In her latest essay, Delphine Horvilleur unfolds her monologue against identities[1]. She chooses a father for herself : Roman Kacew, aka Romain Gary, aka Emile Ajar, and reinterprets the mythical figure of Abraham.
She engenders herself in the masculine and sets up her filiation : Ajar and Abraham, from whom she takes a surname : Abraham Ajar (A.A., at the beginning of everything[2]). She does not forget, nevertheless, that she needs a mother, full of love. This will be Momo’s Madame Rosa from The Life Before Us[3]. And she will make of the cellar the place of freedom par excellence, the hideout – in other words, the unconscious.
Ajar is the pseudonym under which R. Gary managed to fool the world of literary critics and win the famous prix Goncourt a second time. Ajar never was but he exists. He is the result of a chameleon-subject, always ready to escape the identity that could have assigned him to be. As for Abraham, while one sees in him the figure of the patriarch, D. Horvilleur reminds us that on the contrary, he is a man who ran away from his home and his father, and who was caught up by the love of thousands of people ready to recognise themselves in him. « Abraham taught the world that it was necessary to be able to break away from filiation and millions of people, in his name, refuse to do likewise. »[4]
Isn’t the critique of patriarchy, once again, only the occasion to put a Father (such as Abraham) back in control so that we can remain the children of God, of Science or of Nature?
This issue of Nobodaddy (figure of the father of jealousy in a William Blake poem[5]) invites you to discover, by reading Bruno de Halleux’s text, how, in the 21st century, families had to reinvent themselves radically, and how subjects situate themselves in this shift. The second text invites you to enter another phenomenon of the beginning of this century, woke discourse, which tends to impose itself as the master’s discourse, and whose ferocity is no less great than other discourses that have prevailed previously. Each time, the question is that of knowing where the psychoanalyst can position himself in this mutation of social rapports.
Translation : Adeena Mey
Proofreader : Tracy Hoijer-Favre
Picture: @Nathalie Crame
[1] Horvilleur D., Il n’y a pas de Ajar. Monologue contre l’identité, Paris, Grasset, 2022.
[2] Ibid., p. 16.
[3] Ajar E., The Life Before Us (« Madame Rosa »), New York, New Directions Pub. Corp., 1986.
[4] Horvilleur D., Il n’y a pas de Ajar., op. cit., p. 45.
[5] Blake W., To Nobodaddy, in Stevenson W.H. (ed.), Blake. The Complete Poems, Third Edition, New York and London, Routledge, p. 162.
