Screwing is, for a man, a defense against his desire to be female,” pro­claims the SCUM Manifesto. The para­dox of the male libi­do is that it isn’t actual­ly male. Nowhere is this more evident today than in the manos­phere, that awful­ly named borough of the Internet where pickup artists, men’s rights acti­vists, incels, Men Going Their Own Way, and other alt-right com­mu­ni­ties go to com­mi­se­rate, swap tips, and air their woman-hating and racism without fear of repri­sal. At the heart of the manos­phere lies the convic­tion that men—paradigmatically, though not always, white men—have lost sta­tus in the past fif­ty years, ulti­ma­te­ly thanks to the rise of femi­nism. To awa­ken to this fact is to take the red pill—a phrase bor­ro­wed from the 1999 film The Matrix, whose hacker pro­ta­go­nist Neo is given the choice bet­ween a red pill and a blue. The lat­ter will return Neo to his simu­la­ted eve­ry­day life with no memo­ry of the choice ; the for­mer, which he picks, trans­ports him out of the Matrix and into the real world where huma­ni­ty has been ensla­ved by sen­tient machines. In recent years, the alt-right has co-opted the scene as a parable for seeing past femi­nist brain­wa­shing to the truth : femi­nism is a disease, all women wish to be domi­na­ted, and nice guys finish last.

Of course, ano­ther inter­pre­ta­tion of the red pill is pos­sible. Trans women have clai­med The Matrix as an alle­go­ry for gen­der tran­si­tion since at least 2012, when direc­tor Lana Wachowski publi­cly came out as a trans woman while doing press for the film Cloud Atlas. (Her sis­ter and codi­rec­tor Lilly fol­lo­wed suit in 2016.) The sym­bo­lism is easy to find in the plot : Thomas Anderson’s double life (he’s a hacker by night), his cho­sen name (Neo), his vague but mad­de­ning sense that some­thing is off about the world (“a splin­ter in your mind,” resis­tance lea­der Morpheus calls it). Neo has dys­pho­ria. The Matrix is the gen­der bina­ry. You get it.

And then there’s the red pill itself, less a meta­phor for hor­mone the­ra­py than a lite­ral hor­mone. Many have poin­ted out online that back in the nine­ties, pres­crip­tion estro­gen was, in fact, red : the 0.625 mg Premarin tablet, deri­ved in Matrix-like fashion from the urine of pre­gnant mares, came in smooth, cho­co­la­tey maroon. Trans allies on Twitter now glee­ful­ly bran­dish this fact as a well, actually–style rejoin­der to the alt-right’s recent co-opta­tion of the red pill scene as a parable for “awa­ke­ning” from femi­nist brain­wa­shing.

There’s some­thing to this. Taken serious­ly, it sug­gests that the manos­phere red-piller’s resent­ment of immi­grants, black people, and queers is a sadis­tic expres­sion of his own gen­der dys­pho­ria. In this rea­ding, he is an abor­tive man, a beta trap­ped in an alpha’s body, consu­med with the desire to be female and des­pe­ra­te­ly trying to repress it. His desire to increase his man­hood is not pri­ma­ry, but a second-tier defense mecha­nism. Those around him assume he is a lea­der, a pro­vi­der, a pre­sident ; but his grea­test fear is that they are mis­ta­ken. He radicalizes—shoots up a school, builds a wall—in order to avoid tran­si­tio­ning, the way some clo­se­ted trans women join the mili­ta­ry in order to get the girl bea­ten out of them.

But there’s ano­ther level. The Wachowski sis­ters, even if they knew about Premarin, could never have pre­dic­ted that the most com­mon form of pres­crip­tion estro­gen today would be blue. Aquamarine, actually—a tiny, coarse 2 mg estra­diol pill sup­plied by Israeli phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Teva that turns to pow­der in your mouth. At present, I take the blue pill twice a day, once upon waking and once before bed, sen­ding myself back into the simu­la­tion. By this logic, the hid­den trans woman of The Matrix is not the mes­sia­nic Neo, but Cypher, the slea­zy trai­tor, who agrees to hand Morpheus over to the machines in exchange for being rein­ser­ted into the Matrix. “Ignorance is bliss,” he tells the agents, mouth full of jui­cy, nonexistent steak. (Recall that cipher is an old word for zero.) “I don’t wan­na remem­ber nothing. Nothing. You unders­tand?”

Valerie would have appro­ved of hor­mone the­ra­py, I think. The SCUM Manifesto alludes, posi­ti­ve­ly, to a futu­ris­tic world where men are trans­for­med into women “by means of ope­ra­tions on the brain and ner­vous sys­tem.” This was one of SCUM’s non­ge­no­ci­dal solu­tions for the few men who might remain after the revo­lu­tion. Another, hin­ted at in a foot­note, sounds a lot like the Matrix—a vast vir­tual rea­li­ty net­work that men would willin­gly plug them­selves into as “vica­rious livers.” “It will be elec­tro­ni­cal­ly pos­sible for [men] to tune into any spe­ci­fic female [they want] to and fol­low in detail her eve­ry move­ment,” Valerie explains, decla­ring it a “mar­ve­lous­ly kind and humane way” for women to treat their “unfor­tu­nate, han­di­cap­ped fel­low beings.”

