Quel est ton nom, Personne, c'est rien le nom, c'est comme la famille, c'est comme l'enfance, je n'y crois pas, je n'en veux pas.
Constance Debré, Last Name
What is your name? Nobody, the name is nothing, it is like family, it is like childhood, I don't believe in it, I don't want it.
“Constance Debré is the daughter of journalist François Debré (1942–2020) and former model Maylis Ybarnégaray (1942–1988), granddaughter of Michel Debré (1912–1996), the former Prime Minister under General de Gaulle, and of Jean Ybarnégaray (1883–1956), a minister in the Vichy regime and a resistance fighter. She is also the niece of statesman Jean-Louis Debré.” 1 Being part of the French elite places an individual in a line of ancestors and names that can authenticate but also burden them, as the excerpt from Constance Debré's Wikipedia entry already shows.
Robert-Diard had in 2013 for Le Monde The author is portrayed, and her "name" has already become the title: "Constance Debré was born and raised like a little princess in an apartment in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. For a long time, she was the only daughter of a breathtakingly beautiful mother who posed for fashion photographers and a father who was a great reporter and writer. Her maternal family is aristocratic, Basque, impoverished, and eccentric; her paternal family is bourgeois, republican, and civilized." 2 Constance Debré left all of this behind and turned it into literature, in 2018 in Playboy She also severs these ties to a life of luxury, to her legal career and her husband in her writing. Vanity Fair Gaspard Dhellemmes later described his reunion with her: “Six years later, I met her again in a Parisian café in the Marais district. […] She is a different woman. She now has a piercing in her right ear and various tattoos, foliage on her arm, and, as I discover upon looking at her Instagram account, a calligraphic ‘fils de pute’ (son of a whore) on her lower abdomen. From her former life, she seems to have retained only the faint hiss of extended families – ‘My snobbish accent,’ as she calls it.” 3
As a result of breaking with her name, Constance Debré has published three books in which she grapples with the life she found herself in, from which she eventually breaks free:
- Play boy, Paris: Stock, 2018, the story of her breakout from her old identity and the beginning of her love for women.
- Love me tender, Paris: Flammarion, 2020, a sequel in the realm of love and the good life, and a custody battle with the father of their son.
- Last Name, Paris: Flammarion, 2022, which formulates a political program, the radical modernity of a world without ancestry, family names, without childhood and parental authority, without inheritance, wealth or nationality.
Despite all the existing academic distinctions, their own childhood was spent in a public school, but their parents, as children themselves, experienced a shock upon leaving such a protected environment in light of the social realities:
My parents found it important that they were at the public school. Ma mère dit qu'il faut être moderne, live with all the world. Elle dit que ça lui a fait un choc, en sortant de pension après le bac, de découvrir le monde. It is available to people in a sect, in the histories of Mormon children. Mon pere ne se pose même pas ce genre de questions.
Constance Debré, Last Name
My parents think it's important that I go to public school. My mother says you have to be modern and live with everyone. She says it was a shock for her when she came home from boarding school after graduating high school and saw the world. As if she'd grown up in a cult, like in the stories about the children of Mormons. My father doesn't even ask himself such questions.
The book's motto introduces the radical gesture of the political program, as Debré states from thousand trays quoted by Deleuze and Guattari on organless bodies (a concept famously by Antonin Artaud): “Replace anamnesis with forgetting, interpretation with experimentation.” 4Elisabeth Philippe clarifies this in the Nouvel ObservateurThe text should not be read psychoanalytically as patricide: “In any case, her father killed himself, slowly, with doses of opium and then heroin. ‘Nom’ begins with his death. Clinical narration, mechanical gestures. A bucket of ice water is poured over the reader’s head right at the beginning to sober them up and prepare them for the following pages, a guide to radical liquidation that would make Thomas Bernhard’s ‘Extinction,’ this precipitate of literary hatred, look like a treatise on happiness and coexistence.” 5
And the resulting life plan?
