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Hervé Guibert: Writing The Spectral Image, Donna Wilkerson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This paper explores the relationship existing between AIDS (in particular the body-with-AIDS or the corps sidaïque), writing, and the spectral image in Hervé Guibert. While taking into account postmodern theory on the image, photography, and the notion of the "real," this essay examines the similitude between the image as plague and AIDS in order to reveal some central components of Guibert's postmodern conceptualization—namely the complex interplay of fact and fiction as it pertains to the body-with-AIDS. For example, the body is a privileged site from which the text radiates. It can also be mistaken for the "real" body of …