OCCITANIE
Que devient Mathias Van den Bossche qui défendait l'Occitanie dans un Newsgroup formidable ?
OCCITANIE FILM
J'aimerais réaliser un film sur l'Occitanie
un genre de documentaire ouvert avec des centaines d'avis différents en posant la même question à peu de chose près : Pour vous est-ce que l'Occitanie existe ? à tout un panel de gens.
OCCITANIE INDIVIDUS ART
Reçu la visite de Passuello
qui m'a dit qu'Alain Desmaris, qui s'occupe de FR 3 Marseille est un fonctionnaire anti-occitan qui n'en a rien à cire de la culture Occitane.
Il m'a dit qu'il préparait un film sur Lafont et il m'a appris que Lafont, en 1974 s'était présenté à l'Election présidentielle, qu'il avait réuni les 500 signatures nécessaires et qu'un ou deux jours avant le dépôt des signatures le conseil constitutionnel avait invalidé sa candidature en rayant de la liste des signatures normales juste avant la date butoir pour qu'il ne puisse pas en trouver d'autres. Par la suite Lafont avait découvert que toute l'opération avait été montée de toutes pièces.
Moi j'ai dit à Passuello que ce que je reprochais, entre autres à Castan, à Lafont et à Nucéra c'est qu'ils rêvaient tous de rentrer à l'académie française. Et qu'il y avait il me semblait contradiction. Leur défense de l'Occitanie était due au fait qu'on ne les avait pas acceptés à l'Académie française.
Passuello m'a dit qu'il préparait un film qui s'appelle Arco alpino dont la couverture sera faire par Maurice Maubert. Il sera un peu aidé par l'Europe et l'Italie mais pas par la France. C'est l'histoire d'un instrument de musique occitan.
OCCITANIE INTERNET
Robert Lafont propose dans un texte l'Europe Occitane. Ca me fait penser à mon texte adressé aux Suisses proposant une Europe Suisse et non pas une Suisse européenne.
OCCITANIE Reçu un dépliant
des Occitanistes du Québec. Ca m'a fait plaisir.
OCCITANIE ET MEDIAS
Jean Pierre Belmon n'est peut être pas aussi méchant que ça. Je l'avais pris en grippe quand il avait remplacé Miquela. Mais je reconnais qu'il fait un bon boulot. J'ai bien aimé l'émission avec Marsillha et Gach Empenga.
Mon message personnel à Vaqui est celui-ci
1/4 de tradition 3/4 de nouveau s'il vous plait et tout dans la langue. Inventez s'il le faut des artistes d'art contemporain occitans mais il s'agit surtout de montrer que la modernité aussi est occitane et pas seulement la tradition et les vieilles tuiles.
Bravo aussi pour le petit livre : Trobar docs around the world.
CECI DIT A TOULOUSE ILS FONT DEUX FOIS MIEUX QU'A MARSEILLE
OCCITANIE
Reçu une lettre de France 3 à qui j'avais envoyé le livre sur François Fontan.
Ils m'écrivent : " ce film ne semble pas répondre à notre recherche actuelle. Nous ne pouvons pas le retenir pour la diffusion sur France 3 "
Ne me dites pas après ça, Madame Tasca, que vous acceptez un vrai débatet que ça vous intéresse. Et si un jour la situation se durcit parce que vous n'aurez pas lâché le lest qu'il faut n'en veuillez pas aux autres mais à vous mêmes.
OCCITANIE
M6 quand ils ont ouvert à Nice leur 6 minutes sur la télé m'avait demandé d'illustrer une de leurs premières émissions. J'ai proposé quelques phrases en niçois, réponse : silence radio.
OCCITANIE ET BEN
J'aimerais réaliser un film sur l'Occitanie
un genre de documentaire ouvert avec des centaines d'avis différents en posant la même question à peu de chose près : Pour vous est-ce que l'Occitanie existe ? à tout un panel de gens.
ETHNISME FONTAN
Voici un texte que j'ai reçu de Frédo Vala à propos du film sur Fontan.
"Un an après la sortie du film sur Fontan je constate que les résultats obtenus sont décourageants. En Italie il y a eu deux projections officielles: une à Fraysse, à l'occasion de la célébration du vingtième anniversaire, I'autre à Cuneo dans le cadre d'un congrès sur les nationalités. Puis le film a été montré à Turin, lors d'une rencontre de peu d'intérêt sur le cinéma et la musique des minorités Sardes, Frioulane et occitane, puis à Udine, où le film a été accueilli avec beaucoup d'émotion (v. Ie livret ci-joint).
