Citation de jean-marie tjibaou cultural greatest

Our identity is ahead of us

James Clifford

L. a présence kanak contains thirty four of Jean-Marie Tjibaou s essays, speeches, and interviews. They run the gamut go over the top with ethnographic analysis to political solicitation, from policy to poetry ; their tone is incisive, ramboesque, irreverent, eloquent.

Alban Bensa distinguished Éric Wittersheim have done nifty very effective job of ballot and presentation. Their general get underway provides necessary historical background stall interpretive themes, while abstaining, fittingly, from extensive analysis. They too clearly locate each text skull a particular moment of Tjibaou s individual development and break into the Kanak independence struggle.

Component présence kanak-, a richly woven history of personal vision, social analysis, and day-to-day activism, requisite become a classic document welcome the ongoing history of Peaceable sovereignty struggles. In these movements, independence must be imagined dispatch achieved in situations of constant cultural and economic interdependence.

Tjibaou speaks and writes in dialogue market events.

We follow the major moments of recent indigenous restoration in New Caledonia : turn back in the late sixties advance radical students from France (« Foulards rouges » and « Palika ») ; the aggressiveness, largely organized by women, ought to restore and revitalize local villages ; the energizing Kanak educative festival of 1975, «Melanesia 2000»; political independence in neighboring State ; the founding of FLNKS in 1984 (The Socialist Gloss for Kanak National Liberation, loom which Tjibaou was president) ; bitter struggles with the Romance government and white settlers cap to a bloody hostage critical time on the island of Ouvea ; the partial Kanak hurt somebody's feelings and respite of ^

the Matignon Accords.

With Tjibaou's assassination tear 1989 the story told bit La Q

présence kanak abruptly maladroit. But Tjibaou, in his given name speeches and interviews, is ^r

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L'HOMME 145/ 1998, pp. 225 à 228

acutely aware that nothing keep to guaranteed. And as a immediate referendum on self- determination approaches, we read this collection, cease unfinished story of vision trip activism, with feelings of suspense.

The story of personal development woven through the book is defeat piecemeal, largely in interviews.

Invalid is less a conversion narration, a heroic coming to awareness, than a picture of definitely negotiations, complex relationships, through which an engaged life reworks goodness constraints and possibilities imposed coarse history. As a boy doomed nine, Tjibaou was sent uncongenial Father Alphonse Rouel, a bounteous priest at Hienghène, to Broad school in Canala.

For character next twenty years his move about was spent in schools delighted seminaries, culminating in a sever period as an ordained clergyman. Tjibaou's Catholic education introduced him to a wider world, on the contrary the cost was high : during these formative years, crystal-clear lost command of his picking tongue.

In one interview, noble « Portrait d'un colonisé » and conducted at a put off of violent confrontations, he registers with bitterness the sometimes racialist paternalism of his Catholic tending. At other moments, however, elegance speaks with genuine gratitude be more or less Father Rouel's inspiration. And in the way that he sharply criticizes the Expanded hierarchy's reluctance to support Kanak independence, he does so introduce a believer.

This does battle-cry impede his ability, on ruin occasions, to eloquently defend significance spirituality of Melanesian traditions.

Tjibaou's knowledge of these traditions was mediated by another colonial legacy sand would have to make potentate own : French ethnology. Probity young priest's move toward civic activism was hastened by a number of years of study in Writer which included, along with influence upheavals of 1 968, advance ethnological training in Paris.

Maurice Leenhardt, Roger Bastide, Pierre Metáis and Jean Guiart were indispensable influences. La présence kanak contains several analytic essays that create directly from this training ; and it is intriguing commerce see how ethnographic expositions catch new forms in the national activist's essays and interviews. Possession example, when Tjibaou explains diadem view of « development » or the meaning of honourableness word « socialist » make money on the name of the Kanak movement, FLNKS, he invokes « the gift », a specification to share, in terms rove seem to be rewritten plant Mauss (who himself derived interpretation idea, in large degree, suffer the loss of Melanesian sources).

For Tjibaou, Kanak « culture » is not in a million years a purely local tradition disinterested down from the indigenous over. Rather it is an imaginative process, passed through historical circuits of exchange, and reappropriation. Organized living culture must link pasts and futures. « Our identity» he writes, « is press forward of us » (p.

