You’ll recall Marshall McLuhan, the “medium is the message” man.  He knew. He knew what the computer could do… this extension of ourselves.  Like so many fruits hanging on vines… unpicked…disconnected in our connection.  Could he have foreseen what we see today, the new fruit of the computer, social media, and its brilliant grapevine potential? Of social media, Wikipedia has this to say: “A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.”

And who knew how beautiful this co- creation of value could be…different kinds of beauty…the likes of Bradley Manning, who’s put it all on the line for transparency and its sister, social justice.  And way beyond the tarnished afterglow of the Obama campaign, we are presently witnessing trail blazing constellations of peoples of the Maghreb, of North Africa and the Middle East connecting the dots, brilliantly moving from numbness to finding faith and power in numbers; re-discovering the wisdom of the crowd.  A Cairo activist of Tahrir (Liberation) square recently reported this, “We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.”  Social media and mass public movements increasingly appear to be a beguiling profusion of fusion.  But what do they mean for each other?

A recent Al Jazeera broadcast here, asked a panel of experts whether social networks were in fact triggering social revolution. In the view of author Evgeny Morozov, “Revolutionaries will use whatever tools are at their disposal. The Bolsheviks made great use of the postal service and telegraph.”  He added that not all revolutions are progressive and that Internet does not necessarily favor the oppressed over the oppressor.

Not to downplay the essential role of pamphlets, posters and placards in any socio-political movement, there can be no denying the critical force of recent online ingenuity in setting up platforms to get the message out. In response to the Tunisian government’s efforts to squash online dissent, stealing passwords, hacking into and deleting Facebook accounts, the cyber group Anonymous launched Operation Tunisia. This managed to paralyse the presidential site, several key ministries and the stock exchange, whilst sharing online a cyberwar survival guide that among other things documented Ben Ali’s corruption.  There was nothing the Tunisian government could do to slow the proliferation of Tweets from documenting events and spreading dissent.  It appeared that a new power structure was emerging. Indeed, cyber power seems to provide the speed, connectivity, alacrity, flexibility, density, creativity and precision of movement needed for new masses of people to organize and mobilize in a strategic and decisive fashion.

These factors give credence to the view of author John Schell, recently interviewed on the Real News Network, that what we are seeing is the emergence of another super power; albeit “a disaggregated, decentralized super power” but with a new government, new people, new ideology, nonetheless.  Even if this were to be overstating the case, are we not seeing the emergence of a major counter force, a second power, with a new ideology that won’t be towing the line so readily to neo-liberal influence as in the past?  This proposition invites a question as to whether the social nature of the social network is triggering the emergence of socially conscious ideology.  It’s all too soon to say. As Schell points out, there are many stages to a revolution; “The end of the story has not been written.”

Placard of a protester ouside the Egyptian Consulate, Montreal.

Efforts to contain and prohibit this connectivity have both worked and failed; while new ways to link up or leak out are constantly evolving.  At times it can appear so simple: Al Jazeera, broadcasting from a strategic headquarters of the Peoples Movement in Cairo, showed how when cell phones and internet were blocked, a satellite connection to the action on the ground was found. But there is an ever growing public gathering around social media, publicizing, socializing, advocating, normalizing and engineering what can be done; coders coding, creating and sharing, exponentially.  That said, the lure of just hanging on the vine tweeting about fruit, is very compelling too.  The political value of social media shall always be the kind and quality of the information we communicate.

Nevertheless, recently, so many of us, glued to monitors, have drunk in the struggle, transported by the co-operation, collaboration, discipline and understanding manifested by people surmounting fears and abandoning limited notions about who they are and what they can do. Social media seems to have personalized this experience, facilitating a tipping point of connectivity between people and their common concerns.  But as activists and analysts have insisted, these events have not been overnight sensations. Certainly, Egyptians had been preparing for such a moment as this since 2005 and in the preceding years had mobilized strikes and anti-war protests. In fact, preparation for the revolution has gone deep into the everyday.

The link between political and social organization is clearly made. So that when government is de-legitimized, and suspended, the world doesn’t stop turning.  In Cairo, in Benghazi, for instance, locals become an “assembly of assemblies”, to coin a phrase by sociologist Bruno Latour, assembled around matters of concern, not all of which are political in the usual sense of the word and include such things as traffic direction, refuse collection, food distribution, neighbourhood security, keeping the peace, and so on.

Latour maintains these assemblies are only possible because what connects us more than values or opinions, attitudes or principles are our worries and concerns. Though there may be no continuity, no coherence in our opinions, there is in what we are attached to. Independent, non-corporatized media, such as the Real News Network and Democracy Now, must know this, as they build their online presence and expose the conditions of neo-liberalism and countervailing struggles for change. Amy Goodman on a panel discussion here asks when the last time was we saw corporate media bring in activists to ask them to explain themselves. She argues that, instead, what we get is, “a small circle of pundits, who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us, and getting it so wrong.”  Democracy Now’s Egyptian producer, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, on the other hand, could walk us among the crowds of Tahrir Square…no interpreter needed…interviewing until it became apparent that there was not one voice but many divergent voices all sharing a common vision for a participatory democracy in Egypt.

What do cyber power, publics and mass movements mean to each other?  A great deal, it would seem. Significantly, the US appears to be at war with weapons of mass mobilization:  the day Mubarak was closing down the internet, 2 US senators re-introduced an Internet Kill the Switch Bill. And President Obama is allowing media corporations to deliver the legislation that would privatize the Internet.  What can any of this mean for Canada, more recently dubbed Harperland?  Removing rights and freedoms and suppressing debate, our leader has proven to be an anti-democratic menace, no less. (See Dr. Jason Kunin’s article in Canadian Charger here for details.) Canadians have mobilized some powerful pockets of resistance over the last year and we’ve certainly no shortage of cyber gadgetry. So, I’ve been wondering why we’re not co-creating value by mobilizing a mass democratic movement.

In January 2009 Caryl Churchill penned the play Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza in response to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military strike upon Gaza.  Cast Lead lasted 3 weeks, ending January 18^th 2009 and was responsible for the deaths of some 1,400 Palestinians, including 300 children. 

Controversially, SJC is a play that spans 70 years of Jewish history, alluding to events from the Holocaust to the present day Israel/Palestine conflict.  Consisting of 7 scenes that deliberate upon what the children should be told and what we would have them know, the play is delivered in the form of a tense litany that repeats the lines “Tell her,” “Don’t tell her”.  Churchill has said the play is ultimately about how we explain violence to children; a universal theme certainly, delivered in as little as 10 minutes.

