{"id":7738,"date":"2025-01-30T18:42:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T17:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pipol12.pipolcongres.eu\/2025\/01\/30\/rejet-de-la-famille-philippe-giovanelli\/"},"modified":"2025-01-30T18:45:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T17:45:28","slug":"rejet-de-la-famille-philippe-giovanelli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pipol12.pipolcongres.eu\/en\/2025\/01\/30\/rejet-de-la-famille-philippe-giovanelli\/","title":{"rendered":"Rejection of the Family Philippe Giovanelli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writers and filmmakers have described their rejection of the family in a historical context. In his C19th novel<\/span>L’Enfant<\/span><\/em>\u00a0[1], Jules Vall\u00e8s describes the beatings and bullying he endured. \u201cAs long as I\u2019m still a boy, my father can make me cry and bleed: I\u2019ve got to obey and respect him. The family code gives him the power of life and death over me.”\u00a0[2] He denounces parental tyranny, and in his oeuvre, the intimate is superimposed on the political. Following his death sentence in absentia for his participation in the libertarian movement of the Paris Commune in 1871, he went into exile in London. It was there that he wrote this rejection of the family institution, with its arbitrary and violent power.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a>Twenty years later, Gide lets out a cry \u2013 <\/span>Families, I hate you!<\/span><\/em>\u00a0[3] \u2013 which still resonates today. As a theorist of possible jouissance\u00a0[4] \u2013 jouissance from privation and voluptuousness resulting from its satisfaction \u2013 he rages against \u201cclosed circles round the hearth\u201d and \u201cdoors fast shut\u201d, which he assumes to be \u201cjealous possessions of happiness\u201d. He does not denounce childhood punishment but rages against families where happiness is assumed to be selfish. These rejections are two forms of attack on ideals in their dimension of hypocrisy.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the intimate to the universal, contemporary novels take as their backdrop the incommunicability within a family. As a social institution, the family keeps pace with changes in its environment. The profound changes in relations between men and women and the effects of science and technology (contraception, assisted reproductive technology, medical genetics) are altering the very heart of this social bond. The realities of death and sexuality are evoked and intertwined with the torments of the family. <\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Just the End of the World<\/span><\/em>\u00a0[5], Louis, in his thirties, knows that his death is imminent and irremediable. After rejecting his dreary family for almost fifteen years, his visit will only be fleeting. Inhibition and rivalry have fixed destinies in silence. Louis closes in on the weight of his impending death, renouncing that \u201cgreat and beautiful cry\u201d\u00a0[6] that could have been liberating.<\/span><\/p>\n

These variations on the rejection of the family bear witness to the constancy of <\/span>Discontents in the Family<\/span><\/em>. But the family is neglected or rejected only for the trouble, or worse, the tyrannies and abuses it perpetuates. Breaking with one’s ancestors or siblings is nothing new. Neither is not wanting children and asserting this choice. However, rejection of the structure itself, of which the kinship bond is only one facet, sometimes reflects a challenge to the symbolic order. The 21<\/span>st<\/span><\/sup>century has seen the emergence of a new kind of non-desire for children, with new political motives on the part of those who make this choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some people are involved in a movement called \u201c<\/span>Childfree<\/span><\/em>\u201d, which emerged in the United States in the 1970s. This refusal to have children is mainly found in economically developed countries and is rooted in a political position. <\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>GINKs<\/span><\/em>\u00a0[7] – an acronym for <\/span>Green Inclinations, No Kids<\/span><\/em> – see themselves as environmental activists driven by a radical ideology of population decline. Their decision not to have children is based on scientific publications. From these, they testify with anxiety to global climate change and the prospects for the coming decades. One of these so-called <\/span>GINKs<\/span><\/em>sums up her position by explaining that it was out of \u201caltruism for [her] unborn child\u201d that she took this radical decision, in the name of the slogan: \u201cIf you love children, don’t bring them into the world\u201d. Another cites the collapse theorist who coined the neologism \u201ccollapsology\u201d\u00a0[8] and the anxiety associated with these predictions. Another participant in the documentary argues that \u201cThe carbon footprint of a European baby amounts to six hundred and twenty round-trips between Paris and New York by plane\u201d. It is striking that this calculation places a human life in an accounting register. The child is rejected as a quantifiable product. This quantification is in direct opposition to desire.<\/span><\/p>\n

