"My outer and my inner life have been as the very poles - asunder"
George du Maurier "Peter Ibbetson"
Henri has always represented this kind of hope.
Do you realise, taking into consideration his age...
You think "ok, none of us really ever gave up but we all had moments..."
There are periods in my life in which I did other things.
Henri never did that.
He can analyse strikes and movements
that took place in China or in Tanzania,
and it is never gratuitous.
For me, he is both, a Marxist and an anarchist.
And this is what is fascinating with him:
he has a non-traditional trajectory.
He is somebody who always researches things, who studies a lot,
who writes on what he is thinking about, and who is into it.
Who is totally into it.
Compared to other people who are interested in many different things...
He probably has a different life, but he doesn't confide about it.
Henri Simon The story of a (non-)militant
First part Outer life
I started working in November 1945, that's something you don't forget.
I was 23. I started as a low employee. - In the life insurance company?
Yes, in that company. As soon as I started
working, I joined the CGT union.
It simply seemed quite normal to me
to do something in terms of just defending ourselves.
Already, there was something that was problematic for me:
For the official union and other representatives,
there were the cases you would defend, and others you wouldn't.
There was a workers' ethic,
for example, on the CGT member cards, it was written:
"You have to be the best at your job."
There was a sort of criteria of the good worker,
and those who did not respect these criteria were considered indefensible.
But I thought, those were precisely the cases that had to be defended!
When the strike started in 1955, you were not part of the CGT any more?
Absolutely, for two years.
With the friend who made me come to Socialisme ou Barbarie,
even before the 1955 movement started,
we decided to publish an independent workers' journal.
1955: Struggle At The Insurance Corp. At the works council, a new wage scale
is announced, but the major pay rise promised turns out to be fake.
A movement starts for a real wage increase, outside union structures.
They made us believe that there was a big wage increase, like 17%.
But actually, it was taken from some- where else and they ended up saying:
"We recommend a wage increase of 5%."
And that was only a recommendation,
which means that practically you might end up not getting anything.
It was such a big lie that it was...
So I spoke out to say that.
After that meeting, in which nothing got actually decided,
spontaneously, some workers...
most of the workers were women, around 80% of them...
came to see me and asked: "What do we do now?"
I said, we have to get together and try to have a medium of expression.
The first thing - at the time, there was no photocopy - is to buy a Roneo.
Everybody agreed, and 5 minutes later, they gave me the money
to buy a Roneo - which was an expensive thing.
For me, this is one of the most extraordinary lessons:
In a movement, decisions are made in this way: No big debate, no...
You suddenly feel that something comes together,
that makes a break with what you normally see!
While when I was in the union, you had to harass people
to make them pay their two pennies of union membership fee.
But in this case they felt that it was actually about them.
From Socialisme ou Barbarie (SoB) to I.C.O.
Before Socialisme ou Barbarie, you didn't take part in any group...?
No, no group at all. And here, you see that
political orientations are a matter of chance.
If I would have met a Trotskyite, I may have become a Trotskyite,
I would have met an anarchist, maybe an anarchist... I don't know.
The fact I found something that was critical of the Stalinist system,
it is true, I was lucky. It was a guy at my work...
At the time when I became secretary of the union section,
he was doing his military service. So when he came back...
What he was telling me, was close to what I already was feeling.
In the 50s, Socialisme ou Barbarie was one of the only theoretical groups
that criticized not only Stalinism but also Trotskyism, while
retaining a Marxist critique of exploitation.
Henri participated in the journal from 1955-58. He wrote particularly
about the working conditions and struggles at the insurance company.
How did you relate your group belonging with what you said in the meetings at work?
Did you present yourself as a Marxist, as having specific political ideas?
No, I always felt reluctant to do propaganda.
Because either things happened in a specific direction,
then I possibly tried... And it happened that,
in meetings, several times... Like, I remember a meeting where
a guy from LO party suggested some- thing, and I suggested a different thing,
and it was this different thing that was adopted.
