This interview appeared as “La Littérature suspend la mort”, in Le Monde (16 December, “Le Monde des Livres”), 12, 2005.
rdc Could you talk about the intimate, about the circulation that happens in your recent texts and in L'Amour même dans la boîte aux lettres in particular, between the familiar, the familial, the confidential and a more, shall we say, public reflection?
cixous Nothing more intimate, they say, than love, than where one makes love. But what does one make of love, as a human and animal being? It's a question of life and death, of course, but it's a universal question, the first question. It's the one that subverts, that haunts all the scenes in which we move, which all seem professional, external, “extimate”, political, etc. For me, it is always about a questioning of love. Love in turn questions role-playing scenes, in which we play a role, in which we have functions, in which, I could almost say, love would stumble against two kinds of inimical incarnations: on the one hand its opposite, hatred, hostility, war, and on the other hand that which limits everything — and I, personally, cannot accept the existence of this limit — that is, death. Love advances like a sort of vital stream, flanked by powers hostile to love and by powers with which we can have a form of endless dialogue.