Édouard Louis and Kerry Hudson: Who Killed My Father?

so we'll have about 50 minutes the end for questions please do ask them he has such a beautiful mind and it's a shame not to get to tear into it I'm certainly very excited to get the opportunity to and for those of you who have read who killed my father you will already know what a compelling and moving book it is for me is the perfect juxtaposition between a very intimate private story showing a sort of political nature of sort of humiliation and the shame of poverty and I was wondering and did you find this but easier or more difficult to write than your previous to how did you come about writing it writing is always difficult as you know at least for many writers and at least for me so I don't know I didn't I didn't expect to write that book I was I was writing another book that will become my next book in fact the one that doesn't exist anymore but one day my father called me and he told me that he wanted to see me again and you know when I was 15 14 15 years old I left my family and I went to the city to study and was blood by blood of the first in my family to to escape and to study and to have a chance to do that and and very quickly it became for me impossible to talk with my father and not because we had an argument not because one day I shut the door and tell him I hate you but just because our life and our way of living and our way of thinking and our body languages and our daily life became so different you know and my father was a street sweeper in in a little town in the north of France and I was in Paris leaving my gay life and reading peter honker and Tony Morrison and and it became suddenly completely impossible to talk with my father and we stopped talking he had my number I had his number but we didn't talk anymore and when I was 21 my first novel the end of 80 was published and then the second one is story of violence and one day my father called me after years of silence and he told me how you published books I wanted to tell you and I'm so proud of you and I want to see you again and that was very surprising for me because when I have a gay man and when and when I was a child my father would say that gay people should be killed that should be gay it would even say that gay people should be sent to concentration camps and this kind of things and that's why it was one of the reasons of our bodies being completely split and and so when he called me and knowing that my books deals with sexuality and other things but also sexuality when he told me come and come and see me it was so bizarre and so I started to I took a train and I went to see him in the small town up north in front where he lives but when I opened the door after years without seeing him I saw that his body was completely destroyed and my father is a young man is a 50 years old he doesn't have a difficult disease to deal with like cancer or leukemia or everything he doesn't have like big disease that would destroy his body or cause problem to his health but just the state of his body is due to to the place he belonged to in our world in our society so as soon as I saw my father I opened the door and I saw you had trouble breathing that's the beginning of the book I had trouble breathing and trouble working and I felt like what happened and I felt a kind of an emergency to write that book and that's why I started to write that book and I wanted this book to be short because I wanted I wanted people to cross the entire life of my father in white in one week you know in one hour and a half in two hours I thought there was a kind of radicality in it and I was and and and that's that's how it happened but I I never thought that I was going to write this book before and so it's interesting you say that sort of crossing your father's life in an hour and a half because it feels like such an immersive experience like you leave having completely experienced your father's life and really been through the nuances of your relationship and it reads to me like part like a sort of campaigning battle cry and part like a love story or love song to your to your father and it was that kind of your intention you want to do something very political but also something that was there was reflected on your relationship with your father yeah absolutely the thing is I studied so I saw my father as I was telling you and I decided that I was going to write about him and I opened my computer to to work and I realized that I knew nothing about him you know and so I was thinking how am I going to write about a man that I don't know I'm not going to do the only clue the only small things that I knew came from my mother coming because in my family like in a huge part of the working class it was the woman role to talk talking must consider it something fme night for my father so he would never talk never talk about this life we never had a discussion together so I said I have two options either I do an in the investigation book or I can do a book with with the silence being a constitutive part of the book and and so I started to write about this memories that I had with my father and this distance that I had with him and and that's why I don't I don't know if it's a book if it's a love letter for my father if it's a book about love but rather maybe it's a book about why why is it so difficult to say I love you you know why is it impossible sometime to say I love you and what I describe in the book is that someone like my father and many men in the social class and in the media in which I grew up they were trapped by the masculinity and the masculinity meant to never say I love you to never express your feelings and everything and so my father never never told me except when he was drunk a few time he never told me I love you you know and I remember when I moved to Paris to study and I became a philosophy student and sociology student and I met some people of the both ways and I would see fathers hugging's at children it was so exotic for me I was I couldn't believe it frankly I was like it's so resolved like they're far away so if I mean I will because I had this stupid values from that from my childhood still in my mind and so I it's one of the things that I try to do to talk about in the book it's about how the impossibility for a man to express his feelings completely destroyed the life of my father in a way because with my mother my father never said I love you to my mother because for him it was an effeminate feminine things to do and at 45 years old my mother left him because she didn't feel loved enough because he never said her I love you and my father was it was my mother was the love the love of his life you know when I see him today still tells me I will love your mother forever and she left me and and and we see here that love and the ability of talking about love is deeply politics you know because maybe if our society were fighting more against masculine domination maybe my father would have been able to tell of you to my mother and he would be with her today and it would be less destroyed by by his life and so it's really this exploration of this impossibility of talking that I I tried to deal with him in this book and you do so beautifully I think do you think there's a real connection between and like I definitely felt that I read that for and recognized the answer of my own working-class communities and relation between toxic masculinity those are a very destructive masculinity and poverty and sort of