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Reading and discussion
Constance Debré, Violaine Huisman

On Friday, March 25, LUMA welcomed author Constance Debré to Arles for a reading and discussion of her latest book Nom, published in February 2022 by Flammarion. Following her two previous books, Play boy (2018) and Love Me Tender (2020), Nom questions normative structures and calls for the radical dissolution of, among other things, heritage, patriarchal authority, marriage, and family in society.


In her book, Debré writes: "I have a political program. I am for the abolition of inheritance, of the obligation of support between ascendants and descendants, I am for the abolition of parental authority, I am for the abolition of marriage, I am for the separation of children from their parents at the earliest age, I am for the abolition of filiation, I am for the abolition of the family name, I am against guardianship, minority, I am against patrimony, I am against domicile, nationality, I am for the abolition of civil status, I am for the abolition of the family, I am for the abolition of childhood too if we can. "

Practical Information

March 25, 2022
The Tower, Auditorium, Level 1
Constance-Debré-Violaine-Huisman
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© Adrian Deweerdt
© Adrian Deweerdt

Constance Debré, reading and discussion with Violaine Huisman

On March 25, 2022, LUMA Arles welcomed acclaimed French writer Constance Debré for a reading from Name (Nom), published by Flammarion in February 2022, followed by a conversation with author Violaine Huisman.

Following Play Boy (2018) and Love Me Tender (2020), Name continues Debré’s uncompromising literary exploration of family, identity, and power. Through a spare, radical style, she challenges conventional ideas of inheritance, patriarchy, lineage, and the family, opening up new ways of thinking about freedom and self-determination.

The event concluded with a conversation between Debré and Violaine Huisman, author of The Book of Mother (Fugitive parce que reine, 2018), exploring the themes that run through their respective works.

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Constance Debré

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Constance Debré was in residence at LUMA Arles from october 2020 to january 2021.

Constance Debré was born in Paris, France in 1972. She studied at the Lycée Henri-IV and was a criminal lawyer until 2018. She has published two novels: Play Boy (Stock, 2018), and Love Me Tender (Flammarion, 2020). Her books are published by Flammarion in France and by Semiotext(e) in the USA, a publishing house co-directed by Chris Kraus and Hedi El Kholti. As part of her residency at Luma Arles, Constance Debré is working on her next opus. “The work begun in my previous books, which I intend to continue in this way, explores the possibility (?) of being oneself.” It raises the question of the construction of an identity shaped by a double movement, the horizontal movement of narration, as well as the vertical movement of the emancipation of the subject (the narrator) from social, sexual and family identities. Construction, deconstruction, as it were.  

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Violaine Huisman

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Violaine Huisman is the author of Desert Rose [Rose Désert], Gallimard (2019) as well as The Book of Mother, Scribner (2021), which was one of the New York Times 100 Notable Books. The French version, published in 2018, also won the prize Marie Claire et Françoise Sagan the same year. She lives and works between Arles, Marseille and New York.