Zombi Child

Listen, white world, As our dead roar

Listen to my zombi voice Honouring our dead

René Depestre

You there!

Move, dammit!

Hit them if they won't walk.

Work!

Work!

Work faster!

"France,"

wrote Michelet in 1846,

"is guilty of trying to free the world 50 years ago.

They have not pardoned you and they never will.

You are their constant fear.

You may distinguish yourselves

with different party names,

but, as French citizens,

you are condemned en masse.

PARIS, TODAY

For Europe, France will only ever bear a single name,

an inexpiable name,

which is also its true and eternal one:

The Revolution."

That's beautiful,

but is it true?

It's beautiful and, in a way, we recognize ourselves

in Michelet's The People.

We recognize ourselves for we know that even now,

when people around the world

speak of revolution,

they link it to the French Revolution.

Conversely, France is the name of the revolution.

The two are linked.

But...

subsequently,

we have seen how France too,

at many moments and in many ways,

has not always lived up to this promise.

So, how do we deal with this history?

How do we pursue it?

Firstly, there's the issue of

the continuation of the Revolution's completion.

As you've understood,

Napoleon ends the Revolution

in both meanings of the word.

He completes it

and finishes it off.

He pursues it and betrays it.

He betrays it, but he pursues it.

At the same time.

So, if we want to do history, we must ask

how do we write it?

Do we write a continuing history of progress

as a form of liberty unfolding, but we know that's not true.

We have seen how that liberty was continually frustrated,

that it was never really implemented,

and what obscures it?

What means, in a way,

it doesn't come to pass? And that's terrible.

Liberalism.

Liberalism, in the 19th-century meaning,

in other words, the ways

of adapting the idea of progress to liberty.

In a way, liberalism

obscures liberty.

It ensures that it never quite comes to pass.

So we cannot write a continuing history

of the 19th century.

We have no right as that is not how it happened.

What I am suggesting is a history

that is discontinuous, sputtering.

Hesitant.

Or rather a subterranean history

of the 19th-century idea of liberty

that would be seeking its re-emergence,

occasionally resulting in experiences,

experiences of liberty.

That's why I picked that title.

In conclusion, let's think about that.

Don't take notes, just try to think.

How do we relate it?

It's hard to write the history of the 19th century

because it invented History.

It's the century of History.

The notion of experience.

What does a new experience mean?

Trying something that has never been done.

We'll try something.

It also means

trying something together as a group experience.

Through it, we'll find ourselves

to be braver, more inventive,

more surprising than we thought.

Like Damso's sexist.

He's a storyteller.

He may not mean it.

It'd be like Stephen King dressing as a clown.

Maybe he does.

You're the clown.

It's kind of borderline anyway.

OK, they're stories with fictional characters,

but some lines are a bit much.

The songs are awesome.

Yeah, wild.

What's your favourite. Not the most famous.

I'm not dumb.

My love, It's terrible how much I miss you.

But I love the feeling.

It reminds me how I love you.

And, I hope, how you love me.

I keep thinking about last summer.

It's so beautifully unreal, I wonder if it happened.

I count the days to half-term.

I count the hours.

Time passes so slowly here.

We live in such isolation.

We just work and wait.

I try to take an interest

in classes, in the others...

I've met a new girl here called Mélissa.

She's Haitian.

She seemed as lonely as me.

So we talked.

She's odd, but we like the same horror movies and books,

the same clothes and music.

She loves Urban Outfitters and Damso.

I'd like her in the sorority,

but we haven't decided yet.

The realists' response is to favour description.

Description exceeds the narrative structure

as in the incipit of Eugénie Grandet

that lingers over an architectural image rather than enter the plot.

In the introduction to Le Père Goriot, Balzac writes,

"This is neither a novel, nor fiction, all is true."

I keep busy, waiting for you.

I miss your kisses terribly.

Horribly.

Each lost kiss will be returned a hundredfold.

I long to feel you.

Yours, Fanny

She's weird though.

Weird is cool.

She dances well.

What video is it?

I mean Mélissa.

- Where is she? - There.

Who cares how she dances?

It's a literary sorority.

Is she cool enough to hang with us?

Where did she dance?

In class yesterday. She was alone.

What to?

No music.

OK...

She dances without music?

She's too weird.

I think it's cool.

Do we take her or not?

Is she cool or weird?

I find her cool.

I think she's weird.

She talks quietly, she's always alone...

She's often with me.

You're weird too.

With the Catholic nerds here, alone isn't so bad.

That makes her cool.

Her dad has the Legion of Honour?

I guess so. He must be a diplomat.

Do we take her?

We do the test and see.

Yeah, cool.

Get into place.

In defence.

What did you tell her?

That we'd do it soon.

She asked what'll happen and I said she couldn't know.

What did she say?

Nothing.

I said she was weird.

My love,

Last night a girl called Lola came on to me.

She's very beautiful,

very sexy, with a beautiful body.

She kept saying she wanted me.

She tried to kiss me.

I almost wanted to and nearly said yes, but I didn't.

My love is faithful to you.

Yours, Fanny

midnight @fakestatues

Work!

I beat him,

I got him out

and I brought him here.

Put that down!

Come and sit down.

Whatever happens, you never talk about this.

OK, but can we be here?

No worries.

Not this late.

But a sorority is fine. They love it.