A few days ago were reported in The duty the words of four authors, on the representation of romantic relationships in certain literary classics and more particularly on the tragic fate of many of their heroines. Claudia Larochelle then mentioned the need to “be vigilant when we give books to our children, our adolescents”, while specifying, with reason, that censorship was by no means the way to follow. Rather, it advocated the use of “common sense, of the normalization of relations of equity, of justice”.
This passage stuck in my head for several days. I wondered how I should take this call for vigilance, especially since it was a question of works deemed essential: Dumas, Flaubert, Zola, etc. Of course, we are not talking about censorship here … But should we advise against such readings? Formulate warnings about them? Reorient the gaze towards harmless stories?
The words also awakened in me the not-so-distant memory of the controversy surrounding the Association des libraires du Québec. It was in the fall of 2020: faced with pressure from a few people – dissatisfied with the visibility offered to the Prime Minister and the works he wanted to talk about – the management of the Association of Booksellers, caught in the turmoil, had exercised which amounted to self-censorship, removing the Prime Minister’s list of suggestions from his platform. The organization finally did an about-face a few days later. However, to justify their initial dissatisfaction, the signatories of a letter had affirmed, among other things, that “reading is not a virtue in itself, not without a critical spirit” and that certain ideas can directly lead to violence. However, there was no call for censorship: here too, it was more a question of a call for vigilance.
Suspicious vigilance
Without knowing the depths of M’s thoughtme Larochelle, it seems to me, in a very general way, that these calls for vigilance in literary and artistic matters often involve a desire to overprotect a certain public (which one believes to be fragile or inexperienced), and a concern about to the possibility that the latter is too strongly influenced, or even “contaminated” even in his behavior, by the problematic or stereotypical representations to which he is exposed. Now, it is precisely this will and this concern that make the call for literary vigilance suspect, at least as I perceive it.
First, it seems paternalistic to me to suggest that certain readings may be discouraged by those who have not reached a “sufficient degree” of critical thinking. Qualified judgment, like the ability to analyze the subtleties of an essay or a story, is a faculty which, in fact, is formed through contact with diverse ideas and words. We cannot therefore hope that a critical mind will be formed. out of nothing, allowing us then to attack the reading of the works in question. Knowing how to read and knowing how to judge, it is by doing it that we learn it. And it is by multiplying the readings and the perspectives that we can more easily distinguish things. In addition, by dint of wanting to overprotect readers, of wanting to guide each of their steps, they are stripped of their autonomy and their “right to read anything” (Daniel Pennac).
On the other hand, I very much doubt that individuals will buy into an idea just because they have been exposed to it through the prism of reading. One can very well be in contact with a literary representation of the world and human relations without necessarily adhering to it. Of course, no one will deny that certain works contribute to our development and our education, including our moral education. But it is far from it that one can imagine that false, stereotypical or licentious ideas will be blindly supported by the people who frequented them at the turn of a reading. (Even if this were the case, the cause would not be attributable to what these people read; at most, one might wonder what they did not read.)
In any case, those who believe that certain ideas should not be recognized in our society, on the pretext that the simple attendance of these latter would risk their adoption, find themselves in my opinion in a very bad position. In addition to being fallacious, the argument is double-edged. How indeed will they explain the validity of their own convictions, if these could be basically only the random result of their own associates?
The calls for “literary vigilance” may well be more nuanced than censorship – or the fireworks, a sorry example of which made the headlines a few days ago – but they are nonetheless, in my opinion, tinged. paternalism, insofar as they hesitate to trust the intelligence of the readership.
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