En France Ben a organisé une projection au Mamac de Nice. Après cela plus rien ne s'est passé. Le festival du Film des minorités linguistiques de Douarnenez, en Bretagne, I'a refusé; les journaux occitans, aussi bien en France qu'en Italie, en ont parlé très peu (sauf Ousitanio Vivo) Lo Logarn n'a fait aucun compte rendu, Valados Usitanos, avec l'hostilité habituelle de ses rédacteurs, a jugé toutes les réalisations de Diego et de moi-même insignifiantes et pas dignes d'être considérées. Les efforts fait par Ben pour vendre le film aux télévisions françaises n'ont pas eu de résultat comme, d'autre part, nos propositions à la Rai d'Aoste et de Bolzano et à la TV de la Suisse italienne.
Peut être que Fontan est encore un personnage gênant, ou bien le film ne plaît pas. Pourtant je suis convaincu qu'avec Diego nous avons réalisé un bon film, émouvant, avec un langage moderne, et pas du tout hagiographique.
Ce qui me trouble le plus est de constater le désintérêt du milieu occitaniste. Dommage !
Recevez, chers amis un cordial salut.
Je trouve Vala un peu pessimiste. En réalité le film de Fontan est en train de réaliser une carrière mythique. Comme du temps de la résistance on se le passe sous le manteau. Il est projeté dans l'arrière pays niçois avec, à chaque fois, un débat houleux"
J'en ai envoyé partout et même quand on me les retourne il y a une pointe de colère donc ils l'ont vu dont le film les a énervés, donc ils censurent donc ils répriment donc ça avance.
LU LINHA IMMAGINOT
no 43 sur les langues. Deux bons articles un sur le Serbocroate et l'autre sur l'Arabe (seul désaccord je suis pour l'unicité d'une langue arabe si possible la plus populaire celle de la télé).
OCCITANIE
Les élus français qui défendent la langue occitane se sont réunis au val d'Aran indépendant en Espagne. Une façon de faire le pied de nez à Paris.
Reçu la visite de Passuello qui m'a dit qu'Alain Desmaris, qui s'occupe de FR 3 Marseille est un horrible fonctionnaire anti occitan qui n'en a rien à cire de la culture Occitane.
Il m'a dit qu'il préparait un film sur Lafont et il m'a appris que Lafont, en 1974 s'était présenté à l'Election présidentielle, qu'il avait réuni les 500 signatures nécessaires et qu'un ou deux jours avant le dépôt des signatures le conseil constitutionnel avait invalidé sa candidature en rayant de la liste des signatures normales juste avant la date butoir pour qu'il ne puisse pas en trouver d'autres. Par la suite Lafont avait découvert que toute l'opération avait été montée de toutes pièces.
Moi j'ai dit à Passuello que ce que je reprochais, entre autres à Castan, à Lafont et à Nucéra c'est qu'ils rêvaient tous de rentrer à l'académie française. Et qu'il y avait il me semblait contradiction. Leur défense de l'Occitanie était due au fait qu'on ne les avait pas acceptés à l'Académie française.
Passuello m'a dit qu'il préparait un film qui s'appelle Arco alpino dont la couverture sera faire par Maurice Maubert. Il sera un peu aidé par l'Europe et l'Italie mais pas par la France. C'est l'histoire d'un instrument de musique occitan.
Yves Rousguisto et Patrick Vaillant mêritent un 8/10 pour tout ce qu'ils font pour défendre la langue et la musique occitanes. Grâce à eux l'ours qui dort continue à respirer.
MEDIA ET OCCITANIE
Ne trouvez-vous pas curieux que toute la presse, toutes les radios, à propos de la Corse parlent du danger de contagion de l'effet Corse sur les Basques, les Bretons, les Alsaciens etc mais jamais les Occitans. Pourtant il y a de plus en plus de revendications occitanes qui se font jour.
OCCITANIE, en anglais
J'ai trouvé le texte suivant sur un site Néo-Zélandais à l'adresse suivante : http://www.pols.canterbury.ac.nz/ECSANZ/papers/%20jeanjean.htm, et je me suis dis "Tiens, les Néo-Zélandais s'intéressent plus à l'Occitanie que Jospin".
