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Rachel Cusk . Canada, 1967. Writer. In 2009, their marriage disintegrated. In Despojos (Libros del Asteroide) he tells how he survived the separation and the universe of fears, strengths, emptiness and freedom that opened up after the separation.

How are you handling the crisis? Do you think something will change substantially? I live in a remote place and we are quite lonely. Still, the levels of distraction have dropped and it's easier for me to think. There was a small hope, I'm sure I wasn't the only one harboring it, that the pandemic could be a threat to the evil power structures that keep us in check, or at least a corrective to greed, not to mention a balm to environment. But it has already become clear that no. "I think that a feminist should not marry or have a joint account or a house deeded in the name of both," she writes in 'Despojos'. Yes, that is my interpretation of what it is to be a feminist given that we continue to live entangled in material and social structures that put equality at risk. How can a woman have a child without developing some form of dependency or inequality? That is the real question and I think feminism has not yet been able to give you a clear answer. And that is a problem as urgent for women as it is for men. What do you think of the current resurgence of feminism? I tend to live it through my daughters, and the most palpable advantage over women of my generation is that they do not know he expects them to assume the contradictions that exist between his world and that of his mother. Being able to look to your mother as a role model is a necessity but for generations many women have denied themselves. It is a responsibility that all mothers should take seriously. I also perceive that misogyny is expressed much more obviously and clearly with them than with me at their age, which is depressing. What I am not too sure about is the attitude that contemporary feminism has towards women who defend principles that are taking us back years. There is a tendency among people of my generation to see women as virtuous, regardless of what life they lead, and that is still there. In her memoirs she explains that her husband stayed at home looking after the girls for years and that this model does not either. it worked. Is conciliation an unsolvable problem? Maybe if we admitted it we would save ourselves a lot of headaches. The fact that it did not work for me does not mean that it is a universal truth, it is subjective and personal, although I believe that what happened to me is not uncommon. It should be possible for men to stay at home raising children and taking over the domestic sphere. In fact, I think that is what many want to do, and leave women to experiment with new forms of power. Both men and women have long been denied that opportunity. "A feminist man is a bit like a vegetarian: what he stands for is the humanitarian principle, I suppose," she says in the book. My daughters often say that a man can only be considered a feminist when he admits that no man can really be considered a feminist, which seems to me a good way to summarize the idea. The most important thing is that every man in a position of power or influence abides by feminist principles, even if his instincts do not lead him to do so. Two decades ago she wrote 'A Life's Work', a book about motherhood that had a very hot and cruel reaction. One critic went on to say that the human race would die out if everyone read it, how did you survive that? You have to survive a lot of things when you're a mother: the challenge it poses to your individual identity and morality, to the pressure to conform, to the temptation to falsify your emotions, to publicly subscribe to what is 'good' or 'bad' related to motherhood, and above all, to all the shame we women feel for wanting to protect a self of my own instead of subsuming on the existence of a baby. It is one of those moments in which femininity is most compromised. So when I read all those cruel reviews I had the feeling that they came from how wrong and wrong maternal culture is, rather than from a literary or intellectual scrutiny of what I had written. I also had two young girls to take care of, so of course I survived, but writing today about how idyllic motherhood can be has become almost a literary genre, today they wouldn't judge her in that fierce way. . The opposite would surely happen. Do you consider yourself a pioneer? The truth is that I don't know, what I do know is that it is really hard to write well about motherhood. It is difficult to achieve the objectivity necessary to do so. In my case, I didn't know anything about the idyllic aspect of motherhood because I had never seen or heard anything like it, I had never thought about being a mother, so I was not aware of promulgating an unspeakable vision of her. In the book she confesses that having a son was like waking up one day and realizing that he knew how to speak Russian, a kind of strange gift that he couldn't explain where he came from. Was writing about it a way of rationalizing something so animalistic? I did not have any kind of closeness to my mother, I never felt loved or cared for by her, so when I had to be a mother I turned my whole being, including my intellect, into that new experience. It was like filling in the gaps in my past and my emotional world. Also, from the beginning I felt that I really loved my baby, that I respected her as a person and as a friend, that always seemed more important to me than any animal instinct. It has always seemed to me that the people who boast the most about loving their children the most are those who do not really feel any respect for them. Mine have taught me a lot. Why are there people who get married over and over again despite knowing what a divorce is and people who never do? There are several practical reasons why you should be married. And there is some waste of energy in all those people who are not married and insist on maintaining the illusion of freedom when, in fact, it would not matter if they were. I believe that those who do not live in a couple's commitment or are not parents are perhaps the only ones who genuinely understand what marriage consists of. Getting married doesn't always present itself as an option. It is something you do because you assume you are going to do it. Or because you can. The reasons people got married were much more complex before. Marriage has evolved a lot, from Edith Warthon's novels to the time of her mother, who recommended that she look for a good husband in college. You are married a third time. How do you imagine the institution in the future? It still amazes and worries me a little that marriage is still seen as a bargaining chip for women my daughters' age. It still has that kind of fairy tale. Being chosen: is that what women still want? There's also some deliberately light reasoning in the idea of ​​getting married just because you want to throw a big party and dress up in a special way that day, and that's probably the real motivation for people to keep doing it. It is still scary to consider why one chooses not to marry, what reality is like when you erase from it all the narratives associated with marriage. My advice to my daughters has always been the same: that as long as they don't give up their financial independence, it really doesn't matter if they get married or not. I have never depended economically on a man and although it seems like a hard road, it is the best one to travel.

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