Lovers in Touch: Inoperative Community in Nancy, Duras and 'India Song'

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 beingwith,
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.