On 8th May 2021, a preparatory afternoon was held at the ACF-Belgium for the PIPOL 10 Congress, which is fast approaching. We had the pleasure of welcoming Virginie Leblanc and Carolina Koretzky, who each in their own very precise way, shared a view of their reflections with us on the theme. They also commented on the points presented by our colleagues, Anne Semaille, Jean-Philippe Cornet and Sacha Wilkin.
The guiding thread of the afternoon, as you will discover in this issue, gives perspective on the role of misunderstanding, this gap which allows filiation to occur.
This is what the novels of Edouard Louis show us and in particular, his latest book, Combats et métamorphoses d’une femme (Struggles and Metamorphoses of a Woman), in which he testifies that it is the moment when a separation occurs that a filiation can come into being.
“The story of our relationship began on the day we separated. It’s as though we have turned time around, you and I, as though it is the separation that came before the relationship; that laid the foundation.”[1]
Edouard Louis used language to create a gap, a crevasse into which he squeezed.
“When I came back to the village, the first few times, I wanted to show you my new sense of belonging – that is, what was becoming the gap between my life and yours. It was mainly through language that I produced the differentiation. I was learning new words at school and these words became symbols of my new life, words without importance, bucolic, tedious, underlying words. These were words I had never heard before. I used them and they irritated you.”[2]
These new words traced a border to an intimacy that, little by little, drew him out from this world, from which he had always felt excluded and ashamed. And by tracing these contours, he was able to reinscribe himself as a subject.
“Our distance had brought us closer together. Our coming together, not only changed our future, it also transformed our past. I can now revive the fragments of tenderness from the chaos of the past.”[3]
The video Céline Danloy will be screening for us this week, deals precisely with this question of transmission, from where Myriam Leroy, Belgian journalist and writer, will discuss her journey as a subject, from birth via assisted reproduction with an anonymous donor.
Bibliography
Zenoni A., “Quand l’enfant réalise l’objet “ / “When the Child Realises the Object,” Quarto, n°71, 2000.
Review: Caroline Heanue
Photgraphy : ©Nathalie Crame
[1] Edouard Louis, Combats et métamorphoses d’une femme, Paris, Seuil, 2021, p. 67.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 68.