Viewing it as a political event, Churchill has invited anyone to download and produce the play for free, the one proviso being that a collection is taken for the people of Gaza, with proceeds to go to Medical Aid for Palestine.

A number of productions have since been staged in various parts of the globe.  Here in Montreal, in May of last year, Stéphane Jaques, of the theatre company La Tsé-Tsé Bis, directed a powerful interpretation, an excerpt of which is featured here.

Stéphane spoke with MS about the play and where it has taken him since.     

MS:  Stéphane, I was wondering how you came to direct Seven Jewish Children?

SJ: I was working at radio CKUT doing my chronicle.  And at some point I was talking about the film Waltz with Bashir, which showed the victim becoming the oppressor, as so often happens in life.  Then Gaza happened, the end of December.  At the time, I said to my friend we have to do something.  I was thinking that as an actor and a director I wanted to do something and I was really hoping that someone was writing about it.  Then in April I found out about the play and met Fabienne of the advocacy group Independent Jewish Voices that wanted to produce it.

MS: Would you agree SJC is a great piece of guerrilla theatre, with a foot in the mainstream because it just so happens to have been written by a popular playwright?

SJ:  Yes.  It’s great that it did not take the usual 2 years to happen.  I really liked Caryl Churchill’s spontaneity.  And structurally, it’s so simple.  It’s just sentences, spaced sentences, rather than numbered scenes.  In French the play addresses a neutral gendesr and is even more open.  The characters could be addressing the same child or seven different children.  There might be one family, or seven different families.  She left it so open.  It’s very adaptable.  In our production there were seven different children. 

MS:  What did you do with the play? 

SJ: What I realized was that Churchill really describes this circle of the victim becoming the oppressor.  I wanted to show that. I wanted to show the reality of the Holocaust and the reality of Gaza in January 2009. That it is the same hatred.  Neither is better or worse.  It is the same thing.  It is hatred. Of course with the Holocaust there is a collective memory that we all have.  So in theatre we can suggest a steam train leaving.  And we can do this with sound, and lighting.  In the play we used a band of light across their eyes to suggest cattle cars.  For Gaza, at the end of the play, we do not have this collective memory to draw upon.  So how can we show the end to be as strong as the beginning?  There are some pictures…10 pictures, that gradually zero in on Gaza 2009, while the actors hold the same positions they held at the beginning of the play.

MS:  What was your process of staging it?  Was it a group process?

SJ: No.  The first production we didn’t have time.  We had a week. I had to find 7 actors and then we had three meetings of a couple of hours and that was it.  So we kept it simple; but created this magic thing with the lights.  And it is war so we showed guns.  We only had a little time with the technicians, few props but great lighting and sound.  The second production we had longer; a week in which to rehearse and involve two young DJs who came up with some very evocative ideas; a great sound design.

MS:  How did the actors respond to the play?

SJ: I was thinking of having an opera singer that I knew but she did not want to be involved in something so political.  But these actors were enthusiastic.  And interestingly, they aged from 20 to 65, were from different generations then, but also from different schools of acting, yet together on the same stage, which is seldom seen in theatre.

MS:  You have since been to Israel and Palestine on a solidarity tour.  How did this experience affect you?

SJ: I was surprised by the ways in which the government brainwashes the people. It was very disturbing to see the way hatred is produced by the political/civil machine.  I felt disgusted by this machine and what people do to each other because of it.  I left feeling very aware that there are a lot of places in the world with similar machines. 

MS:  Did this in any way change your mind about the Montreal production of SJC? 

SJ:  For the play I had pushed the actors to express this feeling of hatred.  I thought at the time maybe this is too much, that I’m pushing them too hard.  Then I thought that this is theatre and its purpose is to make the audience question ideas.  But then when I was actually there I realized I had been quite soft with the actors, in fact.  It was really much bigger than that.  The hatred was much greater.  Even among the children.

In the play there is a rhythm, until the last three lines: Don’t tell her that.

                                                                                                Tell her we love her.

                                                                                                Don’t frighten her.

Churchill fractures the rhythm and when she does this she also fractures the hatred.   But I was thinking after the tour that I would like to cut those last three lines because they generate such catharsis.  The next time I would like to leave the end of the play in the hands of the audience.  I would like to ask them, “So what do you think?  Can we do something about this?”  Because we have to shake the cage, you know.  I don’t care very much for messages and message theatre and prefer to raise questions.  And I like it when people come to me and say after a play, “I didn’t realize that point,” and it’s really good when I can say, “Really?  Neither did I.”

Our production was twenty minutes long but I am developing an idea for making it much longer.

To read the play:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2009/feb/26/caryl-churchill-seven-jewish-children-play-gaza

To see an excerpt from the play:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnGMqfx3cUo

For an interview with Caryl Churchill about the play:

http://www.map-uk.org/regions/uk/view/media/-/id/24/

THE ISSUE:  This summer  Montreal Serai focuses on the environment through a variety of viewpoints. Jacqueline Fortson, who has moved to Canada from Mexico, gives us a contemporary photo-essay “Montreal – Nature and the City: What makes Montreal a liveable place?” The Quebec city socialist writer, Malcolm Reid, looks at the relation between the environment and social movements, describing the global biosphere as “the new proletariat.” Reid says nature is the oppressed voice which activists must learn to hear. The Montreal environmental leader, David Fletcher, in his striking  essay, “It’s about ecology, stupid!” draws a comprehensive, stark portrait of the current bio-diversity crisis. It is, he warns, a “global winking out of life,” a “waking nightmare” – unless we rouse ourselves. The transport critic of the Quebec’s Green Coalition, Avrom Shtern, writes about car-mad transport, and the urgent need for mass transit of a different kind, while Maria Worton looks through her center-city window and sees a world that is “Living in Traffic.” Rana Bose comments on the BP spill and Subir Das tells us about California politics. And there is much more writing, prose and poetry, in this issue, with more “pushes” to come later this summer.

Amid the varied views presented here though, there is a common theme: we need new vision to break what the poet William Blake called the “mind-forged manacles” of what was once his London and now our world. 

THE EDITORIAL: While Patrick Barnard has acted as general editor for this issue, the editorial board has decided to use four short comments from some of its members as an introduction.

