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Title: Paris May-June 1968 Author: SK Date: 2020, Winter Language: en Topics: France 1968, uprising,immigrants,Algeria,biography,autobiography, Kadour Naimi, book review Source: Fifth Estate #405, Winter, 2020, downloaded December 15, 2021 from https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/405-winter-2020/paris-may-june-1968/
a review of
Freedom in Solidarity: My Experiences in the May 1968 Uprising by Kadour
Naimi; Translation and foreword by David Porter. AK Press, 2019
akpress.org
During times of social ferment like the present, there tends to be a
reawakening of interest in past insurgencies, such as those of the
May-June 1968 French uprising. So David Porter’s English translation of
Kadour Naimi’s memoir of those transformative events is particularly
timely.
While there have been several other highly relevant texts in English,
this book is an especially welcome contribution because it is written by
a person from a somewhat different background than that of most of the
other writers on the topic.
The author, Kadour Naimi, is currently an internationally known
playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. But, during those tumultuous
days in France, he was an economically strapped young college student
who had immigrated to France a few years earlier from a newly
independent Algeria.
Naimi grew up in a working class family. As a teenager he was actively
involved in some very dangerous demonstrations against the French
colonial government. He also participated in local community
self-defense against the right-wing French settlers intent on
terrorizing North Africans.
In 1962, when Algeria gained independence, European owners and managers
fled the country, workers initiated self-management involving hundreds
of thousands on farms,
in factories, workshops and other enterprises throughout the country.
Naimi witnessed this firsthand. He was inspired by the workers’
creativity and challenges to the established hierarchies when he brought
lunch to his father at a shoe factory.
Naimi’s desire to become a playwright led him to immigrate to France in
1966 at the age of 21 and enroll in the École Supérieure d’Art
Dramatique (the School of Drama) in Strasbourg, 300 miles east of Paris.
To his delight Strasbourg turned out to be one of the hotbeds of student
radicalism. When the 1968 upheaval broke out, he welcomed it
enthusiastically, sensing self-management principles in much of the
student movement and hope in the workers’ general strike and
occupations. He was a participant in radical activities centered at
Strasbourg University.
At that time, Naimi knew nothing much about anarchist ideas beyond
authoritarian Marxist falsifications of them. He appreciated Marx’s
early writings concerning social and intellectual liberation, and his
writing on the Paris Commune. But Naimi was also taken in by some of the
Maoist claims about the benevolence of elite supervision of popular
insurgency. Although he didn’t think of himself as an anarchist, he
nevertheless had strong anti-authoritarian beliefs, and rejected
Leninist ideas that put emphasis on leaders presiding over a party that
needed to take power to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Naimi’s account makes connections between the personal and political in
the French movement. He explores the conflict between his sexual desires
and the revolutionary abstinence he learned from studying Maoist ideas.
Having learned from his mother to respect women’s intellectual
capacities, he was concerned about the low numbers of women involved in
discussions during the general assemblies at the occupied universities.
But, he tells us, he had no real ideas for remedying this situation.
His experiences in his native Algeria led Naimi to search for ways to
challenge hierarchies and authoritarian rules, including those inherent
in nationalism and capitalism wherever they appeared. He rejected
compromise with Algeria’s post-independence military dictatorship, while
also rejecting the charade of capitalist democracy.
In July 1968, following the defeat of the revolutionary upsurge, Naimi
returned to his home town in Algeria where he helped develop a
self-managed theatrical company, the Theatre of the Sea: Company of
Research and Experimental Theatrical Productions. The audience was
primarily workers of town and countryside, as well as high school and
university students, and some intellectuals. Audience participation was
strongly encouraged.
But after three years, the troupe was shut down by the military in
consultation with authoritarian socialists who rejected the libertarian
tendencies it represented and encouraged.
At the end of 1973, Naimi returned to Europe and began exploring the
anarchist tradition, including both 19th and 20th century individuals
and groups as a way of better understanding the failures of socialist
revolutions. In the 1980s he resumed his creative activities in theater
and film, addressing the concerns of working people and socially aware
intellectuals. He moved to Italy, where he founded the Maldoror Film
company, as well as a Film School and the Festival Internazionale Cinema
Libero (International Free Film Festival).
Kadour Naimi’s memoir is particularly relevant because of his inherently
anarchistic perspectives along with his introspective self-critical,
creative, and observational skills, giving him the ability to add to
previous reports on the 1968 French events in significant ways.
The late David Porter’s translation and introduction make this valuable
narrative available to English readers.
SK has been interested in anarchist and anti-authoritarian participation
in social insurgencies for many years.