This project is an exploration of the invention of obsession and desire in Hervé Guibert’s Fou de Vincent. Through his autofictional writing Guibert transforms lived reality into literature (or metaphysics) wherein the loved one is invented in the mind of the author and reified through the production of art. The work is considered within the context of Guibert’s social milieu, examining the cross-pollination between he and his friends, Michel Foucault, Sophie Calle, and Hans Georg Berger. Guibert’s literary lineage is sketched through his relationship to Proust, particularly his use of and modifications to the notion of the loved one as “captive” and “fugitive”.
As writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Guibert’s interdisciplinary approaches to art-making are considered with particular emphasis on their shared subject matter, namely the synthesis of art and life and the production of the other. This project is partially an attempt to rescue Vincent from the captivity of characterization, while recognizing the impossibility of such attempts. The sick body is considered as a site of resistance is emphasized, and this project shows thatVincent, rather than À l\u27ami qui ne m\u27a pas sauvé la vie, is Guibert’s first “AIDS book”. Writing the other is a process of writing the self and a way to achieve self-knowledge