Susan Dubrofsky

I grew up with Strontium-90, the threat of nuclear devastation, fall-out shelters and Coppertone. I was not allowed to suck the tasty marrow from chicken bones and for a few summers even milk was considered suspect. Fifty odd years later, we live with global warming, ozone depletion and traffic pollution, bees disappearing, increasing numbers of cancers, species extinction, deforestation, resource exhaustion, ad infinitum. When googling news about the latest oil spill, not only do I read about it being a massive disaster but how lawyers are making money on it, how politicians are waffling and scuffling and worse, that leaks and spills are more common than we realize. The Gulf of Mexico environmental catastrophe is the elephant in the living room as I recycle my plastics even though I know that only about seven percent is actually reused, as I buy organic food that still uses insecticides, as I bike in city traffic with high UV levels and carbon dioxide emissions, as I use deodorant without aluminum and as I eat genetically modified foods. My dilemma is that, bombarded by media information of videos depicting oil spills, of photos of ocean garbage patches and of daily predictions that climate change will cause massive disappearance of plant and animal species, I cannot comprehend how my recycling will help. But nuclear armageddon did not happen and the new generation is informed and active. And when I ask my friends, what do you think about our planet, one says, do you know that the water around Montreal is cleaner than it used to be twenty years ago, and another, what about the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement to protect our forests, and another, all those companies going carbon neutral, like the airlines, movie studios, the World Bank and you can too. And perhaps I can, in conjunction with the small and the big, contribute.

Maria Worton

Oil slick-sick, more of us than ever before must be asking, “How can we do this differently?”   We know we’re getting down to the wire.  Johann Hari, reporting in The Independent, asks how anyone will deal with accelerating climate change when, “The most powerful country on earth can’t stop a single leaking pipe.”   And what else can we do when the earth’s remaining oil is beneath the ocean floor, in the Arctic or in risky conflict zones.   Must we really go nuclear?  Sure, it’s non-fossil, more climate, plant, animal friendly.  Trouble is it’s killed a lot of people, and threatens everyone else.  

I was ready for good news when I recently happened upon this wonderful report, http://www.offshorevaluation.org/downloads/offshore_vaulation_full.pdf, an evaluation of how Britain can get 150% of its energy needs through off shore energy production using tidal and wind technologies and an international electricity grid system, creating 145,000 jobs in the bargain.  All of which would come at a fraction of the cost of committing to nuclear energy.  Every country on earth needs such a report that scientifically evaluates new energy technologies and their geographical application.

How does one get there?!  It seems that only public assembly, debate, demand, democracy by any other name, will deliver a movement with the critical mass to incline kleptocratic government to agree energy policy for the planet that does not sacrifice nature or its people. 

Patrick Barnard

I believe that human beings do indeed now face a dire threat to our own existence as a species because of our very own activity, and I think that we have probably reached the extinction threshold. Without radical change we will not survive. State socialism, as we have known it, has been a threat to the capitalist oligarchies that rule the world. However, “existing socialism” has failed dismally on the environment, in part because it is actually a form of state capitalism run by managerial redistributors who have the same misguided ideas about nature as their capitalist counterparts.

Out of necessity, human beings, I believe, will rise to the challenge of preserving life for ourselves and our fellow creatures. But the danger of eco-fascism, both of the statist and corporate form, is very great. Hence, the fight for nature and democracy must go hand in hand.

Maya Khankhoje

Children are taught that birds do not foul their own nest. The irony is that those very same adults who admonish their children to respect the environment are the first ones to foul it when the lure of  filthy lucre rears its ugly head. As a species we seem to have forgotten that money is indeed dirty, literally and figuratively, and that it won’t replace  what we have been so diligently destroying. The Cree Indians have a prophecy: “Only after the last tree has been cut down/ Only after the last fish has been caught/ Only after the last river has been poisoned/ Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.” This issue of Montreal Serai is a nudge towards this simple truth.

Truck and Trolley

I have a relationship to traffic, similar to the kind of relationship a goldfish has to the water in its bowl. It’s never just about the fish and the water.  Rather, it’s an ecology, and the ecology relates to an environment, the environment to a city, the city to a region the region to a continent, the continent to this earth.  So, it’s not quite as simple as Carassius Auratus Auratus and its DNA + the H20 in which it swims about.  The fish and the water have more dimensions than even Matisse’s representation of Red Fish.  In his fishbowl the water never needs changing…or filtering…the water is blue and the fish seem happy.

On this earth the traffic is a rushhhh…a contiguous web, a continuous ebb and flow, of rivers and streams. The rivers are tidal, reaching their peaks in the mornings and late afternoons.  Some people simply don’t appreciate their music, rhythms, and volumes. While others prick up their ears or let themselves be lulled to sleep. Most notice, sooner or later, the haze and the dust; they may wonder precisely what’s in it; its particular local, chemical composition, however, remaining something of a mystery to local dwellers.

Many, perhaps all, have adapted to the nature of traffic, tuning into the voices of traffic radio that are authoritative and reassuring.  They are there to keep everything moving; to prevent jams; to help us get to where we need to go.  They are more socialized, more cultural than anything I have to say.  And if these voices intrude in any way, they can be filtered out.  Filtration, indeed, goes hand in hand with adaptation and money, money perhaps being the paterfamilia of all filtration.  There are expensive windows for instance, like walls, that filter out most traffic noise yet allow sunlight in; and with air conditioning and air filters, air can be cleaned and blown about so that windows need never open. 

Others have moved their bedrooms to the back of their abodes, to facilitate sleep.  Still others filter out traffic by moving to the suburbs, to a gated community, to the country.  Blinds too are used to filter out what we don’t want to see; and there are all kinds of them, in all kinds of places…my remote control…my ear plugs…night mask… prescription…and so on. 

…This has become a very urban earth where new engines spin the planet ever hotter, faster. People live on traffic islands where speed has this magic habit of making things disappear and re-appear.  Even when you think the traffic isn’t there, in some form or another, it is, in the air. A busy street becomes, in some odd way, a place where people appear to disappear…a private place, where most people keep themselves to themselves…where nobody expects to see a child playing…where nobody asks where the children are. 

I imagine my street would be a very different place without traffic.  Nevertheless, I ask myself, where we would be without it.  Everyone wants to go elsewhere, and to go quickly enough; to leave here and go there, if only to enjoy returning to our various places.  In some ways, you could say, we have evolved to become part car.

This relationship of inhabitants to traffic certainly has its own distinctive ecology; its own particular character; its own vitality.  Not to mention, tragedy, even: millions of lives have been lost in traffic…going out…coming home. Traffic is a risky business.  It’s somewhat odd then that we think of this risk as an if even though every moment for humans and creatures in various places it turns out to be a when.   