The Occitanists and the EU: A minority's turn around
The concept of French identity has always been linked with French language. Regional movements, such as the occitans, fighting for the survival of their culture and their language, have historically posed a challenge to the very concept of France as an identity which, in its most accepted form, denies the existence of other languages, cultures and identities within its borders.
Occitania is the name given to the ensemble of regions where Occitan, a Romance language, is spoken. It comprises the whole, or part of, 32 départements in France (around 2/5 of France), the Val d'Aran in Spain and several alpine valleys in Italy. Out of the 12 million residents in the region, it is estimated that around 7 million understand Occitan and 4 million speak it.
Occitan was, by the XIIIth century, the dominant vernacular language in Europe. The Troubadours had developed a poetic genre which was to influence all western European literatures. Furthermore Occitan was the only language used for legal and administrative purposes outside Latin. Town Charters (Establissementz) written in Occitan can be found outside Occitania (CIERBIDE).
France, even as a Nation in the making, has always been hostile to its non-French speaking indigenous groups. The first translation of this concept into legislation was the Edict of Villiers-Cotterêts which, in 1539, imposed French as the exclusive language of the kingdom. At the time of the appearance of what could be considered the first expressions of nationalism in several countries, the theory of the superiority of French over all other languages was developed by Henri Estienne in his book "De la précellence du langage français" (Of the pre-eminence of the French language) published in 1579. Cutting the elites from their sociocultural roots in the newly conquered provinces and unifying them to better serve the King was part of the strategy to centralise the State: social superiority and linguistic superiority became inseparable elements and the French Academy established by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 was an integral part of his policy of political centralization.
The French Revolution continued this policy after the political victory of the centralist Montagnards over the federalists Girondins. The revolutionary leaders claimed that French was the only language capable of disseminating the revolutionary ideas and that all 'foreign' languages could only be the carriers of reactionary and counter-revolutionary ideologies. Abbé Grégoire wrote and proposed to the Convention his "Report on the necessity and the means to annihilate dialects and universalize the use of French." (CERTEAU)
The Jacobins' arguments regarding the importance of French were framed between 1790 and 1794 in a number of reports to the various assemblies by prominent members such as Talleyrand, Condorcet, Lakanal, Le Pelletier, and Sieyès (PARIAS). The projects developed at that time on the making of good citizens through a general education system were the basis for the education laws of the 1880's which saw the imposition of French as the only language to be used in the new compulsory education system. The systematic punishment of pupils using regional languages in the school further instilled the shame of one's language in generations of Occitans.
Occitan has nonetheless maintained a status as an instituted language (SAUZET) and this is largely due to the activism of the occitanist movement which found its origins in the XIXth century European-wide Romantic movement.
The Occitan literature was at the very heart of the European Romanticism, as Mme de Staël states: "The word 'Romantic' has recently been introduced in Germany, to indicate the poetry originating from the troubadours" (STAËL, 61).
The Romantics deplored the gulf separating classical French literature from the people in whom they were to find their primary inspiration. Occitan writers such as Jasmin and Mistral, who reflected the aspirations and the cultures of the people were acclaimed. The success of Occitan literature, both medieval and contemporary, had a strong impact on the young occitan patriots of the next generation and was further reinforced by the romantic historians. Augustin Thierry, Guizot or Fauriel demonstrated the superiority of the democratic civilization of the South of France and denounced the injustices and the violences committed against it (JEANJEAN, MRS. 1997).
This convergence of historicity and literature meant that no other nationalist Renaissance appearing anywhere in Europe around 1848 had as much legitimacy as the Occitan one. This led to the establishment in 1854 of the Félibrige by a group of Occitan poets who saw the need for the Occitans to be given back the consciousness of their own identity (LAFONT, 1971). For Frédéric Mistral, the most brilliant poet in this group the liberation of the Occitan people may well have come from a reform of the French State and from a European federalism, but these sentiments could not be voiced publicly after the 1871 French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war and nobody dared contest the policy of administrative and cultural centralisation. The Félibrige witnessed the economic destruction of their region without denouncing it and locked themselves in a resistance based on living in the past. In 1870-1871, Mistral, under pressure from his social and intellectual milieux, turned even more to the right at the very same time that Occitan opinion veered to the left, as evidenced by the Communes of Narbonne and Marseille which so frightened him.