the the structure of poverty yeah yeah clearly I thought that you know when I when I started to when I started to write when I started to write books in France and I wanted to write about the media of my childhood because I had the impression that this media was never represented were never enough and very rarely in a good way I wanted to write about it and so I was looking for books who would talk about poor people about working-class and suddenly I had the feeling that so many books even some contemporary books were talking about class the way people would talk about class in the 50s any of the sixties year it was very strange as if history didn't happened for so many writers I don't talk about you I don't talk about any I don't know I don't talk about so many people who are trying to do something different but you know that people who were talking about class as if the LGBT movement never happened as if the feminist movement never happened as if the anti-racist movement never happened and we should consider that all these new struggles that appeared in the middle of the 20th century the feminist movement the LGBT movement and and etc our chances to rethink about deeply about politics about social class and everything so what I do in talking about the life of my father in hooking my father is I try to build a contemporary language to talk about class in general and to talk about my father in particular and as you were saying I say in the book that in his childhood for example my father in order to build this masculinity and Annie had to build this masculinity because if he was not doing it people would have called him like they were doing with me during my childhood so he had to build his masculinity and to build his masculinity meant to reject the school system because it sounded like a feminine and an effeminate things to like school to have a good relationship to the children to to the teacher sorry and it was a masculine thing to reject the authority to reject culture to reject the school system and so because of that my father stopped school at 14 years old and he had no diplomas and because he had no diplomas he had very difficult jobs during his whole life very badly paid that destroyed his health so we see here that the question of masculinity is a class issue and so that the the distinction between politics and class politics and identity politics this dick stain this distinction is an illusion it's a lie there is no such a difference you know like as a working-class man my father was his life was determined as much by masculinity than by class but it's not only that it's two things that were you know super super possess super posed put one on the other but it was it was deeply mixed and it was the same thing and as I was saying last time here in this place anyway in my childhood every single class issue was always a gender issue you know like to be a working class man always meant to refuse what appeared as the effeminate bourgeoisie you know the men hitting small plate the men hit crossing the legs and everything like all on our clap on our identity as working-class people in my childhood was deeply a gender identity so the distinction between gender and classes is it is a lie in fact it works together all the time of course and I wondered and so obviously you're the first of your family to go to university I read the ikura and a house with new books which is not uncommon for a sort of working-class household because you can't afford them and also as you say the educational structure isn't always there and how did you how did you start writing about your experiences and also though because when we first met we met in France and I'd been asking lots of journalists who are the work at the great working-class like French writer and they said well there's an ER no and there's ed relevant and so that's why we met because people put us in touch and and and I remember saying to you like why is there not a greater culture for this because in France the it seems to me that that that poverty line that they serve the the politics of class are so defined and what gave you the courage to write about your own background even though you didn't necessarily have like a model for that if you didn't have a model for it I had a few models like as I can you know in France or de Bourgh but but still it was very minor eatery you know it was very it was very difficult to find patterns because it's a it's a it's a social structure the fact that most of the writers comes from middle-class from a privileged media from the little bourgeoisie from cool cultural bourgeoisie and extremely rarely from pork from probe Amelia from from poverty from from working class or non working class or post working class you know and and as soon as I started to write you know III felt that I couldn't I couldn't write about anything else you know I couldn't it wasn't even it was not a decision you know there is a scene that I often recount from from my teenage hood when one day you know the local Ezio's a French writer got the Nobel Prize for Literature and I was home with my family and we were watching the news you know the very mainstream news tear for conservative stupid news and and and they would never talk about books obviously and and Sudanese if we're talking about it because it was a French Nobel Prize and so they were happy and they were proud and as if they had anything to do with it and and there was an interview from the clay Co and I was I was a teenager and I remember look lady I was talking about the waybill these fictions the waybill the characters so we build the chapters and everything and I had this very knife thought I thought like why is he creating fake characters with fake pains when we are here like real people with with real pain you know why is it why is it not talking about us you know no one will know one will worry about us you know if you are Tony Morrison if you are William Faulkner if you are not gonna touch people right about you they talk about you and we would no one will talk about us you know no one will talk about us personally you know because I wanted someone to talk about my mother I wanted someone to talk about my father you know it's like when you love some you want this person to love you you don't want this person to love someone else as a way of loving you you know and it was it was a little bit the same thing I didn't want to write fiction about the working class and it would have been a way of talking about the media of my childhood I wanted to write about the people of my childhood and and I know of course that it was a knife way of thinking and I was a teenager and so I'm sorry about that and and and a lot of writers that I admire baccarat do has Toni Morrison they wrote fiction so I'm not doing a statement about against fiction I'm just saying that's me with my body with my history with my past I I couldn't afford the fiction I could I couldn't do that I could it was impossible they were my feeling of emergency was too big you know and and Plus after that and it was it was a it came out as a surprise for me I realized how I was subversive autobiography was you know so it encouraged me to to go on because when you when you do autobiography you are saying to people who with you these people exist while you read you know this suffering this pain these people are suffering while you are new so far reading something and it makes the bourgeoisie feels so bad and it's an important thing to do you know to