Abstract

This article takes as its point of departure Maurice Blanchot's pairing of Marguerite Duras and Jean-Luc Nancy in The Unavowable Community, and reads India Song, a film by Duras, through Nancy's work on community. Just as Nancy articulates a thinking of community in terms of touch, so Duras develops her own filmic vocabulary of touch to examine questions of being-with, exposure, love and sacrifice against the background of a negative model of community. The article argues that the figure of touch in India Song, both between bodies onscreen and between viewer and film, becomes central to the film's engagement with issues of community, finitude and the political.