Isn’t that the whole point of gender—letting someone else do your living for you ?

If you’ve ever seen sis­sy porn, you’ll know that tur­ning people female is exact­ly what sis­sy porn says it does. Also known as for­ced femi­ni­za­tion or “for­ced fem,” sis­sy porn seems to have begun cir­cu­la­ting prin­ci­pal­ly on the micro­blog­ging plat­form Tumblr in or around 2013. The genre is cha­rac­te­ris­ti­cal­ly user-gene­ra­ted rather than pro­du­ced by a tra­di­tio­nal stu­dio : in large part, sis­sy content crea­tors would appro­priate videos, stil­ls, and ani­ma­ted GIFs from mains­tream hete­ro­sexual or “she­male” pornography—intellectual pro­per­ty is noto­rious­ly dif­fi­cult to pro­tect in today’s porn industry—and modi­fy this mate­rial with cap­tions alte­ring their ori­gi­nal mea­ning. In late 2018, when the micro­blog­ging plat­form moved to ban gra­phic sexual content, sis­sy porn crea­tors, like many other sex wor­kers, were for­ced to flee to other plat­forms, inclu­ding Twitter and Instagram.

Sissy porn’s cen­tral conceit is that the women it depicts (some cis, some trans, most­ly but not always white) are in fact for­mer men who have been femi­ni­zed (“sis­si­fied”) by being for­ced to wear makeup, wear lin­ge­rie, and per­form acts of sexual sub­mis­sion. This is exe­cu­ted through the unique form of second-per­son address in which cap­tions are typi­cal­ly writ­ten : sis­sy porn direct­ly addresses its vie­wers and pre­sumes to inform them of their own desires : “You love to be fucked in the ass,” for ins­tance, or “You want to suck cock.” (Sissy porn often uses cock as an uncoun­table mass noun, like water or sugar, pre­su­ma­bly because there can always be more.) Captions fur­ther ins­truct vie­wers to unders­tand that the very act of loo­king at sis­sy porn itself consti­tutes an act of sexual degra­da­tion, with the impli­ca­tion that, whe­ther they like it or not, vie­wers will inevi­ta­bly be trans­for­med into females them­selves. This makes sis­sy porn a kind of meta­por­no­gra­phy, that is, porn about what hap­pens to you when you watch porn. In other words, sis­sy porn takes the impli­cit­ly femi­ni­zing effect of all por­no­gra­phy (even the most vanilla) and pro­motes it to the level of expli­cit content—often with spec­ta­cu­lar results.

At the cen­ter of sis­sy porn lies the asshole, a kind of uni­ver­sal vagi­na through which fema­le­ness can always be acces­sed. In the mid­st of the AIDS cri­sis, the gay male cri­tic Leo Bersani famous­ly wrote that public hor­ror of anal sex betrayed a hate­ful envy of the “into­le­rable image of a grown man, legs high in the air, unable to refuse the sui­ci­dal ecs­ta­sy of being a woman.” Sissy porn takes this lite­ral­ly. Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is. At the same time, sis­sy porn remains whol­ly unin­te­res­ted in who’s doing the fucking. Men appear, when they appear, only in frag­ments : a hand, an ass, a stray leg. Tops are props ; their func­tion is pure­ly struc­tu­ral. “To call a man an ani­mal is to flat­ter him,” Valerie writes in SCUM. “He’s a machine, a wal­king dil­do. It’s often said that men use women. Use them for what ? Surely not plea­sure.”

Sissy porn makes frequent use of fetish objects—makeup, lin­ge­rie, breasts, high heels, and the color pink—but unlike the clas­si­cal Freudian fetish, these objects pro­mise cas­tra­tion, ins­tead of war­ding against it. For Freud, the fetish was a clear sub­sti­tute for the “absent female phal­lus.” The lit­tle boy, trau­ma­ti­zed by the dis­co­ve­ry that his mother has no penis and fea­ring lest the same fate befall his own, looks for reas­su­rance to an object that can replace that penis—a high-hee­led shoe, for ins­tance, or the touch of vel­vet. The fetish is thus “a token of triumph over the threat of cas­tra­tion and a pro­tec­tion against it.” Yet even Freud knew that the fetish, in disa­vo­wing cas­tra­tion, the­re­by impli­cit­ly ack­now­led­ged it ; sis­sy porn exploits this weak­ness, trans­for­ming the fetish from an assu­rance that the penis will be kept safe into a gua­ran­tee that the penis will be lost fore­ver. This means that, in cases where the sis­sy is a trans woman, even her own feti­shi­zed penis becomes a sym­bol of cas­tra­tion. If her penis is limp, it is mocked for its tiny size and cal­led a “clit­ty”; if it is hard, this is sim­ply proof that she is enjoying her degra­da­tion.