address the people what are you doing what are you not doing you know what are you doing against this bad world what are you not doing again is about this bad world and I understood out of surprise that autobiography at this train you know and and and and and I think that it's not Picasa it's not by chance if you just are going to publish a memoir if if OSHA and wrong writes about his life if caliber close gap write about his life if ten easy codes were right about his life I think there is a strong avant-garde movements today of autobiographical writing because we are now realizing how powerful it can be both aesthetically and Polly I mean it's interesting that you say about like the power of it because obviously your book was just so globally successful and I'm curious about how it felt to come from where I am you know I have sort of links to you to come from where you came from and to end up say here in this beautiful building talking to all these wonderful people and then travelling around the world and having a sort of success you had but then also I if you feel like talking about it I'd be really interested in like sort of the response that a lot of the the establishment or the media had to that and why you think it ended up being sort of so controversial yes I mean I was I was I was just writing about my family I was just writing about my parents and about my past and I suddenly I realized that truth was polemical you know and suddenly like so many polemics started to fall on me and so many things because as if these people couldn't bear the fact that I was forcing them to see that reality you know to see the fact that they don't do anything against that and it came out also as a surprise it was extremely violent this this sometime this way of like this polemics that were created after I published my books and everything I I didn't write in order to do that I I understand that it can be a good thing it means that people feel uncomfortable and and good literature should make people feel uncomfortable so I'm happy with that but but in fact it was I don't know but but in a way also I was talking about it before in a way I think that this violence this violence from a part of the establishment against me not all of them I don't complain I'm a happy person don't worry but the violence from part of the establishment in a way saved me you know because when you are when you are in what we call the transfuge in France or transfuge when you are class traveller when you come from one class like you like you and you go to another class at the beginning you know when I moved to Paris when I arrived in I wanted to be like the bourgeoisie so deeply you know I wanted to be like them it was my dream I wanted to to see that the Hopi are like them and have the same body language stands I'm at the Hopi ha I wanted to I wanted to have the way of moving I wanted to have the way of speaking I would have I would have given everything to be like them you know and I think it's normal you know I was 17 years old and I was meeting people at school who would tell me oh when I was a child we went to Vietnam when I was I went to Japan when I was a child and during my childhood I was watching reality TV ten hours a day you know and I felt like why do I have such a different childhood and and and I wanted to be like them and and because they never accepted me completely a little bit like Tobey in the in the in the novel over in the masterpiece of Allah no lingers the line of beauty who is an outsider and arrives in a very privileged media and the privileged media make him understand that he will never be like them he would never be part of them and and because they make me understand that I was not like them I didn't succeed to be exactly like them and and they created a weapon against them you know because because I fail being like them and now all I have to do is to fight against them fight against the people who are part of the establishment and who don't do anything against violence who don't do anything about inequality we produce them who don't care about poverty you know it's amazing it's amazing how how people don't care about poverty in fact when you when you suddenly go to I don't know to a literary party in New York you go to literary cocktail in New York and you see that people they just don't say to us don't care you know they just don't care so drinking champagne and they have a waiter bringing them a glass of champagne and and and it takes a champagne glass of champagne ISM they don't even look at the person you know I remember one day I was in one of this party and I wanted to I wanted to scream to the waiter but I'm on your side I'm not like them I'm not like them I wanted to just go go on a table and to say I'm not like them please and and I felt like like all the things you have to learn all the body techniques and the body strategies that you have to learn in order to ignore people that much you know it's very difficult wouldn't be able to do that I would break the glass and everything and and and and all of that you know I want because I will never be completely part of these people even if I am NOT of course part of my childhood anymore also but because I will never completely be part of that it's good for me because I am a little bit outside and it helps me taking a step back and to see how the structure works and to see what is going wrong I hope and do you believe that informs your writing that serves those gonna ask like obviously that sense of otherness your gayness do you think that all contributes to sort of that sense of perspective which enables you then to write about the structure as a whole yeah I I really think so it's in fact it started in my started in my childhood because as I say in cooking my father for for someone like my father the word we were living in was was obvious you know the way was working was obvious but as a queer person because I felt I felt excluded and I started to say okay there is something wrong in this world there is something wrong in the way it's it's it's it's it's working and it's working in a bad way you know and so it really and that's why for example I I guess that my sexuality is one of the reason why I write about class this way you know the fact that when I talk about the class identity of my father I talk about sexuality I talk about masculinity and I understand how much it was important and how much in the trip mind everything during his life maybe if I if I was a straight man I would have not I would have not seen him you seen it you know and because I remember when I when I started to write the end of Eddie and a history of violence in which I was talking about the racism in my childhood as we oma phobia the people voting 60 almost 60 percent for the National Front in the village in which I grew up some people told me an abbot don't do that because it's doing a stigmatization against poor people and against working-class and I'm what I was saying no just including more people in what you call working-class you know because if you talk about and if you write about if you drew literature about working-class about working less it's not a good word but post working-class poor people in general if you're right about them but you don't write about what it is to be a woman was to be what it is to be a person of color what it is to be a transgender person or a lesbian then you talk only about a very few part of this world you know so I'm okay with that I'm in favor of minority so it's