Croche-Pâte is offering a new cycle of surveys on January 30, February 6 and 20, 2025! This survey cycle* brings together 3 books under the themes of guilt and responsibility.
Several discussions within the collective guided us on this theme. Why do we regularly feel guilty? When should we feel responsible for a situation, an action or even a systemic problem? Why do we feel responsible for an unjust system while also feeling guilty for our position? In short, are guilt and responsibility two sides of the same coin with which we constantly juggle?
To begin this survey, what better way than to talk about associative work and the paradoxes that mistreat professionals in the sector…
January 30, 2025 – 6:30 p.m. at MDH Capuche: Book DON’T COMPLAIN, IT’S NOT THE FACTORY. Exploitation in an associative environment (new edition) by Lily Zalzett and Stella Fihn.
The voluntary sector employs 1.8 million people in France, and it has good press. When we work in an association, we are supposed to find meaning there, we are supposed to be in line with values and not with a logic of profit. Being one with your job: an inestimable opportunity?
Contrary to this image, this book reports insidious methods of exploitation, hidden behind the ideology of civic-mindedness and associative commitment: brutal hierarchical relationships, blackmail of responsibility, permanent injunction not to count one’s hours, use without measure of volunteering and civic services. “But don’t complain, you could work in the factory!” »
Text : Niet éditions : https://niet-editions.fr/catalogue/te-plains-pas-cest-pas-lusine-reedition/
February 6, 2025 – 6:30 p.m. MDH Hood: Book RESISTING GUILT – On some obstacles to existing (by Mona Chollet).
To continue this cycle, we will look at an essay that displays the subject more broadly. A way of questioning our own relationship to guilt.
Presentation of the book; “Harassment, humiliation, insults: we are well aware of these scourges of life in society and we strive to fight against them. But there is one scenario that we neglect: the one where the aggressor is… ourselves. Very often a malicious voice resonates in our head which attacks us, which lectures us, which belittles us; who tells us that whatever we do, we are wrong; that we do not deserve anything good, that we have a fundamental flaw.
This voice speaks particularly loudly when we belong to a dominated category: women, children, sexual or racial minorities…
-This book aims to shine the spotlight, for once, on the enemy within. What are these powers that insinuate themselves into the privacy of our consciences? How were they formed?”
February 20, 2025 – 6:30 p.m. MDH Hood: WHITE FRAGILITY – This racism that white people don’t see (by Robin DiAngelo).
To close this cycle, we will dissect the defense mechanisms of white people on issues and violence linked to racism: enough to question our collective and individual responsibility for the relationships of domination encountered on a daily basis.
*Surveying, in its original form (afterwards, like any tool, we can do something else with it), is not intended to provide a collective reading of a work. At least, that is not its objective: it is possibly a means. The objective is to appropriate the author’s ideas to nourish our own reflection.
By dividing the parts of the book, we can share with the group, for example:
– A feeling when reading (easy, difficult, you allow yourself to love or hate the author, etc.)
– One (and only one) strong idea that we retain (resisting the school-university synthesis)
– What it questions or nourishes in life/practice (activist, professional, etc. depending on the theme of the book).
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