Dignity is essential. It means we are viewed by the other as a human being : an interview with Alice Cherki

Alice Cherki

ALICE CHERKI is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author. Born in Algiers, 1936. She knew Frantz Fanon well, working by his side in Algeria and Tunisia as a psychiatrist, and sharing his political commitment during the war of independence in Algeria.

Alice Cherki has lived in France since 1965. She is co-author of the books, Retour à Lacan (Fayard, 1981) and Les Juifs d’Algérie (Editions du Scribe, 1987), and author of La frontière invisible (Editions des Crépuscules, 2009) Frantz Fanon, portrait (Seuil, 2000) translated into English by Nadia Benabid and published as Frantz Fanon: A Portrait (Cornell University Press, 2006) and Mémoire anachronique (Editions De L’aube, 2016).

Gaele Sobott: Can you talk a little about the history of your family, your place of birth and your childhood?

Alice Cherki: I was born in a family of Jewish Algerians who were in Algeria since the Romans or before the Romans. My parents were born in the small towns of Medea and Ksar Bukhari but they met in Algiers. I was born and I lived in Algiers. I am Algerian, voilà!

Some of my family are Jewish Berbers.

GS: Were there Jewish people in Algeria before the Arabs?

AC: Yes, the majority were there well before. Some came later in 1492 from Spain through Morocco, others from Italy, and then Alsatian Jews, but at that point it was already colonial Algeria.  Many of those left again and went elsewhere. But most of the Jews of Algeria had been there for a very, very, very long. Some of them were Berbers who converted to Judaism. I belong to that history.

GS: Did you speak Arabic?

AC: Very little. I’m not very good at languages. I come from the same environment as Derrida. at school, we learnt Latin and Greek.

GS: Did you know Derrida?

AC: I knew Derrida very well. He was eight or nine years older than me and that represents a big difference but yes I knew Derrida well.

Like Hélène Cixous and Derrida, my childhood was marked by the Vichy anti-Jewish legislation which excluded Jews born in Algeria, denied us French nationality, the right to go to school, the right for Jews to work in government administration. This was hugely traumatic for me as a child.

One Christmas, I was 4 or 5 years old, my teacher said, “Tell your mother that after the break you must not come to school anymore.”

When I asked her the reason, the only answer I got was, “It’s because you’re Jewish.”

I didn’t know what that meant.  So, I gathered my courage and asked, “What’s Jewish?”

She replied, “It’s you with your big eyes, big mouth and big ears.”

Each of us, as Derrida also relates, was excluded from school, our parents could no longer work.

GS: How has this experience affected your adult life?

AC: It opened my eyes to the injustices of the world in which we live; a world marked by colonial ideology.  In Algiers in the 1950s, there was no intersection between Europeans, the Jews and Arabs –  the so-called natives. I didn’t experience it at home but we were caught up in all that. I talk about it a little in my book, Mémoire anachronique.  Everyone lived in their own sphere. Some of us would meet each other outside these spheres.

During my early years at primary school there was no mixing at all. In Grade 6, there were some girls; Rachida, Malika.  For the whole of my secondary schooling I only knew of one Algerian woman student even though my school was not the most snobbish high school in Algiers.

GS: It was the same principle as Apartheid?

AC: The same principle except that it was more camouflaged. Algerians were contained in their own neighbourhoods. Even the bourgeois had their areas. The Algerians passed like shadows in the European neighbourhoods

GS: What area of Algiers did you live in?

AC: I first lived on the border of a working-class suburb, near the boys’ school, known then as Lycée Bugeaud, now it’s called Lycée Abdel Kader. Later, at the age of 17, we moved to Central Boulevard in Hydra. Our house was on a piece of land owned by my uncle –  my father’s brother, my father’s sister, and my father. After some years, they managed to build a three-storey house there for the three families.

GS: What did your father do for a living?

AC: My father traded in cereal. He carried out transactions with farmers for the export and import of chickpeas and lentils.

GS: How did your interest in psychiatry come about?

AC: Firstly, it was a struggle for me as a woman to study. After I passed my baccalaureate, even though I was from the middle-class, it was not usual for women to continue their education. Women were expected to marry and so on. I had an older brother and a younger brother and was the only girl. Neither of my parents continued their studies. My father, a brilliant student, was pulled out of school at age 16 by his father. He was the eldest of ten children There were two or three girls before him so he had to work. I believe my mother chose to leave school to get married. When she met my father, she dropped out.

My parents were both very intelligent and relatively progressive. My father spoke Arabic, but they did not have a higher education.

I already had a certain outlook on society and I was more inclined towards literature. I wasn’t a good student and had never received any awards for excellence. I was impertinent and people always told me I would make an excellent actress. With no one to advise me, in those days, if I had decided I wanted to be an actress, it would have been worse than deciding to be a prostitute. Having said that, I did later have the luck to meet many people who became involved in theatre.

So, I found myself first in hypokhâgne and then khâgne. You know what they are?

GS: No.

AC: Preparatory literary classes for the grandes écoles. The equivalent also exists in the scientific field. I was interested in studying philosophy but decided that would mean cutting myself off from the real world. I made up my mind that I wanted to be useful so I chose to study medicine. But very soon I realized medicine didn’t meet my needs. It was all about identifying symptoms and responding with treatments. I remember a teacher saying, “But Mademoiselle, you ask too many questions.”

We never say, “Why” in medicine. Instead we talk about, “How to fix it.”

So, I was part of two cultures; one of interest for human beings and their psyche, and the other a group culture which stemmed from my medical studies.

GS: Were there other women you knew of who were studying medicine then?

AC: There were a few, but they were a definite minority.

There was a saying that summarized the situation quite well. It relates to sitting the intern examination:

If you are white, European and male, you have an 80% chance of sitting the exam. If you are female and European, you have a 60% chance. If you are Jewish and male, you have a 50% chance. If you are female and Jewish, you have a 25% chance. If you are Muslim and male, you have a 10% chance. As for being Muslim and a woman, you are not even mentioned because you just don’t get the opportunity.

Some managed to study medicine or become trainees but none got to sit the intern examination, voilà!

GS: When did you meet Fanon for the first time?

AC: I was part of a youth movement called AJASS (Association of Algerian Youth for Social Action) and Fanon was invited to give a lecture by a friend of mine, Pierre Chaulet, who died recently. It was a lecture on fear and anxiety in 1955. I must have been 19 or 20 at the time and had to leave my parents’ home where I’d been living. Most of the interns at the hospital were French-Algerian and because of my opinions I faced all kinds of problems. My car tyres were punctured, my white doctor’s coat soiled, my files stolen. So, when Fanon found out I wanted to do psychiatry, he told Pierre Chaulet I should come and intern under him at Blida psychiatric hospital.

GS: So you lived at the hospital in Blida?

AC: Yes, as an intern. That’s where I met my husband, Charles Géronimi. He shared my ideas, but having Corsican parents, teachers but Corsicans, they had trouble accepting a little Jew in their family, especially my mother-in-law.

GS: What were your first impressions of Fanon?

AC: My first impressions, at 20, I found everything he had to say very interesting and didn’t think of him as black. He analysed the subjectivity of racism which was very different from the discourse of the time. On the one hand, we had Existentialism and on the other, Marxist materialism which didn’t include questions of subjectivity. It was the first time I’d met someone who was only 10 years older than me but had immense experience, and a developed understanding of these two worlds, of the two ‘ideologies’.  He was neither on one side nor the other which met my expectations, answered my questions.

GS: He had practical ideas?

AC: Yes, he was a hands-on kind of man.

GS: That’s to say, the development of his thought was founded not only on the theoretical but also on his lived-experience?

