Dismantling the monster: The necrophile of Gabrielle Wittkop

Abstract

Gabrielle Wittkop turned her literature into an instrument of taboo
transgression, recognizing, throughout her work, the anguishing human
admiration for everyday monsters (Foucault). The main objective of this paper
is to address her first novel, Le nécrophile (The necrophiliac), published in
1972, through the analysis of the deviant behavior of its main character,
the necrophiliac Lucien. We seek here, especially from the perspectives
of psychoanalysis, to reveal the intertwining of the concepts of deviance,
perversion and violence inserted in a necrophiliac practice described as the
fruit of an amorous relationship and that, therefore, rejects and refutes the
preconceptions of how we view and understand the monstrous.