So we decided to rewrite the great classics of Literature in inclusive writing in order to compensate for the inefficiency of reactionary publishers who do not dare to take the step. Determined to fight for the beauty of the gesture, we are going to put the middle point back everywhere that white heteronormative cis-gendered and patriarchal authors have forgotten to do so. to free literature from the sordid straitjacket in which it has been languishing since the Sorbonne and other conspirators of the same ilk tried to abuse grammar – this lamentable orthoshaming tool – to produce reactionary content. All the great authors will go through it, and believe me, it will be a celebration of the midpoint. A real carnage, there will be it everywhere! Inclusiveness as if it were raining, a real festival. Today: Malraux, The andro-anthropocentric condition.
1. The Androcentric Condition
Would Tchen try to lift the mouquerette? Or would he strike it at random? Anguish twisted his stomach; he knew his own firmness, but at that moment was only capable of thinking about it in a stupor, fascinated by this pile of white muslin that fell on a body less visible than a shadow, and from which emerged only this foot half inclined by sleep, still alive—woman's flesh.
Translator's note: " Il " was a heteropatriarchal pronoun designating a dominant cisgender male. We have maintained this archaism to highlight the opposition that the unconscious of the text constructs between the toxic masculinity of the dominant character and the hidden dominated female character, which the translation reveals. " Mouquer " is a horribly pejorative colonial-macho term for a person with a vulva. We have reinstated it in place of " mosquito net« in a perspective of decolonizing sexual critique of the unconscious of the privileged white Malraux, this voracious pillager of indigenous temples. The " body less visible than a shadow " is necessarily that of a racialized victim made invisible by discrimination. That this goes against the explicit intentions of the author only provides further confirmation. The " pile of falling white muslin " on his body reflects the way the colonial male gaze (CMG) dishonors and eroticizes the symbols of indigenous feminist emancipation. The " foot ": fetishistic objectification of sexual minorities considered “oriental”.
Self-criticism of the translator: My translation was part of the approach of the work Sex, Race and Colonies: The Domination of Bodies from the 15th Century to the Present Day (dir. P. Blanchard, N. Bancel, G. Boëtsch, Ch. Tharaud and D. Thomas). My cisheterowhite privilege prevented me from becoming aware of the perpetuation of the colonial sexual fantasy by this work which aestheticizes the domination of minoritized bodies. The critiques of my translation by Daniel Schneidermann (“apology for rape culture and systemic racism”), by Le Monde ("colon pornography") and by Libération ("complacency of a supremacist libertine dandy for ex·roticism"), led me to reconsider my work, to resign and to sign the petition demanding the withdrawal of the book. I thought that it was necessary to lift the veil on the fantasy of the dominant, in order to condemn it. I was wrong, because to evoke domination and the fantasies that justify it is already to perpetuate it. It is only necessary to condemn, while being careful not to put forward proof: that would be to renew the offense and to give it publicity. I condemn, therefore. And I condemn myself for the example.
2. New translation, entirely revised and corrected by a decolonial ecofeminist team: The Anthropocentric Condition
Would Jean-Robert* try to lift the mosquito net, this device materializing the establishment of a border as uncertain as it is shifting between human beings and animal beings? Would he strike through it, at the risk of moving the species barrier? Anxiety twisted his stomach, a place of life and welcome for many heterospecific hosts who encouraged him to become aware of the discrimination suffered by all diptera and all diptera, and especially by the midges located at the intersection of dominations and the curtain of polyamide fibers. He knew the firmness of his anti-speciesist convictions, but was only capable at this moment of thinking about them in a daze, fascinated by this pile of white muslin falling from the ceiling like the demarcation supposedly drawn by the hand of God himself between living animals. according to their kind. Then they pulled themselves together and overcame their cultural prejudices by clinging to the example of intimate and therefore political biosociality given by Donna Haraway and her dog in heat. They inhabited the confusion of this carapaceous and hairy body less visible than a shadow, and from which emerged this membranous median vein half inclined by sleep, alive all the same — the tip of a wing.
With blinking eyelids, Jean-Robert discovered in himself, to the point of nausea, not the transgressive and creative fighter he was waiting for, but a rapist. Under his sacrifice to transspecies sexuality teemed a world of depths next to which this night crushed by anguish was only clarity. "You don't fuck a fly without obtaining its consent..."
And shit!
* All The first names have been changed in consultation with those concerned in order to prevent stigmatization.
