A complete account of the fiction, films and media work of Marguerite Duras since the film Le Camion in 1977. This study examines the formal pleasures of Duras's work in order to reassess the predominant critical view that it represents a radical and painful engagement with alterity and difference. It is argued that Le Camion marks the birth of a new sadomasochiastic aesthetic, at once post-feminist and post-political, founded on violence and ironic error. Ideas are offered on the relations between eroticism, sexual identity, artistic form and sublimation.