I) Indochina and Algeria: a common history? We will
through a novel testimony "a dam against the Pacific," by Marguerite Duras, examine the circumstances of the occupation of a French possession: Indochina.
The book:
In southern Indochina during the 1920s. An old widow, tired and sick, living with his two children, Joseph and Suzanne, twenty and seventeen years in a bungalow isolated from the marshes of Kam Indochina ...
The old woman, ignorant of colonial customs that need to resort to bribes, has invested all his savings in a concession that uncultivable tides regularly inundate the Pacific. She then fights against the general direction of the cadastre, and in desperation decided to build with the help of the peasants of the region, a dam to contain the high tides ....
If the plot of the book is fascinating, its rich literature is probably the same. Marguerite Duras devoted primarily his attention to the terrible trio of his characters. But the autobiographical material did not prevent already set in this novel colonial castigated the turpitude of certain directors in French Indochina, which became his major problem: the denunciation of social injustice, of bourgeois morality.
French Indochina:
This country was the French colony of Indochina Peninsula belonging to the French colonial empire: Laos and Cambodia were two protectorates; Vietnamese territory consisted of a colony of Cochinchina, Saigon was that the capital, and a protectorate of Annam Tonkin. If
financial investment flourished if the industry was born, however agriculture progressed little, barely half of the lands granted to the Europeans were exploited. However, teaching was more developed than in other French colonies: there were 4% of school attendance in Algeria and 30% in Cambodia . Parents of Marguerite Duras were not the only teachers who responded to the appeal of colonial propaganda.
French rule was not well accepted, especially in Vietnam where there was already an anti-colonialist movement on the eve of the war 1914.Marguerite Duras wrote "A barrage against the Pacific" took place while the Indochina that pitted the French and Indochinese nationalists and intellectuals who joined the party Communist began to doubt the validity of that commitment.
Children of the plain
The description of the children of the plain in the book by Marguerite Duras is a "snapshot" of the harsh reality of indigenous colonial times. Babies, we must "give them mouth to mouth, Rice previously chewed. "
Submitted to such a climate, Cambodians show a "thousand-year slumber." "Their misery had given them the habit of passivity that was their only defense in front of their children died of hunger or their crops burned by the salt." Indeed, "there were many children in the plain. It was a sort of calamity. " "Children were playing in the rain like the rest, sunshine, green mangoes, stray dogs. They kept playing than to die [...] He died probably everywhere. " Without quinine, they are also victims of malaria. This theme of children, their number, their perpetual agitation, their eternal hunger, their premature death, is essential throughout the book which closes even their evocation: "But the children were left at the same time as the sun. You could hear their soft chirping out of the boxes. "
A people miserable:
More unfortunate still that the children of Cambodia, there is this old Malay what "Corporal" whose "great deal of his life was the track" because, during construction, "in side of the convicts, there were enlisted as Corporal ", monitored by the" native militia for natives. " Then he "had done or tried to do all trades" and even "the scarecrow to crows in the rice fields." And this incessant work is necessary because his wife "child constantly and always works the only militia", it is true that "when she was younger, she had the fucking across the plain for pennies." Also, the mother just died, had he gone, "he could not lose a single day to find work." "Corporal" is thus in the novel, all native Indochinese and their ailments.
The " white "
If the exotic ready to denounce the poverty of Cambodia, the drama of the West is no less.
The "little white"
The mother was the victim officers cadastral Kam; victim of the colonial world: its lure, its frauds, its corrupt. And Marguerite Duras paints a satirical picture of the French colony of Indochina in the late twenties, the condition of poor whites.
mother recalls: "I worked for fifteen years and for fifteen years, I have sacrificed every bit of my pleasures to buy this concession the government. " But, ignorant of the colonial practice of bribes, kickbacks, "The Mystery of extortion," the discretionary power almost divine officials, she was unable to reconcile "the dogs of the cadastre" she vituperates "ignominy", the "fabulous wealth." They sold him a concession uncultivable she and her children are the "fourth" to hold them and their predecessors are "all ruined or punctured. Officers of the cadastre granted him a delay with cynicism "for cultivation." Then she was faced with "the solidarity irreducible existed between the colonial banks, "the priests of Mecca, the financiers." And she sighs, "I knew they were so free, so full of freedom, it was mostly because they had a lot of money."
The "colonial fortunes"
The mother was fooled by these "big colonial vampires," these "big cats", "these gentlemen and children of the king" who, by demonstrating "a comfortable to live extraordinary, "bearing the" white suit, the color of immunity and innocence "and their women wearing the same "elegance summer, are no less" garbage ". Their prosperity is based on the exploitation of the country, "the latex flowing. The blood also. But the latex alone was precious, collected and collected, paid. The blood was lost. They avoided even imagine that he would be a lot to come one day claim the prize. " This colonial power is illustrated by the father of Mr. Jo is "a very rich speculator whose fortune was a model of colonial wealth. He began by speculating on land adjacent to the largest city in the colony, it [...] had built rental houses cheap. "
Description of the "city":
But in the big city, they really strut their stuff. The description is first objective: we must distinguish between "two cities in this city, the white and the other". But the description quickly becomes very subjective "top quarter" is "an orgiastic space," "a mess magic", a "paradise", a "theater" where "the white race could provide in peace without mixing show the sanctity of his own presence ", while below are relegated to" the white that had not fortune, the colonial unworthy, "" the white mob "who" s'encasernent outbreaks in brothels of the port "but were" what was more honest, less scumbag in this colossal mess what was the colony. "
These have small snippets of evidence: the impact of colonialism, despite its different effects on the conquered territory, is universal: there are always dominant exercising power over the dominated .
through a novel testimony "a dam against the Pacific," by Marguerite Duras, examine the circumstances of the occupation of a French possession: Indochina.
