Eliane ViennotEn finir avec l'homme

Bye Bye Binary’s selection for their storefront.

With a title that would make Jean-Michel faint and nearly choke, this book tells the story of how and why the word ‘man’ came to refer to the entire human kind. It is interesting to get to know the history of such developments when one seeks to deconstruct them.

“Since when, why, by what diversions did the word “man” come to designate the entire human race? And why is it that so many French speakers do not think to question this totalizing usage?
In the course of a fascinating investigation, Éliane Viennot returns to the etymology of the term, to its original meaning and its meaning sublimated by the grace of powerful institutions, and to the contradictions and confusions that this has not failed to provoke. This book is the story of an abuse of language that has elevated the male of the species to the rank of absolute representative of humanity.
In the land of Cro-Magnon Man, of the Museum of Man, of the Houses of Human Sciences, of Human Rights, etc., this story is a French exception that smacks of masculinist imposture. It is time for the good man to go back to his bed – semantically speaking – and make room for the other individuals of the Homo genus: all humans, including men.”