À vélo, je suis à vélo, Paris est vide, c'est l'été, j'écoute Bach, deux preludes et une toccate, toujours les mêmes, je vais nager à Georges-Hermant, derrière les Buttes-Chaumont. If you are at the dinner table, if you are a person, you are like the patron of the force, you will have a coffee shop in your office. Je ne lis presque rien. Il ya des choses qui me dégoûtent et des choses qui ne me dégoûtent pas. Je fais ce qui ne me dégoûte pas. Rodent, pedal, écouter Bach, lire Manchette or Deleuze, a person, avoir un jean et deux tee-shirts, habiter les apartments des other, faire du yoga sur l'appli Downdog Yoga 8,99 euros per month, guerrier pacifique, position de l'aigle, boire du Coca, manger des dattes, acheter des Malabar bleus à 20 centimes chez les rebeus, me razer la tête tous les huit jours au sabot 2
Constance Debré, Last Name
By bike, I'm traveling by bike, Paris is empty, it's summer, I listen to Bach, two preludes and a toccata, always the same ones, I go swimming in Georges-Hermant behind the Buttes-Chaumont. I go there at lunchtime when nobody's around, I even address the boss informally out of necessity and drink coffee in his office. I hardly read anything. There are things that disgust me and things that don't. I do things that don't disgust me. Swimming, cycling, listening to Bach, reading Manchette or Deleuze, not seeing anyone, owning one pair of jeans and two T-shirts, staying in other people's apartments, doing yoga with the Downdog Yoga app (8,99 euros a month), peaceful warrior pose, eagle pose, drinking Coke, eating dates, buying blue Malabar cigarettes for 20 cents from the Arabs, shaving my head every eight days with the Sabot 2.
Constance Debré writes under her own name in order to exorcise her own name. Her own influential family was victorious in a battle of names that constitutes not only France but every institution, and ultimately she recognizes in this a protective charm against death.
The names are like the Pokémon cards, which come with the points. The point en plus or bien des points en moins. Dans la guerre des noms, la famille de mon père l'emporte sur la famille de ma mère. Le nom de mon père, de mon grand-père, de mon arrière-grand-père, mon nom, donc, l'emporte sur beaucoup de noms. La France, l'État, la politique, la médecine, et même un peu les arts, c'est eux, c'est nous. C'est ça qu'ils se racontent, qu'ils me racontent, que les autres also me racontent, puisque les autres y crient. I'm in the streets and on the floor, mon nom, I'm listening to the eyes and the voice of Madame RATP me rappelle, even if I'm going down to the prochaine station that will appeal to me. Leur obsession pour leur nom propre (mon nom propre, moi qui n'ai pas de propriété, mon nom de famille, moi qui n'ai plus de famille) is comme une protection against the death, leur rempart contre le tremblement, car les bourgeois sont des gens qui tremblent, c'est ça souvent que les Other than that, the immense value of the bourgeois. In this history of the name, I also have a place.
Constance Debré, Last Name
Names are like Pokémon cards; they have points. Either plus points or minus points. In the war of names, my father's family triumphs over my mother's. My father's name, my grandfather's name, my great-grandfather's name—my name—prevails against many others. France, the state, politics, medicine, and even a bit of the arts—that's them, that's us. That's what they tell each other, what they tell me, what others tell me because others believe it. My name is even on the streets and buildings; it immediately catches my eye, and the voice of Ms. RATP reminds me of it if I want to get off at the next station that shares my name. Their obsession with their proper name (my proper name, I, who own no property; my family name, I, who no longer have a family) is like a protection against death, their bulwark against trembling, for the bourgeois are people who tremble; this is often what others don't see, the immense fear of the bourgeois. In this history of the name, I too have a place.