In fact, to be a sis­sy is always to lose your mind. The tech­ni­cal term for this is bim­boi­fi­ca­tion. Captions often ins­truct vie­wers to sub­mit them­selves to hyp­no­sis, brain­wa­shing, brain-mel­ting, dum­bing down, and other tech­niques for scoo­ping out intel­li­gence. “Why do I like the concept of being a Bimbo?” asks one user. “It’s because my brain is always full. I’m always wor­rying if Master tru­ly loves me. Am I enough ? Am I making good choices ? Do people actual­ly like me ? How can I live in a coun­try like this with this cur­rent poli­ti­cal cli­mate ? Where else could I even ima­gine going?” The ges­tures most often loo­ped in GIF for­mat almost always regis­ter the eva­cua­tion of will : wil­ting faces, trem­bling legs, eyes rol­led back into heads. Even the GIF for­mat itself com­mu­ni­cates this, a kind of cen­tri­fuge for dis­til­ling the fema­le­ness to its barest essentials—an open mouth, an expec­tant asshole, blank, blank eyes.

Sissy porn did make me trans. At very least it ser­ved as a neat alle­go­ry for my desire to be female—and increa­sin­gly, I thought, for all desire as such. Too often, femi­nists have ima­gi­ned power­less­ness as the sup­pres­sion of desire by some exter­nal force, and they’ve for­got­ten that more often than not, desire is this exter­nal force. Most desire is non­con­sen­sual ; most desires aren’t desi­red. Wanting to be a woman was some­thing that des­cen­ded upon me, like a tongue of fire, or an infection—or a men­tal ill­ness, at least if you believe the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, where gen­der dys­pho­ria can be found sand­wi­ched bet­ween fri­gi­di­ty and pyro­ma­nia. The impli­ca­tion is obvious : No one in their right mind would want to be female.

Which, remem­ber, is all of us.

Everyone is female, and eve­ryone hates it. If this is true, then gen­der is very sim­ply the form this self-loa­thing takes in any given case. All gen­der is inter­na­li­zed miso­gy­ny. A female is one who has eaten the loa­thing of ano­ther, like an amoe­ba that got its nucleus by swal­lo­wing its neigh­bor. Or, to put a finer point on it : Gender is not just the miso­gy­nis­tic expec­ta­tions a female inter­na­lizes but also the pro­cess of inter­na­li­zing itself, the self’s gentle sui­cide in the name of someone else’s desires, someone else’s nar­cis­sism.

The claim that gen­der is social­ly construc­ted has rung hol­low for decades not because it isn’t true, but because it’s wild­ly incom­plete. Indeed, it is tri­vial­ly true that a great num­ber of things are social­ly construc­ted, from money to laws to genres of lite­ra­ture. What makes gen­der gender—the sub­stance of gen­der, as it were—is the fact that it expresses, in eve­ry case, the desires of ano­ther. Gender has the­re­fore a com­ple­men­ta­ry rela­tion to sexual orien­ta­tion : If sexual orien­ta­tion is basi­cal­ly the social expres­sion of one’s own sexua­li­ty, then gen­der is basi­cal­ly a social expres­sion of someone else’s sexua­li­ty. In the for­mer case, one takes an object ; in the lat­ter case, one is an object. From the pers­pec­tive of gen­der, then, we are all dumb blondes.

This need not be contro­ver­sial. Feminists far less outra­geous than Valerie have long argued that femi­ni­ni­ty expresses male sexua­li­ty pret­ty much from the begin­ning. The orga­ni­zers of the famous Miss America pro­test in 1968—the ori­gin of the famous bra-bur­ning myth—railed in a press release against the “Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol” they consi­de­red the pageant to epi­to­mize. None have put it more stark­ly than the anti­por­no­gra­phy femi­nist Catharine MacKinnon, whose 1989 book, Toward a Feminist Theory of the State, fea­tures a leng­thy cata­logue of examples :

Each ele­ment of the female gen­der ste­reo­type is revea­led as, in fact, sexual. Vulnerability means the appearance/reality of easy sexual access ; pas­si­vi­ty means recep­ti­vi­ty and disa­bled resis­tance, enfor­ced by trai­ned phy­si­cal weak­ness ; soft­ness means pre­gna­bi­li­ty by some­thing hard. Incompetence seeks help as vul­ne­ra­bi­li­ty seeks shel­ter, invi­ting the embrace that becomes the inva­sion, tra­ding exclu­sive access for pro­tec­tion … from that same access. Domesticity nur­tures the consequent pro­ge­ny, proof of poten­cy, and ideal­ly waits at home dres­sed in Saran Wrap. Woman’s infan­ti­li­za­tion evokes pedo­phi­lia ; fixa­tion on dis­mem­be­red body parts (the breast man, the leg man) evokes feti­shism ; ido­li­za­tion of vapi­di­ty, necro­phi­lia. Narcissism ensures that woman iden­ti­fies with the image of her­self man holds up : “Hold still, we are going to do your por­trait, so that you can begin loo­king like it right away.”

