‘De jour en jour / From day to day’: Documenting Times of Self-Mourning in Herve´ Guibert’s La Pudeur ou l’impudeur (1990)

Mourning is predominantly understood as an emotional process caused by the loss of
a beloved other. This is challenged in this article on Herve´ Guibert’s 1990 La Pudeur
ou l’impudeur, a documentary in which the author and photographer represents his
physical and emotional suffering through the last stages of HIV-AIDS. The article
explores this suffering via the idea of ‘ self-mourning’, which denotes Guibert’s
reflection on his own mortality in the light of terminal illness. In particular, the
article focuses on what happens to the notion of time in mourning against the
backdrop of Gilles Deleuze and Jean-Luc Nancy.