Race

Questioning France, Europe, the West on its relationship with the other, the Black, the Arab, the Asian. Ask white people about their relationship to colonization and the occupation of other people's territory. Question the French about their so-called historical place in Algeria. Question Westerners about their role as self-proclaimed civilizers in Africa, South America and the plains of North America. To question, to stir the memory of these (white) men who, for nearly seven hundred years, have occupied center stage, enriching themselves through trade, in other words, by plundering the land of others. At a time when some French people are saying to otherness: "You're invading me with colors that my soil no longer wants to tolerate", Race, like others, is raising his very feeble voice. Saying: thief, slave, inhabitant of the continent of Africa, Arabia and Asia, from now on you are dispossessed of your soil. Your wealth is mine. My language, yours. If to write is to make the dead speak, Race, by giving voice to those silenced by the white man's writing of the world, intends to make the mute of History speak. This text was first performed in Rouen in September 1997 as part of the Octobre en Normandie festival.