Icon: enlarge
Author Annie Ernaux
Photo: CATI CLADERA / imago images / Agencia EFE
The book fair is a place of discourse.
This year we have to let it take place virtually.
Instead of a conversation at the trade fair stand, intellectuals and writers have agreed to provide information in a SPIEGEL questionnaire.
Here the French author Annie Ernaux answers.
What is your current state of mind?
The question might as well be: How are you feeling?
What is happening to us with the pandemic is more about feeling than precise thinking.
Because it is difficult to gain the necessary distance in the face of something completely new and unexpected, but which has lasted for a long time and also changes over the course of the months.
As far as I can remember, I am someone who is curious about the present and what is happening to me, to others.
With this curiosity, I also first looked at the penetration of the virus, its deadly presence, which the French government announced belatedly.
"Today, as the end of the pandemic is becoming ever more distant, I don't know where this long period of uncertainty that lies ahead, with its economic, cultural and psychological consequences, will lead us."
But anger soon mingled with my emotions - anger at a President Macron in a warlike pose that he hoped to hide that the hospitals and nursing staff had been neglected for years.
And I hoped that from this unprecedented moment on, the millions of people trapped would politically and socially question life as it was lived - all the more so as there was a strong awareness in France of the importance of essential but poorly paid and neglected jobs is available.
Today, with the end of the pandemic looming, I do not know where this long period of uncertainty that lies ahead, with its economic, cultural and psychological consequences, will lead us.
As far as the protection of nature, the protection of life is concerned, the signals in France are desperate.
For the President of the Republic there is currently nothing more urgent than anchoring in law the prohibition of "separatism" directed against Muslims.
Pesticides are again allowed in beetroot cultivation.
It's all very similar to the old world.
But I've never been able to live without hope ...
Corona, climate change, social inequality, digitization - where do you see the greatest threat to a humane society?
The greatest threat is climate change caused by human activities, the rampant exploitation of natural resources, water, forests and the use of pesticides.
This change is already causing heat waves that have never before occurred in Europe at this frequency.
In my garden I can see how the conifers dry out more and more from summer to summer, a birch has just died, there are almost no bees left on the lavender.
The effects of climate change may not be as severe as the coronavirus, but scientists believe they will eventually be completely irreversible.
Forty years ago I was against nuclear energy, but I saw factors of social justice in progress and industrialization.
Being able to travel by air, eat pineapples and mangoes, change jeans and t-shirts - that was no longer the preserve of a handful of rich people, as I knew it as a child.
But these possibilities not only maintain profound cultural, educational and housing policy inequalities.
In the face of climate change, it is certain that the affluent upper strata of the population can protect themselves from it in their air-conditioned homes and offices, while the worse-off will suffer from the heat in their cramped homes, public transport and on construction sites.
"And which Bronx street sweeper with Covid-19 would receive the same treatment as Trump?"
The Covid-19 pandemic is a foretaste of what is ahead of us with climate change: a virus that affects everyone but claims its victims especially among those who have not been able to protect themselves from it, mainly because it is the continuity of the ensure daily living and health systems.
The seemingly egalitarian measure of lockdown proved terrible for families locked in small apartments with no computers so their children could go to school remotely while the better-off moved to their second homes and educated parents their offspring's work monitored.
And which Bronx street sweeper with Covid-19 would receive the same treatment as Trump?
Liberté, égalité, fraternité - which of the three terms of the French Revolution needs a revival?
display
Title: Die Scham (Library Suhrkamp)
Publisher: Suhrkamp Verlag
Number of pages: 110
Author: Ernaux, Annie
Buy for € 18.00
Price query time
12.10.2020 6.49 p.m.
No guarantee
Icon: Info
Order at AmazonIcon: amazon
Order from ThaliaIcon: thalia
Product reviews are purely editorial and independent.
Via the so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when making a purchase.
More information here
The equality.
Inequality shapes the fabric of society so much that it seems hopeless to fight it.
Inequality begins at birth, depending on whether you are born in an economically or culturally privileged environment or in a family that barely has enough money to survive.
In order to ensure greater equality, there are at least two measures that I consider particularly important: the drastic taxation of inheritances above a threshold which has yet to be determined and to give the public schools the place they deserve, namely the first.
What problem are you thinking about right now?
The situation of migrants, towards whom Europeans behave as if they were not men and women like them.
We forgot Alan Kurdi, the little Syrian boy in a red T-shirt and blue Bermuda shorts whose photo went around the world in September 2015.
Is the pandemic conveying any message?
There are several: First, that the smallest and oldest living organism, the virus, is able to turn our world upside down, stop planes and trains, and bring the economy to its knees.
We are not masters of the world and we need to rethink our place in nature.
The pandemic is forcing us to question infinite progress, perpetual consumption, as the ultimate purpose of everything and everyone.
It forces us to think of death - denied, hidden and hidden in the nursing home - as a present and collective reality.
We are also called upon to ask ourselves questions about the relationship between individual freedom and health imperatives.
It is quite possible that these messages, these warnings will be forgotten as soon as the vaccine has been found - unfortunately.
Is there a belief that you have remained true to since your youth?
That the acquisition of knowledge and culture must be the goal of every policy.
"I no longer use public transport, I no longer go to the big shopping center or the cinema. The physical immersion in what I call outdoor life has largely disappeared from my life."
How has Corona affected your everyday life?
Covid-19 has changed my being in the world in a unique way by defining me as a "risk person" through my age, which I normally do not think of.
I think more about whether I am healthy, can walk, or feel tired.
Now I am always my age.
I no longer take public transport, I no longer go to the big shopping center or the cinema.
The physical immersion in what I call outdoor living has largely disappeared from my life.
On the street, in the supermarket, the mask that erases people's expressions somehow makes them uniform and indifferent to me.
I am very afraid of getting used to this "contactless" world, as it is called with credit card machines, that is, to regard telephone and e-mails as normal ways of exchanging information with others, to "mutate" imperceptibly, like a virus .. .
Do you know a favorite line or a spell that will help you get through these times?
"If nothing comes, there is always time" - Henri Michaux
What gives you courage
It's simple: to be alive.
Translated from the French by Nils Minkmar.
Icon: The mirror