Elena Ferrante: ‘It is time to eliminate the concepts of winning, losing and failing’

It took me a long time to understand that these classifications are as cruel as they are abitrary

I don’t like the classification of human beings into winners and losers. Or maybe I don’t understand it. I think of the symbols that identify a winner. Money, above all – that is to say, the possibility of acquiring expensive objects, and a taste for displaying them as proof of your superiority. Or the exercise of power, demonstrating by very subtle means that you are high up in the hierarchy. Or the sort of aristocracy that derives from media fame, a blue blood of celebrity ensuring that you don’t have to earn people’s attention every time – you’re recognised enthusiastically, at first sight. Or the permanent mise-en-scène of happiness: someone who has a lot of money exercises power, enjoys the status of a VIP, and therefore must be happy.

Except that all these symbols of the winner’s position soon reveal themselves to be less than genuine and, above all, precarious. Money, power, fame, glory, happiness – all are quick to show cracks. And every time this image of the winner collapses, and the appearance of victory turns to failure, the idea of the loser collapses, too; that category of people who have no expensive possessions, no power, no fame, only a sense of unhappiness resulting from their impression of having failed.

Related: Elena Ferrante: ‘Writing while smoking was a deceptive pleasure’

Continue reading...