AC: On his experience, yes. And that also pleased me. It was from his lived-experience that he elaborated his ideas. But he also had very advanced psychiatric training.

GS: What were some of the work experiences during your time with Fanon in Blida that influenced your practice of psychiatry?

AC: Everything he brought to psychiatry, especially his critique of the School of Algiers’ theory of primitivism. He also introduced social therapy, institutional psychotherapy.

GS: How do you define institutional psychotherapy?

AC: Institutional psychotherapy, as developed by Tosquelles, took off in France with the support of Oury and Bonnafé. It encourages the residents of psychiatric institutions to share things with their caregivers. Through humanising the functions of these institutions, it allows understanding not only of patient symptoms but also the roots of these symptoms. There are still two or three people in France who are struggling to create places that foster institutional psychotherapy, but it is becoming more and more difficult.

GS: Why is it becoming more difficult?

AC: Because of the prevailing ideology. Now we have DCM 3, DCM 4, DCM 5. It is a performative ideology that absolutely bypasses all subjective aspects of alienation.

GS: Did you have any significant experiences in the hospital setting as a female doctor caring for patients in that historical and social context?

AC: What do you mean by significant experiences?

GS: For example, when you worked at Joinville-Blida Hospital, were there certain events that affected you?

AC: Yes, of course.

GS: What were they?

AC: So many things. For example, I saw women hospitalised after childbirth for postpartum, transitory delirium. Some doctors didn’t understand and sometimes even people in the women’s families said, “It’s the djnoun who came to inhabit her.”

It affected me deeply because  I wanted to ascertain their experience of the delivery because it influences their relationship to the newborn baby.  It’s a complicated relationship.

GS: Did you have your own children at that time?

AC: No, I had no children at the time. I now have a son who is 40 years old. He studied political science and then he got involved in theatre.

GS: So, he is fortunate?

AC: Well there you have it.

GS: As a female doctor, what were your professional relationships like with your colleagues at the hospital?

AC: Amongst us interns at the psychiatric hospital of Blida, I was considered an equal.

I married an intern from the hospital. No, I can’t say I had any problems. On the other hand, before that when I was at the Mustapha Hospital in Algiers, I was very young, I did my hair in a bun and put on big glasses to make myself look older so I’d be left in peace.

GS: Was your husband originally from Blida?

AC: No, he was also from Algiers but he was an intern with Fanon in Blida. They wrote a paper together on Algerian women and the cultural specificity of TATs (Thematic Apperception Tests).

GS: In your book, Fanon, Portrait, you mention a meeting between Fanon and Jeanson. (1)

AC: Yes.

GS: In that meeting Fanon expressed his wish to go beyond certain ideas so that readers can experience aspects of life that they could never know firsthand.  You talk about Fanon exploring the sensory dimension of language. Do you think that this approach to writing could enable us to communicate experiences around difference, to understand our differences from an egalitarian point of view – not superior or even inferior?

AC: Yes, I think this type of writing is essential. In my experience, sensory writing starts from perceptions, sensations to try to improve communication with the other, I think it is very, very necessary.

GS: Do you know any writers today who write like that?

AC: I’m not qualified to say. I don’t know today’s writers that well. But Kateb Yacine wrote like that.

GS: Do you see difference as a dialectical space that can trigger creativity and imagination?

AC: Yes, that’s what I call the relationship to the other, the recognition of the outside, the stranger. It is important. I wrote another book called La frontière invisible, in which I insist on the relationship to the other. This allows you to accept the outsider in yourself.

GS: In your book, La frontière invisible, you link psychoanalysis and politics. I understand colonial violence, violence of displacement, violence against the subject in the social context, the context of specific historical and political circumstances, for example, those of Algeria and France. But when I try to analyse this violence from a psychoanalytic point of view, I find it difficult to understand.

AC: It is complicated. But you have sought out strangers?

GS: Always, yes.

AC: Perhaps it’s not by chance.

GS: Perhaps not.

Did you know Fanon outside his work, in his family life? What kind of man was he as husband and father?

AC: Yes, of course I had the opportunity to know Fanon outside his work. I knew his wife well and I know his son very well. As a dedicated husband and father. At the same time, he was a very busy man. But he was very dedicated to his family. When his father left for Africa, Olivier didn’t see him that often only from time to time when Fanon came back from working there.  Olivier was only five when his father died.

Fanon loved life. He liked to go out to dinner, go dancing, things like that.

GS: What type of dancing did he like?

AC: All the dances of that time, le slow, the rhumba . . .

GS: Did you like to dance?

AC: It has been a long time since I really danced but yes at the time I loved it.

GS: At friends’ places?

AC: Yes.

GS: What type of music did Fanon like?

AC: He especially loved Caribbean music.

GS: And you?

AC: Back then my tastes were very eclectic. I liked the Arab-Andalusian, Jewish-Andalusian music right through to Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and then Jean Ferrat, Barbara, Montand. More and more now I love Musique Concrète.

GS: Tell me more. 

AC: When I was a psychoanalyst, I was working very hard. In the evening, when I had finished working and my head was full of words, words, words, I’d play the likes of Kurtág and Blériot. The music is largely based on the sonority of the human body. It defies the normality of melody. It’s best to listen to it alone. There are not many people who love and desire that genre of music. It scares them.

GS: What kind of a sense of humour did Fanon have? What made him laugh?

AC: He had a great sense of humour, Fanon. It was humour that made him laugh.

GS: People who are very involved in revolutionary struggle often dedicate huge amounts of time and energy to the cause, and I suppose that doesn’t allow them to be very good parents.

AC: That’s true, yes. Especially at the time because the people involved in the struggle were very young.

GS: Have you met children whose parents were not only very involved but who were tortured, wounded or killed as part of the struggle?

AC: Yes, children who became orphans.

GS: Regarding the children of revolutionaries, what observations have you made?

AC: It was very variable. For example, Fatma Oussedic, her father was a great militant and she has good memories of her relationship with him. In addition, many families did not only consist of the father and mother, there were, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. They weren’t nuclear families. If we’re talking about orphans this helps a little. But when you see your parents killed before your eyes, that’s not the same thing. As for the children of the surviving revolutionaries following independence, the notion that their fathers are heroes has weighed heavily on many of them.

GS: Would you mind giving me a brief definition of your concept of alienation and the ways it may be experienced in countries marked by colonisation.

AC: That’s a big question. Both the coloniser and countries who achieved their independence, like Algeria, deny in various ways the colonial wars that have taken place. Algeria swept a large part of the past away by claiming the national story begins at the time of Independence. Generations have been taught that they have one history, one language, one origin. This kind of discourse has done a lot of damage. There are many young people who now don’t know who they are.

GS: How does that manifest psychologically?

AC: It varies considerably and is different in Algeria and in France. Here in France these young people are excluded from participating in the inner circle, In Algeria they are divided. There is group of social conformists who represent the youth, and another group of which no one ever speaks but which gnaws away at the heart and soul of the country.  Young people are suffering a great deal, even those who are socially successful. Many young people ask, “What was Algeria like before 1962?” Many are Berbers. The heterogeneity of their roots has been hidden from them. It is as if these roots don’t exist but they are longing for what I call multiple identification … not to be cast in a single mould.

In France there are many young people who describe their lives very well and write novels. Some are very interesting, written in the language of the suburbs. For example, Sabri Louatah, Les Sauvages.

GS: What is your definition of dignity, especially the dignity of colonised people, people considered mentally ill or disabled?

AC: Dignity is essential. Dignity means we are viewed by the other as a human being.

