European Writers on Borders and Identity - Transcript
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James Crawford: There are more borders in the world right now than ever before in human history. What do you think that says about the trajectory of how we’re organising our world, and what might this mean for movement and migration in the future?
Ananda Devi: I think that it’s a problematic that exists probably from the time of colonisation, because before we had sort of defined frontiers, defined boundaries, mostly through the phenomenon of colonisation, people were freer to move and to go from one place to another, but if you take land masses a lot of the current boundaries have been created artificially, I must say. So being from Mauritius, where there wasn’t an indigenous population, it was a desert island so all the people who are there came from elsewhere, nobody was born there, so everybody crossed boundaries, crossed oceans, crossed land masses, in some cases in very difficult conditions, which means under slavery, under indentured labour, labourers from India, but if there had been as many walls as there are today, then obviously nobody would have been able to be in that place and to build a country from that. So for me it’s really tragic to see what’s happening today, and the more resources it seems that we have in the world generally, the less people are prepared, or countries are prepared, to share. So we’re seeing such a gap and an abyss between those who have and who don’t want to share, and those who don’t have and are forced to move out to find the resources they need. And everything goes back to history, I’m afraid, and to the history of colonisation and capitalism also.
JC (21:40): All three of you have moved away from the country of your birth. Is that something you all feel, that sense of not being enough for your adopted home?
AD (24:00): You can see it in two different ways. Either you are not enough or you are more than where you are, you know, so if I look at it from a positive point of view, I could say, well, I’m at home in France, obviously, because I speak French, write in French, I’m at home in the UK because I’ve studied here, I’m at home in Africa because Mauritius is part of the African continent, or it’s an island, my ancestors came from India so I’m at home in India… So in a way you can belong everywhere, and you can also belong nowhere. And I think as a writer it’s fine to be both, because when you belong nowhere you can feel that kind of strangeness and foreignness and be able to express it in what you’re writing. It’s like a kind of fault line, and as we were talking about borders, and I’ve always lived on borders, even when I was living in Africa in the Congo-Brazzaville for many years, we were on the border between the RDC, which is the big démocratique du Congo, and Congo-Brazzaville and we were on the border, and here in France I’m on the Swiss border, so I think it’s very enriching in a way, you sort of feed from all these different energies. At the same time, obviously, physically I don’t fit as a French person, so although I’ve been writing in French since my childhood, I still now, after so many years, have to answer the question ‘Why do you write in French?’ or ‘What does French mean to you?’ even though it is my language, the language of writing, my first language. So yes, you always feel as if you are on that cusp and on that borderline, but at the same time I think for a writer it’s fine because you’re feeding from these energies, whether positive or negative. If you are just a person who is trying to fit in, to integrate, as they say, then it’s obviously much more difficult.
JC (28:50) Ananda, I mentioned in your introduction that you said to be Mauritian is to be both multiple and particular, that’s kind of what we’re talking about. In an ideal world, is that what we should all be?
AD (29:01) I think so, absolutely. I think even for Mauritians, obviously most people are aware that they have access to multiple languages, multiple cultures, religions, spiritualities, et. cetera, but at the same time, on a daily basis, they’re more conscious of the divisions than the sharing and having access to all of these aspects, so on a daily basis it’s more about being in compartments with the others, because it’s an island so there are so many others within that island. And for me it’s more a question of how much I listen to music from India, Europe, classical music, pop, African music, and how much more this has nourished me. So it is really a question of viewing things differently, and of seeing how – as Kapka was saying, identity is a fluid thing, a dynamic thing, and nobody has a monolithic identity. More than ever today, you have the people trying to persuade others that this is your identity, that there is no other, whereas in fact we are multiple constantly, so as individuals we can be so many things, and this is what makes humankind rich. So it’s sad in a way that we can’t see from that positive point of view, and that we’re getting more and more entrenched into these monolithic identities, which obviously create that sense of the other, and refusal, and rejection, and conflict, obviously.
JC (31:15): Why don’t you tell us a bit more about the book [TLD] before we jump in [to the extract reading]?
AD (31:22): Funnily enough this book, the first itme I had the idea for this story was when I was a student in London, which goes back to the end of the 1970s, and at that time obviously the skinheads, racism, all that was very much present in that society. So coming from Mauritius to London as a teenager was a very violent experience, and as I was living there I had different experiences that made me think ‘one day I’ll write a novel about this’. And then time passed, I wrote many other things, I wrote many novels, and then finally this, what I call my London novel, came into being in – well, I wrote it in 2012 and it was published in 2013 as Les jours vivants, and I realised that it was still valid, all these fears, this anxiety were still valid in 2013, and now it’s been published in the UK by Les Fugitives, in 2020, and it’s still valid, so it means that over 40 years, all these stories are still happening, and the main characters are an old British lady, an English lady, called Mary, who has lived through the Second World War, and who is living in Portobello Road in a decrepit house that she’s inherited from her grandfather, but who is becoming invisible because she’s old, she’s literally disappearing in the eyes of other people, whereas the city is living around her, and she meets this young teenager of Jamaican origin living in Brixton, and there’s kind of a strange meeting, a collision, and at the same time a meeting of extremes, two universes that never collide, that never even touch each other, and there’s a kind of love story that springs from that. And so the idea came in the 1970s and even today reading it, it’s sad and tragic that it’s still valid today.
