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Fragility is the only thing I really know about me

Claire Denis

“Fragility is the only thing I really know about me”

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I am not a very balanced person. I am fragile and sad – almost as described in Triste Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss. I feel both those adjectives, I grew up with them. I was aware of my fragility even when I was very young – a baby, learning to walk, living somewhere in Africa and already feeling that the number of white persons was very small compared to the number of black persons and also noticing that most of the black persons that I met were gardeners or maids. I felt – I am sure I am not lying – even at that very young age, not a sense of injustice, but a sort of guilt.

Guilt for what? My parents were nice people, they treated everyone well. My father was avidly learning languages, he spoke many African languages and also Pidgin English very well and he used to speak it to his children. I learned Pidgin English almost before I learned French. So I can say I was well-educated and I was lucky that I was educated far away from France – being able to share different cultures, to have different neighbours. The region I lived in during my early childhood was a Muslim part of the North Region of Cameroon so there were no churches, no Christian presence, the only religion there was Islam. My father got on well with it, but we nevertheless had a pig in our yard. We were saving it for our private meals, because normally we had mutton or chicken. But instead of being strong like an explorer, like a traveller, I lived between two worlds. In one I felt happy – composed of the countries in which I was growing up, the North Region of Cameroon, the South Region of Cameroon, Djibouti and other places. And sometimes for the holidays I stayed for a month or two with my grandparents in France, where I felt a complete stranger, although I noticed I belonged there – because of the colour of my skin, and the similarities between me and the people around me – but there were cultural differences, like having cheese every day which was something I was not used to. So I grew up with that fragility and in a way with a sort of sadness.

When I first read Tristes Tropiques I immediately disliked Lévi-Strauss. I wanted to tell...

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Claire Denis

lebt in Paris. Sie ist eine der bedeutendsten Autorinnen des zeitgenössischen französischen Kinos. Als Tochter eines französischen Kolonialbeamten wuchs sie zum Teil in Kamerun, Burkina Faso und Dschibuti auf. Denis studierte am Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques (heute: La Fémis), wo sie 1971 ihren Abschluss machte. Am Anfang ihrer Filmkarriere arbeitete sie als Regieassistentin mit Dušan Makavejev, Costa Gavras, Jacques Rivette, Jim Jarmusch und Wim Wenders. Sie selbst hatte ihr Filmdebut 1988 mit dem Film Chocolat, der in einem Afrika an der Wende zum Antikolonialismus spielt. Ihre Arbeit beschäftigt sich vor allem mit kolonialen und antikolonialen Thematiken in Westafrika und zeitgenössischen Problematiken in Frankreich, mit Fragen der Identität, Herkunft und fortgesetzten Destabilisierung. Ihr Film Nénette et Boni wurde 1996 in Locarno mit dem Goldenen Leoparden prämiert, ihr Film Beau Travail 1999 in Montréal mit dem Louve d'or und beim Genfer Festival Tous écrans mit dem Preis für die beste Regie ausgezeichnet. 2009 erhielt Denis für ihren Film White Material eine Einladung in den Wettbewerb der 66. Filmfestspiele von Venedig. Claire Denis ist Professorin an der European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Schweiz, und an der La Fémis in Paris.

Weitere Texte von Claire Denis bei DIAPHANES
Kerstin Stakemeier (Hg.), Susanne Witzgall (Hg.): Fragile Identities

What is the current state of the subject and what about the status of its self-image? In contemporary discourses we encounter more and more “fragile identities,” in artistic works as well as in scientific theories, and those are today much less referring to a critique of the concept of identity, but much rather to the relationship those concepts of identity entertain with the overall precarious state of the subject in current social conditions that are characterized by political upheaval and change.
The book Fragile Identities investigates among other things the chances and also the possible endangerments of such a fragile self and asks for the resurging urgency of a contemporary concept of subjectivity. The publication combines international artistic and scholarly contributions, discussions and project documentations in relation to the second annual theme of the cx centre for interdisciplinary studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

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