INTERVIEW
Diane Ducret was successful in 2011 with the publication of her first book, Femmes de dictateur (Perrin), sold over a million copies and translated into 25 languages. She was then interested in the wives and mistresses of 20th century dictators. A theme that the author, who has a master's degree in the history of philosophy and a master's degree in philosophy at Normal-Sup, has continued to explore. At the end of January, La dictatrice (Flammarion) was published, a novel where the action takes place in 2023 and which imagines the establishment of a dictatorship in Europe by a woman. Diane Ducret tells us about its origins and the main lines at Anne Roumanoff's microphone.
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"Would the world be truly at peace if women ruled it?"
For ten years, Diane Ducret has worked a lot on women and has felt the need to write this book. She says she wanted to ask herself what would be total parity. "If the woman is the equal of the man, would it not also be it in the worst? A female dictator could it be the ultimate parity? Could it be possible? Can the world would be really at peace if the women led it? ". A series of questions which she tries to answer in her novel.
The book was written two years ago, in the middle of Brexit, while populists are winning all over Europe and "Women's rights are starting to be violated in Poland, Hungary, Spain ...". The Dictator begins in a context of economic crisis, while every weekend people cry out in anger at the injustices.
The dictator who takes power directs Europe from the Paris Opera and develops its rules. Like that which decrees that "on simple denunciation, men found guilty of rape or sexual harassment are subjected to chemical sterilization". "A program that has not been applied to the Cesars," says Diane Ducret with a laugh.
If her heroine takes power, it is because she realizes that power has been left to men for thousands of years, men who "brought us to war, to economic bankruptcy, to ecological bankruptcy "and that" now enough is enough ". "She does not say 'I get up, I get out of the car' but 'I get up and I take power'", notes the writer, referring to the tribune of Virginie Despentes published Sunday in Liberation following Cesar.
"By wanting good for others, one can do absolutely total harm"
In the book, domestic violence is redefined by the justice ministry and includes extreme jealousy, possessiveness, bashing, name-calling and constant criticism. Men found guilty are expelled from their homes, dispossessed, separated from their children whom they can never see again before their majority so as not to corrupt their spirit. What give grain to those who already speak today of "feminist dictatorship" in France? Diane Ducret refutes it and considers the term used today as "exaggerated".
Through La Dictatrice , she nevertheless wants to "question feminism and certain excesses that exist for [her] in any form of radicalism and radicalization". Basically, the ideas of this dictatorship are not bad according to the writer since she wants to "protect women, and a world more harmonious, more egalitarian, more ecological". Diane Ducret is more interested in the way in which, "in the hands of a weakened, sick personality, the exercise of power can make a spirit twist, crack it and in particular how, by wanting good for others, as soon as 'we impose it, we can do absolutely total harm. "
"If tomorrow we were in a dictatorship, which of us would really resist?"
An ambitious story in which Diane Ducret is interested in the relationship between power and sexual drive. "In all dictators, total power goes with a kind of sexualization and total appetite," she said. So she wondered if it would be the same for women and how we would categorize it. "Finally, if the woman is the equal of the man, she also has the right to have violent appetites, she has the right to use her sexuality also to take power. Or then, does that we will say that it would be ugly in a woman? "
Raised by an old resistant grandfather, Diane Ducret was influenced by this spirit of resistance which she questions in her book. "The dictatorship is the place of maximum destruction and the place where one can question the shortcomings of the human soul," she believes. "If tomorrow we were in a dictatorship, which of us would really resist? How would we manage as women to resist differently?"
The Dictator could become a series. Diane Ducret confides that a "beautiful adaptation proposal" was proposed to her by "a very beautiful broadcaster" in the United States, whom she will meet soon.