On Wisdom - EN
English Version *Wisdom: the ability to act effectively using experience, understanding and insight.
I landed in Guadeloupe on October 21, 2023, the wound from my four wisdom teeth pulled the week before freshly closed. Maybe that's why I don't consider myself "wise"?
Today is November 22, 2023. With the military support or enthusiastic silence of the governments of Biden, Macron, Sunak, al-Sissi and the monarchy of Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saoud, among many others, it's been 46 days since Netanayahu's colonial state stepped up the systematic murder of Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip. 46 days in which more than 11,000 people have been murdered by "Isxxel", not counting the number of wounded and missing under the rubble. 46 days after the attack by Hamas, a pro-Palestinian struggle group elected by the Gazan population in 2005 in the face of the inertia of the PLO and financed by the Israeli government since the 1980s.
So far, if I can't find a demonstration near me, I'm amplifying the Palestinian voices of Wisard Bisan, Motaz Aziza, Plestia and the 45 journalists murdered since the war began, and sharing the resources I'm using to educate myself while taking part in online action groups.
And then, when people around me come up with dingueries or genius ideas, we exchange. For example, during a discussion with some comrades, we discussed the vision of the world proposed by Marc Fouchard in his short film "Les Frémissements du Thé"; released in 2014 and selected for the Oscars in 2017. The protagonist, Malick, a former boxer, is in his grocery store when a skinhead enters and spits on the floor. Malick wipes off the spit and invites him to tea. In the final confrontation, he lets the young skinhead hide in his grocery store, before offering a cup of tea to the young racists who were chasing him. Putting fascist attacks and anti-racist revolts on an equal footing. I and two other comrades were criticized for looking at the film with a "bias", as if objectivity were an ideal to be attained, and as if their own "neutrality" were not also subjective.
Of course, it's France that's colonizing us, so it doesn't surprise me that universalist brainwashing works on some people. And then, another comrade referred to the behavior of the main character, Malick, as "wise"; the speaker went on to say that it's a behavior that comes with age. Malick could box them in, but being wise, he holds back and offers tea to create a "dialogue". Sorry, that's where I burst out laughing. As if wisdom were akin to inertia and status quo, as if it were natural to disengage and turn the other cheek with age. Yet, for our generation, the violence of this film lies in its reminder that the good migrant is the one who bows his head and swallows his anger. The others deserve only loss of nationality and an OQTF.
For me, wisdom is not a question of age, but of insight into the reality in which we live. As one of my comrades remarked, these people who describe wisdom as non-violence are out of touch. I can understand this disconnection, since after being systematically violated by tear gas, LBDs and karsher in the streets of Paris over the last few years, I was beginning to avoid demonstrations and perceive them as pointless. Fortunately, a friend reminded me that it was precisely because of their impact that the government was trying to keep us away from them. Maybe it's a friend like that that's missing from all those people who look at the genocide in Palestine with a "neutral" or "detached" eye.
The cognitive dissonance is real. When we talk about the dangerous vision offered by this film, one of my comrades retorts that it's "just a film", even as censorship rages and hundreds of people have lost their jobs simply for speaking out against the genocide of the Palestinians. Even as Israel's Ministry of Finance allocates its Ministry of Foreign Affairs $26.3 million on November 14, 2023, for the propaganda campaign in which they present the world with misleading videos to justify the bombing of refugee camps and hospitals. At the same time as Nazi Germany was spending millions on the production of Leni Riefenstahl's films.
So when An Duplan asks us: How have the last few weeks changed us? My answer is clear: These last few weeks have anchored a lesson I've learned over the last few years:
I don't believe in non-violence. I believe in targeted violence, as the Dhofar resistance fighters remind us in Heiny Srour's film L'heure de la libération à sonné. There has never been any question of tolerating the death of civilians, whatever their origins. Since 1948, the struggle for Palestine, from the river to the sea, has always been a call for reparations. A call for the return of land, free movement, the destruction of barbed wire walls, walls in the sea, an end to the embargo, the release of political prisoners, the return of bodies and an end to economic control. The two-state solution has always been a decoy used by the United Nations, the United States and Britain to install their armies in a strategic point in the Middle East. It's hardly surprising, then, that Israeli military forces are involved in absolutely every current genocide, from the Sudan to the Congo to Haiti.
Making films and telling stories whose vision allows us to dream of a world after capitalism and colonialism, while acknowledging the reality in which we live, is indispensable. We don't "just" make films. We are mirrors and echoes. We are a point of reference for future generations. I wouldn't be the same person without the books of Octavia Butler, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and Maryse Conde. My vision of the world would be totally different without the films of Sarah Maldoror, Euzhan Palcy and Raoul Peck. So let's live up to the dreams of our ancestors and our children.
The struggle for the liberation of Palestine closely echoes pan-African struggles, from Aimé Césaire in Martinique to Lumumba in Congo and Maurice Bishop in Grenada.
What the Palestinians have been living through for 75 years, our ancestors lived through for 400 years. We are currently living through the consequences of these decades of genocide, ecocide and economic exploitation. In Guadeloupe, resistance movements have always been present, whether in Mé 67 or in 2009 with Lyannaj Kont Profytasion, in 2020 with the destruction of colonial statues and Kolektif kont vyolans a jandam. On November 3, Dominica celebrated 45 years of independence. 45 years, the age of one of my cousins.
"To leap is not to deny the burden (constraints, pain...) but, on the contrary, to turn it into a weightless force: the more intense the pressure, the greater the leap".
Dénètem Touam Bona, La Sagesse des Lianes
So let's organize film screenings, book clubs, working groups, fund-raising events and appeals to our elected representatives. There's so much to learn and pass on.
Why should we want to "return to normal" when we can simply be reborn transformed?