Laure Murat

Taking Esquirol's suggestion to make a history of France from the registers of asylums as a starting point, she questions the nature of delirium in the 19th century in order to understand the impact of political events (revolutions, regime changes, etc.)

This political history of madness attempts to show the extent to which psychiatry, a science still in its infancy that was at the whims of an often-changing government, interpreted mental illness and rendered it a social phenomenon.

In 2015, she published Relire as an investigation of rereading, its reasons and its specificities, after conducting a series of interviews with writers in France (Annie Ernaux, Patrick Chamoiseau, Jean Echenoz, Christine Angot, etc.).

While in the police archives in 2005, she discovered a report from the vice squad attesting to the presence of Marcel Proust in a brothel for gay men that was run by Albert Le Cuziat, who served as the inspiration for Jupien in In Search of Lost Time.

On 15 November 2022, she participated in an episode of the "L'Heure bleue" podcast dedicated to Proust, which was presented by Laure Adler and titled "La Recherche est un livre de consolation.

"[17] Murat regularly intervenes in the public sphere on social issues, especially since the advent of #MeToo and the controversies around cancel culture, about which she wrote a short book in 2022, titled Qui annule quoi?.

Her perspective on these issues is informed by her deep knowledge of both French and American cultures, as shown by her articles in Le Monde and Libération, for whom she wrote for the "Historiques" column between 2016 and 2019, alongside Sophie Wahnich, Johann Chapoutot and Serge Gruzinski.