Annie Ernaux warns of advancing ideology of exclusion and abandonment

82-year-old French writer He sees writing as a political act, and in his Nobel acceptance speech he intertwined parts of his worldview with memories of why he started writing and the mission of literature as “a place of liberation” for Ernaux.

Getting the Nobel didn’t think about it”one victory“But somehow, it’s a collective victory,” and that’s why he wanted that pride.

And it did so by “who want more freedom, equality and dignity for all people, whatever their gender or gender, skin color and culture.” “They are thinking about future generations” and while preserving “a world where the desire of the few to profit has made it less and less livable”.

Ernaux made her literature a lifelong commitment to defending the rights of the most disadvantaged and women. speech.

He also cited the war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin while not naming them. “Dictator at the head of Russia”, who executes “imperialist war”.

The violence of this conflict still prevails in Europe. “the ideology of withdrawal and closure” this does not stop gaining ground in “the hitherto democratic European countries”.

an ideology based on “exclusion of foreigners and immigrants, abandonment of the economically weak, the vigilance of the female body”, this ideology “imposes on me the duty of being over-vigilant as those for whom the value of the human being is always and everywhere the same”.

In addition, “the burden of saving the planet, which has been largely destroyed by the appetite of the economic powers, should not be placed upon the already helpless, as one might fear. At certain moments in history, silence is inappropriate.

The Nobel Prize winner began his speech by searching for a sentence to give himself. “Freedom and determination to speak without trembling” and chose one he wrote in his private diary sixty years ago: “I will write to avenge my race.”

A promise that continued throughout his entire production and life: From a humble family girl -his parents were tradesmen in Normandy – until the university, which opened the doors of the bourgeoisie to him. A journey that makes him feel like an escapee from social class.

The death of his father, a new teaching position, and the worldwide strife that “El lugar” (1983) is the subject of, brought back to Ernaux the need to write, which he distanced himself from in public. “where roles are defined by gender”.

“To explore the unspeakable of a repressed memory and It brings to light the way of life of my people. Writing to understand the reasons inside and outside of me that distanced me from my origins”.

His first book, still fictional, was “Los armarios vacíos” (1974). exposed secret abortion It is a subject that he will return autobiographically in “The Event” (2000).

In her first book, she defined the space in which she would place her writings, both social and feminist. “Revenge of my race and revenge for my gender would be one from then on.

The new Nobel laureate’s commitment to writing is to do so from their own experience. “Woman and immigrant from within” making sure that a book can “contribute to changing personal life, breaking the loneliness of things drawn and buried, thinking differently”.

And that is, “when the unspeakable comes to light, it is political” and today ” the rebellion of women who found the words to disrupt masculine power and, as in Iran, they rebelled against its most archaic form”.

Ernaux wanted the Nobel to be a beacon of hope for all women writers, because “there are men in the world, even in the world. western intellectual circlesthose without books written by women.