Stand Up and Split. Desiring Desertion in Jean Giono and Emmanuelle Lambert

Abstract

To face the powers that be, contemporary French writer Virginie Despentes proposes a straightforward solution: “stand up and split!” But where to go and with whom? How do we stop the proliferation of contested norms if we clear the decks? In a context of ecological crisis, desiring desertion is not rare even if we have only one world to inhabit. This article analyzes the desire to desert from two texts: Le Déserteur et autres récits (Citation1966 [1973]) by Jean Giono and La Désertion (Citation2018a) by Emmanuelle Lambert. It demonstrates that desertion does not make a clean sweep of the past but rather accepts the desert at the heart of existence. That is, both presence and disappearance.