When the dog undoes the master’s discourse: on Bernard-Marie Koltès’s «Combat de nègre et de chiens»

Abstract

Playwright, novelist, short story and letter writer, Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948-1989) invented, in his works, a new response to new forms of «discours du maître» (Lacan) that emerged in the wake of the crisis of ideologies. In Combat de nègre et de chiens, this response requires a dramaturgy that establishes a unique relationship between animality and discourse: Koltès uses the figure of the dog as a lever to subvert the discourses he confronts. To support this hypothesis, the paper analyzes the play in light of the theory of the four discourses developed by Jacques Lacan in Le Séminaire, livre XVII : l’envers de la psychanalyse.