GS: In revolutionary situations, when a group of people can no longer withstand massive pressure and extreme violence, they react violently to create a change in the power structure. This changeover is often quick, lasts for a moment, the objective is specific: to get rid of the immediate cause of the violence that oppresses them. Beyond this moment of revolutionary violence, what measures do you think people can use to get rid of the everyday violence that continues?

AC: Firstly, to speak.

GS: To whom?

AC: Speak, tell, write. . . I think there are many forms of expression, of creation. Because we must get by. We must get out of the stupor. The essential thing is to get out of it, including through collective struggle.

GS: What for you is the most urgent task required to change human relations in the future? What needs to be done to update and develop new definitions of power?

AC: We need to do work in many areas if we are going to change human relations and bring about new definitions of power. Each person should focus on their own domain, the place where they live. It’s true, like many people, I feel I am very active and committed. At the same time, I denounce all modes of liberalism and things like that.

GS: How do you define liberalism?

AC: It is being governed by financial capitalism which transforms the subject into an object.

GS: Is it enough to denounce? Sometimes I get the impression that it is useless.

AC: I know it well. Organisations are important. There are organisations, people who are militant. I am fortunate to have a son, and nephews who are politically engaged in their fields. Me, everyone knows my positions, my writings. My son works in theatre. They go to schools, to high schools. I am not against the revolution.

GS: Do you think that as individuals, we are afraid of revolutionary violence, afraid of revolutionary confrontation?

AC: It depends. There are many people who are afraid of violence. In my case, I’m not afraid. Many French people want to stay in their little cocoons. In Europe, the French are very much like that, withdrawn on their plots of land, and yet they made a revolution.

But I believe violence is . . . for example, what happened in 2005 in the housing estates, with Sarkozy insulting everyone. People called them riots but I called them revolts. Those young people were not afraid.

GS: It is temporary, a moment?

AC: Revolution is always like that. It’s a moment. But moments that produce difference. Every revolutionary moment must be seen as the introduction of change.

GS: Even if it takes a long time to get to that point.

AC: Yes, like psychoanalysis.

GS: Why did you choose to become a psychoanalyst?

AC: Because I found it was the best way to understand the psyche and help people. It’s exciting, I love it, yes, I like it very much.

GS: You must undergo psychoanalysis for several years to be a psychoanalyst?

AC: Yes, you do. It’s experience. You see, even you talk to an 80-year-old woman who is a psychoanalyst and it’s fine.

GS: Yes, it’s been good.

AC: I have lots of stories to tell. I am attentive to other human beings.

GS: Ah yes, but not all psychoanalysts are like you.

AC: That’s true.

GS: Did you have any conversations with Fanon about the ‘Jewish question’ or the events that led to the establishment of the State of Israel?

AC: Of course, Algerian Jews, like myself and Jacques Azoulay, worked with Fanon in Blida. Fanon had very close Jewish friends in Tunis. The subject of the establishment of the State of Israel was far from our concerns. Fanon was profoundly atheist. I, too, am an atheist. We were part of the struggle for Algerian independence, there was never any conversation about the existence of God for example. Those questions and discussions were not on our radar.

GS: But religious discourse was there nonetheless with Messali . . .

AC: Oh, yes. Those discussions took place within the independence movement. It was very heterogeneous. There were plenty of different poles of thought, different ideas. For example, Fanon, returning from sub-Saharan Africa, jokingly said to his colleagues, to the revolutionary friends of the mujahidin, that they should follow the example of Islamic Africans, their wives can walk topless. He said that jokingly. I mean the issue of Islam as a fundamental direction was probably underestimated, but religion was not ubiquitous in our workplace. I think, even Messali, he was for independence from France, he was married to a French woman, he wasn’t a religious Iman.

GS: When and why did you leave Algeria? Do you consider yourself a woman in exile?

AC: I did not really leave Algeria. I settled in Paris but with frequent trips to Algeria and back. I’m not in national exile and I think exile of the psyche is the hallmark of any successful human life.

Notes:

1. Alice Cherki refers to a meeting  between Fanon and Jeanson in her book, Fanon, portrait (Seuil, 2000), however the English translation, Fanon: A Portrait, (Cornell University Press, 2006) refers to a letter.

Alice Cherki was interviewed by Gaele Sobott in Paris, 26 September 2015 and by email between 18 and 20 November 2016.

Translated from French by Gaele Sobott

Follow @gaelesobott

“Dignity is essential. Dignity means we are viewed by the other as a human being”: an interview with Alice Cherki by Gaele Sobott is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

La dignité est essentielle. C’est être regardé par l’autre comme un être humain : un entretien avec Alice Cherki

ALICE CHERKI est psychiatre, psychanalyste et auteure.  Née à Alger, 1936.  Elle a bien connu Frantz Fanon, en travaillant à ses côtés, en Algérie et en Tunisie dans son service psychiatrique, et elle a partagé son engagement politique durant la guerre de l’Independence d’Algérie. Elle vit en France depuis 1965.  Elle est coauteur des livres, Retour à Lacan (Fayard, 1981) et Les juifs d’Algérie (Éditions du Scribe, 1987), et auteur de La frontière invisible, (Editions des crépuscules, 2009) Fanon, portrait (Seuil, 2011), et Mémoire anachronique (Editions De L’aube, 2016)

Gaele Sobott: Pouvez-vous m’en dire un peu sur l’histoire de votre famille, votre lieu de naissance et votre enfance ?

Alice Cherki : Je suis née dans une famille de juifs d’Algérie qui était installée là depuis les Romains ou avant les Romains. Mes parents sont nés dans les petites villes de Médéa et Ksar Boukhari. Mais ils se sont rencontres à Alger. Je suis née et j’ai vécu à Alger. Je suis Algéroise, voilà ! Une partie de cette famille est juive berbère.

GS : Y avait-il  des Juifs en Algérie  avant les Arabes ?

AC : Oui bien avant, majoritairement.  Quelques uns sont arrivés d’Espagne en 1492 par le Maroc, d’autres d’Italie, et ensuite des Juif alsaciens, mais c’était déjà l’Algérie coloniale, beaucoup d’entre eux sont repartis d’ailleurs. Mais la plupart des Juifs d’Algérie étaient là depuis très, très, très longtemps. Certains d’entre eux étaient des Berbères judaïsés. Moi j’appartiens à cette histoire-là.

GS : Est-ce que vous avez parlé l’arabe ?

AC : Très peu. Je ne suis pas très douée pour les langues. Et en plus, je suis un peu comme Derrida. On a vécu certainement dans le même milieu et puis à l’école, on apprenait le latin et le grec.

GS : Vous avez connu Derrida ?

AC : J’ai très bien connu Derrida. Il avait huit ou neuf ans de plus que moi et ce qui représente une grande différence mais oui j’ai bien connu Derrida.

Mon enfance a été marquée tout comme Hélène Cixous et  Derrida par les lois de Vichy qui excluaient les Juifs nés en Algérie, les destituaient de la nationalité française, du droit à fréquenter les écoles et à exercer dans les administrations. Vous voyez, cela a été un grand traumatisme d’enfance.

A 4 ou 5 ans, à Noël mon institutrice m’a dit,  « Tu diras à ta mère qu’à la rentrée, tu ne viens plus à l’école. » 

Lorsque je lui ai demandé la raison, j’obtiens pour seule réponse, «  C’est parce que tu es juive. » 

Moi, je ne savais même pas ce que ça voulait dire. J’ai pris mon courage à trois mains et je lui ai demandé, « Etre juive c’est quoi ? » 

Elle m’a répondu, « C’est être comme toi avec des grands yeux, une grande bouche et des grandes oreilles. »

Chacun d’entre nous, comme le raconte Derrida, a été exclu de l’école, nos parents ne pouvaient plus travailler.

