Around the table, everything was frozen. Thierry noticed the stillness of his father, mother and little sister. They had all put their elbows on the table either side of their pace settings and crossed their forearms just above the plates. No one moved - all three of them seemed to have been struck by paralysis. A fixed smile remained on his parentsÕ faces and the young boy remembered them smiling as they told him about the need to choose a trade.
However, our western democracies, so fond of analysis,
of introspective commentary,
generally treat the slightest flaw,
the most insignificant failing,
as the greatest of delicacies, to be lingered over
and endlessly dissected by the media.
But if so much can be made of a trifle,
how is it that our society can be so reticent
in the face of the delights of a truly cataclysmic event in our midst,
the appetising upheaval tearing us apart.
The concept of paid work is on the way out and
can no longer provide
the necessary basis for social organisation as we know it now.
To accept this makes it necessary to think about our future
on an entirely new footing,
a basis suitable for a new era.
While our society believes it represents a perfect ideal
it is soon relieved of the heavy baggage of desires, thoughts and gestures
which generally, in a dying era, prepare for and call up
a new, improved
and enlightened dawn.
Thierry A.
Thierry A ran to his room and shut himself in. But however much he pushed at the door, it leant towards him shouting "Joiner!". When it stood upright again Thierry could see a man embedded in it. He thought it looked as though the man was crying. Frightened, Thierry turned his back to the window, against the wall facing the entrance to the small room. The window tapped itself on one of its panes to attract the boy's attention. When Thierry turned round, the window banged shut and shouted "Glazier!". The sudden movement caused the wooden frame to knock against the surrounding masonry and the glass panes softened and bulged out into the room. Through the surface of this bulge in the glass the child thought he could again see men in overalls, locked inside the material. Western democracies of the post-industrial age are satisfied with their lot
and have in fact replaced
the ancestral desire for progress with a simple desire for security,
the struggle to acquire rights with the defence of those already acquired,
the question of becoming with the questions of being and representing,
culture with objets d'art and the evolution of art with the preservation thereof
I know of one well-known contemporary artist who, embarrassed by a
delay in delivering a work commissioned by a particular museum, in
the end handed over work which was far from complete.
and do not on the whole expect anything of the future
other than to maintain or continue with the present.
A society which has ceased to think about its future cannot believe in its demise.
Yet, they are right in what they say, these millions of people for whom
"living on the fruits of their labour"
no longer means anything at all.
They are prophets of a strange type, prophesying simply
the end of their present in a time with no future.
We don't know what to call them,
the long-term unemployed,
but they are to a certain extent "les prophètes du passé".
Thierry A.
With the deformation of the window panes, the glass had lost its transparency and though it was only lunch time, Thierry's room was dark. Thierry went to the reading light which he still used as a nightlight for comfort every night, pressed the switch and heard the crackle of electricity along the wire. When they reached the lamp, the electrons made the lightbulb explode. A powerful white light flooded a room which was in complete uproar. Every single item of furniture, ornament, pipe or wall decoration was on the move. "Upholsterer!", "Cabinet maker!", "Plumber!", "Electrician!", "Shoemaker!" From all four corners of the room, the strange names given to those whose lives were locked into each object came to Thierry's ears. Waiting for economic recovery
Already,
the ever-increasing number of people out of work
has reached dizzy heights and the progress of this phenomenon
is so unstoppable
that in some regions, such as here in the north of France, unemployment
even seems to have become a hereditary way of non-life.
For instance,
the grandfather loses his job and cannot find another,
the son has never been able to find one at all,
and his children seem to be swept along by the same tide,
with all the other problems which go with it -
povertyBR> depression, illiteracy,
marginalisation, loss of home,
delinquency.....
In all walks of life, people pretend
to be waiting for the economic recovery
which will bring those dispossessed millions back into the active world.
But everyone, from the cleverest to the dullest,
without ever saying so, because to do so would be to step out into the void,
everyone knows or senses
that they are waiting in vain.
Waiting in a state of suspended animation.
A hopeless and depressing wait, waiting for nothing,
It has no function other than
to provide a word
to those who are incapable of action - without, however, being incapacitated -
to those who are living in a void of involuntary inaction.
It is not a case of just being idle.
Waiting is a better way of describing
what those who do not do anything in our society are actually doing.
How else can we describe their situation?[*]
The term not at work carries with it the notion of holidays.
Drawing the dole implies an action in a life of inaction.
To be unemployed conveys the idea of a social disease
like a cancer, a slow death.
It would be better to say nothing at all
or to look for yet another phrase to describe those who do not work.
[ next ]
