The social network momentarily blocked the account of Ariana Harwicz, author of the novel. In addition, he sent information about help centers to prevent him from committing suicide. Let’s talk, once again, about political correctness.
Better to say it from the beginning and in capital letters: IT’S FICTION. Perhaps if the robot that operates Twitter had known from the beginning, this note would not exist, but perhaps the robot, the algorithm or the market is not interested in understanding that, as the French poet Arthur Rimbaud said, literature – but in general the art- is a fertile space for the subversion of morality.
Twitter did not understand that and on December 5, when Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz trilled the title of her first novel (Kill you, love), her account was blocked for several hours. The little blue bird automaton interpreted that, with his trill, Harwicz “promoted suicide” and intended “to incite self-mutilation.” And then, she says, “they sent me a list of centers to prevent me from committing suicide.”
And it is a paradox because the idea of suicide has indeed crossed the mind of the Buenos Aires writer, and along with that idea, other more crude have arisen such as pedophilia, infanticide or incest. His characters feed on that and more. This is not easy to understand at a time when, as the Argentine journalist Alejo Schapire describes it, he increasingly refuses to differentiate the narrator from the author, where censorship and self-censorship are increasingly practiced for political correctness.
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It is the result of the “disservice that marketing and a certain militancy do to literature written by women, and how could it be otherwise, of their vision of the pandemic and of what it is doing with us”, explains the author from “The progressive betrayal.”
Fragment of “Kill yourself, love”
When my husband goes on a trip, every second of silence is followed by a horde of demons creeping through my brain. A rat jumps on the transparent roof. The crazy woman seems to have fun. I’m going to see if the baby breathes every minute, I touch it to see if it reacts, I uncover it, change its position, illuminate it, pick it up, we are still in the stage of white death. After I control myself, I make myself a sandwich and I stay in front of the TV. But immediately the ajjj ajjj of an owl, that involuntary and erotic genital sound terrifies me. I turn off the TV. I imagine the animals in an orgy, a deer, a rat and a wild boar. I laugh, but I’m immediately afraid of that hodgepodge of bicharracos. Those legs, wings, tails and scales hooked in a race of pleasure. How will a boar ejaculate? I hear again the ajjj, ajjj, like hanging, ajjj, ajjj, like a hoarse and catlike gargle emerging from the curved beak of the owl. Through the large window in the living room I see that in the background is the old mobile home. I don’t know why that house that he left us more than once in the middle of the road is enchanted. It’s rusty but my man says it can still get a few miles on it and that the three of us could go to sea. I’m afraid it will tip over and the baby will be liquidated. Liquidate the baby between the two.
***
A few weeks ago, before the blocking of her Twitter account made the news, Ariana Harwicz had spoken with Radio France International about the harshness of the language with which she approaches her works. Before arriving in France, the country where he has lived since 2007, Harwicz crossed the borders of theater and cinema, both territories crossed by writing. However, it was when he studied playwriting in Buenos Aires that he encountered the violence of theater writing.
“I liked reading plays more than novels, it is as if I thought that there is a more condensed violence, perhaps because the theater is shorter and more explosive than the novel.” That atomic encounter with theater writing was marking his style.
His texts, Nicolás Hochman says, “are difficult, in the sense that you have to have the stomach to read them, to bank them, to overcome the morality we practice, even if we don’t like to admit it too much. They put ethics on hold and go further. They provoke, disturb, wear down. They are tremendous ”.
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Regarding the novel of the controversy, Aída Palau Sorolla, from Radio France International, explains that “Kill yourself, love” is a monologue full of rage by a woman who lives in the countryside and who has just become a mother. With the emergence of the baby, the protagonist is torn between that family role, protecting the child and violent, murderous, suicidal impulses, with very wild, almost animal visions. It’s fiction, but she wrote it precisely when Ariana Harwicz had her first child, breaking the stereotype of the woman satisfied with her motherhood, she says.
In this regard, Harwicz says: “My impulse to go to writing was not to do something illegal, terrible in life. I wanted to try to live that life that I cannot live and transgress in writing. It turns out that the narrator is associated with the author and there is this confusion that is sometimes a bit dangerous (…) in real life I respect the traffic light and I don’t go around raping, stealing and killing. For life this ethical behavior is necessary, precisely to leave excess to art ”.
Fragment of “Kill yourself, love”
I need to see a weapon, even if it is still, dirty, unloaded. When my husband opened one eye I was pointing at him. He was so scared that he could not say a word. Kill him, I said. What, to whom ?, iiiiiiii, iiiiiiii. Kill the dog. Why am I going to kill him? Because he is suffering. So? Leave him alone. Are you serious? Iiii, iiii. Tomorrow we call the vet, he said and turned on his side giving me his ass. Call who? Kill him now, hit him, I said, get out. But he didn’t move and he snored almost as loudly as Bloodie’s moans. I stared at him sleeping in wonder at his eternal cowardice. Shotgun in hand I walked through the house to the corner of the kitchen where, twisted on a dirty rag, I sobbed in pain. I took aim and without thinking about anything, but with the attitude of an Israeli soldier, I heard in my head that they gave me the order. Fire! Fire damn it! And I fired the first shot of my life.
***
In a dialogue with the Télam news agency, the Argentine writer made reference to that excess of political correctness that circulates in the environment and for which there is no antidote or manufactured vaccine, but which, nevertheless, is even leading to self-censorship.
“It is the logic of the political terror of dictatorships, of fascism. Although I am not saying anything new: the mechanism of ideological pressure, of coercion, the environment of pressure exists, with the guidelines and coordinates of liberalism and capitalism ”.
“There are already editorials that work like this, even if they don’t say it, even if it’s not explicit, even if there are no blacklists. There are already lawyers who read the manuscripts. I’ve been saying it for a long time. And, of course, there is already self-censorship. It’s pretty depressing and I don’t know what the way out is. Leaving the networks can be or try to generate resistance from another side, but it is very difficult ”.
Yesterday my account was blocked for ‘promoting suicide’ + ‘inciting self-mutilation’ when writing the title of my novel. They sent me a list of centers to prevent me from committing suicide. @Margo_Glantz he sympathized, and they blocked it. Does anyone have the list of allowed words? pic.twitter.com/v9kiZAI1B0
— Ariana Harwicz (@ArianaHar) February 5, 2021
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The debate about political correctness is not new and is far from over. In a text published in El País de España on the origins of political correctness, he explains that “in the 1930s the use of this expression was limited to the circles of the Leninist left to refer to actions or individuals who aligned themselves with the dictates of the party. Soon, among disbelieving comrades, the use of these two words was impregnated with irony: politically correct served to slyly point out those who followed the party line with exaggerated fervor. ”Seven decades later the expression is still used and now it has a connotation quite different from that of its genesis.
“Berman, author of Terror y libertad (Tusquets) and The flight of the intellectuals (Duomo), explains on the phone that politically correct has been referring since the eighties to the stigmatization of language to advance social reforms. He blames the semantic mutation to the effect that France’s postmodern and poststructuralist philosophical principles had when imported and tenaciously applied in American academia. Political correctness ”, adds El País.
Let’s finish with Ariana Harwicz’s explanation: “Every century has its perversion, its excesses and its tyrants. This XXI century, it seems that the market can do everything and the market wants control and control is to control art as well. Ideologically control art under the pretext of good conduct of anti-racism, not to offend sexual minorities, ethnic minorities, or those who have a disease.
In order not to offend, which is impossible because life is violent (loving is violent, giving birth is violent, dying is violent, being sick is violent, talking is violent), we must make art that does not offend. That besides being despotic is perverse ”.
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