Grandstand. In a 1920 short story titled A societyVirginia Woolf (1882-1941) depicts four young girls determined to put an end to the political, artistic, technical and intellectual irresponsibility of generations of women who devoted themselves to the reproduction of the species and left modestly to men the care of the march of the world.
They form a secret society, a club of questioners which is responsible for investigating the places of power and the methods of its exercise. Each leaves to inspect a territory. The first pushes the door of managerial offices, the second takes care of courthouses, the third visits universities, the fourth probes the arts and literature. They laugh a lot. They laugh a little. They become anthropologists of male domination.
Their research is refined. They return full of admiration for the ingenuity, technical inventiveness, intelligence and courage of men. They haven’t produced all good books, far from it, they are contemptuous, show-offs and hungry for ridiculous honours, but they are happy to sing their praises – women love to sing the praises of men, the reverse is less proven – even if what they have observed, the spirit of competition, the violence, the irresistible drive to produce, worries them. And I understand them.
The return of ancestral clichés
And then the unexpected happens. The war breaks out. And their cheerful optimism is shattered. We will perish, Cassandra said very gloomily, asphyxiated by this unstoppable activity. Because war sweeps away changes in mentality, freedoms, daring utopias, fraternity. War and its destruction bring back old stereotypes. It was a hundred years ago and a lot has changed. No doubt about it. But not those.
It will be pointed out to me that young Ukrainian women nevertheless take up arms. And younger ones too. And on television sets, where virologists have been replaced by generals, there are a few women specialists in geopolitics. However, with brutality, the terrible images with which we are assailed send us back to the world before. Men at the front and women fleeing the bombs, babies in their arms.
Brave men and weeping women. Tearful children saying goodbye to their father through a train window. We were so sure we weren’t there anymore. Because most men are afraid, of course, and most women are brave, we know that. Tied. So how to explain this return of ancestral clichés? War comes and our universalism breaks like a wave on granite.
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