GS : Comment est-ce que cela a marqué votre vie d’adulte ?

AC : Cela m’a ouvert les yeux sur l’injustice, sur le monde dans lequel on vivait, un monde marqué par l’idéologie coloniale, pas chez mes parents, mais on était pris dans ce mouvement-là. A Alger dans les années 50, il n’y avait pas d’intersection entre les différentes sphères. Il y avait les Européens, les Juifs et ceux qu’on appelait les Arabes, les indigènes. Il n’y avait pas d’interpénétration. J’en parle un peu dans mon livre, Mémoire anachronique. Chacun vivait dans sa sphère. Les rencontres se faisaient à l’extérieur.

Quand j’étais dans les petites classes où la mixité n’existait pas à l’époque, il y avait quelque filles qui s’appelaient Rachida ou Malika, mais dès que je suis rentrée en 6^e, dans ma classe il n’y avait qu’une seule Algérienne pendant toute ma scolarité secondaire et pourtant j’étais dans un lycée qui n’était pas le lycée le plus snob d’Alger.

GS : C’était le même principe que l’Apartheid ?

AC : Le même principe sauf que c’était plus camouflé. Les Algériens étaient contenus dans certains quartiers. Même les bourgeois avaient leurs quartiers. Les Algériens passaient comme des ombres dans les quartiers Européens.

GS : Vous habitiez quel quartier d’Alger ?

AC : J’ai d’abord vécu près du lycée de garçons, le lycée Bugeaud, devenu maintenant le lycée Abdel Kader, à la frontière du quartier populaire. Plus tard, à l’âge de 17 ans, nous avons emménagé sur le boulevard central, à Hydra, dans une maison sur un terrain qui était une copropriété appartenant à mon oncle, le frère de mon père, la sœur de mon père, et mon père. Ce n’est qu’au bout d’un grand nombre d’années qu’ils sont parvenus à y construire une maison à trois étages pour y abriter les trois familles.

GS : Quel métier exerçait votre père ?

AC : Mon père était céréalier. Il faisait les transactions avec les agriculteurs pour l’exportation et l’importation de pois chiches et de lentilles.

GS : A quand remonte votre intérêt pour la psychiatrie ?

AC : J’ai d’abord beaucoup lutté pour faire des études. Quand J’ai passé mon bac, même si je venais de la moyenne bourgeoisie, ce n’était pas classique que les femmes continuent leurs études. Pour eux, c’était le mariage et cetera. J’étais la seule fille. J’avais un frère ainé et un frère cadet mais mes parents n’avaient pas fait d’études. Ils avaient été tous les deux retirés de l’école.

Mon père, un brillant élève, a été retiré du lycée à 16 ans par son propre père parce que c’était une famille de dix enfants et qu’il était l’aîné. Il y avait deux ou trois filles avant lui et il fallait qu’il travaille. Ma mère a choisi de quitter sa classe de première, je crois, au lycée pour se marier. Quand elle a rencontré mon père elle a abandonné ses études.

Mes parents étaient tous les deux étaient très intelligents et plutôt progressistes. Mon père parlait l’arabe, mais ils n’avaient pas fait des études supérieures comme on dit à l’époque.

J’avais déjà un regard sur la société. J’étais plutôt littéraire. Je n’ai jamais eu de prix d’excellence parce que je n’étais pas une bonne élève. J’étais plutôt impertinente. On me disait toujours que j’aurais pu être une excellente comédienne. Il n’y avait personne pour  vous conseiller. Si j’avais dit je voulais être comédienne, cela aurait été pire que prostituée à l’époque. Mais J’ai eu la chance de rencontrer beaucoup de gens qui sont devenus des gens du théâtre ensuite.

Je me suis retrouvée d’abord en hypokhâgne et khâgne. Vous savez ce que c’est ?

GS : Non.

AC : Ce sont des classes préparatoires littéraires pour intégrer les grandes écoles. Elles ont leur équivalent dans le domaine scientifique. Mais je me suis mise en tête que je voulais être utile et que si je me mettais à faire de la philosophie je me couperais de la vraie vie si vous voulez. J’ai donc obliqué vers la médecine. Mais très vite en médecine, je me suis rendue compte que ça ne répondait pas du tout à mon interrogation. C’était une médecine des symptômes auxquels on répondait par des traitements. Je me souviens d’un prof qui me disait,  « Mais Mademoiselle vous posez trop de questions. »   On ne dit jamais,  « Pourquoi  » en médecine. On dit toujours,  « Comment faire. » 

 Donc j’avais cette double culture de l’intérêt pour l’humain et son psychisme et puis une culture de groupe seulement parce que j’ai fait mes études de médecine.

GS : Est-ce qu’il y avait d’autres femmes qui faisaient des études de médecine ?

AC : Il y en avait quelques unes mais elles étaient très minoritaires.

Il y avait un dicton qui résumait assez bien la situation pour passer le concours d’internat qui était assez prestigieux :

Quand on est blanc et européen et garçon on a 80% de chance d’avoir le concours, quand on est fille et européenne on a 60% de chance, quand on est juif et garçon on a 50% de chance, quand on est fille et juive on a 25% de chance, quand on est musulman et garçon 10% de chance et quant aux filles musulmanes le dicton ne mentionnait rien parce que il n’y en avait pas.

Certaines parvenaient à devenir externes ou stagiaires mais aucune n’obtenait le concours d’internat, voilà.

GS : Quand avez-vous rencontré Frantz Fanon pour la première fois ?

AC : Je faisais partie d’un mouvement de jeunes qui s’appelait AJASS (Association de la Jeunesse Algérienne pour l’Action Sociale) et Fanon était venu faire une conférence par l’intermédiaire d’un ami à moi, Pierre Chaulet, décédé récemment. C’était une conférence sur la peur et l’angoisse en 1955. A cette période-là,  j’ai dû quitter mes parents chez qui je vivais encore à l’époque. Je devais avoir dix-neuf, vingt ans. A l’hôpital, compte tenu de mes opinions, comme la majorité des étudiants et des internes en médecine qui étaient plutôt Algérie-Française, j’y avais beaucoup d’ennuis.  On nous crevait des pneus de voiture, on me salissait mes blouses, on volait mes dossiers et quand Fanon avait su que je voulais faire de la psychiatrie, il a dit à Pierre Chaulet et bien qu’elle vienne comme interne chez moi à l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida.

GS : Alors, vous avez habité à l’hôpital de Blida ?

AC : Oui comme interne. C’est là où j’ai rencontré d’ailleurs mon mari, Charles Géronimi. Il partageait mes idées, mais ayant des parents Corses, instituteurs mais Corses, ils ont eu du mal à accepter une petite juive dans leur famille, plus particulièrement ma belle-mère.

GS : Quelles ont été vos premières impressions de Fanon ?

AC : Mes premières impressions, à vingt ans, j’ai trouvé ses propos très intéressants et je ne me suis pas rendue compte qu’il était noir. Il analysait la subjectivité du racisme ce qui était très différent du discours de l’époque. Il y avait d’un côté l’existentialisme et de l’autre le matérialisme marxiste pour qui les questions de subjectivité n’étaient pas à l’ordre du jour.

C’était la première fois que je rencontrais quelqu’un qui avait 10 ans de plus que moi avec un immense vécu et une grande expérience de la rencontre de ces deux mondes, des deux idéologies entre guillemets. Il  n’était pas d’un côté ou de l’autre et cela a répondu à mes attentes et mon interrogation.

 GS : Il avait des idées pratiques ?

AC : Oui, c’était un homme de terrain.

