French writer Annie Ernaux said she hoped that her Nobel Prize was "a sign of hope for all female writers", who "have not yet gained legitimacy as producers of written works". She made the comment in a lecture ahead of the official prize ceremony on Saturday in Sweden.
A feminist icon, 82-year-old Ernaux was awarded this year's Nobel in October for "the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory", the jury said.
Her writing is heavily drawn from her personal experiences of class and gender, often casting a critical eye on social structures.
In a lecture in Stockholm ahead of Saturday's gala prize ceremony, Ernaux said she took to writing her personal experiences because "a book can contribute to change" and "enable beings to reimagine themselves".
She noted that growing up as part of the post-war generation, "writers and intellectuals positioned themselves in relation to French politics and became involved in social struggles as a matter of course".
"In today's world, where the multiplicity of information sources and the speed at which images flash past condition a form of indifference, to focus on one's art is a temptation."
Annie Ernaux is the first French woman – and the 17th woman overall – to win the Nobel Literature Prize since it was first awarded in 1901.
An institution 'for men'
"Speech has almost always been monopolised by men and I have noticed that women are often less verbose in their speeches than men, knowing full well that they are more practical", she told AFP on Wednesday, adding it was time for the Nobels to modernise.
"It's hard to say but could we consider less pomp, fewer long gowns and tails? That wouldn't be bad", she suggested with a smile, a reference to Saturday's gala ceremony and banquet attended by the Swedish royal family and more than 1,200 guests.
But since arriving in Stockholm for a week of festivities celebrating this year's laureates, Ernaux said she had been struck by "the solemnity, the splendour of the prize" and "the scope and the role" that comes with it.
The feminist said she wanted to dedicate her Nobel "to all those who suffer, who suffer from domination in one way or another, from racism, from everything that is a form of inequality. And to all those who struggle and go unrecognised".
Surveillance of women's bodies
Ernaux warned of a dangerous ideology spreading in Europe under the shadow of the war in Ukraine aimed at excluding society's weakest and limiting women's reproductive rights.
"In Europe, an ideology of withdrawal and closure is on the rise, still concealed by the violence of an imperialist war waged by the dictator at the head of Russia," she said.
Ernaux said it was "steadily gaining ground in hitherto democratic countries."
"Founded on the exclusion of foreigners and immigrants, the abandonment of the economically weak, the surveillance of women's bodies, this ideology requires a duty of extreme vigilance, for me and all those for whom the value of a human being is always and everywhere the same," she said.
In her lecture, Ernaux also touched on the protests in Iran that erupted in mid-September following the death of Mahsa Amini who had been arrested by the Tehran morality police.
"We see it today in the revolt of women who have found the words to disrupt male power and who have risen up, as in Iran, against its most archaic form".
(with AFP)