Indeed, MacKinnon has built an entire intel­lec­tual career out of the claim that “it is sexua­li­ty that deter­mines gen­der, not the other way around.” For her this means that men and women are construc­ted though an “ero­ti­ci­za­tion of domi­nance and sub­mis­sion” whose cen­tral pro­cess is non­con­sen­sual sexual objec­ti­fi­ca­tion. Hence the famous line : “Man fucks woman ; sub­ject verb object.”

To be female is to be an object—MacKinnon is right about this, I think. Where she errs is in the assump­tion that fema­le­ness is a condi­tion res­tric­ted to women. Gender is always a pro­cess of objec­ti­fi­ca­tion : trans­gen­der women like Gigi Gorgeous know this pro­ba­bly bet­ter than most. Gender tran­si­tion begins, after all, from the unders­tan­ding that how you iden­ti­fy your­self subjectively—as pre­cious and impor­tant as this iden­ti­fi­ca­tion may be—is never­the­less on its own basi­cal­ly worth­less. If iden­ti­ty were all there were to gen­der, tran­si­tion would be as easy as thin­king it—a light bulb, sud­den­ly swit­ched on. Your gen­der iden­ti­ty would sim­ply exist, in mute abs­trac­tion, and no one, least of all your­self, would care.

On the contra­ry, if there is any les­son of gen­der transition—from the sim­plest request regar­ding pro­nouns to the most inva­sive surgeries—it’s that gen­der is some­thing other people have to give you. Gender exists, if it is to exist at all, only in the struc­tu­ral gene­ro­si­ty of stran­gers. When people today say that a given gen­der iden­ti­ty is “valid,” this is true, but only tau­to­lo­gi­cal­ly so. At best it is a moral demand for pos­si­bi­li­ty, but it does not, in itself, consti­tute the rea­li­za­tion of this pos­si­bi­li­ty. The truth is, you are not the cen­tral tran­sit hub for mea­ning about your­self, and you pro­ba­bly don’t even have a right to be. You do not get to consent to your­self, even if you might deserve the chance.

You do not get to consent to yourself—a defi­ni­tion of fema­le­ness.

The the­sis of this lit­tle book is that fema­le­ness is a uni­ver­sal sex defi­ned by self-nega­tion, against which all poli­tics, even femi­nist poli­tics, rebels. Put more sim­ply : Everyone is female, and eve­ryone hates it.

Some expla­na­tions are in order. For our pur­poses here, I’ll define as female any psy­chic ope­ra­tion in which the self is sacri­fi­ced to make room for the desires of ano­ther. These desires may be real or ima­gi­ned, concen­tra­ted or diffuse—a boyfriend’s sexual needs, a set of cultu­ral expec­ta­tions, a lite­ral pregnancy—but in all cases, the self is hol­lo­wed out, made into an incu­ba­tor for an alien force. To be female is to let someone else do your desi­ring for you, at your own expense. This means that fema­le­ness, while it hurts only some­times, is always bad for you. Its ulti­mate toll, at least in eve­ry case here­to­fore recor­ded, is death.

Clearly, this is a wild­ly ten­den­tious defi­ni­tion. It’s even more far-fet­ched if you, like me, are applying it to everyone—literally eve­ryone, eve­ry single human being in the his­to­ry of the pla­net. So it’s true : When I talk about females, I am not refer­ring to bio­lo­gi­cal sex, though I’m not refer­ring to gen­der, either. I’m refer­ring ins­tead to some­thing that might as well be sex, the way that reac­tio­na­ries des­cribe it (per­ma­nent, unchan­ging, etc.), but whose nature is onto­lo­gi­cal, not bio­lo­gi­cal. Femaleness is not an ana­to­mi­cal or gene­tic cha­rac­te­ris­tic of an orga­nism, but rather a uni­ver­sal exis­ten­tial condi­tion, the one and only struc­ture of human conscious­ness. To be is to be female : the two are iden­ti­cal.