GS : C’est-à-dire que le développement de sa pensée était fondé non seulement sur le théorique mais aussi sur le vécu ?

AC : Sur le vécu, oui.  Et cela aussi me plaisait. C’était à partir de l’expérience vécue qu’il a élaboré une pensée. Mais il avait une formation psychiatrique très poussée.

GS : Quels événements vécus lors de votre travail avec Fanon à Blida ont influencé votre pratique de la psychiatrie?

 AC : C’est tout ce qu’il a apporté par rapport à la psychiatrie et la théorie du primitivisme de l’école d’Alger, et il a introduit la thérapie sociale, la psychothérapie institutionnelle.

GS : Qu’est-ce que c’est la psychothérapie institutionnelle ?

AC : Voilà, dans la psychothérapie institutionnelle, que Tosquelles a développée, et qui a trouvé d’ailleurs un grand essor en France avec Oury et Bonnafé, il s’agit de permettre aux pensionnaires des institutions psychiatriques de partager des choses avec leurs soignants, d’humaniser le fonctionnement de ces établissements, et que de là puisse émerger si vous voulez non seulement une compréhension des symptômes mais aussi des racines. Il y a encore deux ou trois personnes en France qui se battent pour créer les lieux de psychothérapie institutionnelle mais c’est de plus en plus difficile.

GS : Pourquoi plus difficile ?

 AC : A cause de l’idéologie ambiante. Maintenant on en est au DCM 3, DCM 4, DCM 5. C’est l’idéologie performative qui court-circuite absolument tous les aspects subjectifs de l’aliénation.

GS : Avez-vous eu des expériences significatives dans le milieu hospitalier en tant que femme médecin soignant des patientes dans ce contexte historique et social ?

AC : Qu’est que vous entendez des expériences significatives ?

GS : Par exemple, quand vous avez travaillé à l’hôpital Joinville-Blida, est-ce que certains événements vous ont affectée ?

AC : Bien sûr que oui

GS : Lesquels ?

AC : Tellement des choses. J’ai vu par exemple, des femmes hospitalisées pour des post-partum, après l’accouchement, avec un délire transitoire. Certains médecins ne comprenaient pas et parfois même des gens de sa famille disaient,  «C’est les djnouns qui sont venus l’habiter.»

Cela m’affectait beaucoup parce que ce qui m’intéressait vraiment était tout ce qui concernait la manière dont elles avaient vécu cet accouchement, ce qui avait infiltré leur rapport à ce nouveau-né qui est toujours un rapport compliqué.

GS : Est-ce que vous aviez des enfants vous-même à cette époque ?

AC : Non, je n’avais pas d’enfant à l’époque. J’ai actuellement un fils qui a 40 ans. Il a fait des études de sciences politiques et est ensuite devenu un homme de théâtre.

GS : Alors il y a de la chance ?

AC : Bon ben . . . voilà.

GS : Quelles étaient vos relations professionnelles en tant que femme médecins avec vos collègues à l’hôpital ?

AC : Dans le milieu de l’internat de l’hôpital psychiatrique de Blida, j’étais considérée comme leur égale.

Je me suis mariée avec un interne de l’hôpital. Non, là je ne peux pas dire que j’avais des problèmes. En revanche dans un milieu Algérois de l’hôpital de Mustapha quand j’étais très jeune, je me faisais un chignon et mettais des grosses lunettes pour paraître plus vielle, pour qu’on me fiche la paix.

GS : Votre mari était originaire de Blida ?

AC : Non il était d’Alger aussi mais il était interne en psychiatrie à Blida avec Fanon. Ils ont écrit un article ensemble sur les femmes Algériennes et la spécificité culturelle de T.A.T.
(Thematic Apperception Tests)

GS : Dans votre livre, Fanon, Portrait, vous évoquez la rencontre de Fanon avec Jeanson.

AC: Oui

GS : Il y exprime le fait qu’il aimerait dépasser certaines idées afin que le lecteur puisse expérimenter des aspects de la vie qu’il ne pourrait pas capter dans un premier temps. Vous parlez aussi de la dimension sensorielle du langage. Pensez-vous qu’une telle conception de l’écriture peut nous permettre de communiquer des expériences autour de la différence,  de comprendre nos différences d’un point de vue égalitaire  –  non supérieur voire inférieur ?

AC : Oui je pense que ce type d’écriture est essentielle. Mon expérience avec l’écriture sensorielle qui part des perceptions, des sensations pour essayer d’améliorer la communication avec l’autre, moi je pense que c’est très, très nécessaire.

GS : Vous connaissez des écrivains d’aujourd’hui qui écrivent comme ça ?

AC : Je ne suis pas qualifiée pour en parler. Je ne connais pas aussi intimement les écrivains d’aujourd’hui mais je sais que Kateb Yacine écrivait comme ça.

GS : Envisagez-vous la différence comme un espace dialectique déclencheur de créativité et d’imagination?

AC : Oui c’est ce que j’appelle le rapport à l’autre, le fait de reconnaitre l’étranger. C’est important. J’ai écrit un autre livre qui s’appelait,  La Frontière Invisible, dans lequel j’insiste sur le rapport à l’autre et qui vous permet d’accepter l’étranger en soi.

GS : Dans ce livre La Frontière Invisible il y a un lien entre la psychanalyse et la politique.

Moi, je comprends la violence coloniale, la violence de déplacement, la violence faite au sujet dans le contexte social, le contexte des circonstances historiques et politiques précises, par exemple, ceux de l’Algérie et la France. Mais quand j’essaye d’analyser cette violence d’un point de vue psychanalytique, je trouve que c’est difficile à comprendre à mon niveau.

AC : C’est compliqué. Pourtant vous avez été cherché des étrangers ?

GS : Toujours, oui.

AC : Ce n’est peut-être pas par hasard.

GS : Peut-être pas.

Avez-vous eu l’occasion de connaître Fanon en dehors de son travail, dans sa vie familiale ?

Quel genre d’homme était-il en tant que mari et père?

AC : Oui, bien sûr j’ai eu l’occasion de connaître Fanon en dehors de son travail. J’ai bien connu sa femme et je connais très bien son fils. En tant que mari et père, il était très présent. En même temps il avait beaucoup à faire. Mais il était très présent. Bon, Olivier, quand son père est parti en Afrique, il ne l’a plus beaucoup vu à ce moment-là sauf si Fanon venait de temps en temps. Olivier n’avait que cinq ans quand son père est mort.

Il aimait bien vivre Fanon. Il aimait aller dîner, aller danser, les choses comme ça.

GS : Il aimait quelles danses ?

AC : Toutes les danses de l’époque, le slow, la rumba . . .

GS : Et vous aimiez la danse ?

AC : Ça fait longtemps que je ne danse plus vraiment mais oui à l’époque je l’aimais.

GS : C’était chez des amis ?

AC : Oui.

GS : Fanon aimait quel genre de musique?

AC : Il aimait surtout la musique antillaise.

GS : Et vous ?

AC : A l’époque j’étais très éclectique. J’aimais la musique arabo andalouse, judéo andalouse jusqu’à Bach, Beethoven, Mozart et puis Jean Ferrat, Barbara, Montand. J’aime de plus en plus la musique concrète.

GS : Dites-m’en plus.

 AC : Quand j’étais psychanalyste, je travaillais beaucoup. Le soir, lorsque j’avais fini de travailler et j’avais la tête remplie de mots, de mots, de mots, je mettais des choses comme Kurtág et Blériot, et c’est uniquement la sonorité qui vient du corps et qui s’échappe de la normalité de la mélodie. Il faut écouter seul parce qu’il y a peu de gens qui aiment et envient cela.  Cela leur fait peur.

