Deluze, Duras, Bukowski and Chinaski’s drinking and writing: creation or transgression
This article examines the relationship between the act of drinking and the act of writing in philosophy (Deleuze), literature (Marguerite Duras and Charles Bukowski) and cinema (Barbet Schroeder). This article has a double-purpose: first, to show whether alcohol intake initiates, catalyses or in any way promotes the act of creation and, then, to examine how alcohol brought to the screen evokes both a state of the body and an aspect of social identity – accepted or marginalized – within geographical contexts (France and the United States). This adopted approach, resolutely comparative, takes place within the area of media anthropology. The latter aims at describing then analyzing the processes located at the intersection of feeling (perceived, lived) and representation. This article examines both the activities (creative activity and compulsive intake of alcohol) and their representations in a videotaped interview (L’abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, 1996), two television broadcastings (Apostrophes, 1984 and 1988) and a film adaptation (Barfly, 1987). For each author studied, a reflection on the dipsomania is conducted. It focuses on creative activities by writing in connection with the use of alcohol. At first, the act of drinking is carefully scrutinized in order to identify certain characteristics (amount, assessment, sacrifice, illusion of creation, resistance), then the study of these addictive behaviors help to understand how they affect all social relationships of these authors. For each corpus studied, outstanding elements and anthropological issues which come out of these creative and alcoholic practices are highlighted for comparative analysis.