It fol­lows, then, that while all women are females, not all females are women. In fact, the empi­ri­cal exis­tence, past and present, of gen­ders other than man and woman means that the majo­ri­ty of females are not women. This is iro­nic, but not a contra­dic­tion. Everyone is female, but how one copes with being female—the spe­ci­fic defense mecha­nisms that one conscious­ly or uncons­cious­ly deve­lops as a reac­tion for­ma­tion against one’s fema­le­ness, within the terms of what is his­to­ri­cal­ly and socio­cul­tu­ral­ly available—this is what we ordi­na­ri­ly call gen­der. Men and women must the­re­fore be unders­tood not as irre­con­ci­lable oppo­sites, or even as two poles of a spec­trum, but more sim­ply as the two most com­mon phy­la of the king­dom Females. It might be asked : if men, women, and eve­ryone else all share this condi­tion, why conti­nue to refer to it with an obvious­ly gen­de­red term like females ? The ans­wer is : because eve­ryone alrea­dy does. Women hate being female as much as any­bo­dy else ; but unlike eve­ry­bo­dy else, we find our­selves its select dele­gates.

This brings me to the second part of my the­sis : Everyone is female—and eve­ryone hates it. By the second claim, I mean some­thing like what Valerie meant : that human civi­li­za­tion repre­sents a diverse array of attempts to sup­press and miti­gate fema­le­ness, that this is in fact the impli­cit pur­pose of all human acti­vi­ty, and, most of all, that acti­vi­ty we call poli­tics. The poli­ti­cal is the sworn ene­my of the female ; poli­tics begins, in eve­ry case, from the opti­mis­tic belief that ano­ther sex is pos­sible. This is the root of all poli­ti­cal conscious­ness : the daw­ning rea­li­za­tion that one’s desires are not one’s own, that one has become a vehicle for someone else’s ego ; in short, that one is female, but wishes it were not so. Politics is, in its essence, anti-female.

This claim extends to the varie­ty of women’s move­ments in the twen­tieth and twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry that may be col­lec­ted under the name of femi­nist poli­tics ; in fact, the conscious dis­co­ve­ry that being female is bad for you might be des­cri­bed as quin­tes­sen­tial­ly femi­nist. Perhaps the oldest right-wing accu­sa­tion brought by men and other women against femi­nists, whe­ther they deman­ded civic equa­li­ty or anti-male revo­lu­tion, was that femi­nists were real­ly asking, quite sim­ply, not to be women any­more. There was a ker­nel of truth here : Feminists didn’t want to be women any­more, at least under the exis­ting terms of socie­ty ; or to put it more pre­ci­se­ly, femi­nists didn’t want to be female any­more, either advo­ca­ting for the abo­li­tion of gen­der alto­ge­ther or pro­po­sing new cate­go­ries of woman­hood unen­cum­be­red by fema­le­ness. To be for women, ima­gi­ned as full human beings, is always to be against females. In this sense, femi­nism opposes miso­gy­ny pre­ci­se­ly inas­much as it also expresses it.

Or maybe I’m just pro­jec­ting.

Everyone is female.

The worst books are all by females. All the great art heists of the past three hun­dred years were pul­led off by a female, wor­king solo or with other females. There are no good female poets, sim­ply because there are no good poets. A list of things inven­ted by females would include : air­planes, tele­phones, the small­pox vac­cine, ghos­ting, ter­ro­rism, ink, envy, rum, prom, Spain, cars, gods, cof­fee, lan­guage, stand-up come­dy, eve­ry kind of knot, double par­king, nail polish, the let­ter tau, the num­ber zero, the H‑bomb, femi­nism, and the patriar­chy. Sex bet­ween females is no bet­ter or worse than any other kind of sex, because no other kind of sex is pos­sible. Shark attacks exclu­si­ve­ly tar­get females. All the astro­nauts were female, which means the moon is a female-only zone. The 1 percent is 100 percent female. The entire Supreme Court is female. The entire United States Senate is female. The pre­sident is, obvious­ly, a female.

Females domi­nate the fol­lo­wing pro­fes­sions : zoo­kee­ping, haber­da­she­ry, land­sca­ping, invest­ment ban­king, long-dis­tance tru­cking, luthe­rie, consul­ting, talent mana­ge­ment, tort law, taxi­der­my, real estate deve­lop­ment, ortho­don­tia, pri­son admi­nis­tra­tion, and the mafia. Not all females are serial killers, but all serial killers are female, inclu­ding the necro­philes. The entire incar­ce­ra­ted popu­la­tion is female. All rape sur­vi­vors are females. All rapists are females. Females mas­ter­min­ded the Atlantic slave trade. All the dead are female. All the dying, too. The hos­pi­tals of the world are full of them : females in beds or gin­ger­ly wal­king about, full of pain, reco­ve­ring, slip­ping away. All the guns in the world are owned by females.

I am female. And you, dear rea­der, you are female, even—especially—if you are not a woman. Welcome. Sorry.