GS : Quelle sorte d’humour avait Fanon ? Qu’est ce qui le faisait rire ?

AC : Il avait beaucoup d’humour, Fanon. C’était l’humour qui le faisait rire.

GS : Les personnes très impliquées dans la lutte y consacrent souvent beaucoup de temps et j’imagine que cela ne leur permet pas d’être de très bons parents.

AC : C’est vrai, oui. Surtout à l’époque car les personnes impliquées dans la lutte étaient très jeunes.

GS : Avez-vous rencontré des enfants ayant eu de tels parents, non seulement très impliqués mais qui ont pu aussi être torturés, blessés ou tués dans le cadre de leur combat?

AC : Mais oui les enfants qui devenaient orphelins.

GS : Concernant les enfants de révolutionnaires, quelles observations avez-vous pu faire ?

AC : C’était très variable. Pour Fatma Oussedic, son père était un grand militant et elle garde un bon souvenir de sa relation avec lui. En plus et dans beaucoup de familles il n’y avait pas que le père et la mère à l’époque, il y avait tout un environnement, les tantes, les oncles, les cousins, les cousines, etcetera, pas de famille nucléaire. Si on parle des orphelins ça aide un peu. Mais quand on voit leurs parents tués sous leurs yeux, ce n’est pas la même chose. Quant aux enfants des révolutionnaires survivants après l’indépendance, le caractère de héros de leur père a pesé lourdement chez beaucoup d’entre eux.

GS : J’aimerais que vous me donniez une brève définition de votre conception de l’aliénation sous toutes les formes où elle peut être vécue dans les pays marqués par la colonisation.

AC : C’est une grande question. Il y a eu  les dénis qui ont porté sur les guerres coloniales d’un côté et puis sur les pays nouvellement indépendants, notamment l’Algérie. On a fait table rase de ce qu’ils  avaient avant en disant que l’histoire commençait au moment de l’Independence. On a enseigné aux générations ce type d’histoire en leur disant vous avez une histoire unique, une langue unique, une origine unique. Ca a fait beaucoup de dégâts. Il y a beaucoup de jeunes qui savent plus  où ils en sont.

GS : Comment est-ce que ça se manifeste psychiquement ?

AC : C’est très variable. Ce n’est pas pareil en Algérie et en France. Ici, ils sont exclus de l’intérieur si vous voulez. En Algérie ils sont clivés.  Il y a une partie sociale conformée et puis une partie intérieure dont ils ne parlent jamais mais qui les rongent. Les jeunes vivent une grande souffrance, même ceux qui ont réussi socialement. Et puis beaucoup d’entre eux demandent, « Avant 62 c’était comment l’Algérie ? »   Beaucoup sont des berbères. Il y a tout une hétérogénéité de racines qu’on leur a cachée. On leur a dit que ça n’existait pas. Eux ils ont envie d’avoir ce que j’appelle des identification multiples… ne pas d’être assignés à un moule.

En France il y’a beaucoup de jeunes qui racontent très bien leur vie. Ils écrivent des romans, et quelques-uns sont écrits dans le langage des banlieues et sont très intéressants. Par exemple, Sabri Louatah, Les Sauvages.

GS : Quelle est votre définition de la dignité et plus particulièrement la dignité des personnes colonisées, des personnes considérées malades mentales ou handicapées ?

AC : La dignité est essentielle. C’est être regardé par l’autre comme un être humain.

GS : Dans les situations révolutionnaires, lorsqu’un groupe de personnes ne peut plus supporter la pression massive et l’extrême violence, sa réaction est violente afin de créer un changement dans la structure du pouvoir. Cela est rapide, dure un moment, l’objectif est spécifique : se débarrasser de la cause immédiate de la violence qui les opprime. Au-delà de ce moment de violence révolutionnaire, quelles mesures pensez-vous que les gens peuvent utiliser pour se débarrasser de la violence quotidienne qui continue ?

AC : D’abord parler.

 GS : A qui ?

 AC : Parler, dire, écrire . . . voilà je pense qu’il y a beaucoup de formes d’expression, de création. Parce qu’il faut s’en sortir. Il faut sortir de la sidération. L’essentiel est d’en sortir y compris par la lutte collective.

GS : Qu’est ce qui reste le plus urgent pour vous aujourd’hui à comprendre afin de changer les relations humaines dans le futur ? Que devons faire pour mettre à jour et développer de nouvelles définitions du pouvoir ?

AC : C’est dans beaucoup de domaines, changer les relations humaines dans le futur pour mettre à jour les nouvelles définitions du pouvoir, chacun dans son domaine, chacun dans le lieu où il vit. Moi, c’est vrai comme beaucoup de gens, je me sens très engagée. En même temps je dénonce tous les modes du libéralisme et les trucs comme ça.

GS : C’est quoi pour vous le libéralisme ?

AC : C’est être régi par le capitalisme financier qui transforme le sujet en objet.

GS : Est-ce qu’on se contente de dénoncer ? Quelque fois j’ai l’impression que cela ne sert à rien.

AC : Je sais bien. Les organisations sont importantes, il y a des organisations, des gens qui militent. J’ai la chance d’avoir un fils, et des neveux qui sont engagés politiquement dans leurs domaines. Moi, tout le monde connait mes positions, mes écrits, mon fils dans le domaine du théâtre, il fait  justement du théâtre vivant. Ils vont dans les écoles, dans les lycées. Moi je ne suis pas contre la révolution.

GS : Pensez-vous que nous, en tant qu’individus, avons peur de la violence révolutionnaire, peur de la confrontation révolutionnaire ?

AC : Ça dépend. Il y a beaucoup de gens qui ont peur de la violence. Ce n’est pas mon cas. Beaucoup de Français veulent rester dans leurs petits cocons. En Europe, les Français sont très comme ça, très repliés sur leurs lopins de terre et pourtant c’est eux qui ont fait une révolution.

Mais, moi, je crois que la violence elle est . . ., par exemple, ce qui s’est passe en 2005 dans les cités, avec quelqu’un comme Sarkozy qui avait été insultant et tout, les gens appellent ça les émeutes, moi, j’appelle ça des révoltes et ces jeunes-là n’avaient pas peur.

GS : C’est temporaire, un moment ?

AC : La révolution est toujours comme ça. C’est un moment. Mais les moments qui produisent les différences. Chaque moment révolutionnaire doit être vu comme l’introduction d’une différence.

GS : Même si ça prend beaucoup de temps.

AC : Oui, comme en psychanalyse.

GS : Pourquoi avez-vous choisi de devenir une psychanalyste ?

AC : Parce que j’ai trouvé que c’était la meilleure façon de comprendre le psychisme et d’aider les gens et c’est passionnant, j’adore, oui, j’aime beaucoup.

GS : On doit faire une psychanalyse de plusieurs années pour être une psychanalyste ?

AC : Oui. Il faut en faire une. C’est une expérience. Même vous, voyez, vous parlez à une femme de 80 ans qui est psychanalyste et ça va.

GS : Ça va.

AC : Je raconte beaucoup de choses. Je suis attentive aux autres d’êtres humains.

GS : Ah oui, mais tous les psychanalystes ne sont pas comme vous.

AC : Ça c’est vrai.

GS : Avez-vous eu des conversations avec Fanon au sujet de « la question juive » et des événements qui ont conduit à l’établissement de l’Etat d’Israël?

AC : Bien sur des juifs Algériens, comme moi et Jacques Azoulay, ont travaillé avec Fanon à Blida. Fanon avait des amis juifs très proches à Tunis. Le sujet de l’établissement de l’Etat d’Israël, c’était loin de nos préoccupations.  Fanon était profondément athée. Moi aussi je suis athée. Nous étions dans le combat de l’Indépendance de l’Algérie, on n’avait jamais de conversation sur l’existence de Dieu par exemple. Ce n’était pas du tout dans les champs de nos interrogations, de nos conversations.

