Flaubert: the celibate machine

Abstract

This article proposes a new interpretation of The Family Idiot, moving away from traditional biographical con­ceptions such as chronological, dialectical, psychoanalytic, and thematic approaches. Following the paths opened by Sartre in The Imaginary, where signs and magic coexist, it adopts a kaleidoscopic methodology inspired by a “conceptual” framework, akin to Marcel Duchamp. The subject is captured in the transparency of glass through a transversal gaze supported by X-ray probe scans at different levels: characters (father, mother, close friends), sexual relationships, places, and book references. What follows are folds of shadow and light that illuminate Flaubert’s obsessions: dreams of ascent or descent, passivity, stupidity, fetishism, sadomaso­chism. The pursuit of objects, with multiple possible couplings, outlines a form of work and hermeneutics in a fan-like fashion in disconnected fragments, constituting the “Flaubert’s celibate machine” as conceptualized in the notions of the body without organs or caress, later developed by Deleuze and Derrida.