marked by that political upheaval.
used in the film.
A CLASS ROOM in a secondary school, Papps goout so or Er years The The Headmaster: Here is your new history master, Monsieur Perly, who from now onwards will cake the place of Monsieur Genthod. Please make him welcome. The headmaster goes out. Marco is carrying a suitease which he puts on his desk and opens. From inside it, he takes out a long blood lausage, a oks up to th astonished and mased class.
Marco: You should know that my tasber is a butcher and my t sausage] on the chopping bourd, starts the metronome, and hrandishes the knife.
Marco: Would somebody like 10 come up here and cut the boudin in time with the metronome? A boy comes forward und starts to de exactly that. The sausage is several metres The boy stops cutting, Marco picks up several pieces of the hoadin Marco: These are bits of history What shall we call them? Do you want to call them hours or decades centuries? It's all the same, and it never stops. Boudin should be calen with onions and mashed potatoes. We are taught that time is like a boudin.
That's how Darwin saw it. except that lie wanted to prove that, sausage continued, the meat changed! Mark thought that one day everybody would stop cating boudin. Einstein nd Max Plan tank the skin off the Does anybody here know what th ‹in ors boutin is made from!
A girl: A pig's bladder.
Mowel excelent Marco slows down the metronome. Tie how once more euls the soususe Into pieces, but much more dowly, in THIS HIS SOCH UPIEL.
Marco: OK. Let'sstop the butchery now. And the burns too. please Let's look at the houdin which is still uncil. You can see thal il folds and And that is interesting. Are there such things as folds in time?
The Ontology of Social Being 1. Hegel 2. Marx together will be sent post free (E3.60). The starting point of Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000. the latest film to be scripted by John Berger and Alain Tanner, is the events of May "68 in France. In various ways, the eight characters have each been This text of the history lesson in the film has been translated and elaborated by JOHN BERGER especially for Socialist Challenge. It corresponds generally, but not word for word, to the text finally In rural agricultural societies people believed that time was cyclic, HONESTED LEE SHERE CHE SERCORE Mid winter's day every year consisted Marco mother as the Special offer to Socialist Challenge readers. Both ordered out. His or her elfort and the erforts of all other people were used to keep the wheel — the wheel of the seasous time as a motorway, the motorway of The progress was that the conquerors, the victors, had not just won a hattle but had been chosen meant to outlast all sensons the pauling can became ind the thread of a corkscrew, but the sharp thrusting point of the corkscrew win always the conqueror's. And the corkscrew opened bottle afier bottle JACQUES DENIS as Marco Perly, the history teacher. £1.80 (20p pop)
E1.80 (20p p&p) Capitalism introduced the idea of escritial idea without terrifying bistory ai cycles were considered inferior bottles until they were no longer thirsty and thee they threw the bottles away, always making sure that in doing so, they broke them. A new farn of violence was born and this was It. Arrows and swords had killed people before, but what killed no was the verdict of historical progress With this new form of violence created by the conquerors, the same conquerors discovered a new fear: a fear of the past anenging atself. If th boudin past one day caught up with th conquerors t would show as ittle pity for thein as they had showa?
In the nineteenth century this fear of the past was turned into a sciemific law. Time became unilinear, a road hends of turnings and infinitely long. Its endless length was abstraction The nineteeath century was hausted by it.
But abstractions have nothing to avenge, Which is why most nineteenth century thinkers chose to transform their fear of the past into a purely folds. mathematical verligo. The endless placed with centuries, days, working hours al clocked in on their cards. All cut up Cut to street scene. Workers going to work. Return to class room Marco: Al last today we can se thal the motorway. the motorway oi CAPISTS DOWN DO DRE BE CIS There are far more reasons for this than I can explain in this litle bit of boudin which is our first lesson. But let's go back for a moment to the fold pointed our to you Marco holds up the uacut purpl Marco: In an acorn tome is already folded in such a way that the fugure form of an onk tree is already present in it. What you are, each of sou different, was already partially there bee your conception. Tam not a determinist, but in your first cell there was a message wiuch you are still reading today. There are things which make holes in time, and sometimes these holes align rhemselves, thanks to the Marco mukes a drawing in the bluckhourd:
through remember my father is a butcher Time folds to make the alignment of the holes possible. Why is nobody a propbet in his or her own country? Prophets find themselves between the boles, pierced but without a skewer!
Nobody listened to what Diderot had to say about sexual psychology WIIIISENCEAI CUETCMIOAAECEE everybody said Freud was a monster to propose that there was such a thing as child sexuality. Some of you surel IT CIRCE.
The holes that propbets make with their ideas are the same holes through which, later, historians poer 10 look back at the past. You can see tbe historians now peering back an eighteenth century through the holes Jean-Jacques Roussean made to glimpse a postble future:
Ahal You are looking watches. All right. I'stinse. We'llend Like the rhythm of the heartbeat. WISHES OH AS BRIES his desk like a drummer.
Marco: Between cach heat there's time, isn't there? Time is the fact that you know that the second heat isn' the first. Time consists of this opposition, this distinction The pupils start to beat their desks i time with Murco. There are shouts and cries loo.
Marco Time i reduced by synthesis!!
The pace of the drumming becomes now faster and louder and Manen is forced to shout at the top of his surice.
Marco: ASTERS cmbryn's witistle the huntan wary of evolution! Darwin the old The class is now completely ont of CUTLET the drumming frenetic. Marco shouts Marco: In a total synthesis time itself disappears!
The schoul bell rings to indicate the cod of the lesson Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000 has lust coened in London at the Paris Pulman and Picenix cinemas. It will be showing in Oxford in May.
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The Other Bookshop Two new Lukacs books from Merlin Press