GS : Mais le discours religieux était là quand même avec Messali . . .

AC : Ah oui. Il y avait ce discours dans le mouvement indépendantiste. C’était très hétérogène.  Il y avait plein de gens qui étaient dans des pôles différents, des idées différentes. Par exemple, Fanon, qui en revenant de l’Afrique noire, disait en plaisantant aux collègues, aux amis révolutionnaires de moudjahid, qu’ils devraient prendre l’exemple de l’Islam des Africains, leurs femmes elles peuvent se balader les seins nus. Il leur disait ça en plaisantant. Je veux dire que la question de l’Islam comme direction fondamentale était probablement sous-estimée mais la religion n’était pas omniprésente dans le milieu de travail dans lequel on se trouvait. Je crois que même Messali, était un indépendantiste, il était marié avec une française, Il n’était pas un iman religieux.

GS : Quand et pourquoi avez-vous quitté l’Algérie ? Considérez-vous comme une femme en exil ?

AC : Je n’ai pas vraiment quitté l’Algérie. Je me suis installée à Paris mais avec de fréquents allers-retours. Vous savez, je ne suis pas dans l’exil territorial et je pense que l’exil psychique est le propre de toute vie d’humain réussie.

Alice Cherki a été interviewée en direct par Gaele Sobott à Paris le 26 septembre 2015 et par courriel entre le 18 et le 20 novembre 2016.

Remerciements à Martine Cassagne et Karima Mezoughem pour leur assistance dans la transcription de cet entretien.

Follow @gaelesobott

La dignité est essentielle. C’est être regardé par l’autre comme un être humain : un entretien avec Alice  by Gaele Sobott is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

IF YOU DIDN’T LAUGH, YOU’D CRY : AN INTERVIEW WITH GAYLE KENNEDY

Photograph taken by Belinda Mason

Gayle Kennedy is a proud member of the Wongaibon Clan of the Ngiayampaa speaking nation of South West NSW. She is an award-winning writer and has published work in newspapers, magazines, literature journals, and for radio. She was the Indigenous issues writer and researcher for Streetwize comics from 1995-1998. Her book of poetry, Koori Girl Goes Shoppin’, was shortlisted for the David Unaipon Award in 2005 and her prose work, Me, Antman & Fleabag[1] was the winning entry in 2006. She wrote eleven books for the Yarning Strong series. The Series won the 2011 Australian Publishers Association award for Excellence in Educational publishing. Gayle is a disability advocate and has spoken widely in Australia and overseas on disability and the arts.

Gaele Sobott: Can you tell me about your background? Where you were born, where you grew up, a little bit about your family?

Gayle Kennedy: I was born in Ivanhoe NSW and we moved to Hay when I was seven. In between, from the age of two to five, I was in the children’s hospital in Camperdown and then a rehab hospital in Wahroonga, then the Royal Far West in Manly recovering from Polio

My mother and father were both born in Condoblin but Dad’s family is from around Cobar. Mum’s family comes from the Euabalong area. Mum and Dad met when they were seventeen, working out at Wilcania. They’re both eighty-three now and they’ve been married sixty years this year. They had six children, four girls and two boys. One of my brothers was killed in a car accident at the age of eighteen in 1976. Dad worked for what was then the Department of Main Roads in the Central Darling Shire. Mum worked for a long while cleaning in hotels but gave that up about thirty years ago. They’re both retired now. I grew up with their stories. My parents’ story is in the national library. Francis Rush did that. She did an interview with me too about my experiences of polio for the Social History of Polio Oral History Project.[2]

GS: What are some of the memories you have of your childhood?

GK: I have vague memories of being in an iron lung and learning to walk again. My memories are mainly of me going backwards and forwards between home and the Far West. I remember loving rehab. It was the only home I knew at that stage. I was surprised to find out that I wasn’t from there when my parents came to pick me up. The first part of Me Antman & Fleabag where I write about the hospital is pretty much based on that time. The rest of it is fiction.

GS: Talk a little about your school experiences.

GK: When I was at the Far West I went to school there and it was okay. Because of the polio treatment I didn’t start school until I was seven. I went to the Convent school in Hay and the nuns were very good teachers. It was a great place because there was absolute zero tolerance of bullying or racism. Then I did one year at Hay Public School, which was awful. There were a couple of kids that bullied me and the headmaster was very racist and treated me like an idiot. Fortunately the teachers realised I was bright and totally ignored his directions to put me in the lower classes. So I got to work at the level I was used to which was the advanced level.

Then I won a two-year scholarship to go to Queenwood here in Sydney, at Mosman, right on Balmoral Beach. Violet Medway was one of the principals then. They were into providing a high standard of education for girls. No domestic science or any of those subjects that used to be taught to women. I loved English and History. I was a bit of a daydreamer – never really concentrated. I was always off in another world when they tried to tell me stuff. I generally crammed for exams. I was at Queenwood from age seventeen to nineteen. I made great friends there.

GS: Describe your early adulthood. What were you doing in your late teens, early twenties? What were your interests?

GK: After I finished at Queenwood I went to the Commonwealth Employment Service in North Sydney to look for work. That’s what you did in those days. They found me a position at the Australia Council as a clerk, Grade one. I went for an interview and got the job. I had a ball. It was fun meeting lots of fabulous people like Gillian Armstrong, Jane Campion, Gary Foley, Brian Syron, George Miller. They were just starting out in those days.

I was living in Cremorne, sharing a place with four guys. It was great fun. I’d go to the beach, go to the theatre. I liked Shakespeare and Ibsen. Reg Livermore was big then. I loved the Rocky Horror Show. There were a lot of new Australian plays happening. I’d go out to listen to bands. Live music was popular then in the pubs – blues, jazz and rock. We’d listen to bands like The Sports, Mondo Rock, the Divinyls. Cold Chisel was starting out. It’s changed now. People moved to the inner city areas from the North Shore, places like that, and started complaining about noise. Gentrification changed the live music scene and also poker machines took over in the pubs as the main entertainment.

I did my share of partying too. Everybody danced, played records, got stoned, got laid. I had lots of relationships – a couple long term. One of them lasted for ten years and one for about four years. I ended up being bored. I didn’t find them exciting or interesting anymore. They were good men but I never really took to being tangled up with anybody.

GS: Music seems to play a big part in your life.

GK: I’ve always been obsessed with music every since I was little. I like melodic music. If I like a piece of music, I want to know all about it. Who wrote it and why – the whole history. My tastes range over a lot of genres from Joni Mitchell to Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Nancy Wilson, Sarah Vaughan. I listen to music all the time. It lifts my spirit and takes me to another place. If I’ve got a religion, it’s music.

I can remember singing when I was very young, maybe two, the old country songs like Don’t sell Daddy any more whiskey. Both my parents played and sang socially, at celebrations, weddings, funerals. Mum sings and plays guitar, piano accordion and piano. Dad sings, writes songs, plays guitar and performed around the traps.

GS: Tell me more about your work life and career.

GK: I stayed in the public service for years. I worked for a while with People with Disability and various community centres. From 1995 to 1998 I was a writer and researcher for StreetWize comics. I worked at the Aboriginal Medical Service and the Aboriginal Legal Service doing clerical work, research work, report writing. Then I started at the Attorney General’s Department as a policy officer around Aboriginal justice. I got sick of that and left in 2008. I’ve been a writer ever since.

GS: Why did you get sick of working at the Attorney General’s Department?