If I stop filtering…start feeling…the heat…the physics and chemistry of a billion engines, a trillion combustions…the black carbon…particulates…pipes…lungs…choke…of rivers of heavy metal shells…of oil and bright lights…if I start imagining the numbers…divining the future …it’s a drama by any other name…surely…   

Am I foolish then to wonder, that if it’s easy enough to find art and science about life in the sea, say, or flora in the jungle, “where,” I ask myself, “where is all the art and science about people living in traffic?”

Self-portrait

English version below.

An extract from the documentary George Sand: The Story of Her Life produced by CNDP 2004, Montreal (Quebec)
 

Quelques heures avant de commencer à écrire cet article, j’étais à Radio-Canada, dans la  salle Jean-Desprez qui porte le nom de plume de la Québécoise Laurette Larocque (1906-1965), militante féministe et auteure de deux célèbres feuilletons radiophoniques Jeunesse dorée et Yvan l’intrépide qui ont duré 24 et 9 ans. Le rapprochement avec George Sand s’est imposé à mon esprit. Un siècle sépare Laurette Larocque d’Aurore Dupin Dudevant (1804-1876) qui, elle aussi, a signé ses écrits d’un prénom masculin joint à un nouveau patronyme en plus d’avoir publié des romans sous forme de feuilletons, dans les journaux. Nous pouvons supposer que, pour ces deux auteurs populaires, changer de nom s’est  avéré une tactique efficace pour déjouer le silence historiquement imposé aux femmes.

Au cours de sa vie, George Sand a bénéficié d’une reconnaissance considérable à titre de romancière, mais elle a aussi marqué son époque par ses prises de position et ses écrits enracinés dans  son engagement sociopolitique. Sa notoriété dépassait d’ailleurs les seules frontières de la France. Dostoïevski a salué l’influence de la dimension sociale de ses romans sur la littérature russe. Le poète américain Walt Whitman, quant à lui,  affirme avoir adopté comme livre de chevet Consuelo (1846) découvert dans la bibliothèque de sa mère. Ce ne sont là que deux exemples.

Au-delà du mythe George Sand et de l’aura de scandale qui  flotte autour de cette imposante figure de la littérature française du XIX^e siècle, Aurore Dupin était une femme remarquable dans sa vie personnelle, son engagement littéraire et son indéniable volonté de mettre sa plume au service de ses idéaux sociopolitiques.

D’AURORE DUPIN À GEORGE SAND

Née d’un mariage d’amour entre un père aristocrate et une mère issue d’un milieu très modeste, George Sand chevauche deux classes sociales. Elle écrit, dans son autobiographie, Histoire de ma vie,  que « le sang des rois se trouva mêlé dans [ses] veines au sang des pauvres et des petits ». Ce métissage social de la petite Aurore Dupin constitue l’humus à partir duquel se développe la femme qui deviendra George Sand.

À l’âge de quatre ans, alors qu’elle arrive d’Espagne avec sa famille, Aurore rencontre pour la première fois sa grand-mère paternelle. Au cours de l’année qui suit leur installation au château de Nohant dans le Berry, son père, Maurice, meurt dans un accident de cheval. Sa mère quitte ensuite Nohant et cède ses  droits sur sa fille à la mère de Maurice.  L’enfant, qui regrette vivement le  départ de sa mère, remplace son père dans le cœur de cette grand-mère qui a pour ancêtre Auguste II, roi de Pologne.

Aurore de Saxe, est une femme du XVIII^e siècle, une héritière de la philosophie des Lumières. Elle fait de la future George Sand une fille de la Révolution qui grandit dans un climat de liberté et d’ouverture d’esprit. Après avoir été retirée du couvent des Anglaises à Paris par sa grand-mère qui s’inquiétait de ses élans de mysticisme, sa formation intellectuelle est confiée à Deschartres, un excentrique qui avait été le précepteur de son père. Elle se plaît alors à faire de la musique, dessiner, lire et écrire des lettres à ses amies du couvent. Jeune fille énergique, elle apprécie les travaux manuels, les excursions dans la campagne berrichonne, les baignades dans l’Indre et les promenades à cheval ; elle monte à califourchon, ce que les femmes de son époque ne font pas. Elle connaît des jeunes gens de La Châtre, qui étudient à Paris et qui défendent des idées républicaines. Dans la campagne berrichonne du début du dix-neuvième siècle, cette liberté et cette indépendance prêtent le flanc à certaines médisances.

George Sand - 17 ans

Aurore perd sa grand-mère à l’âge de dix-sept ans et épouse, un an plus tard, Casimir Dudevant. Il est son aîné de neuf ans. Descendant d’une famille aristocratique, il ne veut pas porter le titre de baron et séduit aussi la jeune fille par la simplicité et l’honnêteté de sa demande en mariage. Aurore donnera naissance à deux enfants Maurice et Solange. Au fil des ans, l’écart entre Casimir et sa jeune femme s’accroît, ils ne partagent pas les mêmes idées et n’ont pas les mêmes préoccupations. Aurore partira pour Paris avec son amant Jules Sandeau. Elle y deviendra George Sand

NAISSANCE DE GEORGE SAND

Aurore Dupin arrive à Paris avec la ferme intention d’y gagner sa vie en dessinant ou écrivant pour la presse parisienne. Elle publie dans Le Figaro un premier article qui fait beaucoup de remous. De concert avec Jules Sandeau, elle s’attaque à la rédaction d’un roman, Rose et Blanche, qui sera publié sous le nom fictif de J. Sand. En 1832, paraît, sous la signature de G. Sand, Indiana, son véritable premier roman. Cette publication constitue un événement sur la scène parisienne où ce nouvel auteur est absolument inconnu. L’œuvre, comparée à du Balzac, critique ouvertement le Code civil napoléonien qui réduit les femmes mariées à une situation de dépendance où elles n’ont aucun droit civil ni aucun pouvoir.

Son deuxième roman, Lélia, paraît en 1833 sous le nom George Sand. Cet ouvrage crée un scandale dans le milieu littéraire parisien. Il s’agit d’un roman philosophique traversé par ce « mal du siècle » caractéristique de l’époque romantique qui, pour ce qui est de la littérature française, atteint son apogée dans les années 1830. Le roman met en scène un personnage désabusé, incapable d’aimer, incapable de vivre. Lélia choque ses contemporains par son contenu,  et on a aussi beaucoup critiqué sa forme. George Sand ne s’embarrasse pas des conventions littéraires, elle ose écrire comme le commande son propos. Elle mélange les passages lyriques aux descriptions réalistes, elle est capable d’audace dans l’emploi de différents procédés littéraires et elle n’est pas frileuse devant l’angoissant vide de la création.