Mistral's refusal, when asked, to lend any support to the wine-growers during their 1907 revolt epitomised an unwillingness to deal with any real political or economic issue affecting the very people whose values this movement claimed to represent. By the 1930's, the relationship with the working and peasant classes had so deteriorated that Charles Maurras, a prominent member of the Félibrige, was also the leader of the extreme-right nationalist and royalist movement Action Française, and participated actively in the Vichy regime.
The 1944 liberation was marked by a feeling of triumphant French nationalism and the occitanists who had sided with the Resistance, Gaullists and communists alike, fell "into the trap of French Nationalism" (BALZAGUES). The Institute for Occitan Studies (IEO) they created was essentially a cultural organisation but in the 50s and 60s it was divided, as was the whole country, by the great decolonisation debate fueled by the Algerian war. François Fontan, a member of the Institute, perceived the colonial nature of the Occitan situation and founded the Occitan Nationalist Party (PNO). The leadership of the IEO comprised only intellectuals, mainly academics, who, because of the close ties they had with the French left, could not accept in its midst these separatist political activities judged as a crime against French unity.
The PNO actively supported the Algerian liberation movement and the French deserters for two reasons:
- firstly, it felt compelled to fight alongside other liberation movements;
- secondly, it believed that the psychological shock created in Occitania by the Algerian independence would help raise the consciousness of the Occitan people and therefore help eradicate French patriotism in the region.
As the gulf separating the economic development of the North and South of France in the early sixties was widening rapidly, the analysis of the PNO equating the economy of Occitania to a colonised economic seemed justified.
During the winter of 1961-62 which saw the entire population of the Decazeville region behind the coal miners following the announcement of the closure of the mines, some members of the IEO led by Robert Lafont, created the Occitan Committee of Studies and Action (COEA). It condemned what it called "interior colonization", stressing the Occitan character of the political and socio-economic struggles taking place in Occitania. It never questioned the French structure itself, and tried to modify, from the inside, the policies of the French left.
A new generation joined in following the May 68 events, and each step of this ideological development increased the divisions within the Occitan movement, stressing the various contradictions within its ranks. Nonetheless, among those who accepted the fact that the fight for the retention of their language and culture could not be separated from the socio-economic context, and therefore could not be achieved without a political struggle, some common analysis seemed to prevail on two fronts closely linked: Regionalisation and Europe.
The Occitan movement rejected the regionalisation proposals put by either the right or the left. Both de Gaulle's proposals of 1969 and the Deferre Law of 1982 were perceived as a purely superficial and symbolic decentralisation, never to reach the levels of regionalisation existing in other countries such as Germany, Italy or Spain. The regionalisation was an institutional problem solely organised and manipulated by Paris. The first regional elections held in 1986 only reinforced this view: they were held the same day as the national legislative elections, ensuring that the regional question would not be debated at all. The lists of candidates for the different regional councils were drawn in Paris, showing further the contempt the national political organisations had for that new administrative strata. The occitanists wanted the Region to be a natural organic unit based on historical, cultural, as well as economic realities and to erase the artificiality of the jacobins' administrative division of France (JEANJEAN, 1992).
The colonisation factor being at the very centre of their analysis, the decolonisation of Occitania was at the heart of their political project. This could be achieved only with the collective regional property: the inhabitants would own collectively natural resources such as the natural gaz of Lacq or the bauxite in Provence, and all companies working, or exploiting resources, in Occitania would have to transfer their head offices and pay their taxes locally. But if the responsibility of the centralised State was highlighted, that of the local middle classes was also stressed. The local bourgeoisie, having espoused Jacobinism since the Revolution, lacked an occitan national consciousness, and was in fact betraying the rest of the population.
The European question was approached from the same anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist ideological perspective which can be best summed up by a text written by François Fontan in 1965 on the myths and realities of the European integration: the objective, geographica, human and cultural Europe does not exist and it serves only as a pretext to well defined economic, ideological and political interests (FONTAN).
European political integration was seen only as a necessity within the framework of a liberal capitalist society requiring bigger markets, unimpinged by customs and regulations. European unification, a condition sine qua non of the Marshall Plan, was only a step towards a greater concentration of capital as European companies, not being able to compete, would be taken over by the anglo-American trusts.