You always find yourself in such situations,
but I did not say: "I do this in the name of...", etc.
This is an attitude I also had, when I was part of Socialisme ou Barbarie.
The funny thing is that, in 1955, when we did this movement, it is the unions
which, in a leaflet, denounced me as a henchman of Socialisme ou Barbarie!
Break With "SoB": At the end of the 50s, Castoriadis, a central figure of the journal,
tries to give to the group the role of an organised party.
In 1958, Henri Simon leaves the group because of growing dissent on
the question of organisation.
When there was the Gaullist semi-coup in 1958,
there was made an interpretation which, in my opinion, was wrong.
There are those in SoB - not only them, there was similar analysis in other parties -
who thought, De Gaulle would do what the Algers colonists and the army wanted,
that is to establish a fascist regime.
They concluded that workers' reactions would follow,
and as new troops - the students - were available,
we should create a more powerful movement: a party.
And we were a minority who said: No, no way. De Gaulle is not fascism,
so if we need to get organised, it has to be done in a more
federal way with groups linked to each other, not in a centralised way.
And the break happened because of this.
In SoB itself, there were not many blue collar workers,
actually, there was one.
The others were intellectuals, teachers, things like that.
So, in 1958, when we left the group,
or rather, when we were more or less excluded...
We created what became I.C.O, which was a group with only workers.
May 68
From May 68 onwards, each time something happened, I was there.
Simon spoke at each meeting of the staff.
He was obviously attacking the CGT, and denouncing their
underlying collusion with the management, that was clear.
Though, he was not at all supported on this by the majority,
even from employees who were ready to go for a fight.
Politically, we got on very quickly, because
he immediately told me about the group I.C.O.
I got to know I.C.O. while they had meetings with around 20 people.
Very quickly, as soon as the May 68 events took place...
I think, once we were probably around 100.
I.C.O. really was his whole life.
I saw his wife, I saw his children, but not very often.
I could see that this political world was...
his whole life. It was not 90%, no: His whole life!
Henri, if I exaggerate, was rather a monk.
I mean, he was speaking to say things that were really...
He was giving information, for example, what was going on
at his workplace, or information about similar facts
happening at other workplaces.
But when it came to making jokes, there were almost none!
Or, to say spontaneously: "Let's go and see this exhibition".
No. That was not his form of militantism.
Before May 68, Henri becomes close friends with Christian Lagant,
member of the anarchist group and magazine "Noir et Rouge".
A dialogue opens between the two groups
beyond the traditional marxist/anarchist divisions.
In 68, we published in the same printing house
with basically the same cover, two completely different magazines:
Our point of view, and I.C.O.'s point of view.
And in each one it was written: confer with the other magazine:
Noir et Rouge in one case, I.C.O. in the other. That was not a problem for us.
Because we always had a position that was related to history.
When we published an article on Spain, Italy or France, it's always
about the historical preconditions.
And in I.C.O., it was always about what is going on in the workplace,
and sometimes, especially after 68, there was the councilist position.
I didn't follow these things at all, I was more active in my domain of work.
I attended Noir et Rouge meetings, but didn't take sides on those things.
- You didn't attend I.C.O. meetings. - No, I did not.
I was thinking of stories that marked me, I was a bit exterior,
but there were other themes that interested me particularly
such as culture: I remember discus- sing with Christian for a whole day,
about writers or artists who are totally reactionary or even fascists,
but who are good in an artistic way.
We had a long discussion: "We still read them, but..." Really interesting!
- Were you there? - No, but I am really not surprised:
Christian was totally open, especially about art.
I had more discussions with Christian than with Henri about those things.
Yes, I would even say, I am wondering if Henri
ever had a discussion around this theme!
In an indirect way, Christian was almost at the level of May 68:
Rejection of militantism, rejection of a militant life
separated from one's love life or everyday life.
Christian understood this completely!
When the proletariat discovers that its own externalized power
conspires in the continual reinforcement of capitalist society,
no longer merely thanks to its labour,
but also thanks to unions and parties,
and state institutions it had estab- lished in pursuit of its emancipation,
it also discovers through concrete historical experience
that it is that class which is totally opposed to
all reified externalizations and all specializations of power.
