We are born before we are truly born. Before us, socio-historical, political and cultural events outline the contours of what will surround our own development once the day of our biological birth has passed. This conception of birth, called “sociological”, developed by the philosopher and sociologist Didier Eribon and taken up, closer to us, by Jean-Philippe Pleau in his famous Rue Duplessisallows us to think about our existence stretched over decades, even centuries before us, offering, on our personal suffering, a new, poetic perspective, but, above all, one that brings possible emancipations.
So there are several births that tell who we are. There is our birthday, first, known, which appears on our birth certificate, the one that designates the starting point of our inescapable entropic process. Then, there are all those times when, during our existence, we bring ourselves into the world, freeing ourselves from our environments, sometimes, from the shame linked to certain conditions perhaps, from relationships that stifle us, from personal configurations that no longer do justice to the expansion of our being.
Yes, we are often born, after having suffered a little – or a lot – obviously. If we know how not to run away from ourselves, if we dare to hold on where the times do not allow us to hold on for long, in the place of transformation, if we know how to let things change us, if we dare to undergo metamorphoses in a world that is almost, one might say, “metamorphophobic”, we are born a hundred times, a thousand times, in the course of a single life.
But also, and this is the whole path opened by this idea of sociological birth, there would also be “the before us”, which, well beyond our ancestors, outside of the simple lineage and its genetics, would tell how we arrive in a story that has already begun. As the philosopher Paul Ricoeur said: “We are born one by one, we die one by one, we appear in the middle of a conversation that has already begun and in which we try to orient ourselves so that we can in turn make our contribution.”
And we also know that there are not only happy births, and that some sociological dates of birth also concern those moments when the world has plunged into horror, war, cruelty, injustice or oppression. These dates exist in us, even when we have not lived them. We carry them, like stigmata, brands with a hot iron, scars on wounds that others have borne before us, others who are part of our own narrative, whether or not we are related by blood.
A few weeks ago, at Correspondances d’Eastman, I hosted a fabulous discussion with Stéphanie Robert and Hugo Latulippe, about their documentary I rise upscreened for the occasion, in keeping with the theme of the event which, this year, was “The Revolt”. Around the creation of the stage object of the same name, staged in 2019 by the sisters Véronique and Gabrielle Côté, the documentary allows us to hear the voice of a youth marked by the climate emergency, the hope of this world which will dare, finally perhaps – it would be necessary – the real metamorphoses required for its future.
And this week, I want to draw inspiration from the exercise proposed to the actors by the Côté sisters. Echoing the idea of sociological birth, they ask them to complete the sentence: “I am the daughter of…, the son of…, the child of…” The scene of the monologue delivered on stage, inspired by the responses of the actors and actresses, brings tears to my eyes every time I watch it. So, I ask you the question, too. With the idea of acting, the idea of giving up the perfect answer, the idea of opening up to your inner worlds.
You are the children, the sons, the daughters of whom, of what, of what event, of what great illusion washed up on the beaches of your biological birth, of what political defeat, of what victory over adversity, of what hope?
I’ll get the ball rolling, if you don’t mind.
SO.
“I am the daughter of European immigration, vomited on the banks of a frozen country, in the urgency of fleeing a Europe destroyed by the totalitarian, strategic, methodical hatred of camps, collaborators, famines, and massacres that kill entire villages in less than three hours.
I am the daughter of a father who is not mine, but who sheds tears over a baby my age, at the Paul-Sauvé center, one evening of a missed appointment, who no longer seems to have a next time. I am the daughter of a hysteric, given over to Charcot’s clinical lesson, fainted at the Salpêtrière in Brouillet’s painting. I am the daughter of Mata Hari who, just before the execution, blows a kiss to the platoon of soldiers. I am the daughter of October, the daughter of a new reason to fear the sound of boots. I am the daughter of a woman who dances, eyes closed in the middle of a Café Müller.
I am the daughter of the in-between territories, of roots twisted by the stretching of time between two visits, by mourning without ritual, by languages that are not transmitted from one generation to the next. I am the daughter of buttered cakes, of tulip fields and of Foulkes’ soldiers in Wageningen. I am the daughter of Russian tanks arriving in Berlin, of women’s heads shaved in the public square. I am the daughter of railways, then of signatories of a refusal that will only be told to me.
I am the daughter of an old land that believed it was legitimate to tear away that of a people convinced that nature is something that inhabits us and not something that we colonize. I am the daughter of this guilt, the daughter of this one and then of the one that erased from history all the colors that were not its own. I am the daughter of the guilt of residential schools, of the slaughter of sled dogs in a melting North. I am the daughter of acid rain, of antipsychiatry and of flowers slipped into gun barrels.
Over to you.