GK: Every time something good was happening the government would pull the pin. There was too much double speak, too many weasel words. I didn’t like the attitude of a lot of the young people I was working with who’d grown up not really knowing about hardship or what was really going on with Aboriginal people in the justice system. There’s no fire in their belly. They pay lip service to the struggle that went on but I don’t think they really acknowledge that struggle or give a damn. I just wanted to be out.

GS: How did you start your writing career?

GK: I had a plan before I left the public service. I started entering writing competitions. Irena Dunn initiated the Inner City Life writing competition in the mid 1990s when she was director of the NSW Writers’ Centre. I submitted a poem for that which was highly commended. The following year I won the competition with a prose piece called ‘Life’s Good When Ya Know How’. I liked the piece so much I expanded it into a book and entered it for the 2006 David Unaipon award. I won and everything grew from there.

I was commissioned to write a graphic novel as part of the OUP Yarning Strong series. One by one the other writers who had been commissioned dropped out so I ended up writing those stories. I published eleven books with the series. The illustrator was Ross Carnsew. I’d worked with him before on StreetWize.

GS: How do you find writing to a brief for children?

GK: It was challenging writing for a particular age group but I managed to make the stories interesting. I wrote the kind of books that kids want to read. You just think back to when you were a kid and put yourself in their shoes. I don’t use big words when I write for adults. I like clean, simple, lean writing. So writing for children is not difficult for me. With Yarning Strong I was given a word, family, land, lore, culture. I wrote whatever I liked around the subject.

The books went into the schools. Apparently they are much loved and are still selling very well. They were the overall winner of the 2011 Australian Publishers Association Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing. The series was also awarded Best Student Learning Literacy resource for 2011.

GS: Your work at StreetWize was specifically for low-level literacy readers, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. Do you think there is a need for more of this kind of writing?

GK: Well there is no real organisation doing that kind of publishing anymore. Yes there is a definite need for more. It was a great way of providing for kids and adults with low-level literacy. StreetWize publications were very mobile, very accessible. You’d find their comics in waiting rooms, classrooms, wherever. It relied on government grants and was closed because of lack of money. Howard got in to government. Need I say more?

GS: What was your experience with writers’ festivals and the media directly after winning the David Unaipon award? How were you received as a writer with disability?

GK: I was only invited to three writers festivals – Sydney, Darwin and Brisbane. The festivals didn’t want to have me because it meant paying the extra fare for my personal assistant. The organisers didn’t check that accommodation and venues were wheelchair accessible which made it difficult. There were no radio interviews, no press. The other David Unaipon award winners got a lot more attention. I think that was to do with me being an older writer and one with disability. Writers’ festivals like the young writers.

But Me, Antman & Fleabag is still selling after all these years and now it’s starting to sell overseas. That’s mainly due to social media and word of mouth.

I think writers today are expected to have the kind of face that looks good on magazine covers, to be celebrities, attractive in that way. They have to be highly visible, good with sound bites.

GS: You’ve written about people with disability as being ‘the shadow people’. What do you mean by this?

GK: People with disability are often in the background, in the shadows. Everyone else gets up to talk for us, which I find very frustrating. We’ve got voices!

GS: How does being Aboriginal, Disabled and Woman play out in your life experience?

GK: I’ve never experienced any major problems with being a woman or being Aboriginal. I’m very proud of being Aboriginal. In terms of my writing, I don’t like the way the literary scene ghettoises books. For example, if you walk into a bookstore you’ll find my book lumped into the Indigenous section when it should be in the humour section. Indigenous writing should be categorised as part of the mainstream.

I’ve always done everything I wanted as a woman. Disability is the lowest on the pole in my experience. I think leadership is the key to changing that. Too often it is the hands of people who don’t have disability. I never took much notice of it when I was young. It was later in my life when post-polio kicked in and I realised the physical barriers and obstacles, discrimination, people talking over you or to whoever is accompanying you rather than to you.

I think there is some change happening, more and more people are coming out but they don’t get the opportunities to voice their concerns. They’re not given the stage. People without disability write about people with disability and they’re given the glory and the money. You see that at the writers’ festivals and in the media.

GS: What other changes would you like to see happening in the Australian arts and cultural sector?

GK: I’d like to see a broader and more representative spectrum of writers and actors. I mean Australia is so white. You turn on the television and you’re lucky to see a black face or an Asian face or Arab face. I don’t know whose reality it’s supposed to be. I’m so tired of watching those programs about young, hip and happening people in their shorts doing up a house. Until the public starts demanding more substantial entertainment it’s not going to change. Why would production houses and TV executives spend a couple of million dollars creating a drama or a comedy when all they have to do is put some want-to-be in a house or in a kitchen. Cheap as chips.

We need to get in the door. If I got my foot in that door, I would change what goes on inside!

GS: Iva Polack from the University of Zagreb writes that Me, Antman & Fleabag  ‘ . . . is an observational comedy and a dark satire of Aboriginal contemporaneity asking the reader to get into the circle of laughter by simultaneously laughing with, at and back.’[2] What role does humour play in your work?

GK: Humour is very much part of what I write. Even in the most serious sections, I like to have a laugh and to make people laugh out aloud. Humour is very important. Sharing laughter makes you feel good. That’s what it’s meant to do. The old saying goes, if you didn’t laugh you’d cry. Laughter is up there with music in life.

GS: Do you think there is something distinctive about Aboriginal humour?

GK: Yes, Aboriginal humour is pretty much at the expense of other people, taking the piss out of yourself and people around you. It’s often anecdotal and based on love and trust. You’re comfortable enough to laugh with each other. It’s clever. You’ve got to be very quick, nothing gets missed, and it’s very much observational. It’s a humour that engages deeply with what’s going on around us.

GS: What are you working on at the moment?

GK: I’m doing a lot of talks on disability, on writing, whatever pays the bills. I would like to be writing my own book. I want to do a three-part story looking at my life and experiences with polio, intertwined with my parents’ lives.

GS: How have you changed over the last forty years from the time you first lived in Sydney to present day?

GK: I took every advantage of being young, good looking, carefree. Now I don’t need to be going out all the time. I’m happy with my own company. I wasn’t for a long time. I’m glad I made it to sixty. I’m a lot more tolerant of people. I think a lot more deeply about things.

I don’t miss living in Hay. I haven’t been back there for a couple of years but I’ll be there in October for my parents’ sixtieth wedding anniversary. I do miss the people. Sydney is my home, my friends are here and I’m comfortable. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else. I started out on the north side, Neutral Bay, Cremorne, Manly then moved to Balmain 1977. I’ve been here ever since apart form a two-year stint in Newtown. That was too hip for me.

I write now. I never would have back then. I was too busy going out having fun.

GS: In your keynote speech at the 2014 Scribbler Forum you said, you have not been a political person. It seems to me that you are a very political person determined to bring about change in a number of areas including for artists with disability.

GK: I guess I am but that’s only emerged in the last few years because I realised you can’t effect change by staying silent.

Notes:

[1] Me, Antman & Fleabag,Paperback, 130 pages. Published September 1st 2008 by University of Queensland Press
[2] Gayle Kennedy interviewed by Frances Rush in the Social history of Polio oral history project [sound recording] http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6184496
[3] Iva Polak, ‘To Laugh, or Not to Laugh – That is the Lesson: Gayle Kennedy’s Me, Antman & Fleabag’ presented at Australasian Humour Studies Network Annual Conference, hosted by Flinders Institute of Research in the Humanities at the State Library South Australia, 4-6 February 2015

This interview was conducted in Balmain, Sydney, 12^th June 2015

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If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry: An interview with Gayle Kennedy by Gaele Sobott is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.