It bears a revolution that can leave no other social sphere untransformed
that enforces the permanent domination of the past by the present
and demands a universal critique of separation.
I was 20 in May 68.
Before 68, I had the luck to discover the S.I. and also
the pamphlet "On the Poverty of Student Life".
That was like a revelation! I hadn't read Marx before,
I had only read a few texts at school.
I think, older people like Henri and René Lefeuvre
were already really lucid about what was going on.
We didn't have a clue: We were young,
we were threatened with a sinister future, we thought,
our life was already over before it had even started.
And all of a sudden, hope was coming.
We discovered things, different from what the previous generation knew.
For example, I don't know what relation Henri has with the S.I.,
but in the ultra-left, there were many people
who were totally refusing to read the S.I.
It was a real joke, I have anecdotes about it, you would laugh to death.
While we were completely in- fluenced by it. We were into stuff
like "everything we did in everyday life was really important".
Have you been influenced by the critics of everyday life?
Not particularly. Situationism never really interested me.
The theory they were making, the spectacle, etc., it was true.
But for me these things were almost obvious.
In 68, they did the C.M.D.O., Council for Maintaining the Occupations,
and they behaved a bit like leninists, and
tried by all costs to propagate something,
and in a very rigorous way. It is well known, their rigor was directed
against all those they had come close to.
I.C.O. was the victim of it,
as they wrote a very positive article on I.C.O., and then
to the extent that we did not follow the direction they were hoping,
they criticized us and attacked us systematically.
This was their quite classical way to behave with all those around them.
What explicitly was their critique of I.C.O.?
It corresponded to a moment when they thought it was necessary to act.
And they were criticising I.C.O. for its attentist wait-and-see position.
It is funny that in one of the first journals,
when the Strasbourg story took place, and the pamphlet
"On the Poverty of Student Life" came out, there is a footnote about I.C.O.
Where they already denounce I.C.O.: "They are good, but attentist."
Which means, "they do not intervene". And precisely,
we refused to act like an organisation, like a party,
and for them, that was a major critique.
Were there other groups that criticized I.C.O. for the same reason?
Yes, and the split of the I.C.O. in 68 happened because of this.
Because there were those who thought that 68 was the start...
especially because in 69, there was the Italian movement,
in 70, there were events in Poland,
so they thought it was the start of a revolutionary movement etc.
I had already been through that in 58, actually.
And I.C.O. exploded because of that.
Because as soon as you project yourself into
ways of acting and organising,
the old political devils reappear between Marxists and anarchists.
That's what happened, and only the small core remained
who created "Echanges", but we were only a few.
Creation of the network and journal Echanges et mouvement
In 1974, a meeting in Boulogne is gathering some former I.C.O. members,
comrades from Belgium, the Netherlands (with Cajo Brendel),
and the English Marxist group "Solidarity".
They created the network and journal "Echanges et movement".
When I arrived in Echanges in 1976 or 77,
I was told that it was a network, and that
we were doing things around struggles.
We were not so many people at the first meeting I attended,
maybe around 10 people.
Apart from Anne, Henri's daughter, there were only men.
I remember one day, when a guy from the group said:
"There are only men in Echanges," and I said "And me?"
He said, "You are a man".
That was during the first meetings, there were regular meetings,
I don't remember how often, each time at the home of one of us.
The meetings were to prepare... At the time, we were already doing the journal,
but we were also making books.
Like this one that I showed you, which we did about the movements in USA,
it was the time when I was in Echanges.
So several people participated in making this book.
I participated in writing an article about the blackout and
the strikes at the continental in Edison, with 2 comrades of the group.
So we were doing this kind of thing, and
we were also regularly inviting friends from abroad. That was
the extraordinary thing with Echanges and Henri: the network of relations.
We were regularly meeting people from Holland,
from England, from Italy, from the group Collegamenti.
