The Everyman and the Epic

Public access

Yes

Tickets

Free (no booking required)

Venue

Ateliers Jeanne Barret
5 Bd. de Sévigné
13015 Marseille, France

Date & Time

01 October, 2022

Language

French

In Lotus Eaters, the chapter of The Odyssey that inspired this chapter of Ulysses, Homer begins by describing Odysseus sitting in front of a king, crying, distraught at his memories of the hardships he has endured. The King asks him to explain his tears and tell his story, and Odysseus says that he will, even though telling it will redouble his pain.

If Ulysses is, as Joyce said, the everyman made epic, then those everymen and everywomen who make epic journeys from their homes to places they hope they will be safe are both the Ulysses and the Leopald Blooms of our time. Their ability to tell their own story is put to the test again and again by the asylum process, and their lives depend on how well they do it.

The core participants of this symposium were Magali Perl and Marie Jacob, both psychologists with Comede, a French non-profit organisation that helps exiles access healthcare; Valérie Manteau, the award-winning author of Calme et Tranquille and Le Sillon as well as other literary auto-fiction; Samer Salameh, a Palestinian-Syrian cinematographer and director of the semi- autobiographical documentary 194, Us children of the camp; and Chloé Fraisse-Bonnaud, a judge from France’s national high court of asylum rights. Together they discussed how we tell the story of ourselves : the truth in fictions, the fiction in truths, the hidden, the revealed, the hurt and the hope in these stories.

Credits: Presented by gethan&myles and ildi! eldi with the support of Ateliers Jeanne Barret, Comede and Les Ateliers des Artistes en Exil