En ce moment je cherche pour mes vieux jours une méthode qui me per­met­trait de pas­ser en dou­ceur du futur au condi­tion­nel. On raconte qu’au cours de la deuxième année de son règne, Nabuchodonosor a fait quelques rêves trou­blants qui ont agi­té son esprit et ren­du son som­meil capri­cieux. Il convoque les ensor­ce­leurs, mages, astro­logues, devins et enchan­teurs du coin pour qu’ils l’aident, et leur dit :

— J’ai rêvé un rêve, et mon esprit s’est trou­blé du désir de com­prendre ce rêve.

Après une phrase de défé­rence qui sou­haite au roi de vivre long­temps, voire éter­nel­le­ment, les enchan­teurs lui répondent :

— Raconte ton rêve et nous t’en don­ne­rons le sens.

Nabuchodonosor se sent obli­gé de pré­ci­ser sa requête :
— Je vais être très clair : si vous ne me faites pas connaître et mon rêve et son inter­pré­ta­tion, je vous le dis, vous allez tous mou­rir très vio­lem­ment, vous serez, selon les tra­duc­tions, soit décou­pés soit mis en mor­ceaux, le résul­tat est à peu près équi­valent, et vos mai­sons seront chan­gées en tas de fumier ou bien en bour­bier, mises au rebut ou bien encore trans­for­mées en tas de décombres ou d’immondices. Mais si vous me don­nez et mon rêve et son inter­pré­ta­tion, alors je serais géné­reux et gen­til avec vous, je vous don­ne­rais des cadeaux et des hon­neurs, peut-être même de riches cadeaux et de grands hon­neurs.

Certainement aus­si sur­pris que nous par la requête de Nabuchodonosor, la bande des enchan­teurs tente de jouer la carte de la fausse naï­ve­té et, sur un ton léger, réex­pose la méthode habi­tuelle :
— Très bien, que le roi donc nous raconte d’abord son rêve, et ensuite nous lui don­ne­rons son inter­pré­ta­tion.
— Je vois bien que vous ten­tez de gagner du temps com­pre­nant qu’irrévocable est mon pro­pos, reprend Nabuchodonosor qui com­mence pro­ba­ble­ment déjà à s’énerver un peu, mais je vous le redis : rap­por­tez-moi mon rêve et son sens, sinon vous serez mécham­ment punis.
Ne pou­vant plus se défi­ler, les enchan­teurs se trouvent dans la néces­si­té d’être expli­cites. Ils résument au roi l’impasse dans laquelle il les met :
— Votre ques­tion est vrai­ment dif­fi­cile, vous savez : jamais per­sonne n’a deman­dé ça à qui­conque. À vrai dire, c’est même un peu exces­sif, car, à moins d’être un dieu, c’est-à-dire sans corps de chair ou habi­tant une autre demeure que les êtres de chair ou dont l’habitat n’est pas dans la chair, il est tout sim­ple­ment impos­sible, sur la terre sèche, de répondre à votre demande.

À ce moment pré­cis de l’histoire, toutes les ver­sions concordent : Nabuchodonosor s’irrite furieu­se­ment, sort de ses gonds, écume, s’énerve, entre dans une colère noire, devient vrai­ment furieux, s’emballe, finit par se fâcher et décide, sans d’ailleurs prendre le temps de peser le pour et le contre, de tuer tous les sages de Babylone. Un décret est publié, et l’on part, entre autres, à la recherche de Daniel et de ses amis pour les mas­sa­crer.

Après s’être ren­sei­gné sur les rai­sons qui ont conduit à une sen­tence si sévère, Daniel demande à Nabuchodonosor de lui accor­der un petit délai avant le mas­sacre. Il rentre chez lui, raconte toute l’histoire à ses amis, et ensemble, ils dis­cutent afin de ten­ter de trou­ver une manière de s’en sor­tir.

— Au petit matin, Daniel va voir Nabuchodonosor qui, tou­jours autant obsé­dé par son rêve, lui demande d’emblée :
— As-tu fina­le­ment trou­vé ce dont j’ai rêvé et pour­quoi ?
— Oui, j’ai trou­vé ton rêve et sa signi­fi­ca­tion, répond Daniel. Je résume ce qui s’est pas­sé : tu t’es cou­ché tôt, ton esprit a diva­gué, tu ne dor­mais pas encore, tu t’es mis à pen­ser à l’avenir et, dans ton som­meil, tes rêves ont répon­du à tes ques­tions.
— C’est-à-dire ?
— C’est-à-dire qu’ils t’ont fait savoir ce qui allait se pas­ser, très exac­te­ment. Tu as rêvé et ton rêve t’a don­né une vision, une pré­mo­ni­tion même : au matin, tu te réveille­ras, tu seras trou­blé par ton rêve, tu cher­che­ras à com­prendre ce qui te trouble, tu feras venir astro­logues, devins, mages, ensor­ce­leurs, tu deman­de­ras à connaître ce qui t’a trou­blé, tu seras très clair, tu exi­ge­ras qu’on t’expose simul­ta­né­ment ton rêve et son inter­pré­ta­tion puisqu’ils n’existent pas l’un sans l’autre et que per­ce­voir et racon­ter orga­nisent la manière dont on per­çoit et raconte. D’ailleurs, tu seras même prêt à sup­pri­mer d’un seul décret toute la sagesse de Babylone si elle pen­sait pou­voir les dis­so­cier, si elle esti­mait par exemple que l’on pou­vait racon­ter sans inter­pré­ter, per­ce­voir ou décrire sans com­po­ser, et qu’il exis­te­rait ain­si comme des sortes de choses en soi, brutes, simples, arides, per­dues dans des espaces neutres, des choses aux­quelles on se cogne­rait ou qui nous aspi­re­raient dans un tour­billon silen­cieux. Alors que tout, ton rêve y com­pris, est tou­jours immé­dia­te­ment pris dans ton trouble qui l’enveloppe et le fait explo­ser et dans celui des choses qui t’enveloppe et te fait explo­ser.