There were also big meetings and assemblies,
where there were sometimes many conflicts.
What were we arguing about?
First, the theoretical conflict was about the very idea of theorizing.
Obviously in the analysis of capital, everybody was theorizing.
But some of us were going further.
There was always the idea that struggles were speaking by themselves, and
that analysing struggles by going beyond analysing the struggle itself,
or trying to insert it in an understanding of what could come,
and in a process that could lead or not to the revolution...
For Henri, this was an intellectuals' activity, detached from the struggles.
I wouldn't speak of workerism, because it wasn't exactly Henri's position,
which was: "struggles are theoretical by themselves".
So already here, you could not go against it.
When we were confronted with those who had leftovers of councilism,
obviously, it was easy to argue about the idea of management.
I don't remember precisely the terms on which we were arguing,
but with Henri that was the content of the argument. With others,
it was about positions about the restructuring, about the revolution,
the current evolution of capital. Conflicts that still exist, actually.
Echanges today (issue 146 - winter 2013/14)
What is Echanges?
Echanges is a network, not a group of which you become a formal member,
and it is above all a quarterly journal, made by a few people,
and mainly by Henri, obviously.
- Hello.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- Your change, Madam! Madam! Your change.
- Oh, I am a scatterbrain, sometimes.
It does not answer the question...
That is, what do you find in the magazine, maybe?
It is the idea of society as class struggle.
I don't write in it, but participate in it, I participate in meetings...
a lot less since I have this shop, unfortunately. There was a certain break.
And I do the layout, the proofreading, some technical work, let's say.
How do you finance Echanges, then?
First the subscriptions, that is more or less 2/3 of what we get.
A part is put in bookshops, another is sold directly.
The total circulation must be around 400.
On workers' councils, do you think times have changed in regards to them?
Yes, absolutely. I wrote a long article that
will not be published in Echanges but in another paper,
because something struck me:
Since 68, of all the movements that took place,
for more than 40 years, none of them...
The last movement that created councils was actually Hungary in 1956.
Afterwards, none of them.
And I think, this is not by chance.
Because the development of capitalism is such...
I mentioned that idea in an I.C.O. issue, a guy said:
"You give up on the theory of the companies' management by the workers themselves".
Thus, I wrote another very long article,
and I say: At the basis, there are always workers,
everybody, not only the workers: Somebody who has an activity
wants to decide himself on his own activity, and
appropriate the product of this activity,
it belongs to him. For me, it is obvious.
And this is the basis of reactions against capitalism.
And from the beginnings of capitalism onwards,
there were quite positive reactions in the cooperative movement.
The first cooperatives in England developed progressively,
with the development of capitalism, and
because of this reaction to appropriate the product of one's activity,
and to control that activity. Hence,
both cooperatives of consumption and of production.
Then, cooperatives got progressively integrated into the capitalist system,
they became what we know today, they still exist!
But in parallel, another theory was born in 1905 with
the appearance of the workers' councils.
A theory no theorist had expected, by the way,
even if it became a theory afterwards, and
it developed corresponding to the structure of capitalism at the time.
Because the idea of being able to manage a company...
For this, the company has to be a whole.
Capitalism was like this between the two World Wars.
I take the example of Renault Billancourt,
you had everything: to make tires, to make every part,
there even was a bank! It was a totality,
and, in this case, the idea of managing the company
is understandable. But capitalism today
is something completely different
from what existed almost more than 70 years ago.
The structure of capitalism today is so globalised on one hand, and
on the other, it is very diverse and fragmented
into a lot of small companies,
of sub-contractors, with assembly lines, etc., but they work with...
No company... can be isolated from the rest.
So it's not by chance that the idea of self-management
and of workers' council cannot develop any more,
for there no longer are perspectives. Even the most radical strikes today,
their only aim is getting more money, that is all.
What are the struggles today that give you hope?
Do you think, a social revolution now would surely start from the workplace?
I don't know.
There are some positive things.