The author's relative, Jean-Louis Debré, also wrote a book about the name, based on the family history. 6 In an interview with Julie Malaure, he links the name change to Jewish belief in names: In response to the question In your book, your ancestor is named Anselme, not Debré. When did the family change their surname? He replies: “Under Napoleon, when he wanted to integrate the Jews, he demanded that they register in the civil registry. However, their names were not allowed to sound Jewish. It is Jacques, my ancestor, who will take the name Debré. This was noted by the registrar in Westhoffen, the small Alsatian village where I come from, because he was unaware that the word in Hebrew means ‘to carry the word.’ Not just any word, but the word used to convey something. The officer didn't recognize the religious connotation, and Jacques was deeply religious and absolutely did not want to betray his Jewish roots.” 7
Constance Debré's version of the story is a fervent exposé of a will to assimilate that seeks to erase its own Jewishness and integrate itself into a "pure" French master narrative. Internalized antisemitism, she sharply accuses, and the author, who now lives openly as a lesbian, links this accusation to questions of class struggle and homophobia.
The family crée sa foil and the food is always there. Les bourgeois are not pas moins fous que les aristos. Ils sont fous, bien sûr qu'ils sont fous les Debré, leur Folie, ils l'appellent l'État, ils l'appellent la France. Pour oublier peut-etre qu'ils sont un peu juifs. Il a oublié qu'il porte un nom juif, le Premier ministre, que son grand-père était rabbin, qu'il a des cousins qui ne sont jamais revenus des camps. This is also a part of his history, which is now available to Blum or Aron, and this is also difficult for people who are young. Mais non, Debré ne sun pas juif, et si on ne sait pas on ne sait pas, alors eux aussi ils ont fait comme s'ils ne savaient plus, comme si Debré n'était pas juif. C'est plus commode, puisque leur grande idée c'est qu'il faut être français et que pour eux être français, c'est ne pas être juif. There is a song in the love of France, in the obsession for France, in the French version of the Chanson de Roland à Péguy en passant par Racine et Barrès, in France Universume, in France Jacobin, in the French language and in the Autre, in Breton, in Alsace, in France Pauvre, pas juif, il ya une Folie dans cette France en laquelle ils croient et qu'ils écrivent eux-mêmes avec leurs lois et leur Constitution. A foil or a mansonge, a honte, the haine du juif en eux. What do you mean, juif, pour eux? Source impureté ils y voient ? Source tache? This is a latent homosexuality or a complex of classes. La pureté is la France.
Constance Debré, Last Name
Every family creates and nurtures its own madness, since it is the only thing that holds it together. The bourgeois are no less mad than the aristocrats. They are mad, of course they are mad, the Debrés. They call their madness the state, they call it France. Perhaps to forget that they are a little bit Jewish. He has forgotten that he bears a Jewish name, the Prime Minister, that his grandfather was a rabbi, that he has cousins who never returned from the camps. It would have been a different story, perhaps, if Debré had been Blum or Aron; then it would have been harder for them to forget that they were Jewish. But no, Debré doesn't sound Jewish, and if you don't know, you don't know, so they, too, have pretended not to know anymore, as if Debré weren't Jewish. That's more convenient, because their grand idea is that one must be French, and for them, being French means not being Jewish. There is a lie in their love for France, in their obsession with France, the eternal France from the Song of Roland through Racine and Barrès to Péguy, the universal France, the Jacobean France, the France that says you are French and nothing else, not Breton or Alsatian, not rich or poor, not Jewish. There is a madness in this France they believe in and that they themselves create with their laws and their constitution. A madness or a lie, a disgrace, the hatred of the Jew within them. What does being Jewish mean to them? What impurity do they see in it? What kind of blemish? It is like a latent homosexuality or a class complex. For them, purity is France.
Constance herself became a mother, although her accounts indicate that she was no longer able to see the child regularly and fought with the father for custody. The passage in [reference to relevant text] is compelling. Love me tender, in which she talks about naming the beloved newborn:
It's not, I'm looking forward to the premiere of this, with a good view of the sky, the corps of the Lui, the life of the Lui, the death of the Lui, there's nothing to be desired, it's available to the air with the content that I'm plus, I'm comparing it to the exact Lui, just like that histoire qu'on se raconte, j'ai dit qu'il s'appelait Paul. Il a le nom de son père mais le prénom c'est moi. C'est quelque chose qui n'existe pas dans les other amours de choisir le nom de qui on aime. A prénom pour qu'il soit aimé par d'autres, pour qu'il s'en aille un jour.
