Nous aussi, a novel by Anne Godard, explores the experience of a subject that has lost its uniqueness, struggling with the vast distance it feels from others. Published by Actes Sud, the book has 240 pages and costs 20 euros. Godard uses only the indefinite pronoun "on" to represent the offspring of a Parisian bourgeois family, one that is well-educated and dominant in the sense described by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. This method is not only a description of the family's customs, such as how to place tableware, but also a reflection of their identity: "the blades of the knives turned toward the plate" is described as "our glorious past, our certificate of authenticity, the legitimacy of an inheritance we do not have to question." Being excluded from this group, as philosopher Félix Guattari would put it, is like being banished from the world. This family, seeing itself as a social power, not only judges how guests cut their cheese but also claims a place in the Pantheon of Great Men: "We say we would have resisted against the occupier, against the Nazis, the Gestapo, the collaborators, we have that in our blood, since always we are on the good side, that of culture and freedom." Even though small details, like "The youngest is always the last, too bad for her if she eats cold," hint at potential cracks in the family's image, the narrative's initial arguments are so thin that the reader becomes absorbed in the neutrality of "on" that permeates the text. The reader might feel like a parent annoyed by a child who does not appreciate their privileges, wondering what is wrong with being superior to others. The family's identity is expressed through phrases like "We attract attention without trying" and "We are beautiful without thinking about it," which may seem enviable, even if one mocks the family's manner of speech. However, what begins as an attribute of "on" gradually turns into a counter-tyranny: "We do not make distinctions, no separation, we have no boundary, no limit, no proper body, no self. We are in an indistinct whole, but hierarchical, from which we can only exit if we are excluded." The novel explores the anxiety of this "on" that speaks, especially "when we are convinced that we cannot live outside? That there is no life elsewhere, only a great void where we will be lost." The use of "on" is a relatively recent linguistic development. It originated as the subject case of the noun "homme," but it has grammaticalized, losing its function as a common noun to become a grammatical tool. Philosophers like Martin Heidegger, who used the term "Das uneigentliche Man" to describe the inauthentic "on," viewed it as a form of dictatorship that imposes uniformity and dissolves the individual in the mass. However, one can also consider the crowd with the irony of Charles Baudelaire, who translated Edgar Allan Poe's L’homme des foules, and find in the "bath of multitude" a "singular intoxication." This perspective is not foreign to Anne Godard, who portrays the identity confusion within a mass of children as both a potential tragedy and a source of joy. The novel's narrative stakes lie in the cracks within this undifferentiated mass. The subject cannot emerge from this matrix without renouncing its initial identification with the tribe. Several scenarios are proposed, as "on," even fragmented, persists. The revolt, still tied to this "inauthentic on," is initially ineffective: "We say we are suffocating, we feel hindered from being what we thought we would be. We think it is this conventional education that oppresses us, the good manners and the silver spoons, it is our oppression." Leaving the family and changing one's environment does not suffice to discover one's singularity. "We work every day. Life begins to resemble a long subway tunnel [...] We feel far, we feel bad. Isolated, we are no longer us, we do not become 'je' like that." What is fascinating in Anne Godard's novel is the resistance of the narrative to the dictatorship of "je." If "on" is dictatorial, "je" can be too, as Henri Michaux wrote in the postface of Plume: "We want too much to be someone." Godard presents various wanderings of a subject incapable of instituting itself: "We are a woman who no longer has her full mind. Nephews have designated themselves as guardians. We no longer know exactly who they are, we let them take care of everything. We float in our too-large clothes, in our thoughts that scatter." Gradually, this "on" will become a "nous," a new mathematics of the subject.