A threat of collapse lurks in these testimonies, and a pure culture of the death drive is mobilised. They are supported by a discourse that asserts the need for a radical break with old models, even prophesying a generalised collapse. Does this non-desire for children serve as a defense against the real of a global disruption of nature and its consequences for the social bond?<\/span><\/p>\n

This discourse is a social bond and sometimes seeks to establish this non-desire for children so that it applies to everyone. But we know from Lacan that moral law is not pure reason. What animates these radical positions is more often than not a culture of superego. The fact that the superego is not rational, but drive-based, leads us to suppose that this non-desire for a child is motivated by a jouissance.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1967, Lacan pointed out that \u201cthe destruction of an old social order\u201d\u00a0[9] would result in the rise of imperialism and segregation. Claiming to be <\/span>GINKs<\/span><\/em> is not necessarily a refusal to enter the symbolic order, but rather a rejection of the effects on the real induced by the alliance of capitalist discourse and the discourse of science.<\/span><\/p>\n

In \u201c Family Complexes\u201d\u00a0[10], Lacan also reflects on the fate of the family in the West. He emphasises that the family is not natural, not biological, but a social fact. We read in this seminal text that the evolution of the family is moving towards a reduction to the nuclear family. Let’s assume, too, that the logic of anticipating this heralds the childless couple and, even further ahead, <\/span>Ones-all-alone<\/span><\/em>. A \u201csocial fact\u201d can be undone.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let’s not forget that these rejections of the old order are also a source of invention for the younger generation. Reinvented love takes many forms, as in the case of <\/span>bold love<\/span><\/em> on social networks. Neither marriage, nor children, nor cohabitation, it’s about being happy together, but separately. Perhaps there’s a kind of rejection here of these families, silently sealed by serious dysfunction? Could it be that this boldness is also a way of assuming a form of solitude specific to our age, which Lacan describes as the age of the O<\/span>nes-all-alone<\/span><\/em>?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[1] Vall\u00e8s, J., <\/span>The Child<\/span><\/em>, trans. D Parm\u00e9e, New York: New York Review of Books, 2005.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] <\/span>Ibid<\/span><\/em>., p.142.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] Gide, A., <\/span>The Fruits of the Earth<\/span><\/em>, trans. D. Bussy, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, p.68.<\/span><\/p>\n

[4] <\/span>Ibid<\/span><\/em>., p.66-67.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] Lagarce J.L., <\/span>Juste la fin du monde<\/span><\/em>, Paris: Flammarion, 2020, p. 125.<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] <\/span>Ibid<\/span><\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] \u201cGinks\u00a0: ne pas faire d\u2019enfant, geste \u00e9colo ultime\u00a0?\u201d, Long report by T. Schlegel et V. Rebeyrotte, <\/span>France Culture<\/span><\/em>, 14th February 2020, findable on the internet: https:\/\/www.radiofrance.fr\/franceculture\/podcasts\/grand-reportage\/ginks-ne-pas-faire-d-enfant-geste-ecolo-ultime-4891504.<\/span><\/p>\n

[8] Cf. Servigne, P., <\/span>How Everything Can Collapse: A Manual for our Times<\/span><\/em>, trans. A. Brown, London: Polity, 2020.<\/span><\/p>\n

[9] Cf. Lacan, J., \u201cAllocution sur les psychoses de l\u2019enfant\u201d, <\/span>Autres \u00e9crits<\/span><\/em>, Paris: Seuil, 2001, pp. 362-\u00a0363.<\/span><\/p>\n

[10] Lacan, J., \u201cThe Family Complexes\u201d, trans. C. Asp, <\/span>Critical Texts, vol.5, issue 3<\/span><\/em>, 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Translation: Alasdair Duncan<\/span><\/p>\n

Proofreading: Laurence Maman<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writers and filmmakers have described their rejection of the family in a historical context. In his C19th novelL’Enfant\u00a0[1], Jules Vall\u00e8s describes the beatings and bullying he endured. \u201cAs long as I\u2019m still a boy, my father can make me cry and bleed: I\u2019ve got to obey and respect him. The family code gives him the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7358,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[532,561],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nRejection of the Family Philippe Giovanelli - Pipol Congr\u00e8s<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pipol12.pipolcongres.eu\/en\/2025\/01\/30\/rejet-de-la-famille-philippe-giovanelli\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rejection of the Family Philippe Giovanelli - Pipol Congr\u00e8s\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Writers and filmmakers have described their rejection of the family in a historical context. 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