Historically, thediscourse of absence is carried on bythe Woman : Woman is sedentary,Man hunts, journeys; Woman is faithful (she waits ), man is fickle(he sails away, he cruises) . It is Woman who gives shape to absence, elaborates its fiction, for she has time to do so;  she weaves and she...

Sometimes I haveno difficulty enduring absence. Then I am “normal”: I fall in with the way"everyone" endures the departure of a "beloved person"; Idiligently obey the training by which I was very early accustomed to beseparated from my mother- which nonetheless remained, at its source, a matterof...