Constance Debré, Love me tender
He was born, I saw him for the first time, with his own face, his own body, his own life, his own death. He wasn't really crying; he had a dissatisfied expression that I liked. I understood that he was truly him, not a story told to others. I said his name was Paul. He has his father's surname, but his first name is me. That's something you don't do with other loved ones: choosing the name of the person you love. A first name so that he will be loved by others, so that one day he will leave.
A complete deconstruction of the family would be the epitome of modernity, but it would certainly have this in common with sects and totalitarianisms, were it not also for the radical renunciation of the subject's relinquishment of transmission:
Pas d'argent, pas de maison, pas d'heritage. C'est conforme à ma philosophie de ne rien transmettre. Pas meme le nom. En remplissant les papers après sa naissance j'ai réfléchi. Je ne suis pas un éleveur de vaches, je ne marque pas les bêtes. Qu'il porte le nom de son père. Ordinary and transparent. Un nom qui ne me concerne pas. Je lui fais grâce du mien. Rien de ces choses-là. C'est mieux. Dans une société enfin moderne les noms de famille disparaîtraient. Les noms et les heritages. Mais la modernité n'en finit pas de ne pas arriver.
Constance Debré, Last Name
No money, no house, no inheritance. That's my philosophy: to pass nothing on. Not even my name. When I filled out the paperwork after his birth, I reflected. I'm not a cattle breeder; I don't brand them. He should bear his father's name. Ordinary and transparent. A name that's none of my business. I'm sparing him mine. None of that. It's better this way. In a truly modern society, family names would disappear. The names and the inheritances. But modernity keeps failing to arrive.
But how could this be conceived? Isn't the very transmission of language, social mimesis, every form of affection already connected to what Debré discredits as the branding of cattle breeders' names? "I don't know what motherly love is, what love in general is; I only know the particular," she once said in France Culture. 8 Marivaux' comedy The dispute leads to the site of a human experiment, where children were left to grow up in solitude, and Hermione's first sentence to the prince is not accidental: "This is the wildest and loneliest place in the world, and nothing here heralds the feast you promised me." 9 Debré's design, however, only vaguely resembles aesthetic-philosophical designs like those of Alberto Savinios. Tragedia dell'infanzia, because here childhood is also a mythical place and not just a defensive instance of autonomy.
What follows from these sharp, paratactic short chapters on the name? A kind of avant-garde, a road movie, a perpetual departure, lonely and heroic, entirely unironic. But the "on" she uses here, a spoken "we," ultimately remains an "I."
Avec n'importe quels parents j'aurais écrit le même livre. Avec n'importe source enfance. Avec n'importe quel nom. Je raconterai toujours la même chose. Qu'il faut se barrer. De n'importe où et n'importe comment. Se barrer. All de plus en plus loin. Géographiquement ou sans bouger. Être de plus en plus seul. All verse la solitude. La sienne ou celle de l'autre. Possible that les temps quiennent détruisent les vieilles structures, les families, le couple, l'amour, le travail, all ce qu'on a appris. Possible qu'on ait besoin de se preparer être beaucoup plus fort, pour survivre à tout. Possible qu'on ait besoin d'aprendre à vivre autrement, à ne plus croire puisque tout menace de s'effondrer. Possible qu'on ait besoin d'apprendre à vivre en animal ou en guerrier, pour de longs exiles. It is possible that the world is one of the heroes. Je me propose, c'est exemplaire la littérature, c'est pour ça que je dis Je.
