Pascal Quignard's Les Désarçonnés: A Treatise on Unseating and Liberation

Pascal Quignard's latest volume in the Dernier Royaume series, Les Désarçonnés (Grasset), explores figures who have been thrown from their horses—literal and metaphorical—as a path to liberation. Drawing on mythology, literature, and history, Quignard examines how moments of crisis (accidents, death, love, reading) can unseat individuals from societal norms, allowing rebirth. The book critiques modern control and servitude, citing Botho Strauss's concept of emancipation creating 'affranchis' not free people. Quignard argues that true freedom requires abandoning heroic postures for non-heroic strategies, like those of Lancelot, Saint Paul, or Montaigne. He emphasizes the salvific role of sex and solitude, advocating for desertion from the 'meute' (pack) of society. The work is a dense, a-moral, a-theological summa that confronts humanity's love of war and violence, from the Commune of Paris to the Holocaust, while offering a path through secret life and disengagement.