Análisis sectorial: El sector no alimentario.

In La Démangeaison the skin of the main character can be analysed in different ways; it can be seen as a crime scene (bearing traces of fighting and violence), and as a stage. Just like the Nothombian dancer in Chapter 2, Irène seems to be caught in a network of gazes: all the focus (especially Irène’s) is on her body, and her body becomes the site where her story is traced. Her skin is therefore a means by which we may decipher her behaviour. While Irène is aged only six months, the appearance of the skin condition is first described as ‘un psoriasis monumental, preuve de mon infamie et de ma différence, la gale en un mot’ (16). Instantly the young girl is categorised as different. The skin is the first platform of communication with others in so far it bears the traces of personal history and identity. Those can be simple sunburns or birth marks; they can be scars, bruises or traces of wounds that may bear witness of accidents or bodily violence; they can also be plaques and lesions caused by a skin condition such as psoriasis. In the latter case, these visual alterations of the skin speak of the inherent difference of the person who bears them; a possible social response to these visual markers of difference may be, as is the case in Irène’s story, the classification of this individual as an outcast, an “other”. Irène’s psoriasis can be detected on her skin and it is a “proof” of the horror of her own person and condition. The skin thus represents the first frontier (obstacle) and opposition with others; it is that which determines the end of the self, the “me”, and the beginning of the “not me”, of others. Furthermore the skin could also be understood as a platform for communication in terms of contact with others. At the onset of a lifelong skin condition Irène depicts herself as despicable and different (16) and both these aspects are represented on her skin thanks to the lesions formed by psoriasis. However, if the skin initiates the dynamics of our rapport with others, it can nonetheless be

posited as an unreliable source of superficial knowledge, opposed to what can be known or experienced through the body. As I show later, the skin can therefore impede self- introspection since it risks being misread by the subject and by others. In her article which analyses the workings of an ‘écriture de peau’ in La Démangeaison, Robson quotes Peggy Phelan who herself evokes the superficiality of the skin. She comments,

‘[it] lacks the depth, the interiority, we want it to give us’.216 _{Robson continues, ‘Her}

choice of terms here is telling: what do we invest in our belief that the skin can

somehow offer some kind of access to or reflection of a self, that the surface can offer proof of the depth?’.217 As mentioned earlier, a possible social response to visible difference may be the rejection of the subject; Irène’s skin may be (mis)read as

indicating the inherent vileness of the character. However, the diseased skin can also be interpreted as an indicator of a malaise within. Therefore, if Irène’s damaged skin points to a damaged inside, if it may be understood as the visual proof of other internal pains, this potentially involves another reading of the ‘maladie’ itself. Is it solely an

“individual” malaise – that of a sufferer from a specific medical condition – or, as I would suggest, could this ‘maladie’ be the subject’s response to the social rejection she undergoes? As Jackie Stacey writes in Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer, ‘The skin is overburdened. It represents the interface between inside and outside and is the

body’s ambassador: it meets the world’.218 As the ‘body’s ambassador’ the skin may indicate the torments inside the body, but in the case of psoriasis, internal difference is inscribed on the skin and also enacted through multiple gestures which testify to others of the subject’s (visual, behavioural and ultimately identity) difference. I argue that it gives away the unruly presence of an Other within, positing the subject as hybrid and monstrous.

Nobécourt’s protagonist is the victim of uncontrollable skin rashes caused by psoriasis. Robson writes that,

This compulsive scratching, on its simplest level, constitutes a response to the itch generated by her skin diseases, offering temporary relief and release. It also, however, represents the narrator’s urgent need to communicate and to transmit what she cannot articulate, that which remains locked inside her skin and which she cannot externalize thanks to the barrier of diseased skin that separates her from others.219

In the case of Irène, the skin does not play the role of communication between/from Irène and/to others. Rather it seems to be one-way in so far as it indicates to others that she is different, even repulsive, and this does not resolve (but worsens) the lack of dialogue between Irène and her surroundings. Moreover, it could be understood that by

216 _{Peggy Phelan, Mourning Sex: Performing Public Memories (London and New York:}

Routledge, 1997), p. 41.

217 _{Robson, ‘“L’écriture de peau”’, p. 76.} 218 _{Stacey, Teratologies, p. 84, my emphasis.} 219 _{Robson, ‘“L’écriture de peau”’, p. 71.}

scratching her skin – by removing the diseased skin – she attempts to eradicate what prevents her contact with others (on the physical level of contact, and that of oral communication). The monstrous will emerge within this damaged body, out of a feeling of claustrophobia and of the isolation/rejection from others. As Robson argues above, it is by compulsively scratching herself that she manifests her need to communicate her malaise. Irène (unsuccessfully) peels off her unhealthy skin to create a new rapport with others and encourage a new perception from the outside. Simultaneously she expresses her lack of care and contact with her parents by “caressing herself”, that is to say by incessantly and violently scratching her skin; we read:

Car ma mère ne déposait aucun baiser sur mes joues roses d’enfant, et mon père, à aucun moment, ne me serrait gentiment dans ses bras. Et ce manque à gagner, cette chose à devenir folle, oui on peut devenir folle pour cela, je le sentais dans ma rage à me caresser moi-même, c’est-à-dire à me gratter jusqu’au sang. (20-21)

The removal of the damaged skin by scratching is initially the attempt to take down the obstacles to mutual/reciprocal contact, communication and love with others. It is also an early attempt by the young girl to overcome other limits: her rebellion against the limits which dictate the rules of physical propriety is played out via her own challenge of the boundaries imposed by her body and illness. In so doing she has started to go literally beyond the limits of her body, peeling off what I would call her “skin-armour”.220 Moreover, the skin as container is a concept developed in Nobécourt’s L’Equarrissage in which she writes about ‘la peau, le bel organe de neuf mètres sur deux et qui contient le tout. Essayer de déchiffrer la peau, voilà toute l’affaire: l’écharner couche après couche pour découvrir autre chose que les os’ (36). This divulges a turn in the character’s perception of her own (diseased) skin, beyond a point of contact, (mis)communication and opposition with others. Indeed, she begins to envisage the unwrapping of her own body as a way to discover the mysteries of her flesh. I will demonstrate in the following sections that by scratching beyond the surface of her skin, the subject will metaphorically transcend multiple limits and become monstrous, she will challenge her personal as well as social perceptions of her visible difference, and attempt to decipher her own identity.

220 _{This “skin-armour” refers to the extra layers of skin that psoriasis produces. It can be}

understood as a claustrophobic body-sized cage which, because of its hideous appearance deprives Irène of love and care; and it could also be seen as protection from outside aggressions simultaneously caused by this repulsive-looking armour. In any case, it is thanks to this skin- armour and its negative consequences on Irène’s surroundings that the young girl starts looking