The appearance, almost 5 or 6 years ago,
of occupation movements, Occupy and all those movements,
that are totally new: To some extent, they may remind us of
the appearance of councils in 1905, on a quite different scale.
But there is actually the manifestation of
a group of people, often very heterogeneous,
who use methods that are new,
- the occupations of public spaces.
They aren't completely new, I think, because
if you think about Tiananmen, about Mexico in 1968,
the occupation in South Korea of a city by students,
there have been, periodically, similar things in the past.
But this time, since 6 years ago, these things repeat themselves,
and, in my point of view, the very positive aspect of this,
is an internationalisation of this phenomenon,
which happens de facto
independently from any form of propaganda,
only through the development of a situation,
which shows at the same time that all those who participate
spontaneously in this, are placed in an identical situation on global scale.
And for me, this is positive. The future development, I don't know,
but it is a reason to hope, as you asked me.
How do you make Echanges and get all the information on current struggles?
It means a lot of fishing around for it,
by all possible means: from a direct contact, or
a few lines in a newspaper that
make me go on the Internet to get to know more.
For sure, there are possibilities for knowledge that did not exist before:
You can check the information, you manage to know
a lot more on struggles than you could do before.
And how much time a week you spend reading,
and doing stuff related to struggles?
I would say, it is almost 100%.
I say 100% in an ironical way, because I have other things,
I have contacts, I visit people...
But it represents a large part of my activity.
Interlude Family life and militant life
First family Odette, Anne, Paule and Claude
So here is Henri, Odette, Anne, Claude and me.
I can't remember Sundays when nobody came to our home.
Probably, there were some. But what marked me
are all the friends who were visiting on Sunday,
and all the contacts we had.
I did not experience them as militants,
for me, they were people, it was nice.
Between 5 and 13 to 14 years old, you don't pay attention to the ideas.
But I think, the fact that meetings took place here on Sunday,
participated a lot in the richness of our education.
Some of the group members were nice.
Not all of them were fans of a relentless militantism.
And I was going to Paris to see them sometimes,
when I was 15-16, more or less.
But these meetings were boring me.
I tried to stay one or two times, but...
Each person explains one's little story,
there is not much dialogue, it is like in every group.
Three of them were doing all the work.
They were sometimes 20-30 at the meetings.
People come, go, have a drink, have dinner and that was it.
The journal itself was made by 2 or 3 people.
Was your mother participating in it?
Yes, she took part.
In terms of quantity, she did most of the work.
He was doing the noble, intellectual work, writing, analysing,
and she was typing, doing the stencils, proofreading...
She was the one doing the typing. Then there was the Roneo in the small room.
And then there was the... How do you call it?
...gathering the papers. And we children were participating in this.
First, it probably was a game.
I think, after a while, we were bored and stopped.
So there were friends coming to help with the Roneo and gather the papers.
But our whole life was organised around this.
Because when my dad came back from work,
we went to bed, he was coming back quite lately.
I can't remember him coming back before 7:30 pm.
Often we were having dinner, he was checking our homework,
that was a compulsory step. And then,
we went to bed, and during the weekends he often was in the office,
what we called the office - which is now a room,
where he was working, writing and reading.
And it was a political activity.
Did he try to make you become militants?
No, never.
- And Anne, did she do some political stuff? -Yes, more.
I think they don't always agree, but she did more political things than me.
I didn't...
...maybe as a reaction to this.
Maybe because I afterwards had the impression that it was something
a bit invading, for my mum as well.
Henri has a very strong personality
that tends to stifle those who have a less strong personality,
and I think it was a bit the case with my mum.
It is true that her life was always revolving around that:
living with a militant.
1997: Henri leaves Odette.
In love with Janet, member of the Marxist group "Solidarity",
he goes to London to start a new family.
Odette starts a new life in Paris and develops a passion for theatre.
Second family: Janet and Claire
It seems he was really permissive with me.
My brother and sisters opened very big eyes,
because apparently he was a very strict father with them.
- Oh, very! - So they told me.
But with me, many things were allowed.
