Une subjectivation extravagante. Métaphysique des tubes, d’Amélie Nothomb

From Prétextat Tach to Melvin Mapple, Nothomb’s fictional world is full of extravagantly obese characters. They are bits of nothingness surrounded by a fat substance, a nothingness that takes more and more room, invades and eventually consumes everything. The key subject of Nothomb’s novels is this invasion of the self’s space by another’s emptiness, by their inert kernel of apathy, that disturbs, provokes anxiety and disgust to a point the self just can’t stand it. In Métaphysique des tubes, the tube is the object that shapes the non-being. This novel tells the story of the construction of a subjective structure whose crucial moment is when the carps, tubes surrounded by fat, let the reader glimpse at the kernel of non-being inside the subject. The subject is founded by the extravagant disgust caused by the externalisation of the inner tube