okay but at least people have to be honest about it and so what I was trying to do was to include more lives more bodies more voices in in this category and and and and but that that meant to fight against a certain way of talking about class a masculine way of talking about class and as you were saying that's probably due to my position as an a sexual outsider I'm interesting I sometimes say that I feel like when you leave like I agree with you working classes like a terrible term and so like yeah you know sort of justifiable for all of the things that that includes but like it's like a hinterland you're neither here nor there you know you don't belong quite in the place you are that you also can't can't really go back to the place that you are do you do you I don't what should i try to identify an i do you identify as working-class or do you do serve do you think of yourself as more in your present life no yeah it's a it's a complicated question for sure it will be it would be an obscenity to say that I am working-class it would be an awful thing to say because I have privilege that my father don't have I travel I am able to pay my rent I am able to go to the restaurant if I want to go to the restaurant and so I'm not working class and as I was saying before and that completely part of the board y'see so it objectively I am but physically and subjectively I have not and it creates this this kind of tension and it really depends in fact it depends on the in on the place where I am talking you know and it's the beginning of who killed my father because when when I at the beginning of the book when I returned to my place and I opened the door so now I understand that it will be difficult to talk with my father because for him suddenly I had bodies at the dominant class you know so dominant class at humiliated humiliated him that humiliated us you know and so as soon as I see my father I hate my body in a way you know because I know that I represent something violent for him and and and I know it from my flesh I know in front of my flesh because when I was a child and and we would see someone privileged someone with money someone with culture we felt so in failure you know we've had so humiliated even if the person was kind even is like we would it was like a sociological psychoanalytical psycho and analytical mirror and we would say I don't have that I don't have that I don't have that I don't talk this way I don't raise this way I don't do what they do and it was a constant objective humiliation in spite of what people were doing and what we're saying and so what does it mean to suddenly become that body what does it mean for me this is at the center of the book even if I don't like this is the kind of ghosts that cross the book what does it mean to to become the body that humiliated me during my childhood you know and I see that like how much I try to talk with my father to talk with my family but no matter what I do no matter what I do it's it's violent you know what am I going to say if you say what did you do yesterday I will tell him I was in London I went there for free my publishing house paid me a note album for free I had a dinner for free you know people were there is a paid to listen to me Toki considering the life that he has it carries in itself a violence of the border of the of the burden the border between what some people have and what what some other people don't have and so really I'm trying to struggle with that in in in the book in like what it is to to talk about and to talk with a man that I never really knew but that I can't really know either because how can we talk together that's and I think that's a unfortunately some things that is not it's not about my experience you know it's it's a it's just a structural experience and I'm sure you could say the same thing more or less exactly the same thing and then a few people several people could say it so I want that I want I want people to feel that I want people to feel that as soon as I write about my father I write about potentially their father you know and because even the issue of masculinity is not only concerning the working classes even if there are some differences linked to the media but but anyway yeah obviously your books been translated so many places now and has been received in so many contexts has it changed the way you think about class in France and like the universality of poverty and shame and humiliation that goes of it like I feel like that's a very common theme in all of my work here in the UK that desperate desperate sense of shame at poverty which he did not invite which you were born into and has traveling around with the book and seeing how people have responded to it has that changed your idea of sort of the the sort of universal sense of what it means to grow poor and marginalized yeah like I mean one of the things that really surprised me while travelling while travelling for my books was to see how similar the situation is like everywhere you know and and people always have the feeling that it's different somewhere else you know so when I people interview me and tell me oh but the class system is not exactly the same in our country that it is in France but in fact when I travel and when I talk with the people and when people send me letters to talk about their lives it's incredibly similar you know so of course there are some differences small differences due to the government due to history due to but but the structure of the society working with excluded people and included people persecuted people and including people it's very a kind of sadly universal thing that's the starting point of hook in my father when I said that what we call politics and in fact what we call society is the border between bodies exposed to a premature death and bodies were protected who are privileged you know and if you are working-class person in France you have 50% more chance to die before you're 65 to die which means your your your life is finished you don't do anything you don't have friends anymore drinks anymore sexuality anymore if you are a queer person you have four four times more chance to kill yourself during your childhood or your teenage food if you're a black person if you're a person of color or an Arab in France you can be killed by the police there is more or less one person every month in France killed by the police per person of color so it means that depending on the body you have depending on how your body is being perceived by our world if you're a woman you can die from masculine violence like it happens all the time you are exposed to a premature death and for me this is this should be the very definition of politics this should be the very definition of what we call society you know what is more important than life and death you know because deaths it means everything is offer I mean people in this place doesn't necessarily believe it but I truly believe it but and so for me it was so that's what I that's what I figured out when I when I saw my father I felt like it belongs to this category of beings is belong to this category of bodies that I exposed to a premature death and that's the story of his lives that's the story of it of his body and and and it's very bizarre because in the public space in the public sphere it's as if the people who talks about politics are constantly hiding what politics means you know so the politicians make you believe that politics is a matter of gesture matter of strategy a matter