What's so troubling about the Woman behind the Mask?: Est-ce que je te dérange? by Anne Hébert

In this 1998 novel Hébert explores the dangerous implications of the mask as metaphor for identity. Unlike Kamouraska or Le Premier Jardin, in which women wear masks as a defensive strategy, here it is a weapon used by a man to destroy a woman. Reading Est-ce que je te dérange? in light of Riviere's "Womanliness as Masquerade" and Fanon's and Memmi's respective critiques of colonialism's masks reveals the broad political implications of Hébert's novel. More than just dérangeant, the imposition of reductive models of identity—be they based on gender, ethnicity, nationality or language—is akin to murder.