Constance Debré, Last Name
I could have written the same book with any parents. With any childhood. With any name. I would always tell the same story. That you have to run away. From anywhere, somehow. Just run away. Keep going and going. Geographically or without moving. Be more and more alone. Go into solitude. Your own or someone else's. It's possible that the coming era will destroy old structures: families, partnerships, love, work, everything we've learned. It's possible that we'll have to prepare ourselves to be much stronger in order to survive it all. It's possible that we'll have to learn to live differently, to stop believing because everything is threatening to collapse. It's possible that we'll have to learn to live as animals or as warriors, for long periods of exile. It's possible that the coming world will need heroes. I offer myself; literature is exemplary of this, which is why I say "I."
Gérard Lefort's review of Last Name sees the text as being in a tension between furious revolt and quiet hope: “Last Name is the name of a great betrayal: of the politics of "one must remain sane," of being called up to the militia of do-gooders that frames our lives and diminishes them. […] Last Name is a novel of encouragement. Which, despite its cry to shut up, nevertheless awakens the desire to continue a conversation verbally.” 10
Three books address the rejection of identity; this is a paradoxical, perhaps even contradictory, undertaking. Debré's rejection of the social is something different from, say, Rousseau's solitude or Thoreau's retreat into the woods. Nathalie Crom in Télérama compares the absoluteness of her refusal: “She has the astonishing radicalism of the saints, the adventurers of faith. The great mystics, with whom she shares a predilection for discipline and asceticism, and whose pronouncements sometimes recall inner experiences.” 11 The reviewer of The Express demands one must deal with this third book Last Name Finally, let's stop discussing the Debré case "from a sociological point of view" and finally talk about her style: In this respect, her uniqueness and talent put an end to all debate. 12 Debré writes against the wretched, unlived life, echoing Crom's "the voluntary or thoughtless clinging to the theater of appearances and affiliations of all kinds (social, familial…), the acceptance of assigned identity and assigned fate, the simple surrender 'to fate, to habits, to others, to external forces.'" This uncompromising text also resonates with me as a work of mourning for what Constance Debré calls "modernity." It is a narrative detoxification therapy that also explains the harsh rhythm of the erratic style, an autofiction in the unreal tense.
J'aurais pu avoir un père, une mère, des frères, des soeurs, un signe astrologique, une ligne de la main, un profil ayurvédique, un groupe sanguin, une religion, des opinions, j'aurais pu avoir une couleur préférée, j'aurais pu avoir des fetiches, des porte-bonheur, des icônes, des idoles, j'aurais pu avoir des blessures, des nostalgies, des reproches, des regrets, j'aurais pu me dire d'une génération, d'un pays, d'une ville, d'une époque, d'un milieu, j'aurais pu me réclamer d'un genre ou d'une sexuality, J'aurais pu chercher une definition de moi-même, j'aurais pu croire à l'identité, et chercher la mienne, j'aurais pu me dire victime ou coupable, j'aurais pu dire J'accuse ou Mea culpa, j'aurais pu chercher une origine, une cause, un pourquoi, j'aurais pu croire à la généalogie, à la sociologie ou à l'ADN, chercher du côté des rabbins, des nobles, des Basques, des ministres ou des camés, j'aurais pu croire à all ça, j'aurais pu en avoir les poches pleines, j'aurais pu All voir un psy deux fois par Semaine, j'aurais pu lui demander de m'aider à me faire vouloir tout ce dont je ne veux pas, j'aurais pu lui demander de me guérir. Je vis sans proprieté sans famille sans enfance.
