It is a satire that brilliantly illuminates current controversies in the world of books. In Sensitivities (Grasset), Tania de Montaigne imagines a publishing house listed on the stock exchange, Feel Good, which sanitizes manuscripts so as not to offend any potential reader. Like any good dystopia, fiction anticipated reality, since the subject of “sensitivity readers”, these proofreaders responsible for ferreting out words that could shock ethnic or sexual minorities, found itself at the heart of the French literary season. At L’Express, Tania de Montaigne explains why this need to accommodate sensitivities in the name of progressivism is not only ineffective and essentialist, but ends up playing into the hands of the far right.
L’Express: Your book, a fable about sensitivity readers, was published even though the subject was controversial in France. Kevin Lambert, Canadian author, winner of the Medici and December prizesused a proofreader of Haitian origin for his novel May our joy remain, which earned him criticism from a colleague, Nicolas Matthieu…
Tania de Montaigne: It all started with Instagram and social networks are really not the best framework for discussing and debating. Nicolas Mathieu placed himself on the side of literature and risk. Kevin Lambert defended the idea of using a Haitian proofreader because, having written about a Haitian character, he wanted to avoid approximations. So far nothing extraordinary, the fact of wanting to find out about a subject is the baba. But, in addition to the desire to enrich his writing, he also made it clear that he wanted to avoid falling into the clichés that white people can attach to black people, and that for me is the heart of the subject. What I wonder is: does he honestly believe that once he does this, all black people will approve of his novel? In other words, does he think that the point of view of a black reader can guarantee that of all black people? Or even that a Haitian woman could speak for all Haitians? At the end of his response, Kevin Lambert also suggested that anyone who did not think like him on this issue was reactionary. I understand why Nicolas Mathieu reacted in this way, it is a way of prohibiting debate and thought, of saying I am Good and you are Evil.
What really strikes me is the essentialization. If publishing houses communicate the fact of having used a sensitivity reader, It’s good because Kevin Lambert is white. The problem is that we thus reduce everyone to a skin color, a gender, a sexuality, an illness… It is the very negation of what makes the strength of any art, namely touching on the singular and escaping the assignment and the norm.
You yourself had a mishap with the comic book adaptation of your book Black* on the life of Claudette Colvin, this African-American woman who refused in 1955 to give up her seat to a white woman on a bus…
The designer Emilie Plateau has made a very beautiful adaptation of the book. So much so that the comic was selected for a festival in English-speaking Canada. The head of foreign rights, who is English and white, then told us: “It’s great, it will give us access to Anglo-Saxon publishers!” On the other hand, she explained to us that for this, we had to change the title and call it “Bus”, because Emilie is white. It’s always funny when a white person explains to me what can hurt black people. This led to a surreal discussion. The book Black talks about segregation and the ravages of a system based on people’s color. We weren’t going to change the title based on the skin color of the person writing! I was very angry, especially since I saw that these were very anticipated fears: what if we ever hurt a black person because of this title and they made a tweet? Fortunately, our editor defended us. But the result is that we have not had an English translation, although there is, for example, a Korean translation of Black.
The states of art of Tania de Montaigne.
© / Press Agency
Constantly wanting to imagine the pain that a person might feel because of their skin color is a fundamentally condescending and racist dynamic. Since the principle of races is based on the idea that a color determines a psychology. But it is also a logic that requires constant adaptation. It only takes one person who is a member of a minority to say “that makes me sad” for us to be forced to modify a work.
In your novel, you go so far as to imagine DNA tests to ensure that the author has a biological link with the subject treated…
I wanted to push this logic to the absurd limit. When I meet literary people, I come across a lot of people who tell me “ah, I would love to do that, but I’m not legitimate”. This question of legitimacy is increasingly present in the artistic field. And leads to the fact that we ask fiction to be documentary, to prove that it is true. It is the negation of the imagination and the possibility of being someone other than oneself.
I therefore wondered how we could evaluate and measure legitimacy. If we want to be able to speak to as many people as possible without risking litigation or controversy, we can use sensitivity readers, which is already in practice. But the next step is the guarantee of maximum authenticity. Ultimately, the best tool is the DNA test to prove that an author is biologically close to his character. Afterwards, it will still be necessary to determine the necessary percentage, because of course no one is 100% of one ethnic origin. (laughs).
“Today, everyone puts their sensitivity forward, even the extreme right”
Do these sanitizations of language have an effect on reality?
Social media feels like it represents the world. But they are often very uncorrelated with reality. For example, MeToo was pushed by fairly educated people, in certain social categories who became agitated on social networks. The more working classes have escaped the phenomenon. I also spoke with an actress who was to promote an American film some time after the death of George Floyd. On her social networks, she had not displayed the famous black sign which means “I support you, the Black”. As a result, the interviews all focused on this. We no longer talked about the film. There was a crisis meeting with the press officers to find out what elements of language needed to be highlighted. All because this actress was white. And meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics continued to be killed without anyone mobilizing. It’s as if from the moment we put up our black sign, we had done the job. However, discrimination, violence, racism and homophobia do not raise questions of affect or sensitivity, but questions of law and require active citizen participation.
In the novel, you joke about the fact that even the far right invokes the right to no longer be offended and stigmatized, campaigning for it to be called “hard right” or “post-fascist right” instead. Should we spare our sensitivity?
Marine Le Pen says that it pains her a lot to be called far-right. But if she really had a problem with racism or anti-Semitism, she would not have taken over a historically far-right party. If she had changed a lot, she would not be at the National Rally. For me, Marine Le Pen is far-right. I’m not going to euphemize this as “hard right” or “right that takes responsibility”.
Today, everyone puts their sensitivity forward. American anti-abortion activists have understood this well, changing the subject from a moral question to a question of sensitivity, by highlighting the pain it causes them to see suffering embryos. This strategy paid off. Similarly, in the United States, changes to school programs or content in libraries, under pressure from religious fundamentalist groups, were made in this way, saying that it caused a lot of pain to children.
If someone tells you “that hurts me a lot,” you can no longer argue. Because the pain cannot be discussed. There is no rational argument or question of law to raise against it. Which means that we can no longer form a society. And that it will always go to the side of the one who has the means to say the loudest that it hurts him. It’s an infantilization of the world.
Especially since you suggest that in the end, it is the far right which benefits from these identity tensions. For what ?
It’s clear who wins… Like dominoes, countries fall one after the other. When my American father woke up in 2016 to learn that his president was named Donald Trump, he wasn’t sure if he had read it correctly. It seemed unthinkable. Today, it is a shared reality in many countries.
If we have to take a lot of precautions in anticipating the sensitivities of others, this can, in the end, only lead to a society in which you only speak with people who agree with you, in order to avoid all risk. It is a disaster. And of course it benefits the populists.
The problem is that in the meantime, the far right is effectively producing language. A progressive newspeak has been established in privileged circles, but it does not permeate the population as a whole. While the far right has imposed terms adopted by everyone. Which means that a president can talk about “native French people”, even though he is in no way far-right. Or that we hear more and more about “first”, “second”, “third” and now even “fourth” generations, which means that we put an ethnic marker on people who are nevertheless French. All this vocabulary to signify otherness has been entirely manufactured by the extreme right, which, for the moment, has won the battle of language and imposed this fantasy that a real Frenchman would necessarily be white and Catholic, whereas this has never been the case. For me, the real battle is here.
Sensitivitiesby Tania de Montaigne (Grasset, 175 p., €18).
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