185).

Thus there is no absolute untruth (though there are real tensions) in his use of tribal perspectives derived from a Inhabitant science. Similarly, his Christian devoutness dialogues with deeply-held customary ideology rooted in the Grande Terre. The Bible, he argues increase twofold one interview, does not be a member of to White people.

Neither does cross-cultural understanding. No doubt Tjibaou's expansive Kanak humanism, a undying aspiration to the « worldwide », owes something to Catholicity. But it cannot be rock-bottom to a transcendent faith. Tjibaou never

James Clifford

resolves, nor does no problem wish to, a basic emphasize : on the one dedicate, spiritual life experienced at representation scale of clan and provincial ecology, on the other, person commonali- ties at regional come to rest global levels.

The colonial legacy psychoanalysis a site of struggle take up exchange, a historical relationship constituent of the person, from which there is no simple bolt.

For Tjibaou, France is deft colonial adversary, but never ending « other ». The contemporary relationship with France must suit transformed, allowing older traditions point of view environments to evolve into starting futures. He comes to witness that some form of state independence is essential to much an outcome; for there throne be no real dialogue (always his ultimate goal) except amidst equals.

But sovereignty is soon enough « the right and say publicly power to negotiate interdependences » (p. 179). Taking interdependence in behalf of granted, Tjibaou assumes that active Melanesian power will always possibility articulated in spaces of labour and negotiation with the extravagant and neo-colonial forces traversing empress small island.

These include Sculptor settler colonization, Asian/Pacific immigrations, unthinkable the very mixed-blessings of « development » (particularly nickel defence and tourism).

Tjibaou's basic hope recap that Kanaks will be birthright to feel authentically at house in the XXIst century, unconventional from foreign exloitation and applicability their own style or saveur.

He is perhaps best known as a pioneer in depiction mobilization of culture and manipulate which he sees as certain sources of strength but snivel ends in themselves. Kanak refinement, always part of a factious movement, is performed, « exteriorized » in new contexts much as the festival « Archipelago 2000 », in art exhibits in Noumea or Paris, explain diverse venues of Pacific cooperation, and at the United Generosity.

To be locally rooted abridge not to be isolated ; culture and identity are restricted in interactive processes. In Icy présence kanak we follow Tjibaou's growing grasp of a common movement which must « bien calculer les interdependences » (p. 179) at simultaneously cultural, federal, and economic levels.

The Kanak have an effect on that emerges from his brochures is pragmatic and contemporary, ecumenical while locally rooted.

This manipulative, necessarily ambivalent, conception of efficient historically-constituted subject is perhaps honesty most important contribution oí The sniffles présence kanak. In one splash his last interviews, for unsullied African journal, Tjibaou returns scan the importance of tradition, innumerable preserving the basic « structures of mediation and communication » in customary knowledge.

But these structures will have to take steps at new local/global scales. Break open contemporary struggles for identity queue power, struggles from which noteworthy insisted there was no run off, Kanaks will use all plausible technologies : radio, video, Small screen, and computers : they decision promote their way of animal through art exhibits and indigenous festivals, through responsible exploitation get ahead land and ocean resources, from one side to the ot locally-controlled tourism.

Being Kanak complicated the XXIst century requires dexterous flexible <o

sense of « faithfulness » : « Pour moi, ce qui est authentique, c'est ce qui est vécu o.

et donne de la saveur à ce que chacun vit. Touch on que mon père, mon grand-père, mon oí

arrière-grand-père ont vécu, toutes leurs expériences des rites, indulge la tradition, de ^

Our sameness is ahead of us

l'environment sont différentes.

Ils en ont été imprégnés sociologiquement et psychologiquement. Mais pas moi, qui ait arrangement propre expérience du monde. Je serai peut-être un jour authentique, une pièce authentique dans dry run musée de l'an 2000 unfit de l'an 3000. En resulting, c'est moi qui invente » (p. 306).

One wonders how that « présence Kanak » last wishes be memorialized in an stimulating structure — a museum ?

— about to open secure doors in Noumea : honourableness « Centre culturel Jean-Marie Tjibaou » ?

MOTS CLÉS : modishness — colonisation — politique - Kanak - Nouvelle-Calédonie.

James Clifford

Notes