"I am a woman of letters, historian, former diplomat and feminist", thus begins each of the five episodes that make up this "A naked voice" that Caroline Broué devotes to Claudine Monteil. And it's wonderful to see that the feminist commitment of the woman who was close to Simone de Beauvoir has remained not only intact, but particularly energetic.
But let's resume since it is the essence of this program to retrace the journey of those who mark our time. Episode 1, Claudine Monteil was born in 1949 to a chemist mother, Josiane Serre, who was director of the Ecole Normale Supérieure for young girls, and a mathematician father, Jean-Pierre Serre, who was a professor at the College de France. And to remember that the latter offered him, on his 15th birthday, the copy of the Second Sex, the book by Beauvoir that his mother read when she was pregnant.
In episode 2, Claudine Monteil tells how, involved in the Maoist movement, she meets Sartre and, in the following episode, how, accompanied by Marceline Loridan, she dares to push the door of a meeting of the Women's Liberation Movement (MLF) despite the Maoists being banned from joining this gang of "hysterics". Except that "I still go and I feel like I belong," she says. I was 20 and everyone was there: Anne Zelensky, Monique Wittig, Delphine Seyrig, Gisèle Halimi”.
Intergenerational struggle
De Simone de Beauvoir Claudine Monteil first remembers: "She spoke at full speed and you had to think as fast as she did. " Moved, she will have these words: " She was a writer, an activist until her last breath. She is a heroine, an icon. »
In episode 4, she reminisces about her MLF years and it's very stimulating. She tells the backstage of the signing of the "Manifesto of the 343 bitches", which appeared in Le Nouvel Observateur on April 5, 1971 and which calls for the legalization of abortion. She remembers that they had to fight day after day, and spend whole nights debating and organizing themselves, with few means and without social networks, to be heard.
She also reminds us – and this is the subject of episode 5 – that nothing is ever certain. Indeed, after a women's party which had taken place at the Cartoucherie de Vincennes (Val-de-Marne) and, faced with the success of this event, expressing her enthusiasm to Simone de Beauvoir, Claudine Monteil remembers what the author of The Second Sex said to him then and which remained so famous: "Never forget that it will be enough of a political, economic or religious crisis for the rights of women to be called into question. These rights are never acquired. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life. »
Unfortunately, adds Claudine Monteil, "life has proven to me that she was right: you only have to see what is happening in Iran, Afghanistan, Poland and even in the United States since the revocation of Roe versus Wade, which granted American women the right to abortion nationwide, leaving American states free to ban abortion.
Worried, of course, she nevertheless refuses to be pessimistic. Says she will keep fighting. Emphasizes the importance of intergenerational struggle. hail the wave
