctive conflict is transformed into a broader kind of relationship.In this change,emerges the concept of difference.The body is only made up of differences,and the various reactions between the body and world are also attributed to differences.Differences become the center of the story,and that the relationship between bodies can be also regarded as the relationship between differences.This kind of Deleuzian theory is interpreted literarily in Tournier’s works like la phorie in Le Roi des Aulnes and the metaphor of Italian mirrors reflecting bodies in les météores.The writing of the body is no longer isolated and mechanical but open and dynamic.The meaning of body is realized in these relationships.In this way,the body can not be only expressive but also creative,which tells a higher body-writing.How did a visible fact become a novel story? Why did the body in photo become dead? All of Tournier’s questions actually affirm the possibility of the meaning created by body.Besides,the creation is not disordered,nihilistic.Difference constitutes repetition,which determines the paradox of repetition itself: it is both finite and infinite.With chasing the past,it meanwhile creates something new.The writing of the body follows this paradox.The body in Tournier’s works is always chasing one after another.They are all in some sort of elliptical orbit,imbuing all stories with timeless movement like musical fugue.