“Standing Head” by Paul Audi, 2024 Femina Prize for greatest essay | EUROtoday

Dyears Troubling Identityin 2022, Paul Audi was making an attempt to come back to phrases together with his id, this acidic substance which isn’t a block however a circulation, which doesn’t come from us and doesn’t go with out saying. “Be identifiedhe wrote then, is to be confused”topic to the logic of belonging, whether or not geographical, social or spiritual. It was a guide – great – about what he known as “sucking from the past”. Two years later, Stand your floor tackles that of the current: the “ sucking » of this day when “the fragile skin of the world”an expression borrowed from Jean-Luc Nancy, was mutilated by the fear of October 7, the wave of its shock, the explosion of “Judeophobia, as it stands between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism”, writes Audi, and all of at present who’ve since sucked the Middle East, the world and humanity right into a black gap.

To circumvent geopolitical evaluation, “with which we are all saturated”Paul Audi levels a correspondence. Two outdated mates, like everybody on the bedside of horror, write to one another in the course of the first 5 months of the struggle. Their names are Maurice Abadi and Thomas Scur. Maurice is Jewish, Thomas just isn’t – neither is Audi – however they by no means imagined that anti-Jewish ardour would return with such pressure. There has been absolute belief between them for greater than ten years. They attempt to lean on one another, to right themselves, additionally, by mutual clarification of their political and ethical questions, to search out stability, to stay and nonetheless consider.

The sharpest of ridge traces

Because, actually, night time has fallen. “We no longer see very clearly. »“But something exists and persists. What is this ? What, on the horizon of our humanity, still awaits us patiently? » Perhaps men are still capable of lighting this night without resorting to the fire of war, of changing their destiny without seizing that of others, of remembering the sacred character of each human life, of “stand your ground” to hatred.

To Discover



Kangaroo of the day

Answer

Let it’s stated: this guide, written by a local of this Middle East that he would really like “save from himself”doesn’t “debate” the Israeli-Palestinian battle, doesn’t confront divergent opinions, doesn’t current arguments or counter-arguments. It is each an essay which offers its share of fiction on actual occasions and an epistolary novel between two French folks, annotated by a thinker who just isn’t positive of something. It’s a heroic guide, too, which makes us need that factor that we swear on daily basis is extra not possible than the day earlier than: dialogue, deep, sincere, credible, on the sharpest of ridge traces. A guide of friendship, lastly, within the sense given to it by Antigone in Sophocles: “I was not made to live with your hatred, but to be with what I love. » §

“Stand your ground”by Paul Audi (Stock, 329 p., €21.90).