A woman is an Indian on “Discharge” by Claude Vercey

The equivalence between woman and Indian, a theme whose variations will be developed throughout the nine parts of the book, is forcefully stated from the first lines:

Once upon a time there was an Indian, a woman -

a woman is different – ​​different from a man
A woman is an Indian:
An Indian, therefore someone completely different.

Indian , she writes. and why not Indian ? We may be surprised: a reflection, a little further, on the ambiguity of the word man will provide a possible key:

Man means: not woman, and it also means: woman and man. We never know exactly what that means. But we can still dance it very well. We don't always need to know everything exactly.

So, Indian is, all inclusive, Indian and Indian? In any case, the antithesis of this designation, namely: those who don't dance with the Indians , seems to be fine Men in suits , and the author, depending on the fiction she develops, speaks about it knowingly:

I loved a man
a man in a suit
a man on a mission
he didn't want
leave your god for me
walk on the same earth
than me

and I will not leave my land
for him

This poem, which I quote in its entirety, gives the general outline of the book, the form as well as the tone: allusive ( no need to know everything exactly ), of a false naivety with its ironic undertones, which authorizes itself more worrying evocations: Cruelties lurk in the dark , it is rightly stated: When my hands were cut off I didn't say anything because it happens...

Clichés about women die hard, Murièle Camac is not afraid to take charge of them, to push them to the point of absurdity: thus, she insinuates, while it remains in the order of things that the man plays Ulysses - hero always in search And who always leaves -, the woman seems doomed to Tapestry (title of the first fragment, do not see this as a coincidence), to remain a Penelope, the one whose the story is not very interesting :

the story is that of a heroine
and the heroine is on a quest
in fact I will explain to you
she can't leave
she's not married yet, she has to sleep while she waits
she is married she is pregnant she is too fat
let's not talk about it
she has a child she has to take care of him she's stuck on an island
she doesn't want to get married, staying childless is not possible

she can't be a heroine
(she's probably a dirty whore)

So, a woman is an Indian, that much is understood. But everything is not so simple since Socrates is also an Indian…! You will definitely have to decide to read this book to see clearly!