of responsibility but no it's first and overall it's matter of like am I going to die am I going to live am I going to survive so that's why there is this some people call the political life part in the in the book in who killed my father in which I talk about French politics during the 35 as a 30 35 40 last years and how it affected the body of my father but what I wanted to say what I wanted to show is that book is that for my father decision by by Macomb or a decision by Sarkozy is as intimate as his first kiss or the first time we made love you know he's just part of the history of his body you know when you're a migrant today and you want to come to France and Mike home refused to welcome you and his government refused to welcome you it means that maybe you will die in the sea maybe you daughter will die in the sea maybe your wife will die in the sea maybe you husband will die in the sea what is more personal than that you know and so for me you know it's it's a paradox but in a way this book is not more politic than is real violence and the end of ad is just it's just about the story of the body of my father and and and what happened through politics the days that's one one of the President and as you probably know the French system is a very presidential system created by your son Google was a crazy monarchist and wanted to be King of France and South Korea and Margaret do has some poor sucker and Margaret's for beautiful things about it you should read it it's a very presidential thing and so when you have a president that say we are going to stop reimbursing some medicine for my father it meant I can't buy this medicine anymore you know so I have a headache so I have a stomach ache so as I have pain in my body and so it was just deeply deeply personal you know so I don't I don't care if people read my books don't know Mac home if they don't know Sarkozy if they don't know their name what I want to show is a structure in which the more you are socially dominated and the low you are hit by politics the more your life is determined by politics I could say that today I I hate what what my coin is doing I I hate what Trump is doing in the United States but when I'm in France or when I'm in the United States what they do it's not taking food out of my mouth it's not exposing me to death it's not exposing me to direct death but if you are Mexican migrant is a working-class person it's completely different you know and so the more you are excluded and the more you are exposed to politics so also to talk about the life atma of my father as a life stricter by politics if is for me a way of talking more generally about the condition of the poor people's lives you know of my people the people I I was part of my childhood have any of you read the book yet yeah isn't that end part where he speaks about his father in relation to the political decisions they make absolutely extraordinary absolutely genuinely breathtaking and my favorite bit is where you talk about is it five year old a week they take away five euro a month is that right yeah favorite month it's it's a good it's it's my coin is government and and since its presidential Okajima my coin is the person that can say stop when something happened the other can cannot say stop or they can be fired as ministers you know and and so the is government decided to withdraw five euros from precarious people welfare programs that was called a pl a pl which is money for poor people students working less people to pay the rent so it's fine and this is a rich were five euros and at the same time they were cutting tax for multi billionaire people and there were cutting tax for people who write by a private boat and private jet and and when they were doing though they were saying oh but five years is nothing you know but I remember from my childhood that was five euros we would buy a pastor for two days with tomato sauce for two days you know so far as it was amended two days of food you know and and and it meant am I going to eat for two more days or not and these people are so disconnected from that they don't they do politics and they don't understand anything about politics they do politics and and they are so clueless you know and even at some point I remember in my in my trajectory when I moved to a small but city of the region before going to Paris the bigger city in the region in which I grew up you know sometimes a school would take us to theater and they would very often ask her one euros or two years to go to theater and they will pay the difference the school would pay the difference and and very often my father and my mother they didn't have these two euros to go to theater and and and and the people that I were studying with me in amia they would tell me but even when you don't have money you have two euros you know and so and so the notion of nothing the notion of emptiness the notion of I don't have was deeply different you know and and I see today in Paris when I see some of event of my friends who are writers artists and everything and they say I don't have any more money and we are the restaurants and I know that they are going to pay and I'm saying like because when I was a child when we say nothing it meant nothing it meant that my mother would tell me can you go to see the neighbor and and beg for a couple of pasta packs you know and so when these people say five years is nothing it means that they just don't they just don't understand you know teachers don't understand and and so for my sake only to they call it a political decision but my father call it am I going to eat tomorrow you know so the notions of what politics means is is is very different and my father is talking about personal issues and that's why cooking my father is a personal book about the life of him before he came that he was exhausted talking about it because in Germany they're just still obsessed right my boss for one question he's negative grab me so I read that you said that what one of the things that shocked you about the yellow vests protest was the the way that the the way that sort of your peers around you insults of the people who were taking part in the yellow vests protest but if they insults those people they're also insulting your father and that's why you decided to come and support of them and can you talk a little bit more about why you decide to support them and how that sort of fed into to this work and your work generally mm-hmm I don't know for me the yellow vest movement was a an area a space of truth you know finally and you know there was this very beautiful idea from Jill dollars the French philosopher when he was talking about may 68 the riots of May 68 in France Jill dollars were saying that when people talks about May 68 they say that it was the emergence of dreams of Autopia of imagination of dreams of another Society but Jill dollars were saying in fact it was very powerful because it was quite the opposite because it was a little bit of truth finally you know people who were saying I want to feed myself I want to have sex I am a woman and I want to have sex with women I want to be I want my body to belong to me I want to have the right to abortion I want to make love with the people in my university I want to and and and it was a very moving and powerful idea from Jill dolars who say it was so powerful because it was finally a space of truth and I think that truth is one of the rare or reversed what do we say is that one of the rarest thing in in in the public