Constance Debré, Last Name
I could have had a father, a mother, brothers, sisters, a star sign, a palm line, an Ayurvedic profile, a blood type, a religion, views; I could have had a favorite color; I could have had fetishes, lucky charms, icons, idols; I could have had hurts, longings, accusations, regrets; I could have said that I belong to a generation, a country, a city, an era, a milieu; I could have identified with a gender or sexuality; I could have searched for a definition of myself; I could have believed in identity and searched for my own; I could have described myself as a victim or a culprit; I could have said J'accuse or Mea culpa; I could have searched for an origin, a cause, a why; I could have believed in genealogy, sociology, or DNA, searched among the rabbis, the nobles, the Basques, the ministers, or the junkies; I could have believed in all of that; I could have had my pockets full of it; I could have twice I could have gone to a psychiatrist this week; I could have asked him to help me, to make me want everything I don't want; I could have asked him to heal me. I live without possessions, without family, without a childhood.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- From the French Wikipedia entry on Constance Debré.>>>
- Pascale Robert-Diard, “Constance Debré: de l'autre côté du nom,” Le Monde, October 13, 2013.>>>
- Gaspard Dhellemmes, “Portrait: Constance Debré, the prometteuse avocate métamorphosee par la littérature,” Vanity Fair, 14. September 2020.>>>
- “Remplacez l'anamnèse par l'oubli, l'interpretation par l'expérimentation.” Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, thousand trays>>>
- "De toute façon, son père à elle s'est tué tout seul, à petit feu, à doses d'opium puis d'héro. « Nom » s'ouvre sur sa mort. Récit clinique, gestes mécaniques. Un seau d'eau glacée balance d'emblée à la tête du Lecteur, histoire de le dégriser et de le préparer aux pages qui vont suivre, Manuel de liquidation radicale, qui ferait passer « Extinction » de Thomas Bernhard, ce précipité de détestation littéraire, pour un traité sur le bonheur et le vivre-ensemble.” Elisabeth Philippe, “Constance Debré, sans toit ni loi" Nouvel Observateur, 10. February 2022.>>>
- Jean-Louis Debre, A family story, Robert Laffont.>>>
- Dans votre livre, votre aïeul, c'est Anselme, non Debré. Quand la famille at-elle change de patronyme ? | Sous Napoléon, lorsqu'il a voulu intégrer les juifs. Il a demandé qu'ils s'inscrivent sur les registres d'état civil. Seulement, leur nom ne devait pas avoir de consonance juive. C'est Jacques, mon ancestor, qui va prendre le nom de Debré. Noté par l'officier d'état civil de Westhoffen, le petit village alsacien dont je suis originaire, parce qu'il ne se rend pas compte que, en hébreu, le mot signifie " porter la parole ". Pas n'importe quelle parole, la parole pour transmettre quelque chose. L'officier ne réalise pas la consonance religieuse, et Jacques est profondément religieux, et ne veut surtout pas trahir ses racines juives." Julie Malaure, Les Debré, a “marque de fabrique”, The Point, October 24, 2019.>>>
- “Je ne sais pas ce que c'est l'amour maternel, l'amour en général, je ne connais que du particulier.” Constance Debré, France Culture, Le réveil culturel.>>>
- “Voici le lieu du monde le plus sauvage et le plus solitaire, et rien n'y announce la fête que vous m'avez promise.” Marivaux, The dispute, Scene I.>>>
- "Last Name Est le nom d'une grande trahison: à la politique du “il faut raison garder”, à l'enrôlement dans la milice des bien-pensants qui encadre nos vies et les rend minuscules. […] Last Name It's a novel of encouragement. Ce qui malgré son injection de la fermer, donne l'envie de poursuivre à l'oral par un entretien.” Gérard Lefort, “Constance Debré: On vit dans une époque endormie et endormante,” Les Inrockuptibles, 4. February 2022.>>>
- "Elle a la radicalité stupéfiante des saints, des aventuriers de la foi. Des grands mystiques avec lesquels elle partage le goût de la discipline et de l'ascèse, et dont ses phrases, parfois, évoquent les expériences intérieures." Nathalie Crom, “Quand Constance Debré dit Nom”, Télérama, 5. February 2022.>>>
- “Il est grand temps de cesser de débattre de son cas sous un angular sociologique et de parler enfin de son style: sur ce plan, sa singularité et son talent mettent fin à toutes les querelles.” Louis-Henri de La Rochefoucauld, “Constance Debré, Elie Robert-Nicoud, Geneviève Brisac: les livres à ne pas manquer”, The Express, 6. February 2022.>>>
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