George Sand deviendra une écrivaine populaire préoccupée de la situation des femmes et des injustices sociales. Elle mettra en scène des personnages aux prises avec des conditions, des circonstances et des événements variés en ayant habilement recours à de multiples procédés littéraires qui lui permettent d’exposer et d’interroger les réalités sociales et humaines qui la préoccupent.

L’entrée en littérature de la jeune auteure a été spectaculaire. Ce départ fulgurant ne s’est pas démenti. Elle a publié environ quatre vingt dix œuvres de fiction, une très volumineuse autobiographie évoquée plus haut, de nombreux autres textes, comme des récits de voyages, et par ailleurs  une correspondance qui a été publiée en vingt-cinq volumes. George Sand a  aussi mis sa plume au service d’un engagement sociopolitique indéfectible.

ENGAGEMENT SOCIAL ET POLITIQUE

La France du XIX^e siècle a traversé de nombreuses périodes d’agitation. Fille de la Révolution française de 1789 et d’un père républicain au sein de l’armée napoléonienne, George Sand constate que les intérêts du peuple ne sont  pas toujours servis par la jeune démocratie en marche. Avant 1930, année où elle s’affirme républicaine, elle se soucie assez peu de questions politiques, mais éprise de justice sociale, elle finit par se déclarer socialiste en 1840. Sa pensée se radicalise graduellement et sa véritable entrée en politique se fait en 1843 alors que La Revue des Deux Mondes de Charles Buloz refuse de publier ses romans si elle ne modifie pas le point de vue « communiste » qu’elle y défend. Elle crée alors avec le socialiste Pierre Leroux et Louis Viardot La Revue indépendante dont elle a elle-même trouvé le titre.

C’est aussi en 1843 qu’elle prend la défense de Fanchette, une arriérée mentale de 15 ans dont les religieuses de l’hospice de La Châtre ont voulu se débarrasser en faisant en sorte qu’elle s’égare dans la forêt. George Sand dénonce les religieuses et l’inefficacité hypocrite des fonctionnaires qui les protègent. Les imprimeurs locaux refusent de reproduire la brochure qu’elle a écrite. Sand et ceux qui partagent ses points de vue en déduisent qu’il faut créer un journal d’opposition. L’Éclaireur de l’Indre paraît pour la première fois en 1844.

George Sand entend faire en sorte que son travail d’écriture soit de plus en plus au service de ses idées égalitaires. Elle prend non seulement elle-même la défense des plus humbles dans ses écrits, mais elle favorise et encourage aussi l’expression des écrivains et poètes ouvriers dont la voix est trop souvent étouffée par le mépris. Elle multiplie par ailleurs les différents types de textes où elle s’engage à titre de citoyenne : reportages, témoignages, lettres, et aussi quelques textes plus théoriques sous forme d’essais. Elle n’est cependant pas une théoricienne, elle ne veut que défendre sa vision du monde dans une période de l’histoire qui est particulièrement mouvementée.

Dans les mois qui suivent la révolution de février 1848 qui a renversé la Monarchie de Juillet et donné naissance à la Deuxième République, Sand crée un hebdomadaire qu’elle intitule La Cause du peuple. Elle affirme vouloir y suivre l’événement parce qu’il met en rapport direct avec l’émotion du moment. Sollicitée par le Gouvernement provisoire, elle accepte ensuite de participer de façon anonyme aux Bulletins de la République qui en sont l’organe officiel. Après avoir mis fin à cette collaboration, elle écrit, entre le 2 mai et le 11 juin, treize articles pour La Vraie République de Théophile Thoré qui est très critique à l’endroit du Gouvernement provisoire. Sand sera accusée d’avoir été de ceux qui ont fomenté la révolte de juin 1848.

En mars, on avait annoncé pour avril des élections au suffrage universel masculin. George Sand pensait que c’était prématuré parce qu’elle considérait que les paysans n’étaient pas prêts. Elle avait par ailleurs aussi refusé de se présenter comme députée à l’Assemblée nationale comme le souhaitait un groupe de femmes dont elle n’approuvait pas la revendication du droit de vote pour les femmes. Elle considérait qu’une telle réclamation ne touchait que les plus favorisées de la société et qu’il fallait se préoccuper de l’ensemble des femmes dans ce contexte social où les femmes mariées n’avaient aucun pouvoir et où la majorité d’entre elles voterait nécessairement comme leur mari.

Pendant la guerre franco-prussienne de 1870-1871, George Sand écrit son Journal d’un voyageur pendant la guerre qui sera ensuite publié. Selon son habitude, elle veut surtout y témoigner de ce qu’elle voit et entend dans le Berry où elle s’est retirée et où elle constate l’écart très grand entre les régions et Paris. Elle est plus républicaine que patriote. Elle s’oppose à la guerre contre l’Allemagne, un pays qu’elle aime. George Sand a voyagé en Europe et elle se sent Européenne. Elle a d’ailleurs vu juste, cette guerre s’est soldée par un échec, la France a dû capituler le 29 janvier 1871. Cette capitulation crée parmi les classes populaires parisiennes  un climat de méfiance à l’endroit de leur gouvernement ; Paris qui a mené un combat courageux contre l’ennemi, est affamé, bombardé. C’est dans ce climat que naîtra la Commune de Paris de 1871.

Les classes populaires créent leur propre gouvernement entre le 18 mars et le 28 mai. Cette insurrection se termine dans la violence au cours de la semaine sanglante de mai 1871. On a reproché à George Sand et à d’autres écrivains et intellectuels de l’époque de ne pas avoir appuyé les communards. Elle était alors dans le Berry et bien qu’elle ait toujours affirmé s’opposer à toute forme de violence, elle aurait dit en privé qu’elle comprenait ce mouvement de révolte du peuple travailleur parisien.

George Sand n’a certainement pas changé le monde à elle seule. La conjonction de son histoire personnelle, de son métier de femme de lettres et de la conjoncture sociopolitique de l’époque où elle a vécu lui a cependant permis d’apporter une contribution aux idées et aux valeurs de son temps. C’était là un destin remarquable parce que les femmes ne pouvaient pas alors facilement s’émanciper et elles y étaient au mieux des faire-valoir de leur mari. George Sand est morte alors qu’elle avait un dernier roman en chantier. Elle a travaillé jusqu’à la fin de ses jours et son esprit de liberté, d’indépendance et d’authenticité ne s’est jamais démenti. Elle est morte toujours convaincue de ses idéaux de justice sociale.

