Patrick Moreau is a professor of literature in Montreal, editor-in-chief of the journal Argument and essayist. He notably published These words that think for us (Liber, 2017) and The prose of Alain Grandbois, or reading and rereading The Travels of Marco Polo (Note bene, 2019).
“I want to be part of history,” say many English and foreigners who flock to London and agree to queue for hours, even days, to contemplate the royal coffin for a few seconds. By devoting much more air time to this event than to the war in Ukraine or to the inflationary crisis in which we are currently plunged, the media of the whole world — or almost — seem to be giving them reason and confirming them. in this feeling that they are living a truly historic moment.
It is, however, a complete illusion.
The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, like all similar celebrations (princely weddings, jubilees, etc.), is not part of history. They even constitute the exact opposite, the perfect reverse of a story in the making, since they are, by definition, predictable: the Queen’s death was as inevitable as is the fact that he There are, in each generation, marriages in the royal family, and in this sense they are non-events. These celebrations are also more or less repetitive: nothing resembles a princely wedding more than another princely wedding, the funeral of a queen to that (future) of a king, whereas history does not never repeat the same.
These celebrations, finally, are turned towards the past rather than the future. Historical time never retraces its steps.
Like so many other ceremonies, and like the British monarchy itself, these royal funerals, with all their antiquated decorum, actually dedicate a time that wants to be outside of time, in other words an ahistorical dimension, a kind of eternal present. where everything would reproduce itself more or less in the same way and whose stability would contrast precisely with the unpredictability and tragedy of history. Because of her long reign, Elizabeth II perfectly symbolizes this illusion of an immutable world.
Through its disappearance, it is not history that we celebrate, but on the contrary non-history, the conception of a time always more or less identical to itself and on the bottom of which we would sink an existence as predictable and monotonous as the changing of the guard which takes place every two days in front of Buckingham Palace.
But this existence without hazards, without unforeseen events, without turbulence, without conflicts, without stories would also be an inactive life, a bare life, which would sink into the passivity of biological rhythms and, in the end, a life which would not be completely or not fully human, because, in addition to being a social and political animal, the human being is also a historical animal; it has no natural habitat other than history.
If all these people walking slowly through London can sincerely believe they are participating in history by queuing in front of a coffin, that is to say by playing the onlookers, perhaps even by inventing a new kind of tourism, the mortuary tourism, this is the sign that they now only conceive of history as a setting in front of which they parade with others, in single file, strolling around and doing nothing in particular.
It is also a sign that we are now living history as spectators, in absentia, as if it were taking place outside of us, without us. As if it were nothing more than a motionless landscape in front of which to take a selfie. This is perhaps the end of the story announced to us by Francis Fukuyama more than thirty years ago! And it looks like an abdication rather than a triumph…
Queens, princesses, crowned heads, just like the stars of cinema, business, sport or song, have the main function of selling us the illusion that we live by proxy a history that does not belong to us. not really, which would not be the collective fruit of our actions. This history reduced to funerals, weddings and meetings of the “greats” of this world, as well as the releases of films of the century or the decade, concert-events or even major sporting competitions and records that we do not will not fail to establish there, is an anti-story.
It is only a litany of pseudo-events as artificial as they are insignificant, the false symbol of a world stopped like the hands of an old watch that its owner has long since forgotten to wind. Despite these hands which stand still, the hours continue to flow.
We are all part of the story. It remains to be seen how we want to participate in it.