“The Monsters. Separate the work from the artist? The troublesome geniuses of Claire Dederer – Libération

The American journalist, admirer of Roman Polanski, questions the boycott of artists who have committed monstrous acts in an essay in the form of a wandering.

On the cover of Claire Dederer's book, in the French and British versions, two women are depicted whose postures evoke the Scream by Munch. One of them holds her head and opens her mouth. The other screams, covering his ears and closing his eyes; she no longer wants to hear anything, no longer wishes to see anything. It would be more accurate to say that she no longer knows where to turn. The Monsterssubtitled Separate the work from the artist?does not call for censorship. “Are we consistent in our way of boycotting when we decide to no longer follow this or that artist, or is our rigor variable? Is it wrong to continue to appreciate the works of (especially) men and women who have committed unforgivable acts? We think we are ethical when we only have “moral feelings”successive sincerities, sometimes conscious denials, in order to go with the direction of the wind. American journalist, film critic, avid reader, author of two previous Books which have not been translated into French, Claire Dederer asks herself, often with humor, many questions in this well-documented essay whose structure is that of a wandering. This elasticity is its charm, added to the fact that it digresses. The author's judicious idea is to warn the reader that she is writing “an audience biography” : she cannot answer for people, because they