The PIPOL 10 Congress invites us to explore the theme ‘Desire for family and clinic of filiations’ and will address what science brings to it in terms of transformation for each one. Until then, in this Edito, it is toward science-fiction and fantasy that I invite you to come forward.
Epiphania [1] is a serie of three comic strips produced by Ludovic Debeurme, a prolific author who is sensitive to psychoanalysis. In a more conventional format than usual, he offers us a tale which begins and ends with the question of childbirth. The title, Epiphania, responds to the term ‘Epiphany’ which celebrates the birth of the child considered by Christians as the incarnation of God, and which also, according to Wikipedia, refers to ‘the sudden understanding of the essence or the signification of something’. In other words, the rise and the searing intensity of the effect of meaning.
The first book of Epiphania begins with David, whose partner, Jeanne, is about to give birth. When he arrives at the hospital, there are no carers – he is alone with her and the unborn child. Petrified by the vision of the one who comes into the world, we see him in the next box with a baby in his arms, whose features are quite strange. It was a nightmare, recurrent, which this time wakes David up shortly before some pre-apocalyptic events occur. Meteorites reach the surface of the globe, triggering tsunamis of which David’s partner will be the victim. From these events, small beings of a new kind, mixture between humans and other mammals – the mixbodies – emerge from the earth itself which has become fertile. One of these strange creatures grows up in David’s garden – he looks a lot like the one of his nightmares. Hesitating to ‘abort him’, he finally decides to adopt him, facing his gaze and facing the misery of this little body, and he gives him a name: Kojiko.
Hélène Bonnaud notes: ‘Paternity has never been certain, but the act of recognition of a child as his own ensured an act of the father, now contradicted by scientific knowledge. The genetic father dislodges the symbolic father, and this has an impact on the very construction of family ties. Science acts as a cut in the paternal recognition. It intrudes and sometimes destroys. It then verifies a doubt, a lie, an injury and constitutes paternity as a blood tie, and not as a nomination. Let us note that any child, whether or not genetically his, is ‘adopted’ by his father as well as by his mother. It is a consent to be responsible for him, to become his parents.’ [2]
Here, there is no doubt, David is not his genetic father. And not only does he adopt Kojiko, but the latter recognizes him as his father, to the point of denying the scientist that he meets who asserts that the ‘hatred of humans’ is genetically programmed in the mixbodies DNA. L. Debeurme unfolds, in this exciting tale, the journey of a father who does not cede on his desire to be a father despite the radical otherness of his child, and of a son who tries to build his place in the world.
The father will be discussed in this new release of Ombilic. And from today, it will offer the opportunity to discover five texts.
In her text, ‘Father’s Harm’ (‘Mal de père’), Chantal Bonneau returns to the book of Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize winner in Literature, which describes the impossible encounter with his father.
We can also discover the interview of Judge Guenoveva Ilieva in Bulgaria who has been conducting civil trials in the Varna Court for nine years, involving parental rights and child protection measures. Law will also be addressed in the Martine Revel’s text on the French law on Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy.
And to continue the European tour, Karagianni Despina offers us a reflection on her work as Clinical Director of a Day Centre in Greece for women during the perinatal period.
To return to this Edito’s theme, you’ll also find in this 18th issue of Ombilic, a text of Sophie Lecocq-Simon entitled ‘Give birth to the stranger’ (‘Mettre au monde l’étranger’), which provides a reading of the book ‘The messy woman’ (‘La femme brouillon’) written by Amandine Dhée who, according to S. Lecocq-Simon, ‘identifies in a masterly way that the figures of the stranger are above all a matter of subjectivity and demonstrates how they are lurking in the intimacy of everyday life and in this case of a future and then young mother’.
Last but not least, let’s find out the new video uploaded on the Youtube channel of the Pipol 10, along with the presentation of the artist of the day and the book of the week.
Happy reading !
Translation: Manuela Rabesahala
Photography: ©Emmanuel Kervyn – https://www.emmanuelkervyn.com
[1] Debeurme L., Epiphania, Book 1, 2 & 3, Bruxelles, Casterman, 2017-2019.
[2] Bonnaud H., The Child’s Unconscious, From the symptom to the desire to know (L’inconscient de l’enfant, du symptôme au désir de savoir), Paris, Navarin, 2013, p. 39.