sphere you know it's very rare and what's happened for me with the gelly shown with a yellow vest that suddenly people were saying you know soon it will be Christmas and I can't buy a gift to my children people are saying I can't feed myself people were saying my mother is dying a few kilometers away and I can't pay to go to see her and to take care of her and I was I was certainly thinking like this sentence is politically speaking are much more powerful than all the technocratic discourses about responsibility about you know like all this life in fact like our political conditions are full with lying you know full with the with this very violent advocacy I don't know if you know this very famous scene from England where Braun was talking to working-class women and she was telling him I'm came ashamed of the voting labour because you don't do anything for us and and and Brown tells her no no we are supporting you we are fighting for you we are on your side we are making your life better and then brown go in the car and he forgot today I still have the mic and it's like say was this crazy woman and who she was just a bigot from the Labour Party and and and and and in fact this scene was so important because he was like this is how politics works it works with with lie lies at the core of it structures you know and so when when this when religion movement appeared and and when social movement in general appeared like in 2005 against the police violence and racism in France it was very important social movement it was finally some truth you know said finally some people and it was the same thing in literature in a way you know when I started writing I would open French Contemporary books and I would think like what are they talking about you know in which world do they live you know it's not the world that I know and and and and so I thought that it was important and it was important to to to support this movement as a left-wing person because it was very important to create a left-wing energy and a left-wing dynamic in this movement you know because when you have a movement in which people say I suffer I suffer from starving and everything the language that will be used can be very different you know do people are going to say I suffer because of migrants and women's rights or are they going to say I suffer because of the government and the dominant class and the inequality system and the way it works I think that every single social movement is also a struggle of language and and therefore of bodies because the language makes decisions that will affect your body and so I thought that it was very important to be here of course I know that there were some homophobic things I thought I knew that there were some racist anti-semitic things I know that you know I know that I wrote about it in my two first books and as I wrote in they say it was very it was very funny because sad not funny but when I published history of violence and then over Eddie I had a big part of the of the conservative establishment who were telling me oh you talk about racism you talk about male domination you talk about homophobia in the middle of your childhood but this is not true there is an authenticity in the working class and people are good and people are a good living and everything and now when when there is the relation movement and these people are revolting they say oh but they are awful races they are all ulama phobic people and so at the end the question is not what are they saying the question is how they do to make people shut and they can contradict themselves from one day to the other as soon as the working class guy me shuts up all those relationships and they can contradict themself as soon as we don't talk about poverty as soon as we don't talk about misery as soon as we don't talk about exclusion so what I was saying it was that I know that people are saying bad things I know because these people part of the movement are like my father's are like my brother some of them are lost forever you know I had some people in my family well ideologically so deeply racist who would do it Clarion cross on the cause and everything so some of them was maybe hopeless I think but many of them they could they could have changed very more or less quickly and more or less easily I remember that a lot of people in my childhood they were always is it a ting between voting for the left and voting for the far right you know and it's something that you're very rarely see in the dominant class because people are either right center left but they don't agitate between two things that are considered so different but it means that these people in my childhood people like my father were saying like who is supporting me you know and and so that if if the progress is people are strong if they offers them a space to talk about themselves then part of these people and I believe it a big part of these people can move from one side of the political spectrum to to the other absolutely agree and I think we're gonna open it up for questions that I could talk to you I'd love you guys to have an opportunity to ask something we've got a roving mic and to say oh look at this hands up everywhere yeah you just do keep your hands up thank you merci beaucoup thanks so much for your books and for this fascinating conversation and we talked a bit about toxic masculinity and you described so well how gender stereotypes affect both men and women in the same way and I was wondering what you thought about the importance of men speaking up about that and because you're quite a rare masculine men voice talking about these issues oh yeah I really think that anyway like it's very busy for me to say toxic masculinity because it's like saying two times the same thing we can call it masculinity I don't know like it probably come from from my microwave body and the fact that since the very beginning of my childhood I understood that I was on the same side than women you know and it's not by it's not by surprise it's not by chance if if many of the gay artists talked about women address the issues of gender like you can think of Xavier Dolan in the movie Pedro almodóvar the movie Millia field and so of course I understood that III was sharing I was sharing a certain faith a certain destiny even if of course as a man there were some things that I didn't suffer from you know that a woman suffers from and and so I don't know it's very difficult for me to answer precisely your question because it became part of my part of my body you know as a lot of queer people as a lot of queer men when I was a child at school my only friends were girls you know like I didn't connect with the boys I was I didn't like soccer I didn't like sir the male sociability and so my mother was trying to convince herself that I was not gay would always say his social YZ is so attracted by girls because it's with girls all the time all these friends are girls and I was there quite the opposite like real tough boys have boyfriends who are boys and my friends were girls because I okay and and so and so since the very beginning because of this is biographical trajectory there was something yeah something something in common and and so it's not even I don't know it's it's it's it was obvious for me it was obvious and also to also to talk about how my father suffered from masculinity but also to talk about everything that he enjoyed from that it's also important to talk about that in fact it was great home and my mother