“Je-sans-moi”: Patients, Pain, and Painlessness in Malraux’s Lazare

Focusing on André Malraux’s month-long hospitalization that led to his 1972 text Lazare, this article singles out three interrelated topics – namely that of pain and painlessness, the doctor-patient encounter and self-identity in illness narratives – in order to argue that Malraux’s exploration of patienthood importantly challenges the genre of autopathography.