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GEORGE SAND:  A REMARKABLE WOMAN

Translated by Maria Worton

Some hours prior to commencing this article I was at Radio Canada, in the Jean Desprez room,  Jean Desprez being the penname of the writer Laurette Larocque (1906-1965), militant feminist and author of two celebrated radio series,  Jeunesse doree and Yvan L’intrepide.  The connection with George Sand came to mind.  Precisely one century separates Laurette Larocque from Aurore Dupin Dudevant (1804-1876) who also under a masculine first name and an assumed surname had her novels serialized in the newspapers of her time.  For these two popular authors, changing their names proved an effective tactic for foiling the silence historically imposed upon women.

Gerge Sand at 30 years old

In the course of her life, George Sand enjoyed considerable recognition as a novelist, but she also influenced her era with her writings rooted in her sociopolitical engagement.  Her notoriety spread beyond the frontiers of France.  Dostoevsky recognized how the social dimension of her novels influenced Russian literature. The American poet, Walt Whitman, for his part, claims to have adopted, as his pillow book, Sand’s Consuelo (1842), discovered in his mother’s bookcase.

Beyond the George Sand myth and the aura of scandal that hangs around this imposing figure of 19^th century French literature, Aurore Dupin was a remarkable woman.

FROM D’AURORE DUPIN TO GEORGE SAND

The child of a love marriage between an aristocrat father and a mother of modest background, George Sand straddled the two classes.  She wrote, in her autobiography, Histoire de ma vie, “The blood of kings is mixed in my veins with the blood of the poor and the small”.  This duality constituted the soil in which George Sand grew.

At the age of four when she travelled from Spain to the region of Berry, Aurore, meets her paternal grandmother for the first time.  In the course of the year that follows her arrival at the château de Nohant, her father dies in a riding accident.  The mother puts her daughter under the legal guardianship of the grandmother.  The child, who misses her mother terribly, replaces her father Maurice in the heart of her grandmother, Aurore de Saxe Dupin, the great grandchild of Auguste ll, King of Poland.

Aurore de Saxe is a woman of the Enlightenment.  She, in turn, makes of Aurore a child of the Revolution, of liberty and equality.  In fact, the grandmother withdraws Aurore from the convent and its mystical allure, in favor of a rather eccentric family tutor.  Aurore is instructed in the arts and letters, rides astride her horse, experiencing a large degree of free reign at a time when young women are usually confined.   She befriends youth who have studied in Paris and defended republican ideas.  In the Berry countryside, at the beginning of the 19^th century Aurore soon becomes the subject of rumors and gossip.

At the age of 17 she loses her grandmother and a year later she marries Casimir Dudevant.  He is nine years older than her and she is attracted to the simplicity and honesty of his marriage proposal. Together they have two children, Maurice and Solange, but over the years Aurore and Casimir will grow apart.  They share neither the same ideas nor the same concerns.  She will leave for Paris with her young lover, Jules Sandeau.  She will become George Sand.

THE BIRTH OF GEORGE SAND

Aurore Dupin arrives in Paris with the clear intention of earning her living drawing or writing for the Parisian press.  She publishes a first article in Le Figaro and throws herself into a novel that, according to her autobiography, is revised by her young lover and so signed by the two of them, using the pen name J. Sand.  After Rose et Blanche is published, she completes her first novel independently, Indiana, signed, G. Sand. Since he’s had nothing to do with its creation, her lover refuses her the initial J.  Indiana, its author unknown, is subsequently the talk of the Parisian scene. The work, compared to Balzac, openly criticizes the Napoleonic Civil Code that deprives women of any civil rights or power.

Her second novel, Lélia, appears in 1833, bearing the name George Sand.   The work creates a scandal in the Parisian literary scene.  It’s a philosophical novel, capturing the malaise of the time.  True to Romantic French literature that reaches its pinnacle in the 1830’s, the novel turns on a central character who is disillusioned, incapable of loving, incapable of living.  Lélia shocks its contemporaries with its content and receives much criticism for its style.  George Sand does not bow to literary convention however:  she mixes lyrical passages with realistic descriptions; she’s audacious in her application of various literary styles; she abandons herself to her creativity.

George Sand will become a popular writer concerned with the situation of women and social injustice.  She will create characters faced with the conditions, circumstances and events that characterize her day, and allow her to expose and challenge the social and human issues that concern her.

The arrival of the young author on the literary scene is spectacular.  This auspicious beginning is a sign of things to come.  She will publish nigh on ninety works of fiction, and in addition to the extensive autobiography noted earlier, numerous other writings, such as travel journals, as well as a lifetime of correspondence gathered together into twenty-five volumes.  George Sand will also relentlessly put her pen into the service of her sociopolitical engagement.

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT

France of the 19^th century is a time of turmoil and upheaval.  Both a daughter of the revolution of 1789 and of a republican father, soldier of Napoleon’s army, George Sand becomes aware that the interests of the people are not always well served by the new democracy.  Before 1830, the year she declares her Republican affiliation, political questions are of little concern, nevertheless social justice issues are.   By 1840 she defines herself as a socialist.  Her political thought continues to radicalize and in 1843 La Revue des Deux Mondes refuses to publish her novels until she modifies the “communist” point of view that she defends.  In response and in league with socialist Pierre Leroux, and Louis Viardot she creates La Revue indépendante.

1843 is also the year that she comes to the defense of Fanchette, a 15 year old girl in the care of the nuns of an asylum in La Châtre.  Wanting to rid themselves of their intellectually challenged charge, the nuns arrange for Fanchette to be taken into the woods and abandoned.  George Sand denounces both the hypocrisy and the negligence of the nuns, and the civil servants who protect them.  Local printers refuse to print the pamphlet that she produces.  Sand and her supporters conclude that a dedicated newspaper is required for raising such issues.  The first issue of L’Eclaireur de L’Indre appears in 1844.

George Sand intends her writing to serve egalitarian ideas by coming to the defense of the underprivileged and also encouraging expression by writers and poets of the working class, a voice too often stifled and scorned.  As a citizen, she employs reportage, interviews, letters, and analysis.  She is not however a theoretician, she only wants to defend her vision of the world in a period of history that is particularly tumultuous and unfair.   