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« La fin des his­toires »
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Po&sie n° 180
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p. 168–170

Oui, c’est le mar­quis, je pense, de qui le cer­veau, de même que le mien, se voit équi­pé de ce que le mar­quis, donc, appelle un sur­veillant de som­meil. Le sur­veillant de som­meil est mis en acti­vi­té sitôt que le mar­quis s’est lui-même mis au lit. Le mar­quis lit dans son lit (force lui est, au demeu­rant, de consta­ter que ce n’est plus jamais que dans son lit qu’il lit), et le sur­veillant de som­meil est, prin­ci­pa­le­ment, un sur­veillant de lec­ture, quoiqu’il puisse aus­si, mais de moins en moins fré­quem­ment pour celui qui nous occupe, fonc­tion­ner en mode de sur­veillance de pen­sée : le cas est deve­nu, en effet, excep­tion­nel où le mar­quis se couche assez repo­sé pour pou­voir encore voir venir la fatigue ; le mar­quis, dans le cas rare où il se couche repo­sé, lit un peu, voit, lisant, venir la fatigue, éteint la lumière, et, seule­ment alors met en acti­vi­té le sur­veillant de som­meil, avant d’entreprendre de pen­ser dans le noir. Dans le même temps que le mar­quis pense, le sur­veillant de som­meil ana­lyse ses pen­sées, non pas sous le jour de leur valeur intrin­sèque, laquelle demeure de l’exclusive com­pé­tence du mar­quis, mais sous celui seul de leur cohé­rence, en fonc­tion de quoi il les qua­li­fie­ra ou de diurnes ou de noc­turnes. Une pen­sée sitốt épin­glée comme noc­turne, le sur­veillant de som­meil aver­tit le mar­quis qu’il vient de s’endormir, et prend congé. Ainsi, cepen­dant, que nous l’avons dit, le cas le plus fré­quent est celui ou c’est déjà fati­gué que le mar­quis se met au lit, et lit. Ce sont phrases, alors, qu’examine le sur­veillant de som­meil, auto­ma­ti­que­ment déclen­ché. Sans doute même devrions-nous dire – puisque, enfin, sont d’ordinaire phrases elles-mêmes ces pen­sées que nous avons vu plus haut le sur­veillant de som­meil pou­voir avoir pour tâche d’analyser – qu’il ana­lyse des phrases lues, toute la ques­tion, qu’il lui faut résoudre, étant celle de savoir si le livre existe, ou s’il n’existe pas, dans lequel le mar­quis, selon, ou les lit ou croit les lire. S’il est patent que le livre n’existe pas, ou si, exis­tant pour­tant, ou pou­vant être appe­lé à l’existence (le point qui alerte le sur­veillant de som­meil peut être, en effet, l’irruption de l’un par­mi ces per­son­nages des­quels le mar­quis est le concep­teur unique ; or nous devons savoir, et du moins, quant à lui, le sur­veillant de som­meil sait-il, que le mar­quis ne se relit jamais ; à plus forte rai­son ne se relit-il pas au lit), ce livre ne peut être le livre que le mar­quis lit, c’est, alors, que le mar­quis, sinon dort, du moins s’endort. À la ques­tion de savoir à quoi réel­le­ment peut bien ser­vir un sur­veillant de som­meil, il est répon­du que, sans doute, en effet, non, il ne sert pas à grand-chose : à peine, nous l’avons vu, dans les cas de lec­tures lasses, dont nous savons aus­si qu’elles sont les plus fré­quentes, auto­rise-t-il – ins­truit par le sur­veillant de som­meil de ceci qu’il ne lit plus mais déjà, sinon tout à fait dort, du moins s’endort, le mar­quis dépose le livre, déchausse ses lunettes, et éteint la lumière – de tout de même assez modestes éco­no­mies d’énergie. En ce, tou­te­fois, qu’il per­met, ou bien à la phrase ou bien à la pen­sée près, de repé­rer l’instant de l’endormissement, il offre sur le tard de la vie ce que l’on se rap­pelle avoir répé­ti­ti­ve­ment ten­té d’atteindre dans l’enfance.

