Abstract. Let M be a simply connected closed manifold of dimension n. We study the rational homotopy type of the configuration space of 2 points in M , F (M, 2). When M is even dimensional, we prove that the rational homotopy type of F (M, 2) depends only on the rational homotopy type of M . When the dimension of M is odd, for every x ∈ H n−2 (M, Q), we construct a commutative differential graded algebra C(x). We prove that for some x ∈ H n−2 (M ; Q), C(x) encodes completely the rational homotopy type of F (M, 2). For some class of manifolds, we show that we can take x = 0.