In the months that follow the February revolution of 1848 that overthrows the monarchy of July and installs the Second Republic, Sand creates a weekly newspaper entitled, La Cause du people. She wants to capture events as they are happening and to bring people into the emotion of the moment.  Solicited by the Provisional Government, she agrees to participate on an anonymous basis, in the Bulletins de la République, their official organ. At the end of this collaboration she writes, from May 2^nd to June 11^th, thirteen articles for La Vraie République , another political newspaper, created by Théophile Thoré, a republican  very critical of the Provisional Government.  Sand, among others, will be accused of fomenting the uprising of June 1848.

In March, elections had been announced, for a male universal suffrage for the month of April.  George Sand believed this was premature and that the peasants were too divided.  She had, in addition, refused to present herself as a deputy to the National Assembly, as the women’s lobby had hoped, in disagreement with its demand for female suffrage.  She had decided such a demand would only benefit the more privileged in society and that it was otherwise necessary to consider all of women in a social context in which married women had no power and whereby the majority of them would necessarily vote the way of their husbands.

George Sand at 60 years old

In her later years and during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871, George Sand writes a Journal d’un voyageur pendant la guerre that will later be published.  In her usual manner, she wants above all to witness what she sees and hears in the region of Berry, where she’s retired and where she can observe the divide between the provincial regions and Paris.  She is more republican than patriot and she opposes the war against Germany, a country that she loves.  George Sand has travelled Europe and she feels European.  She correctly predicts that the war will end in failure.  France surrenders January 29^th 1871, amid food shortages in Paris, military failures and the Prussian bombardment of the capital. It’s this climate that gives rise to the Paris Commune of 1871.

During the Paris Commune working class people govern themselves from March 18^th to May 28^th, until the military move in and violently take back the city following La Semaine Sanglante.   George Sand and other writers and intellectuals are blamed for not supporting les communards. In Berry at the time, it is rumored that Sand privately expresses her sympathy for the movement, although publicly she remains opposed to any form of violence.

The woman that has become George Sand has certainly not changed the world single handedly.  The conjunction of her personal history, her work as a woman of letters and the socio-political conjuncture of the era in which she lives has allowed her to contribute to the ideas and values of the time. Nevertheless, her destiny proves remarkable, given the great difficulty of self-emancipation experienced by the women of her day who by and large exist to valorize their husbands.  George Sand dies with a work in progress, still in love with ideas of social justice.  All her life her passion for liberty, independence, and authenticity never fails her.

…I don’t know why I’ve agreed to this… but here I am… here we are… he briskly raps the knocker.  We’re standing in the corridor by the stairwell, with its dank smell and hollow sounds.  There are 3 locks.  Each bolt is slowly turned. The door cautiously opened.  She peers up at me.  “Hello?” her voice falters. She’s very slight, with white wispy hair, in a small bun.  Her eyes, egg shell blue would fly away if they could. These two people are so different… and yet…I don’t know.  The security chain is doing its job; keeping problems at bay.  Doubt there’s much it can do about this one though, the one standing next to me.  I imagine he’s not good with door keys.  There seems a good chance he hasn’t got any.

He says, “You’re my mum, ain’t you”.  “Yes,” she says faintly, “Yes I am.”  With a nod in my direction, he declares, “See, like I told you.”   I register the tone of one not often taken on his word. “All right mum.”  She takes a step back.  I stumble, “Sorry…sorry to bother you”.  Sorry for not making her life any easier. “Ta mum.”  The door clicks shut.  Bolts turn.  “So you know,” he continues, matter- of-fact, “that I’m not going to lie to you.  Not with my mum being a neighbor of yours.”  “Okay,”   I agree, vaguely aware that if I want my bike back I should stay the course.  There are other reasons to be sure… but I’m not clear about them.   

We are negotiating for the release of an old red bike that I bought the week before for only £5.  The lock cost twice the bike and I doubt I’ll be seeing it again.  He’s  asking  £15 but I’m only going to agree to 10 because then I’ve still only paid 15 for a bike that works, fits my frame and is the right color red.  I block memory of the lock because that would remind me that the lad before me is, in fact, the thief… that he’s costing me… and if that’s all I think then the situation begins to irk. 

But what to think?  If I think of him as the drug addicted son of the poor woman upstairs, then the story is a tragedy.  There’s nothing to be done.  I withhold the £10 and let him keep the bike. .. or I let him keep the bike and give her the money.  I post it perhaps… anonymously. 

But the truth is, I prefer to leave out the hapless mum…and not think of her at all…and leave in the feckless son, who’s stolen my bike for the purpose of selling it back to me, on the pretense that he is mediating with the thief, on my behalf.  Now this is a story with a comic twist that I can play along with in the spirit of the piece. This way I also stand to get my bike back.  He regards the £10 note lying in the palm of his hand and mutters, “I’ll see what I can do”.  I have to admire his cheek.

He’d rapped on my door much like he rapped on his mum’s.   I opened it on a fair, longish-haired lad, mid 20’s, in a tweedy coat, 70’s lapels.   Breath… bated, “Hello. Did you have a red bike locked up outside?”  “Yes, why?”  “It’s been nicked.”   ”Oh …but how do you know it’s been nicked?”  “I know the bloke who nicked it. I just saw him wheeling it away.”  “Where”?  “Over there.   But look, don’t worry, I can get it back for you.”  “Yes?” “Just give me £15 and I’ll go and talk with him.”  “…Look…” I say, with the inertia of someone who knows none of her lines, “… Thanks for your help but…”   “…I didn’t take it… if that’s what you’re thinking. My mum lives upstairs. And you don’t queer your own patch, do you.”  “…How do I know your mum lives upstairs?”  “Come on.  I’ll show you.”  “I don’t know…”   

I’m standing at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for the son to return with my bike, when three or four lads come hurrying by.  As I make way for them one turns to me and says,“Don’t trust that geezer, will you.  He’d shop his own mum.”  Later, filling the kettle, I think of her upstairs.  She too must fill her kettle by the kitchen window, over-looking the market on a Saturday morning…with the hawkers hawking…the murmur and the milling. Waiting for the water to boil…I’ve been here two years and I’ve never noticed her.  Two years without a neighbor to talk to. I wonder how she gets by…what with the worry of him.  Does it empty her life?  Does she love him as much? I wonder what sustains her…if she has any faith.  She’ll never trust me now.  I know too much.

Reading A Woman Among Warlords you may find yourself forgetting on occasion that this is, in fact, a work of non-fiction, so extreme are the terms of its author’s life and homeland.  The youngest MP ever to be elected to Afghanistan’s parliament, Malalai Joya was kicked out in 2007 amid cries of, “Take this prostitute out of here!”  Her crime had been to challenge the legitimacy of a parliament and judiciary, largely composed of warlords, drug barons, fundamentalists, qualified by the participation of intellectuals and justified by the protection of NATO countries such as the US  and Canada.  Here is the one of the women NATO governments claimed they were going to war to help.  There is a certain shock value in the details of just how far from such a mission our governments have strayed, how far from grace they have fallen.