Est-ce que je ten­dais la main vers l’interrupteur, pro­non­çais les mots à voix basse, « je ne sais pas », et seule­ment alors me disais : « Tiens, voi­là que je les ai pro­non­cés encore ! », et cela, chaque soir ? N’est-ce pas plu­tôt que, une fois, les pro­non­çant, me sur­pre­nant les pro­non­çant, j’ai pen­sé – j’ai pen­sé d’abord « Mais qu’est-ce qu’il me prend ? » : je ne bat­tais pas, en effet, à tel point la cam­pagne que je n’eusse conscience à tout le moins d’une bizar­re­rie ; et ensuite seule­ment : « Qui plus est, il me semble bien que ce n’est pas la pre­mière fois. » Mais com­bien de fois ? Une fois ? Deux fois ? Trois ou quatre ? En sorte que, où j’ai dit plus haut « chaque soir », il pour­rait ne s’agir que de peu de soirs, et peut-être point même consé­cu­tifs. Il pour­rait ne s’agir que de l’illusion de plu­sieurs soirs. Ou est-ce que je me sur­pre­nais, ces mots, « je ne sais pas », sur le point de les pro­non­cer, et cela, alors, oui, pour­quoi pas ?, chaque soir – chaque soir, de nou­veau, ayant déri­vé mes pen­sées sur le sujet vaste de mon igno­rance –, ou non pas, d’ailleurs, sur le point de les pro­non­cer, ni ne me sur­pre­nant, mais, chaque soir, y recou­rant comme à cela seul qui fût sûr, ou non pas y recou­rant, et non pas comme à cela seul qui fût sûr, en négli­geant, encore qu’elle fût, la cer­ti­tude au pro­fit de la répé­ti­ti­vi­té qu’elle fonde, en accep­tant, pro­vi­soire, puisque, le len­de­main, je recom­men­ce­rais, le constat en tant même que, le len­de­main, je recom­men­ce­rais, et l’égalant, répé­ti­tif, par là m’égalant, et mieux de le dire, de pro­non­cer les mots, et qu’ils vibrassent, fût-ce peu, dans l’air et dans l’espace, qui sont ordre de la nature, à l’ordre de la nature, et à la répé­ti­ti­vi­té des soirs.

L’intérêt, pour­tant, qu’il y a, non négli­geable, tant s’en faut, à pas­ser des nuits très courtes, c’est que, à la condi­tion qu’il ne soit pas pré­vu de ren­dez-vous après le déjeu­ner, l’on a désor­mais un but dans la vie : la sieste. C’est dans la pen­sée de la sieste, en outre, qu’au cours d’une mati­née certes s’étirant, mais enfin moins que n’eût fait, suc­cé­dant à la nuit longue, le jour entier, et mal­gré les effets de la fatigue qu’il se peut bien que l’on res­sente, l’on s’adonnera à quelque tâche louable : repeindre une à deux fenêtres, apprendre quelques mots d’une langue étran­gère, à tra­vers les­quels voir venir le monde ; dans son car­net, cou­cher une ou deux notes. L’heure son­née de la sieste, l’on se ver­ra en droit de rete­nir un ouvrage, indif­fé­rem­ment de lec­ture aisée, ou plus dif­fi­cile : la honte, dans le pre­mier cas, l’effort dans l’autre, seront trop brefs pour qu’il vaille d’en tenir compte. Au sor­tir de la sieste, l’on n’aura plus devant soi qu’agréables pers­pec­tives : verre d’avant dîner, dîner, pro­jec­tion d’un film dans l’ancienne nur­se­ry trans­for­mée en ciné­ma­thèque, and so to bed. L’on y pui­se­ra la force, ma foi, de peindre une fenêtre encore, d’apprendre quelques mots de plus, ou de cou­cher une autre note (au choix). L’on consta­te­ra, qui plus est, par le moyen d’un cal­cul simple, que la nuit courte addi­tion­née de sieste consacre au som­meil moins d’heures et, ce fai­sant, accorde plus à la vie pro­pre­ment dite, laquelle est éveil, que n’eût fait la nuit longue.

Nous par­lions de l’ignorance ; aus­si, d’un savoir obs­cur ; du sang, et com­ment, une fois appris qu’il cir­cule, c’est conti­nû­ment, obs­cu­ré­ment, qu’on le per­çoit cir­cu­ler ; de ce chuin­te­ment aux oreilles lorsqu’on les bouche ; du cour, et comme on l’entend battre, la nuit, ces coups sourds, dans le silence de la cam­pagne ; du corps en géné­ral ; de son uni­té, de son mor­cel­le­ment, de ses débris.