After anger and lust, Geneviève Morand and Natalie-Ann Roy continue their impertinent and feminist reinterpretation of our worst vices with this 3e deadly sin, and not the least: laziness, clearly less easy to free than one might think.
Taboo, you say? After Release Anger (2018) and Free the panties (2021), this is the reflection that comes to us spontaneously when reading this confrontation Freeing lazinesswhere it will be more a question of exhaustion than of idleness.
It was to be expected. When asked “what are you doing these days?”, who really dares to answer: not much? Is there a worse shame than not being busy? Above all: can we really dream of widespread laziness? “If no one gets up tomorrow morning, the entire system will collapse!”, the two co-directors of the collective, whom we met on Monday morning, also know. Hence the infinite complexity of the subject, it must be said.
Published by Éditions du remue-ménage, the book brings together around twenty writers, in addition to those of Geneviève Morand and Natalie-Ann Roy, including Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, Marie-Pierre Duval, Heather O’Neill, Catherine Voyer-Léger and Cathy Wong.
As you may have guessed, as this is a feminist work, we made the “effort” to seek out “feminine, trans, queer or non-binary” voices.
For good reason: to date, “most books on laziness have been written by male writers!” says Geneviève Morand, referring to the Sofa Philosophy (Stefano Scrima) or at Right to be lazy (Paul Lafargue), in particular.
Is it a coincidence? By handing the microphone here mainly to women, therefore, the echo is completely different. And this is obvious from the first lines. It will not be so much a question here of relaxation or strolling, as we have said. Forget the praise of the hot bath and the good bubbles, you are not there at all. It is fatigue that will be the question. Almost unanimously. And it will be spanking.
A word here to underline the courage of some of the texts in this robust collection of nearly 300 pages, anything but lazy (sorry), which dare to be shockingly transparent. It is not easy to confide (certainly less to write it down on paper) one’s vulnerability. Not only do the testimonies seem to echo each other – professional burnout here, parental burnout there, why not political burnout, including a stop at the psychiatric emergency room, if you want fatigue, here it is – but it is also difficult not to identify with them. Who among us is not overwhelmed by the mental load? Who is not chasing their tail?
Mental health, body image, motherhood, identity, the masks fall here one after the other. And the fatigue of having to “perform” everything, as they say, comes back again and again. Of course, at times, it’s heavy, almost redundant, downright infuriating.
It’s not cheerful. […] We created a quilt and the words that came out of it were this.
Natalie-Ann Roy, co-director of the collective Freeing laziness
It must be said that it is in the post-pandemic air of the times, this reflection on exhaustion adding to that already started by Véronique Grenier (and her story At the end of its rope), Bianca Gervais (and her series Exhausted), without forgetting Rose-Aimée Automne T. Morin (and her show To slow down).
This is probably also why the collection begins with a bang, with a correspondence between the two co-directors, on this categorical observation: “this book is a failure”. “We didn’t make it to liberation!” the two women confirm in unison. It forced us to face our powerlessness.” Ironically, Geneviève Morand and Natalie-Ann Roy also took three years to bring this book to fruition, after having to put the project on “pause” due to professional exhaustion, each and respectively. “We really embodied our theme”, they say with a laugh. More than one might think: they also lowered their expectations, called on fewer texts, even canceled meetings to… take naps.
Ideas for solutions
Speaking of naps, it should be noted that here and there some interesting ideas emerge. Ideas that generally arise (yet another disturbing observation) after having fallen in combat, due to illness, professional exhaustion, or other. We think of the four-day week, the sabbatical year, flexible hours. One author works only in the evening, to free up time during the day. Several have also adopted self-employment, to reduce their hours, precisely. But these decisions are not without economic consequences, it goes without saying. As for Geneviève Morand, she claims the right to bring her children late to school, to take “mental health” days off, and to do homework halfway. “My children will not reach the heights,” she writes, in heartfelt praise of the “ good enough parent ».
Nevertheless: if all these individual leads are not without interest, the issue remains collective, conclude our two interlocutors. “It is a public health issue, collective exhaustion costs so much, says Geneviève Morand. We can no longer live like this with serial burnouts. What encourages me is that there are still many of us thinking about it.”
Exactly… “Couldn’t we take it upstream, do some prevention? We would have everything to gain. But for that, we would have to talk about money!”, adds Natalie-Ann Roy. Interesting idea, which will also be explored in their next book, we learn, where this time they will try to free a new sin, namely… greed!
Freeing laziness
Housework Editions
276 pages