The concentration of capital and of industry would lead, in the name of efficiency and rationalisation, to a greater concentration around some economic centers such as the triangle Genoa-Turin-Milan, or the Rhine valley while the excentric regions such as Britanny or Occitania, already under-developed, would see their economic situation worsen even more.
In 1965 Fontan was predicting the crumbling of both the Eastern and Western blocs along nationalist lines. He claimed that the idea that the world was heading towards uniformisation and integration was a mere illusion put forward by the American right and the Soviet left. The disintegration of the blocs would lead to national independences and would help develop an international trade no longer held up by the political alignment of those countries in a manicheist world.
An editorial in an Occitan magazine (AICI E ARA, 4) analysed the result of the European elections of the 10 June 1979 in similar terms, viewing the Assembly as, in majority, pro-American, the States' policies of colonisation as reinforced and one of the aims behind the European integration as a better coordination of the repression of nationalist movements. The collaboration between the Spanish and French police forces was then conducted openly.
The States were organising a judiciary Europe destined to combat nationalist movements, a Europe in which political asylum would be denied to all those considered as "terrorists" by centralist states incapable of dealing with the demands of economic independence since they were dominated by insatiable multinational companies.
The 1976 crisis in the wine-growing region of Languedoc had given ample evidence to the Occitan movement that the Common Market was dominated by the wholesalers and was aiming at the eradication of the wine industry of that region. The European regulations were seen as a premeditated plan put in place to institutionalise the ruin of the South of France through the unchecked and fraudulent importation of Italian wines and others transiting through Italy (LE BRIS).
The 1976 riots encouraged the anti-European sentiments felt by the Occitanists as they forged links with the wine-growers' leadership. The opposition to the entry of Spain and Portugal in 1986, following the opposition to the entry of Greece in 1981, dominated the agenda as both those countries had agriculturally-based economies in direct competition with the Occitan regions, further eroding the economies of the latter.
In 1976, the Occitan movement in the Languedoc felt obliged to support unconditionaly, and without a thorough analysis, the demands of the local wine industry. Occitanists wanted desperately to believe that the wine-growers' demonstrations, with Occitan flags and Occitan songs, were the expression of a new Occitan consciousness, and they wanted to believe in a unified and monolithic Occitania, re-creating a centralism of their own. Occitania never had a monolithic and uniform identity. For the Occitan wine-growers of the Bordeaux region, the occitanists were those people who, in order to defend a cheap and nasty plonk, opposed the expansion of the Common Market, therefore preventing them from accessing those new markets, in which they had found buyers for their high quality wines. Europe was becoming an essential element in the growing divisions of the Occitan movement which even split the IEO in 1980/1981 (JEANJEAN, 1995).
The editorial in the Winter 97-98 edition of Lo Lugarn, the magazine published by the PNO, announced the changes in strategy and policies of that political organisation and summarised its evolution on the European question: for nearly thirty years it had opposed, in principle, the construction of Europe, but in 1994 it favoured a federalist Europe based on regionalism - in France, the other side of the same equation.
The Occitan movement was as hostile to the Regionalisation proposals as it was to Europe. It is true, as claimed by most occitanists, that Regionalism was first decided, organised and manipulated by Paris and did not take into account the linguistic, cultural and historical identities of the Regions. Nonetheless, the 1982-1984 laws of decentralisation gave a leading role to the Regions, enabling them to formulate a regional plan. The inter-regional cooperation was encouraged and extended to encompass an international dimension as the Regional Council was empowered to organise regular contacts with the foreign decentralised Regions with which they had a border. This legislative framework led to several meetings between the Presidents of several Occitan Regions and Jordi Pujol, President of the Generalitat de Catalunyà. As a consequence, a Euroregion comprising Languedoc-Roussillon, Midi-Pyrénées and Catalunyà was created in 1991.
Occitania was not only disenclosed on an economic level, but was also culturally less isolated.
Jordi Pujol, whose name came to symbolise Catalan cultural identity after his trial and imprisonment in 1960, has been president of the Generalitat since 1980. He kept linguistic politics in his own portfolio and today, bilingualism is in place in all levels of education. Catalan is the preferred language of local administration and has become an official working language in the