Abstract

Through the term « jouissance », Jacques Lacan designates what disrupts the life of the body, what creates a hole in the implementation of the principle of pleasure and leads the speaking subject to consider his body as an Other, always somehow strange – that is impossible to control, if not threatening. Reading the work of Patrick Modiano in light of this lacanian concept of « jouissance » reveals a very singular use of proper nouns in his writings. Often, Modiano uses these signifiers in a way that mortifies
jouissance and in the same movement brings about a new jouissance : the white, poetic jouissance that produces his way of mortifying jouissance.