Juliette ManciniEveils

Growing up. Confronting others, dealing with the first disappointments, the way others look at you, the expectations of the world. And then make discoveries. To understand, to reveal oneself to oneself, to others. To build oneself. Through snippets of her life and her journey, Juliette Mancini tells her story, but also the world in which she grew up. The virilist legend of the grandfather who fought in the war; the first sexist clichés (the strength of boys, the grace of girls); the first hand on the buttocks in a crowd, the fear and shame that arise, but also the discovery that one can be desirable. By choosing these striking moments, or in any case significant moments in her life and career, and by deconstructing them with the greatest acuity, Juliette Mancini achieves an all too rare feat, that of transforming the particular into the universal. With modesty, delicacy, intelligence, and just the right amount of distance, she takes us from childhood to adulthood, from the acceptance of false evidence to the debunking of myths, the better to deconstruct the injunctions of a society so quick to assign us roles. His previous book, De la Chevalerie, was already interested in the mechanisms of domination, and, without Manicheism, rightly pointed out the complexity of these mechanisms, refusing the (too) simple duality dominant-dominated. The same analytical finesse is at work here, demonstrating, for example, how the gaze of the other can be alternately flattering, inquisitive or degrading. She also reminds us of the extent to which paradoxes and contradictions seem to be the hallmark of human beings, but also, without doubt, what makes them so rich. With Eveils, Juliette Mancini has written a powerful work, an openly political book, which, rather than asserting ready-made truths, invites reflection. A great success.