Returns of the Speech of the Indian (for Mahmoud Darwish)

15/10, 5/11/2018

“Here is the story of the escape of a poem: ‘Speech of the Indian. The penultimate before the white man’, by Mahmoud Darwish. With a strange familiarity, the poem originally written in arabic evoked the famous speech of chief Duwamish Seattle at the same time as it seemed to pursue a natural and centuries-old dialogue with the first peoples of Mexico.
The poem is said to be the “penultimate” speech of the “Indian” against the “white man”. Perhaps the last is a speech in action which, long ago – in the form of an incalculable environmental crisis – returns the poem to this “grandmother” as the poem recalls, what is the Earth .
In Mexico, on our continent and in the world, today we witness deaths and disappearances often linked to the defense of rivers, mountains, lands, languages ​​and knowledge.
Whole communities live today in a paradoxical situation that we will call “residential exile” although they continue to live on their land. They are continually dispossessed by a minority acting with the consent of national states. Palestine also pays with the blood of its children for the criminal plunder of land, water, olives…
The pain of the earth caused by a predatory economy supported by accumulation by dispossession is increasingly questioned. The cry of heteronomous justice grows stronger with the hope that one day, not too distant, this drunken minority of ruthless, suicidal domination and progress in pursuit of “security” may hear the voice of the innumerable other. Today, his feared vulnerability is reflected in the mirror of this letter-poem which announces the deadly melancholy of the eagle.”


October 15, 2018
18:30-21:30
La Générale Nord-Est
14, Avenue Parmentier – 75011 Paris

Round table :

  • Silvana Rabinovich (IIFL/FFyL-UNAM / LLCP-Paris 8): “The Returns of the Speech of the Indian between Mexico, Palestine, and Western Sahara”
  • Mansur Tayfuri (LLCP-Paris 8 / Sorhawardi House) and Suhaib Amin Nadir (Sorhawardi House): “Darwish in Kurdistan” (Videoconference via Internet)
  • Naji El Khatib (Institute of Humanities MEDFIL): “The right of return and Palestinian memory”

Projections:
An excerpt of Notre musique by Jean-Luc Godard (2004)
Videos of multilingual readings of the Speech of the Indian by Mahmoud Darwish

Multilingual reading with the participation of: Leila Elyaakabi, Lynda Meghara, Naji El Khatib, Azadeh Rahmani, Yolinliztli Pérez Hernández, Zahra Pourazizi, Dánivir Kent, Élisa Nosal.


November 5, 2018
12:00-15:00 | Deleuze space (Building A, 1st floor)
Paris 8 University
2, Rue de la Liberté – 93526 Saint-Denis

Introduction to the research:
Silvana Rabinovich (IIFL/FFyL-UNAM / LLCP-Paris 8):
“The multilingual translation of the Speech of the Indian”


The Returns of the Speech of the Indian (for Mahmoud Darwish) is one of the stages of a research project entitled “Nomadism and hospitality in language” directed by Silvana Rabinovich (National autonomous university of Mexico).
The research took the form of transhumant translations of Mahmud Darwish’s poem into spanish, mazatec, chinantec, mixtec, zapotec, and maya; and discussions around crossed experiences of hospitality and nomadism according to a process of translation and justice between Palestine, Mexico and Western Sahara.
With translations by: Gloria Martínez Carrera (mazatec translator from the community of San Juan la Unión, Zoquiapam, Oaxaca), Alicia Gregorio Velasco (chinantec translator from the community of San Antonio Analco, Oaxaca), Yasnaya Elena Aguilar (translator from the ayuujk or mixe de Ayutla), Víctor Cata (translator of the diidxazá or zapoteco del istmo, from Juchitán) and César David Can Canul (translator of the yucatec maya from the community of Mesatunich, municipality of Motul, Yucatán).


With the support of the Pedagogies of the trace, Remembrances, Translations, Nomadic Territorialities program (IDEFI-CréaTIC Workshops-Laboratories – University of Paris 8).
Contact: infopolitical-studies.net