There is always a lot of accuracy in Mona Chollet’s books. But there is also a small problem of methodology. Too often, in “Resisting Guilt.” On a few obstacles to existing” (Zones, La Découverte), the references are compiled like cover-ups, and intuition like counter psychology takes precedence over reflection.
There is always a lot of accuracy in Mona Chollet’s books. In Resisting guilt (Zones), since it is the latest, we will find, for example, a detailed presentation of the double punishment inflicted on rape victims: not only do they have to absorb the trauma of the act they suffered, even more, they are kept in a swamp of guilt which pushes them to wonder if they do not have a part of responsibility in what happens to them. “It’s this mixture of fatalism and a spirit of submission” that the essayist analyzes quite finely, with landmark references in support – we come across, in this first chapter, Hélène Devynck, the author ofImpunityor even Marie Portolano and Guillaume Priou, to whom we owe the documentary broadcast on Canal + I’m not a bitch, I’m a journalist (2021).
The same goes for the injunction to efficiency, developed in the chapter “Walk or die”, where the author has the good idea of returning to the « karoshi » Japanese (death from overwork) and the violence inflicted on competitive athletes from a very young age by those around them (family, coaches), by looking at the Simone Biles case or the revelations of Thierry Henry. Grace will also be given to Mona Chollet for urging us to smooth things over in matters of feminist activism, the end of Resisting guilt being for her the opportunity to engage in sincere self-criticism and to embrace the “human too human” condition, we could say, which encourages us to put our foot down on intransigence and purity. Which pushes us to admit to those who pride themselves on feminism that they are always a little “cardboard feminists” because, as Péguy recalled, “Kantianism has pure hands but has no hands”. When she warns against “the shame of being well” and the victimization one-upmanship, Chollet could not be more relevant.
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