WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, OCL: TRIBUTE TO CHRISTOPHE SOULIÉ (1954-2023) (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Our friend and comrade Christophe Soulié, a longtime Courant Alternatif

collaborator, passed away suddenly on March 5 at the age of 68. His
funeral took place at the Landouge crematorium, near Limoges. ----
Christophe, whose Spanish nanny had been active in the ranks of the
CNT-FAI (1), was born in Brive in 1954 to a doctor and a philosophically
interested mother who were sensitive to the social Christianity of
Vatican II Growing up in a family environment characterized by a
humanistic, cosmopolitan culture. In addition to his pursuit of
vegetarianism, which he developed around the age of five, several trips
sharpened his conscience and his child's imagination, while he showed an
early interest in the world of fairy tales, a prelude to this art and
fondness for the storytelling that shaped him so much.

When he entered adolescence, Christophe was an altar boy. The parish
group to which he belongs regularly goes to the café, after mass, where
all subjects are discussed and discussed. We are in 1967-1968 and, soon,
the pretty May upsets a moral order whose obstacles are contested by a
youth socially subjected to the censorship of its word, its desires. For
Christophe, the high school years will be those of revolt (against the
injustices and hierarchies of an obstinately patriarchal society) and of
his meeting with Monique, his lifelong companion. The young teenager
enrolls enthusiastically in a particularly formative sociability
network, made up of men and women of different generations and
commitments (libertarians, left-wing Christians, Trotskyists, PSU
militants, etc.).
Involved from the age of 15 in the High School Action Committee of his
establishment, he left the Christian Student Youth to campaign for a
time within Lutte Ouvrière, before joining the "anars" fairly quickly.
Anticlerical bombings, high school agitation, situationist-inspired
radicalism: his first year ended with an unofficial but definitive
exclusion. Registered in 1972 in the Tarn within an institution
supervised by Dominicans with a rather liberal pedagogy, he spent his
weekends hitchhiking, often alone, through the South of France, like a
dreamy Rimbaud sleeping at the Big bear...
The tray in his pocket, he is fortunately reformed. After a year at the
Faculty of Letters in Limoges (1973-1974), he entered the École Normale
(1974-1975) before being assigned to Haute-Vienne... In a national and
international context of political, cultural and first-rate social
groups, from LIP to Larzac via the MLAC, from anti-militarism to the
anti-nuclear movement, from the armed struggle against the Franco regime
(the MIL, the GARI) to Italian, German or French Autonomy (including
Marges ), without mentioning the RAF, the question arises of acting with
some consequence against all forms of oppression in a world bent on the
iniquitous laws of capitalist exploitation. For Christophe, like many
his anti-authoritarians who turned twenty like him in the post-68 era,
the question does not arise. His commitment is active,

He fell in January 1978.
First imprisoned in Tulle, he was sentenced in December of the same year
by the Assize Court of Corrèze. The verdict is heavy, in comparison with
the facts which are reproached to him: 4 years firm for some departures
of fire aiming at a permanence of the RPR (in Brive) and two or three
portals of churches. The Liberation of the time was moved by it...
Christophe was then detained in Mauzac in the Dordogne. Indelible test
of confinement.
It was released on October 6, 1980.

