Maroonning? (Come, if you feel like it)

"When we understand each other as human beings, we are one step closer to our shared humanity. These words are part of what Jazz Aline writes about TCM's next season, Dialogue. The choice of theme was a natural consequence of the programming for the 2023-2024 season. It has to be said that the upcoming shows are dedicated to provoking dialogue.

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The synopsis of our first show, On marronne? (If you feel like it, come), sets the tone. How do we identify with the "other", individually and collectively? What roots are we really attached to? How do we manage old and new relationships when we choose to live in another territory? From these questions flow a host of others, the limits of which are set only by ourselves, and in the case of this show, by the audience. Before you see On marronne, here are a few ideas for thinking about the term "marronnage".

According to the Académie de Guyane, this term refers to the forms of resistance practiced by black and Amerindian slaves in the face of white slavers. In a context of triangular trade and the slave trade, this resistance was based on escape.

Marronnage resonates particularly with Adélaïde, the main character in On marronne. She is the one who makes the daring and perilous choice to leave. Her story echoes the books Les métamorphoses du marronnage (2005) and Lignes de fuite du marronnage (2018) by Mahorese philosopher, artist and anthropologist Dénètem Touam Bona. The latter identifies marronnage over a period ranging from the 15ᵉ to the 19ᵉ century, as a "general phenomenon of slave flight", which can be "occasional or definitive, individual or collective, discreet or violent [...] fueling banditry (black cowboys of the Far West, cangaceiros of Brazil, etc.) or accelerating a Revolution (Haiti)". Real "maroon secessions" with slave states thus came into being, particularly in the Americas, "the heart of the slave system"¹.

It was through this resistance that "Maroon societies" were created in opposition to the slave states, with their own political system, culture, religion and agriculture. Moreover, Maroon secession is the culmination of a "cultural resistance to the slave order", in which flight and guerrilla warfare constitute "the matrix of a singular form of life whose supreme virtues will be autonomy and stealth"².

Fleeing and guerrilla warfare are part and parcel of Adélaïde's journey, as she stealthily adapts to her new territory and builds a new community of her own. This search for adaptation in a new territory is not without risk, that of a metamorphosis involving dissolution and self-effacement.³

This show is not intended to provide predefined, time-bound answers. Rather, it offers food for thought about our surroundings and our questions. It's up to us to try and answer them, or to contemplate our own questions.

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Florent de Vellis

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

¹ TOUAM BONA Dénètem, "Les métamorphoses du marronnage",Lignes, 2005/1 (n° 16), p. 36-48. DOI : 10.3917/lignes.016.0036.

² Idem

³ TOUAM BONA Dénètem, " Lignes de fuite du marronnage. Le "lyannaj" ou l'esprit de la forêt", Multitudes, 2018/1 (n° 70), p. 177-185.DOI : 10.3917/mult.070.0177.