JC (38:04 – after the reading) A really atmospheric reading, Ananda, and just as with Leila’s reading there’s a killer line in there – ‘They were on home turf’ [when Cub is attacked by the skinheads]. It’s in some sense the classic nightmare of the stranger, to be confronted by people who believe that this is their territory, their turf, and because of how you look and sound it’s not yours.
AD (38:28) – Yes, but it’s also a sense of entitlement, and it’s not just about the other and the sense of ethnicity or religion, for example women sometimes find that they are the other, that it happens that a man is on home turf and the woman is on slippery ground, and that anything can happen. So this kind of otherness, you can bring it to the point where each individual is an other in a different context, but entitlement is very much what I think defines the world in which we are, and we’re seeing it now with people who are leading some of the countries in the world, even the most powerful countries in the world, that they have this sense of entitlement and the problem is that they’re leading people to believe in it, so they’re not questioning it, and whoever they are, however stupid, they don’t make sense when they talk, people are believing it because they have this sense of entitlement. I’m not being clear but I think that it’s sad that we’re being led by people who are telling us not to reason, not to use our common sense to see whether they’re saying things which are right, and maybe today the world of the media, social media, etc., are leading people towards a place where they don’t have to think, they just have to follow, and we don’t use our common sense as adults, our lucidity, and our compassion as human beings.
Audience question (48:59): Do you think writing can still influence and encourage change in today’s digital world?
AD: (50:30): I think it’s more necessary than ever, literature is more necessary, because we are in a world where everything is very transitory, and the immediate use of words, for example, that you see on social media, you can comment immediately without even thinking. Before you think, you’ve written something and sent it, whereas for writers it’s the contrary, with each word you write you’re thinking and rethinking it, but not just that, it’s that news, yeah, we’re surrounded by 24-hour news and they pass by very quickly because you have to immunise yourself in a way, to numb yourself to this assault of news. But what makes you stop and think and try to understand, it’s going into a book, reading a novel where you are with a character who is travelling or crossing borders or living something, but you have to stop as a reader to live with those characters for the time in which you’re reading the book, so it’s the time which you have to give to those people and which you have to give to that thought which isn’t given anywhere else. So more than ever I think literature is the other voice we need today, which as Kapka said, even if it’s fiction it’s a form of truth, fiction is a form of truth that you can’t deny and you have to be swept by it and believe in it to believe in a book and to live with those characters.
Audience question (52:55): How do you think your writing helped you to deal with the experience of borders and discrimination?
AD (53:07): Definitely it’s helped because for me everything is part of experience, as I was saying earlier, so everything could fit into my writing. The first time I left Mauritius was to go to the UK, and after that I went to live for a few years in the Congo-Brazzaville, and people were saying when I went back to Mauritius, ‘How do you live exiled?’ And I said, well, being in exile is a different thing, exile means you can’t go back to where you live, and for me it was a choice to travel, a choice to learn other places, to be in other places, and in a way writing is your country in that sense, but at the same time in makes you look back on where you’re from, and realise that for example in my mind I was living in Mauritius because I was writing about Mauritius for many years, so in a writer’s mind geography is a kind of mental geography, it’s not a physical geography. So it helped me in a way to be in all those places, but I was also lucky that accepted in those places. I wasn’t in the same situation as migrants today who are trying to cross the seas and the oceans, or even as my ancestors who crossed the ocean in terribly difficult situations. So my travelling and crossing borders is privileged compared to those experiences.
Audience question (55:07): All of you have had your work translated, often many times. How do you find that process of the movement of your work from one language to another?
JC (56:50): Ananda, you’ve translated your own work sometimes, haven’t you?
AD (56:54): Yes I have, and I’ve also worked as a translator for 25 years, but more as a scientific and technical translator, but I translate literature also. So obviously I’m passionate about translation, and without translators 90% of the world’s literary riches would not have been read. And we have to be writers ourselves, in a way, to be able to translate. But I also think that in our particular place in this panel today, even as writers, we are translating something also, because writing for example in French, I’m translating Mauritian culture or Indian culture for example into French, by bringing it into a different language from its origin or source, so in a way writers are translators as well. So I think it’s very important, and I think it’s very important, as Kapka said, to really celebrate the work of translators.