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The South African Pavilion THE STRONGER WE BECOME ORGANIC LOOPS: by Aïcha Diallo In physics, resilience is the ability of an elastic material to absorb energy and release that energy as it springs back to its original shape. By drawing parallels with human behaviour, resilience refers to a person's ability to bounce back from a major, debilitating setback. Resilience represents a complex web of aspects and mechanisms to recover from or adjust to traumatic experiences being on an individual level and/or a collective one. Looking further, while resilience is the ability to absorb impact enough that it allows you to bounce back, resistance is the ability to oppose impact. Not only are the two interdependent, but also both operate on a continuum. An explosive reaction. Débris. Elastic. A mantle of dust. Jumping, keeping up, standing up. In an interview, the multimedia artist Abdessamad El Montassir describes his project Résistance Naturelle (French for organic resistance) by referring to the Arabic term ةيعيبط ةمواقم (Muqawama tabieia) which has the dual meaning of natural resource as well as organic resistance.¹ In other words, as El Montassir explains further, this idiomatic term considers the act of resisting as a natural resource as well as a normal, logical response when faced with threat and adversity. Sequence 1 Trauma is of Greek origin and means injury. In medical terms, trauma implies a physical damage: it is a physical wound that is very deep and may upset, if not damage, wholly or partly the bodily system. In psychological terms, trauma is an emotional wound of great dimension that cannot be integrated into the human psyche. In other words, it means that when trauma occurs, there is a process of disintegration coming into play. In other words, there are no words or symbols available for a person or a group within one's/their coping mechanisms to absorb and oppose the impact of traumatic experiences. The wound subsequently becomes a memory that stands still unable to be processed. It is oftentimes a hidden one. Intangible. Also, trauma presupposes a state of shock and paralysis, a state of being exposed by force. “No escape. Trapped in a never ending loop.” No escape. Trapped in a never ending loop. Moreover, the notion of trauma and its implications emerged a long time ago. Yet, it is progressively since the public testimonies of the Holocaust atrocities during the Third Reich that collective trauma has become a subject of continuous interest. For instance, the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946) represented a pivotal time for the notion of testimony, transitional justice and collective trauma.² In the late nineteenth century, in the wake of psychoanalysis, an emerging theory of trauma stayed in the margin.³ Traumatic experiences related to patients and their responses to them were purely defined as a product of their fantasies only. 1 Interview with artist Abdessamad El Montassir during his research residency at IMéRA – Institute for Advanced Study, Aix Marseille Université, available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKIpjtp9kqk 2 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory – Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. 3 Becker, Migration, Flucht und Trauma: Der Trauma-Diskurs und seine politischen und gesellschaftlichen Bedeutungen. 11
Besides, it is also true that trauma involves a process that finds its own mechanisms. Moreover, “trauma can result not only from a ‘single assault’, but also from a ‘constellation of life’s experiences,’ a ‘prolonged exposure to danger,’ or a ‘continuing pattern of abuse’”.⁵ The environment in which any individual lives and grows has its influences being positive or negative upon the self. In fact, the social, and also in a wider sense the social and political context plays important role to either lessen or increase the repercussions of any traumatic experiences. Hans Keilson argues that trauma is sequential: not only does it involve a deep break, but also it implies that trauma lies on a continuum.⁶ Timeless. Retraumatization. Fantômes. Reenactments. Reliving of emotions, of physical sensations. Breaks, triggers. The unforeseeable. Keilson also identifies the links between individual and social processes.⁷ How to think and feel trauma, resilience and resistance simultaneously? How to consider and give meaning to victimhood and survival in a complex way? Collective re/traumatization, resilience and resistance are responses that go hand in hand. Who has the upper hand? Often times there is a chasm in-between. Yet, interdependent, they re-emerge in loops. Almost feeding each other, almost symbiotic. ‘Every form of enslavement generates in one way or another an opposing struggle for liberation’.⁸ Sequence 2 I am watching Abdessamad El Montassir's film Résistance Naturelle as I have been invited to be his interpreter on the occasion of his artist talk hosted by the ifa Gallery Berlin. It is winter, and I am sitting at my desk taking notes. At some point in the process, I stop the film and rewind, and then keep rewinding the same sequence, the same scene. I am struck by this image. In this scene, this plant appears in an infinite sea of sand. The earth is flat. They say there is a finishing line. Perhaps an end. The soil. The land. The film shows El Montassir's interdisciplinary approach through a lens of artistic production, social sciences, psychology, biology and neurosciences. In his research project, he aims to trace back the traumatic experiences that have been lived through the ongoing conflict of the Sahara in southwestern Morocco. This situation has generated crippling responses and coping mechanisms resulting from trauma expressed by amnesia, shame and guilt. The film translates the visceral transmissions between two generations and bodies creating a story in three layers, in three temporalities. One of these temporalities is defined by the plant called Euphorbia Echinus or daghmous as in the local languages being Darija (Moroccan Arabic) and Hasania (Arabic in Southern Morocco). This plant originally had a different structure than today: It consisted of leaves. Interestingly enough, in order to survive the external factors that threatened it, the Euphorbia Echinus developed its very own system of resistance: As of today, it is entirely covered in thorns. The Euphorbia Echinus occupies a ubiquitous place in the Sahara in the southwest of Morocco. The plant somehow epitomizes its very own continuum of trauma, resilience and resistance reacting to this heavily charged territory. To this singular land. Like a weaver, Abdessamad El Montassir puts together the links that may exist between the resistance grown by the daghmous to survive and oppose against external factors and the sense of resilience developed by the Sahrawi communities as part of their strategies to resist oppression and liberate themselves from this extremely violent political, social and cultural context. “Before it can adopt a positive voice, freedom requires an effort at disalienation. At the beginning of his life man is always clotted, he is drowned in contingency. The tragedy of the man is that he was once a child”.⁹ 4 Bouson, Quiet as it’s Kept: Shame, Trauma, and Race in the Novels of Toni Morrison. 5 Bouson, 3. 6 In Becker, Migration, Flucht und Trauma: Der Trauma-Diskurs und seine politischen und gesellschaftlichen Bedeutungen. 7 Ibid. 8 Fick, The Making of Haiti – The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below, 1. 9 Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, 180. 12
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