The author brilliantly pursues her readings of Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu. Proust is presented here as the first modern writer to revel the sado-masochistic tendancies inherent in national, religious and sexual identities. His enigmatic characters and, above all, the Dreyfus Affair form the basis of Kristeva's exploration of these compelling questions. The material was originally delivered as the Zaharoff Lecture at the Taylor Instition, University of Oxford, 1997.