was cooking for him my mother was cleaning the house for him it could go where he wanted and my mother if she wanted if she wanted to go somewhere it would ask her where and when she would come back and and so it it's not because he suffered from that that it didn't benefit from that at the same time and that's the important thing to keep in mind when we think about masculinity and violence of masculinity but it's true that there isn't an entire field of new questions also that opens about you know in front I am part of the committee Adama is that fight against the police violence towards people of color and who was created by asset Holloway a french activist her brother was killed by Jean down two years ago and she created the committee Adama was the first name of her brother and and and she's going to publish a book with my friend of father Landry it will be published it will be published pretty soon and in this book because they are my friends so I read the book as I talk about like how it affects in the suburbs of Paris where most of the excluded people of color live I would being a man and being a women like affect differently your life and the relationship to the penal system for example the men who are being put in jail and we don't have access to school even less than women and everything so I anyway sorry I'm talkative but I think that there is an entirely new field and that's what also I try to do with working my father it's not it's not saying like I'm going to talk about class and race and gender and sexuality at the same time but more than that how can my knowledge of sexuality or how can my knowledge of gender can challenge the way we think about class the thing is the way we think about inequality you know so it's not an addition it's not an addition of several way of fighting over but it's the way that every single struggle even if they have their own individuality and their own temporality but how each struggle is a way of completely we were challenging how we fight in other areas are we fight for other lives I will fight for other bodies and so masculinity I think that today if we really want to renew the class analysis I think that masculinity has to be a very very very central thing you know [Music] okay can ask in the circles you now move the literary circles in France the people who are drinking the champagne not serving are they more comfortable talking to you about your your sexuality your sexual identity than they are about the poverty which you also write about which makes them more comfortable to speak about I know it's a very it's a very as Gary was saying it's very interesting and important question it in a way took it took time for me too it took time for me to understand the [Music] masculine violence and the Omo phobic violence of the dominant class because as soon as I escaped from my Emilio I thought that the privileged class were so much more welcoming to different sexuality which is in a you know in a way it's it's really true I mean in a way it's it's easier to be gay here tonight in a literary event and to begin to village in which I grew up so it's important to be honest about that and not to be in the old-fashioned flattering disco saying working fest is like anywhere else life is like anywhere else I don't believe it but but still I figure I figured out so many mechanism of violence of a mu phobia of and and you know like for example my second novel history of violence is is dealing with rape I talked about about sexual violence and about a rape and it was very surprising for me to see that a huge part of the of the of the of the media and not a huge part a small part of the media but a strong part of the media were doing everything in order to try to show that what I was talking about was wrong that it was fails that it was a lie you know which is a very basic rape culture you know as soon as you have a victim justifying to put all your energy in order to show that the victim is responsible that and I would have never imagined that to be that violent you know I think that maybe deeply in my body and I'm ashamed of it and that's why I say tonight maybe somewhere deeply in my body when people were talking about rape culture maybe somewhere in me I thought that it was a little bit exaggerating you know because we we don't understand we have structures in our mind and people transmit pass some discourses and ideologies along to us and even when it was a most most left-wing person you don't realize that you still have some social conservative structure in your mind and when I experienced it directly you know in spite of the medical evidence is in spite of the destruction of my body in the few days after the sexual assault and everything people were were ready to lie when you know we're ready to say and so he really took time for me to figure out that to understand that to say that it was a very very strong sexual violent in this in this media and that's what we thought what we saw is the mutual movement and with what was called a leak do loyal recently in France where we realized that some journalist so-called left-wing journalist from a newspaper or like libel as you were harassing LGBT people in women for month and month and month for years destroying them pushing them almost to suicide and everything just because they were women because they were gay and so there are so many things that I'm still figuring out you know and so even if they pretend to be more open you understand that it's just another way of being violent is that they are not homophobic they're just differently homophobic and so I will have to write about that toxic masculinity with humor and saying you're talking about the same thing so what is a mere male heterosexual to be I don't think I hope I'm not toxic but what is my identity to work towards because if the equation is masculinity I assume that's maleness - perhaps you're using the words can you speak irrelevance Ari these are my two new life in a pair clothes so if you elide if you're saying that masculinity and male nurses say as a male where my to place myself or indeed much more important the young developing men in our society who have an identity crisis if you say if you say it's all toxic that's not helpful I shouldn't think you're asking but where do you see the place of a non toxic masculinity it's a you are right it's a it's a it's a strong and it's also a very important question because you know you there are writers that I deeply admire like George Rene and who were obsessed with masculinity and they loved masculinity and they were singing masculinity so much originally in the diary of the thief in his books it was you had a kind of like extreme fascination for masculinity and so my idea and my ideal and I don't know if it can happen one day but when I talk about masculinity when I talk about identity and and what we are it would be that masculinity is an option against among other options you know the violence of of masculinity is because masculinity some things that is compulsory for a man or you are being excluded or you are being called or you are being called freak and and and so I'm I'm not saying we should erase masculinity wouldn't make sense it would it would mean probably philosophically nothing but it's - Ray Ray's the violent part of that the way of treating women so we have treating queer people and everything and on the other side is this dream this dream of a society where masculinity could be an option among others and could be an