SOURCE: “Writing the Subject: Exoticism/Eroticism in Marguerite Duras's ‘The Lover’ and ‘The Sea Wall,’” in De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography, edited by Sidonie Smith and Julie Watson, University of Minnesota Press, 1992, pp. 436-58.

In the following essay, Chester examines colonialism and autobiographical representation in The Lover and The Sea Wall.

Until now, the main body of critical work on Duras has explored the relationship between her writing and the category of the feminine—defined variously in cultural, linguistic, and psychoanalytic terms.¹ However, the colonial aspect of Duras's work has been largely ignored and is, I argue, crucial to a reading of sexual difference and the construction of a gendered writing subject. Therefore, my essay will focus on Duras's representation of the particular power relations emerging from the confrontation of the female Other with the “exotic” Other in a French colonial situation...