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This article examines the persistence and effectiveness of Alexandre Grothendieck’s question “Are we going to continue scientific research?”. The author questions its filiation. To do so, she draws on Grothendieck’s texts, published in Survivre… et Vivre, and especially in Récoltes et semailles, and on her own investigation published at the beginning of 2022, on the history of the internment camp of Rieucros (Lozère). By introducing the notion of “collapse” presented by Norbert Elias, she argues that Grothendieck’s political statement is not independent of his experience of the rejection of the foreigner, his own – “the history within him” – and the one that struck down his parents.