I was allowed to do things they had not been allowed to.
- So, I know that he changed. - But times had also changed!
After 2 years, Henri and Janet split up.
Henri stays in England until 1991 to participate in Claire's education.
2 years later, Claire moves to Paris to join him.
Did you get news about your friend?
They will bring him to the office, I don't know where,
at the prefecture, in order to apply for residency
by the end of April.
But will he be allowed to get residency?
They don't know. It is a judiciary catch 22 situation,
because he has no passport...
- Should I put something else on the table? - Yes, plates.
I paste all the things that seem absurd to me.
There are some more below, it is a shame not to see them,
some older below, it is without end.
So you don't see the old ones.
There was also one with Thatcher.
- No, it is here, I don't know: Can we take out this one?
It is the "Gone with the neutron", it is a good one.
No, but the one with Thatcher that I put in parallel with a vampire.
Yes, with a vampire head, but now it is hidden.
I like this one as well: the Pope.
Faith and order. It is a good one.
We need to eat now!
Claire, do you follow all these political things?
Not really, actually. The whole theoretical part of politics
never really attracted me.
I do stuff... I am more interested in action.
We do... I do things for RESF, helping migrants in school system,
we work together on this some- times, we do translations as well,
but not... Maybe, it's because I was surrounded by that
during all my childhood, so I got sick of it!
All the meetings, elaboration of new theories...
these things did not interest me.
Once I said, you were not that much ambitious and self-confident, and
you replied: "With a militant father and a poet mother,
what did you expect me to become?"
Yes, many people tell me that I am spectacularly well adjusted,
if you take into consideration who my parents are,
and the fact they took me with them here and there.
Your mother was a poet?
Yes, and she still is, more or less.
Is she published?
Yes, her poems have been published in England.
Second part Inner life
When I met him and he gave me the book "Peter Ibbetson",
and for him it was an extremely important book.
I remember that almost everything was underlined.
He was already underlining everything that was important,
while it is a book that does not even try - like in this short book
Simon wrote, or other things like his small tales for children -
to bring together the real and the surreal,
the reality and the dream, as if...
Simon always wanted to bring together these two things, but thought
it was impossible.
My outer and my inner life have been as the very poles - asunder, and if
at the 11th hour, I have made up my mind to give my story to the world,
it is not to rehabilitate myself in the eyes of my fellow-men,
deeply as I value their good opinion.
I would say that Henri's whole life is
linked to his political life, of course.
I don't know very well Henri's affects, in fact.
He is a guy who has... some kind of dignity.
I had never understood as much of Henri's affects as when
he almost died and wrote that little booklet.
But as his whole life, his whole passion, is essentially focused
on what we could call "political activity",
he does not like this term, and me neither.
For sure, his whole life was immersed in this.
In fact, I don't know what Henri's other activities are.
I was surprised to discover one day, when he came
- I was listening to some friends of us who have a choir -,
and he told me: "I love songs, I love choir".
He loves theatre, something I didn't know at all.
I could have discovered it... I think he was a walker as well,
but I don't know much about Henri's tastes.
I discover them by chance, in his old age.
Before, I had no idea. I could have, but, because the main theme was
to speak about struggles, there was not much space for something else.
When he came back to France, I was a proofreader for a newspaper,
we met again, he even came to pick me up at work,
like 30 years before.
We walked, we walked again in Paris.
So we started to meet each other again; less often since a few years.
And it is at this moment that I saw...
that I better understood how Simon was.
I saw to what extent he had a desire
that people knew he was somebody else.
And that this person: a workplace militant for a long time
and then - how could I say - a theorist...
That there was always this person who had a desire for recognition,
for his part...
...which he would translate with literature, with theatre. After all,
he can say: "But you know, I like theatre, too!"
And for a man who did what he did, who is who he is,
for him to say in such a childish way "I like it too"...
You think, he met many people in his life who missed out on him.
You really must see the booklet he did for Judith.
He did something a bit surrealist, with cuttings, watercolors,
and it is always about escaping, a tiger that escapes from a zoo.