The book:
In southern Indochina during the 1920s. An old widow, tired and sick, living with his two children, Joseph and Suzanne, twenty and seventeen years in a bungalow isolated from the marshes of Kam Indochina ...
The old woman, ignorant of colonial customs that need to resort to bribes, has invested all his savings in a concession that uncultivable tides regularly inundate the Pacific. She then fights against the general direction of the cadastre, and in desperation decided to build with the help of the peasants of the region, a dam to contain the high tides ....
If the plot of the book is fascinating, its rich literature is probably the same. Marguerite Duras devoted primarily his attention to the terrible trio of his characters. But the autobiographical material did not prevent already set in this novel colonial castigated the turpitude of certain directors in French Indochina, which became his major problem: the denunciation of social injustice, of bourgeois morality.
French Indochina:
This country was the French colony of Indochina Peninsula belonging to the French colonial empire: Laos and Cambodia were two protectorates; Vietnamese territory consisted of a colony of Cochinchina, Saigon was that the capital, and a protectorate of Annam Tonkin. If
financial investment flourished if the industry was born, however agriculture progressed little, barely half of the lands granted to the Europeans were exploited. However, teaching was more developed than in other French colonies: there were 4% of school attendance in Algeria and 30% in Cambodia . Parents of Marguerite Duras were not the only teachers who responded to the appeal of colonial propaganda.
French rule was not well accepted, especially in Vietnam where there was already an anti-colonialist movement on the eve of the war 1914.Marguerite Duras wrote "A barrage against the Pacific" took place while the Indochina that pitted the French and Indochinese nationalists and intellectuals who joined the party Communist began to doubt the validity of that commitment.
Children of the plain
The description of the children of the plain in the book by Marguerite Duras is a "snapshot" of the harsh reality of indigenous colonial times. Babies, we must "give them mouth to mouth, Rice previously chewed. "
Submitted to such a climate, Cambodians show a "thousand-year slumber." "Their misery had given them the habit of passivity that was their only defense in front of their children died of hunger or their crops burned by the salt." Indeed, "there were many children in the plain. It was a sort of calamity. " "Children were playing in the rain like the rest, sunshine, green mangoes, stray dogs. They kept playing than to die [...] He died probably everywhere. " Without quinine, they are also victims of malaria. This theme of children, their number, their perpetual agitation, their eternal hunger, their premature death, is essential throughout the book which closes even their evocation: "But the children were left at the same time as the sun. You could hear their soft chirping out of the boxes. "
A people miserable:
More unfortunate still that the children of Cambodia, there is this old Malay what "Corporal" whose "great deal of his life was the track" because, during construction, "in side of the convicts, there were enlisted as Corporal ", monitored by the" native militia for natives. " Then he "had done or tried to do all trades" and even "the scarecrow to crows in the rice fields." And this incessant work is necessary because his wife "child constantly and always works the only militia", it is true that "when she was younger, she had the fucking across the plain for pennies." Also, the mother just died, had he gone, "he could not lose a single day to find work." "Corporal" is thus in the novel, all native Indochinese and their ailments.
The " white "
If the exotic ready to denounce the poverty of Cambodia, the drama of the West is no less.
The "little white"
The mother was the victim officers cadastral Kam; victim of the colonial world: its lure, its frauds, its corrupt. And Marguerite Duras paints a satirical picture of the French colony of Indochina in the late twenties, the condition of poor whites.
mother recalls: "I worked for fifteen years and for fifteen years, I have sacrificed every bit of my pleasures to buy this concession the government. " But, ignorant of the colonial practice of bribes, kickbacks, "The Mystery of extortion," the discretionary power almost divine officials, she was unable to reconcile "the dogs of the cadastre" she vituperates "ignominy", the "fabulous wealth." They sold him a concession uncultivable she and her children are the "fourth" to hold them and their predecessors are "all ruined or punctured. Officers of the cadastre granted him a delay with cynicism "for cultivation." Then she was faced with "the solidarity irreducible existed between the colonial banks, "the priests of Mecca, the financiers." And she sighs, "I knew they were so free, so full of freedom, it was mostly because they had a lot of money."
The "colonial fortunes"
The mother was fooled by these "big colonial vampires," these "big cats", "these gentlemen and children of the king" who, by demonstrating "a comfortable to live extraordinary, "bearing the" white suit, the color of immunity and innocence "and their women wearing the same "elegance summer, are no less" garbage ". Their prosperity is based on the exploitation of the country, "the latex flowing. The blood also. But the latex alone was precious, collected and collected, paid. The blood was lost. They avoided even imagine that he would be a lot to come one day claim the prize. " This colonial power is illustrated by the father of Mr. Jo is "a very rich speculator whose fortune was a model of colonial wealth. He began by speculating on land adjacent to the largest city in the colony, it [...] had built rental houses cheap. "
Description of the "city":
But in the big city, they really strut their stuff. The description is first objective: we must distinguish between "two cities in this city, the white and the other". But the description quickly becomes very subjective "top quarter" is "an orgiastic space," "a mess magic", a "paradise", a "theater" where "the white race could provide in peace without mixing show the sanctity of his own presence ", while below are relegated to" the white that had not fortune, the colonial unworthy, "" the white mob "who" s'encasernent outbreaks in brothels of the port "but were" what was more honest, less scumbag in this colossal mess what was the colony. "
These have small snippets of evidence: the impact of colonialism, despite its different effects on the conquered territory, is universal: there are always dominant exercising power over the dominated .
Nour, Chanez, Sarah and Meriem
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