Documentos de Académico
Documentos de Profesional
Documentos de Cultura
LOÏCK ROCHE
Contact:
Loïck Roche
loick.roche@grenoble-em.com
-1-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
To Dieter
-2-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-3-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-4-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
§
“The anxiety of the finality of life is too hard to bear if
one is not strengthened by the idea that one is a total
person and that, thanks to this totality, one is able to
participate totally in life – capable of proving oneself by
-5-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-6-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-7-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-8-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
-9-
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 10 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 11 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 12 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 13 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 14 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 15 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 16 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 17 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 18 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 19 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
§
Each of us has Socrates’ hemlock within reach; the phial
of cyanide that we will break unless, like Katow, the
pragmatic hero in The Human Condition, we offer it to two
unknown prisoners, literally dying of fear – Katow who knew
that he was condemned to be burnt alive in the fire of a
locomotive because of his political ideas… Each of us has
available Bettelheim’s plastic bag with which, on March 13,
- 20 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 21 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 22 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 23 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 24 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 25 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 26 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 27 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 28 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 29 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
One must leave aside the bogus suicides like those who
destroy themselves gradually by using drugs, through
alcohol (its excesses, of course); like Alain Leroy, the hero in
Louis Malle’s film The Fire Within - a production inspired by
the novel by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and the life of Jacques
Rigault, author of this sentence: “Life is not worth making
the effort to leave it.” It is true that, coming from a
surrealist writer… Other bogus suicides – suicides like Scott
Fitzgerald. Without saying that he really “committed
suicide”, Scott Fitzgerald knew he had a weak heart so slept
on his left side to end his life. In Buffet Froid by Bertand
Blier, Jean Rougerie asks Depardieu to commit a murder;
the chosen victim is none other than the person making the
request! Another form – The Grande Bouffe (Blowout) by
Marco Ferreri. The story of a collective, gastronomical
suicide. Booed at Cannes – the film also wanted to be an
indictment of the consumer society – Philippe Noiret retorted
to the critics: “We were offering a mirror to people and they
didn’t like what they saw in it. It reveals bloody
extraordinary stupidity.” (sic!). We also leave aside all the
suicides based on what we could call the organisation of
one’s own sabotage! Refusal to accept treatment when
severely ill, certain accidents or taking extreme risks… Like
Virginia Woolf, these people every day insist on putting into
- 30 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
their pockets the stones which will carry them down the
river.
- 31 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 32 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 33 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 34 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
“It is ideas like this which make you die. Being unable to
bear them, one kills oneself […]” (Camus, Betwixt and
Between). That too has changed. Today, man is aware of
- 35 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 36 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
can endure his own life, as we have seen with Lacan at the
start. Here too is why, often, trade unionists for example get
better results… “In the daily grind in which we live, wrote
Camus, (The Rebel), revolt plays the same role as the
“cogito” in the order of thinking: this is the first obvious fact.
But this fact draws the individual from his solitude. It is a
common realm which combines all men through the first
value. I revolt, therefore we are.”
§
Raymond Bellour and François Ewald, in their work with
Deleuze on Spinoza (“Signs and Event”, the Literary
Magazine, 1988), show that if he does not revolt, the person
- 37 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 38 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 39 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
§
“Will we one day get away from this blind form of
management, write the authors of the Elegy of Well-being at
Work, which requires that in response to a decision taken by
an n something, n-1 simply passes the request on to n-2
who in turn passes on this request? Everybody shares the
same fear of not knowing what to do (this is also true for the
manager who must meet shareholders’ demands, the
demands made of politicians…). Everyone develops defence
mechanisms which simply cumulate as they spread
throughout the company.”
- 40 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 41 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 42 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 43 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 44 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 45 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 46 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 47 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 48 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 49 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 50 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 51 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 52 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 53 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 54 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 55 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 56 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 57 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
For all those who do not have this cool hand to unite
them with the world, this memory which will bring them
back to the world, “who do not have the chance of being
able to discern through the ragged clouds the impenetrable
black stains and, within them, a small star; for those,
divorced from life, more or less infirm – then, wrote
Dostoyevsky, their destiny [is sealed].”
- 58 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 59 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 60 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 61 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
Can one hear these people who will commit suicide if one
- 62 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
These people who will commit the act, who don’t know
what they know…, they can be recognised by their smile… an
enigmatic smile. Exactly the same enigmatic smile as the
Mona Lisa!
- 63 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
There are, like this one, places that are known… known
for being places like cemeteries where animals come to die,
where one commits suicide! Pierre Delvot, in his “Study of
suicide by precipitation off the Loire Atlantic bridge” (one is
precise or one is not…) shows that there are iconic bridges,
- 64 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 65 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
Fall).
- 66 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
§
The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile is Dieter’s smile, saying
farewell as he left for Dublin. Dieter whom we found hanged.
Three days later!
- 67 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 68 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 69 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
§
One can find wisdom, strength and beauty in the
suicides of others when committing suicide oneself; to follow
in the steep trails of “these first suicides who showed a
difficult path on which they were the first to tread.”
- 70 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 71 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 72 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
The laugh of the Mona Lisa when the death of our loved
ones produces ambivalent reactions in us (Freud).
- 73 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 74 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 75 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 76 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
- 77 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
“If one can enjoy the moment, writes Pierre Rey, one
holds the key to the world. One succeeds in putting oneself
into a timeless orbit, this point in space that Borges refers to
in The Aleph where suddenly present, past and future come
together to form but a single amalgam reduced to a strange
flickering of light seen in a certain place at a certain time of
day at a certain angle from a certain step of a staircase in a
- 78 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
But nevertheless…
- 79 -
The Laugh of the Mona Lisa
I have spoken!
- 80 -