La question nationale chez Robert Lafont, Yves Rouquette et Joan Larzac (1967-1969)
The paper examines the early theoretical positions of three Occitan thinkers and writers, extremely important for the Occitanist movement of the 20th century. Apart from writing literary works of quality and being committed activists to various social and political movements, they also theorised about the political and social condition of Occitania.
Lafont for example was the creator of the concept of 'interior colonialism', influential in its day, as a way to understand the political and economic dominance of the centre of France over the rest of the country. Not just actively dominating but siphoning off. Keep in mind that this was in the mid 60s when the third world national liberation movements were happening all around the world. In the backdrop of Vietnam and Algeria, there was a fertile intellectual atmosphere for theorising using vocabulary and concepts drawn from Marxist thinking. It's not too hard to go from the working class that is alienated from the fruit of its labour to the people alienated from its nation due to desenfranchisement. Or a small group of intellectuals (a vanguard) who would awaken their alienated brethren (the proletariat) to their condition.
The two other thinkers, Roqueta and Larzac are actually brothers. Larzac is a socialist priest who's still around, Roqueta passed away in 2015. In the 60s, they use Lafont to bounce ideas off and at the same time they push further than him. Take the concept of interior colonialism.
Lafont distingue scrupuleusement colonisation intérieure et colonisation extérieure, justement parce que, grâce à la Révolution, les colonisés de l’intérieur, grâce au pacte national, sont des citoyens et possèdent le droit de vote. Pour Larzac, ce droit est un leurre, parce que les colonisés étant minoritaires, ils ne sauraient d’aucune façon faire avancer leur condition par les urnes. Pour lui, intérieur et extérieur ne signifient qu’au-dedans et au-dehors de l’hexagone (qui, demande-t-il, peut sérieusement parler de colonialisme intérieur pour les territoires d’outre mer ?). Tout colonialisme, quel qu’il soit, est extérieur (« se tracha totjorn d’una terra autra, situïda en defòra del punt colonizaire »43) et intérieur, car la colonisation est toujours intégrée à des degrés divers (sans intégration au moins minimale, on ne peut parler de colonisation)44. Aussi, à rebours de Lafont, il soutient que la colonisation intérieure est encore pire que celle du dehors ; elle est plus profonde, plus complète, car plus invétérée (Lafont 1977, 5745). « La colonizacion interiora es la qu’a mai capitat coma colonizacion »46.
Lafont carefully distinguishes between interior colonialism and exterior colonialism, precisely because the colonised peoples of the interior - thanks to the French Revolution, thanks to the national pact, are French citizens and have the right to vote. For Larzac however, this vote is a sham, because as the interior colonised peoples of France are minorities, they couldn't advance their position via voting anyway. For Larzac, interior and exterior can only refer to within and without continental France (who, he asks, can seriously use the term interior colonialism for the overseas French territories such as New Caledonia, Guyane etc?).
All colonialism, whatever kind it is, is both exterior (it's always about an other land, situated outside of the coloniser's place) and interior, for colonisation is always integrated to various degrees (without some integration, even minimal, there's no colonialisation to speak of). Thus unlike Lafont, Larzac argues that interior colonialism is even worse than the exterior kind, it's a deeper colonialism, more complete, because more rooted. "Interior colonisation is the colonisation that has best succeeded as colonisation".
If you've never heard of the idea that the peoples living within continental France are also victims (and you can say self-perpetrators) of colonialism, or if few Occitan thinkers have explicitly revealed themselves to be Occitan nationalists or independentists, it is in part because, as this paper argues, such views are unacceptable to the broader French speaking public. Such views must be carefully stated even within the hermetically sealed Occitan speaking community.
There is apparently an active kind of censure on the part of French media and publishing houses, even if one were to write in French:
Lafont, quant à lui, de manière très consciente, avait fait le choix de composer ses écrits politiques en français de façon à être publié par les maisons d’édition parisiennes les plus prestigieuses, en un temps où une fenêtre s’était ouverte pour ce type de production intellectuelle en français. Mais, on le sait, cette fenêtre s’est vite refermée, y compris pour Lafont lui-même (ces ouvrages ne purent plus paraître que de la manière la plus confidentielle, dans de petites maisons d’édition et désormais sans aucun relai critique national). Aujourd’hui il est devenu extrêmement difficile, sinon presque impossible, de faire accepter par les maisons d’édition parisiennes des textes sur les langues minorées de l’hexagone, du moins s’ils abordent le sujet d’un point de vue politique un tant soit peu offensif. Cela est aussi vrai de la presse régionale, comme en témoignent les chroniques inoffensives d’Yves Rouquette lui-même pour la Dépêche publiées en 2000 et cette année même 2015. Nous sommes relégués de fait, pour le partage et la discussion de ce type de discours, à l’entre-soi militant ou aux catacombes universitaires, qui ne dérangent personne
The Roqueta brothers feel a bit more free to write about these issues in Occitan, knowing they'll be little read, indeed if you google the Occitan quotations, you'll be directed to this paper.
In the following quote, you'll see a 'strong' statement by Ives Roqueta that was edited out from a document to be published in an Occitan language magazine, Viure. This censorship was a decision that was taken by Lafont himself, because it was deemed too overtly nationalistic. To understand this quote, know that Lafont made a distinction between 'primary nations' (a people) and 'secondary nations' that came later on the basis of conscious self organisation, pacts, citizenships etc. The secondary nation par excellence for Lafont is France. He himself did not see a necessary contradiction between them, although he thought that France had done a terrible job of creating itself as a secondary nation, by repressing the primary nations in order to do it.
çò que Lafònt sòna « nacion segondària », aquò’s pas per nautres qu’un Estat que cal ajudar a deperir coma tal. Çò qu’apèla « nacion primària » son de nacions sens cap d’organisacion estatala e an besonh de se’n donar una se se vòlon pas pèrdre, lenga e tot çò autre, dins un futur pròche
What Lafont calls 'secondary nation', that's nothing more than a State that we need to help die as such. What Lafont calls 'primary nation', are nations without any state organisation and that need to be granted one, if they do not wish to lose their language and everything else in a near future .
Even for the Roqueta brothers, there is a kind of self censorship at work, as Cavaillé points out. They say a bit less than what they really think, or they hold themselves back from thinking the next logical step of their premises.
He also criticises the unfortunate tendency of the Roqueta brothers to be unable to conceive of a nationalism that would not mirror in some way the French model. Thus they too easily reject Occitan nationalism as an actual political project. It's something I hear sometimes in Spain as well, 'I reject Spanish nationalism, but I also reject Basque/Catalan/Galician etc nationalism, to me they're all alike', the idea being that all nationalisms are bad because all nationalisms are alike. Roqueta writes:
Mon antinacionalisme, se en primièr s’opausa al nacionalisme francés desfaitaire d’Occitània e de sos òmes e que donc coma tal devèm denonciar de longa, me cal dire que s’opausa tanbèn al nacionalisme occitan
My antinationalism, if it is first opposed to French nationalism, destroyer of Occitania and its men, and that we must denounce strongly, then I must say that my antinationalism is also opposed to Occitan nationalism.
Spain has its own influence on the Occitan thinkers, because when the Spanish dictatorship ended and Spain became a democracy, the political organisation that was chosen for Spain was that of a decentralised country split into autonomous communities, consciously following the German model. As it so happens this works well for Lafont, as he does not want to reject his Big Country for his Little Country.
Lekitton, berton! Ez ote du euskararen sonoritatea ezagutzen? Inork ez dio sekula euskaraz egiten?