options also for women you know if a woman wants to be masculine and everything that could be that could be an option and and Judith Butler in no gender trouble really worked about that what would be the possibility of gender as a performance so as not something violence but as something that you could choose to perform and when identities that you could play with you know and so of course I'm not and I know there is a for example in the u.s. a strong movement of of like criticizing masculine masculinity and everything and and I think it's a more than important but in a way like I don't know i would i would never condemn someone who is in a couple where someone is performing masculinity you know if the people are happy like this I'm not a policeman I'm not going to chase people and say you should play this way you should play this way you know when I have sex with people sometime I love to play roles of masculinity and of submission and but it's a it's a it's a it's a game and we became something entirely different and so the ideal would be to build a identity as a and gender identity and others identity as as a system of of choices but I know it's a crazy dream but we will try as much as much as much as we can yeah does this work well ah um sorry I have to think in English now I am I wanted to thank you very much firstly because I come from Mauritius as does my partner and you come from work in movies a little boy anything and when I was reading your book I could see elements of you know my mother's family and my in-laws reflected in a diesel you know realities are firmly anchored back home and and I think that you know if it's affected me and I come from 6,000 miles away that this must have you know a little little do mundo FET and I was wondering if that could not in the end sort of lead to perhaps like a globe a global project of sorts perhaps empowering other people I know if both of you have any sort of plans for that that could elevate these voices and perhaps encourage other people you know like you like me and like you know other people who have grown up in these conditions to write about them and if that was you know in your projects at some stage because you've been translated everywhere and I guess you get these comments from from everybody now yeah no thank you yeah I I write because because I want people to talk you know and I want I want people to see that some experiences some scenes some interactions some things that they experienced during their life is meaningful and is something that deserved to be said you know because narrative narration doesn't mean anything as such the question is like what do we socially and collectively and in our society build as something that can be told that is worth being told you know and so what I try to talk about when I would try to write about is to talk about things that are not often said in individual reveal to Sadie say things that deserve to be said you know and and and some people were telling me but so when you write you don't have any reader how do we say it in English Peter modesty modesty for Peter okay and I say no because what we call Peter or modesty is that is the is the is the border between what can be said and what cannot be said and what I want to say is what cannot be said you know and and and then one of the one of the best things that anyone told me in my life I was in in South America for my for my first book the end of Eddie and someone told me is the best book I've read about the favelas and and it was it was so strong it was so strong for me to hear that because my liver I remember that when I started to read the novels from xx Morris and I remember like she's there are the best books about my life that the best book about my childhood you know because because through the foods of power she's the powerful work she's building the the power of her book the strength of the books she makes me able to realize so many things in spite of all the all the differences you know and and and I hope that every single life being described every every single reality being shown up can be a tool for a wider imitation for people to talk about their life probably probably the gay movement would have not exist without the anti-racist movement you know because I was saying okay you know there was was a kind of pattern there was a kind of there was a dynamic like this and also to finish because I have to finish at some point [Laughter] the thing is also and I know it's not a very fashion thing to say in the English world most of the time but for me it's also very difficult to to talk about what what is not part of our lives you know to talk about all their lives to buy those to talk about other bodies to talk about other people you know some people call it appropriation some people call it but I don't see thing this way I really believe that you know it was it was at the center of my book history of violence when I NGO the sexual violence and suddenly you realize that you have you have to talk about it again and again you have to go to see the police you have to go to see the doctors you have to go to Caesar the judges you have to go to see you have to talk about it again and again and I remember thinking why don't I have someone carrying my story for me you know and I truly believe that we are not responsible for our suffering you know when you are being thrown in our world and people call you Jewish and people call you women and people call you you didn't shoot that I didn't choose to be called you know and so if I don't want to to fight against that that's my right you know why should it be my struggle considering the fact that I didn't choose it you know so it's my struggle in fact but I don't want that to be imposed and I think that there is obviously a very beautiful thing in in carrying others people's pain for themselves you know and so if what they say is not true if what they say is caricatural or if only white people are talking about people of colloidal only straight people are talking about queer people then it became a structural and institutional problem which is a different problem but this ability of talking on behalf of someone else for me this is this is the theory of the theory of Edward Lee so this is the theory of the of the of the to Munden this is a theory of of what what good things we can create out of globalization you know it what listen with a there is the violence of globalization the erasure of differences of some cultures of some language and everything but we can turn it into something else since we are all linked we are all linked with new media and new languages new ways and everything this is strong opportunity for us to create something new you know and so I want people to talk on my behalf I want I want to write something and throw it and say to people now it's your issue you know when there is a theatre adaptation of history of violence I'm so happy because I think this is not my struggle anymore you know I had enough of that now it's your struggle and and this is really what I want to do with my books I really want people to to take my struggle okay on that note could you please all take Edward struggle by heading to the book can we all just thank you so much for an extraordinary evening [Applause]

Channel: London Review Bookshop

Views: 19,969

Rating: 4.9268293 out of 5

Keywords: Edouard Louis, France, Macron, gilet jaune

Id: 6JeNRF7EwGI

Length: 65min 44sec (3944 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 27 2019