Lord Louis, there is concern that the yellow West-movement reactionary, is not right. They marched in the Demos. Why?
I am aware that the movement is heterogeneous and the risk that you will drift outside to the right. The “gilets jaunes” go on the road, because you are suffering from the conditions, because they are afraid of. For me, the Yellow jackets are, therefore, a progressive movement. The people started to attack you. You said: “Oh, there’s the “gilets jaunes” racists, therefore we reject you.” But this is exactly the reason why the Left should be in the demonstrations to be present. After all, who is opposed to the “gilets jaunes”, in the end, supported only by the Right, makes them even stronger.
You makes you stronger?
For the past 20 years, there is no strong Left. This is a big Problem: As they were in the 50s and 60s, there was the opportunity to say: I suffer from exclusion and social violence. As the right became stronger, changed: It is now suffering due to migrants and Colored. A challenge only the right-wing parties are not. It is also important to find a progressive frame to articulate violence and pain. A social movement such as the “gilets jaunes” is always a movement within the movement: a struggle for the language to articulate his suffering, how one frames the pain. I see my task as an Intellectual: With my books, I want to find ways on how you can say: I suffer.
The risk of a division by the yellow West.
The question is, what kind of new beginnings. May 1968 was a good revolt. The “gilets jaunes” fight for your life. This is a reality that I know from my Childhood. I grew up in a small town in the North of France, where the people worked in factories until it closed 20 years ago. The people – like my family – live in extremely precarious conditions. When my father was 35 years old, he had to be at work in the factory in an accident that destroyed his back. Our family belonged to what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat. In today’s literature I would never find something about this lumpen proletariat. I began to write, therefore, from vengeance.
write out of revenge?
Yes, I try to give my books to the people on stage, appearing in the public discourse. There are politicians who are owned by poor people, such as Emmanuel Macron: The poor should work harder. The government and the Ruling to let the people believe it is your fault if your life is difficult when you are poor. I hate this bourgeois fantasy, the working class could Express themselves as well as intellectual. If you say that, makes you the social domination invisible.
Can you speak as an Intellectual for Outclassed?
This is something I examine in my new book: There is a kind of violence in what I do. Because I’m talking instead of my father, I tell of his poverty, I am referring to the social violence that he suffered. It is not one of the worst forms of social exclusion that people very often have the opportunities to talk about themselves. I have my father in my book a voice, but I’m not saying what he would say.
do not reflect the reality?
When my father speaks about himself, then he would say: “I can’t complain, my life could be worse.” My father is ashamed that he is poor. That’s why he can’t talk about it. When I write about my father, then this is also an attempt to overcome this shame. Clearly, there is something objectively Violent, if one speaks instead of someone, when I write about my father. But it is an emancipatory force.
“to say If our society would be less contaminated by male dominance, would have been my father might be able to, “I love you”.”
How they managed to escape?
I had a double social judgment: I was a member of the working class. And I’m gay. These two Verdicts were not inconsistent where I grew up. I had no choice, I had to leave my family. I describe in my first novel, “The end of Eddy”. That was not my decision, I was condemned to freedom. But this time, against my will. I wanted to be straight, a tough guy. I fought as hard as I could to fit in. But I failed. That’s why I went to the grammar school. That was the only way to escape. One day, I discovered through books that I can talk about what I have experienced in my life. When I started Writing, it was also a revenge of the literature.
In the literature?
I asked myself why people like my dad from the literature are repaid, why people like my mother or my sister come before it? I was so angry on the literary field. That was the beginning, when I began to write.
your father does not read.
I sent him a copy of my book, I also know that he bought the other two. When we meet, we are not talking about that kind of stuff. We are not talking to each other. My father never said “I love you” to me. My book is also the story of this absence. Love, relationships, tenderness – these are very political issues.
love as a political issue?
Yes, to say that if our society would be less contaminated by male dominance, would have been my father might be able to, “I love you”. My mother left my father, when he was forty, because they felt sufficiently loved. This has destroyed him. Because he loved you. But my mother, he had said that, instead, he was aggressive. For him, this was a Performance of his own masculinity. In my Childhood there was an Obsession in terms of masculinity. My father said, we would have Gay people killed. Each And Every Day. There is also an explanation.
What is it?
Pierre Bourdieu would say, you’ve taken away the working-class everything, the money, the access to culture, to science. The Only thing that remains are the body. It is therefore not surprising if there is in the work environment homophobic tendencies and an Obsession in terms of masculinity. In the Milieu of my Childhood education was something Feminine, something for girls, for fags. That’s why my father left school with no qualifications. And that’s why he had lousy Jobs.
There is no Escape.
But, in my book I show that the body can not so easily from the standards affect. In my Childhood, it was said, for example: boys don’t cry. Only Women. But when I remember my Childhood, it was my father and my brothers, who were crying all the time. My mother, however, only twice in 15 years. So there was a distance between what is considered the Norm – and what the body. To talk about this distance and write it, is a way to entmächtigen these standards, and to combat the associated shame.
The poor would be interested?
In the literature there are many examples of authors were heroes of the Substandard. Even my mother knows who Victor Hugo and Emile Zola are that they wrote about arms. As a woman, you can benefit today from Simone de Beauvoir, even if one has never read. Books can develop a Power over the audience. That’s not enough, clearly. But if you say that people were reading less and less, then not is never raised the question of whether there is a Problem with the literature. I, for one, believe that we should invent a new kind of literature. This is not to say that it is easier. But it should be books you feel less excluded.
(editing Tamedia)
Created: 31.01.2019, 18:23 PM