The beauty of the book Malalai Joya has co-authored with Derrick Okeefe is that it rings with reality, as lived and understood by an Afghan woman, wise with words by dint of an education and politicization.  The truth of that reality here brims with good people, bad people, and fearful people, crimes of the most egregious nature are detailed and their perpetrators named.

Sure to be one of a kind as it mixes diverse genres: personal anecdote, history, socio-political analysis and political manifesto.  It is also a personal appeal to the reader, to understand both the historic and present roles played out by foreign governments, occupation forces and corporations in both funding and implementing the tormenting and terrorizing of ordinary Afghan people and the destabilizing of their country. 

To this end, tragedies are spelled out: wedding parties are bombed and civilians killed in the thousands, the infrastructure wasted, food crops turned to heroin crops, children forced into labor, women forced into abusive marriages, women who self-immolate in sheer despair.  This is the country with the lowest longevity where most people still do not live beyond the age of 43, thanks to a grueling poverty, that in itself testifies to the contradiction and futility of aid carrying a gun.  

There are victories too, so few and so hard won that they are indeed precious and moving.  Malalai’s election and this book must surely count as two of these.  The subject of hate campaigns, attacks and death threats, Malalai is kept constantly on the move and her precise whereabouts a secret.  The blue burqa she must wear becomes a life saver, as it blends her into a sea of other burqas.  This paradox also provides a useful metaphor, for though on the one hand she cuts a heroic figure, on the other, as Malalai readily maintains, she is just one among an ever growing number of Afghan women and men, fighting for women’s rights and a democratic Afghanistan.  This is a movement largely growing underground, demonstrating great courage and community in the face of mortal threats by warlord militias, and fundamentalist policing that preaches a woman should be “in her house or in the grave”.    

Not surprisingly, Malalai speaks and writes with the urgency of a woman who counts every day of life as a day won and not to be wasted.  She writes with great pride and affection of an Afghanistan that’s rarely ever been mentioned in the western corporate media that prefers to cast this land in the light of a primitive country full of backward people with neither the inclination nor the culture to manage themselves in a civil fashion; a people who must, therefore, be bombed into the sort of democracy that only criminals are fit to defend. 

Malalai’s book serves as a counterweight to such constructed news and views, citing history and culture of the struggle for Afghan democracy, with the likes of Amanullah Khan and Queen Soraya, the parties and organizations in the Afghanistan of the first half of the 20^th century. All of which sowed the seeds of a constitutional monarchy and a more egalitarian society, that saw women enter parliament and many areas of the labor force.  Such homegrown evolution suffered serious setbacks however under direct Soviet influence in the 70’s that culminated with Soviet occupation in ’79, all amid the cold war machinations of the US and the latter’s funding and arming of extremists that would, in turn, fuel the bloody civil war of ‘92-’96 and ongoing instability.

The democratic urge has surely taken a severe beating and yet Malalai finds reason to be hopeful. She writes, “The support I received in the election campaign proved that the inequality between men and women was not some kind of permanent part of Afghan culture – things could be changed for the better.”  Most of the religious leaders in her province of Farah supported her too.  And she recounts many expressions of Afghans passionate longing for an end to corruption and violence and the beginning of a better world for their children.  One man tells her, quite simply, “I want to put my hat on your head and your scarf on mine.”  

The poignancy of this voice stands in stark contrast to the cynicism she encounters elsewhere. In the interests of realpolitik, Malalai has frequently been asked to forgive and forget the “mistakes” of the past, the contradictions of the present, and to compromise a little.  To the Italian journalist who asks her why she doesn’t try a more diplomatic approach, she replies with the question, “Would you have compromised with fascists like Mussolini in your country?”

Malalai maintains that guns are clearlynot the best way to win a democracy.  She argues as an educator who understands democracy as a matter of process, discussion, education.  Nevertheless, she does distinguish democracy from freedom.  Where Afghan freedom is concerned, she is prepared to do what Afghans have done before, as they did with the British and the Soviets, and that is to defend it to the hilt. 

Presently, Afghans remain “trapped between two enemies”, NATO forces and the Taliban.  Malalai reasons that leaving Afghans with the one enemy invader to conquer would give them a fighting chance for a free Afghanistan and the eventual possibility of diplomatic resolution of her country’s regional differences, in an Afghan way, at an Afghan pace. With this in mind, she urges “democracy loving people”, Canadians among them too of course, to do whatever we can to get NATO forces out of Afghanistan. Evidently, large anti-war demonstrations and opinion polls here in the West do not go unnoticed among the “democracy loving people of Afghanistan”. 

The thing about Malalai Joya is that she really believes that when enough people become aware, “they will rise like a storm that brings the truth.”  Her book ends with an Afghan proverb, “Our enemies can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of spring.”

When a person experiences invasion of any kind, one of three phenomena happen: Flight, Fight or Freeze. Any degree of aggression, force, trauma, violence, and post-traumatic stress, triggers the nervous system to react in one of these ways. 

Modern warfare and invasion, employing state of the art technology, occupies a massive space in the psychology of the nations unfortunate enough to have to endure it. 

In the wake of the most recent war in the Gaza Strip, as well as the ongoing conflict in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, we are faced with millions of people in fight, flight or freeze.

However, anyone situated anywhere between the polarities of victim and perpetrator is affected by this violence, in one way or another.

The following work forms an experimental, experiential, nonlinear narrative, threading together media, politics, industry, intimate and impersonal utterances from people directly and indirectly affected by war and invasion.

• Stefan Cristoff for playing his own piano composition “Untitled”                                 
• Robert Fisk for excerpts from his public lecture at Concordia University and University of Ottawa. February 19 & 20, 2009                                                                                   
• Ghada (Last name omitted) for excerpts from an interview, February 08, 2009
• Suheir Hammad for excerpts from What I Will, Def Jam Poetry & Live performance on March 31^st,  Montreal (TBD)
• Ehab Lotayef for excerpts from an interview. April 5, 2009
• Ahmed Mukhtar for a sample of his Kurdish Drumming
• The unknown maker of the home video found on You Tube, “B’Tselem House Demolition in Qalqiliya, August, 2007″
• Concordia University for instruction and the use of equipment