But there is one thing which, as a school-boy, I never dreamed,
that I, and one other holding a torch, should one day, by common consent
find our happiness in exploring these mysterious caverns of the brain, and
should lay the foundations of order where only misrule had been before
and out of all those unreal, waste and transitory realms of illusion
evolve a real, stable, and habitable world, which all who run may reach.
I met him in 2005, I think.
At the summercamp in Poland,
I took the bus with my backpack,
there was Henri, François, and a friend of François.
I went to speak to him, we sat next to each other.
I don't know how many hours the trip took, like some 16 hours.
We spoke during 16 hours. I don't think we slept, just speaking...
Just like today: from the geology of the Alps
to the last film of I don't know who.
These are not necessarily militant discussions,
a word I don't like much.
He can speak about everything, about homosexuality,
about how the family and the relation between sexes change.
I don't have the impression that... He is not used to it, that is clear.
It doesn't happen spontaneously, but if you bring him
on these themes, he won't be shocked nor scandalized.
This is something I like: he is never scandalized.
In a general way, he can be indignant, but not scandalized.
Room 467
I went with him to a medical test.
And two days after, he had to go with the ambulance,
because he had a crisis, in fact a heart attack.
He was operated on immediately. He had tubes coming out everywhere.
He recovered quite quickly, he went to a convalescent home.
That is where he wrote "Room 467".
He experienced narcotics for the first time.
Never in his life, he had such an alteration of consciousness.
He doesn't drink, he never took drugs.
So it was a new experience for him.
And surprisingly, even in such a state, of semi-consciousness,
of altered consciousness, his preoccupations and view on things
remain the same: This book is a science-fiction book that
relates imprisonment and exploitation.
Of course, the walls were bare, totally bare,
of an unalterable whiteness.
So were probably as well the base of the mattress,
the ground and the ceiling he could see.
They were exudating light and heat, because there was not a trace
of those devices providing an atmosphere totally adapted
to his body and who knows what other element of what he was starting to
perceive as a total nightmare.
What do you know about the time he had at the hospital recently?
I don't know much, I know what he himself told us.
I knew that he had this accident...
Well, then...
After that I met him but...
When we went to the summercamp last year,
we took the plane together...
I think it was in the plane or train, he told me while blushing slightly:
"I wrote a small thing, a short story, do you want me to give it to you?"
He was all... As if... If he had written a text on the struggles
of female workers in China, he would have found it totally normal!
But then, he looked like a young man admitting to write poems
while he was supposed to do business studies!
It was funny. While blushing a lot, he gave me this little text.
Do you still have some "Room..."? Which number is it?
- Oh, I don't even remember.
Why?
- Because I forgot the one I had at Sabina's place.
- But I don't have any more copy. - You don't? - No.
- How many copies did you print? - I don't remember.
I didn't organise the printing, Helene did.
I will ask Sabina to bring it back to me, then.
Somebody put it on internet. - Really? - Yes. - On what page?
- Wait, I will tell you right now.
Shit, I am doing nonsense here.
Would you say, Henri is a militant?
Difficult question.
Because we present ourselves as anti-militant.
It depends on what meaning we give to this word.
We are not the militants of a party, we are not looking for...
we are not looking for membership in order to get bigger.
We are not trying to convince in order to get more members or anything.
But Henri is a militant, that is for sure, because
he has ideas and he lives totally for them.
Henri Simon The story of a (non-)militant
Thanks to Jackie, Lola, Sabina, Alain, François,
Christiane, Frank and Claude,
Claire, Anne, Claude, Paule and Odette Simon.
Epilogue
In 68, in your talks, why didn't you ever suggest the dream?
- Because it was talks adapted to the situation.
- But that's the reason why strikes always end up badly then,
when our militants adapt their talks to the situation!
Directing - Editing Jeanne Neton
Camera Antje Grez, Andreas Förster
Sound Bruno C., Dane Rapaïe (Pygmée Studio)
Subtitles labournet.tv