Outside, nothing has changed, except for the worse; ebb of struggles and
hopes, in a France soon subjected to the "quiet force" of a social
democracy as sordid as it was sedative. In addition to the regular
maintenance, in the company of other comrades, of an anarchist press
table, Place de la République in Limoges, Christophe founded the CLARES
(Limousin Collective for the Animation of Resources and Social
Experimentation), an association dedicated to listing and promote
alternatives in Limousin. At the same time, these first post-prison
years encouraged him to develop a critique of the Prison and of Justice,
disciplinary institutions that he questions in correspondence with the
thought of Michel Foucault, which touched him deeply: Monitor and punish...
Putting in existential and political order of his experience of judicial
repression and incarceration, the conception and co-hosting of a
program, Taule onde, contre tous les forms d'confnement, on a free radio
station in Limoges (Radio Trouble-Fête) from February 1982 to September
1984, was accompanied by sustained activity and reflection around "free
defense". In this context, Christophe sealed an accomplice friendship
with the lawyer Babette Auerbacher (founding member in 1973 of the group
Handicapés wicked) and Jean Lapeyrie, involved shortly after its
creation in 1972 in the Action Committee for Prisoners (CAP) then in
initiative of the Prison-Justice Action Committee (CAPJ) in 1980-1981.
Christophe is involved in the Assises de la Défense Libre,
At the same time, in 1984-1985 he contributed to the creation of Secours
Sanitaire International (SSI), an associative structure designed as an
alternative to the humanitarian approach to dependency, as practiced by
most international organizations, even non-governmental ones. In
Colombia, the ISS makes itself available to the indigenous populations
of the Cauca region, organized within the CRIC (Indigenous Regional
Council of Cauca), in order to provide assistance on request at the
material, health and social levels, in a perspective of exchanges and
autonomy - which neither the regime, nor the paramilitaries, nor the
FARC guerrillas tolerate...
At the same time (1984-1986), Christophe (then unemployed) studied
journalism at the IUT in Bordeaux, finalized by a dissertation on the
theme of prison, in relation to a history of prison struggles. On this
occasion, he rubs shoulders with the anarchist bookstore L'En Dehors and
meets Gilles Durou (1954-2003), its future publisher, through whom he
establishes an undeniable partnership with the OCL. Independent
journalist, he publishes in Politis, Jeune Afrique, etc. At the
Panafrican Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), in 1986 he conducted
several recorded interviews with some of the most emblematic (and
critical) filmmakers and poets of postcolonial Africa. He has some
informal and fraternal exchanges with the young Burkinabe president
Thomas Sankara,
Around 1986-87, Christophe joined the Cercle Gramsci founded in Limoges
in 1985. He was one of the main organizers for a dozen years. He
proposes and presents several evening-debates which he initiates the
recording in order to report very faithfully in the bulletin of the
Circle. The themes he takes on range from "The GDR between right and
left" in 1990 with Dagmar Brocksine, to prison with Jacques Lesage de la
Haye in 2003. In addition, he energizes the AUSP (Auto-Université
Solidaire et Populaire du Cercle, 1995-2002) for which he prepared and
led many of the seminars at the Château de Ligoure ("Work and the end of
wage-earning", "Guaranteed income", "Education and self-managed high
schools", etc.) .
The end of the 1980s was characterized in Limoges by the dynamic (albeit
short-lived) resurgence of an anti-authoritarian movement, formed
through informal encounters, often like affinities, between people from
different backgrounds and generations (students , employees, etc.). From
1989 to 1993, Christophe works tirelessly in favor of a libertarian
Convergence, always concerned with transmitting the elements of his
(intense) career and his (huge) culture conducive to promoting the
intellectual autonomy of the very young comrade (among others) who was
the author of this tribute, oh so grateful...
In addition to regular participation in various libertarian meetings
(Barcelona, Lyon, Grenoble), the 1990s announced for Christophe the
pursuit by other means of lifelong aspirations, the renewal of a cycle
begun in the years of embers of a youth fiery.

Already a lecturer (precarious status) at the Faculty of Letters and
Human Sciences of Limoges, on the theme of storytelling and more
generally of languages related to the world of the media (he will obtain
in 2008 a Master's degree in Media Cultures, Francophone Literature &
Popular Education), Christophe pursued studies in Education Sciences
from 1992 to 1997. In this context, he produced a series of interviews
as well as a documentary in connection with the Bonaventure Experimental
School (Oléron, 1993-2001). The libertarian and self-management pedagogy
of this militant experience resonates with his theoretical interest and
his practical involvement in favor of popular education, in a so-called
research-action approach, developed in contact with this sociological
current that he knew perfectly well.: institutional analysis. In this
perspective, in 1997 he supported a Master's thesis at the crossroads of
popular education and life stories, conducted under the direction of the
institutionalist sociologist Jean-François Marchat. From there,
Christophe collaborates in surveys, conducts interviews and contributes
to monographs related to the solidarity economy, in association with
CRIDA (Center for Research and Information on Democracy and Autonomy,
Paris). He also teaches courses in the Department of Educational
Sciences, from which he will be ousted for budgetary considerations,
despite the support of his students and colleagues. Moreover, his
interest in alternative experiences, coupled with a certain erudition in
relation to the social history of a Limousin rich in its mutualist
movement at the origin of the workers' cooperatives of the 19th and 20th
centuries, will result in the 2000s in its participation in CLARA
(Collectif Limousin Autogéré of Action Research) within the Solidarity
Economy Activities in Limousin Team. Since 2015-2016, Christophe has
worked as a lecturer at Polaris, a training organization in the social
work sector, particularly as part of a preparatory course for people
with heterogeneous backgrounds, which he (re)initiated with tact and
passion for methods and techniques of expression, both written and oral.
will be reflected in the 2000s by its participation in CLARA (Collectif
Limousin Autogéré de Recherche Action) within the Activities of
Solidarity Economy Team in Limousin. Since 2015-2016, Christophe has
worked as a lecturer at Polaris, a training organization in the social
work sector, particularly as part of a preparatory course for people
with heterogeneous backgrounds, which he (re)initiated with tact and
passion for methods and techniques of expression, both written and oral.
will be reflected in the 2000s by its participation in CLARA (Collectif
Limousin Autogéré de Recherche Action) within the Activities of
Solidarity Economy Team in Limousin. Since 2015-2016, Christophe has
worked as a lecturer at Polaris, a training organization in the social
work sector, particularly as part of a preparatory course for people
with heterogeneous backgrounds, which he (re)initiated with tact and
passion for methods and techniques of expression, both written and oral.
As meticulously documented as it is emotionally difficult, the rewriting
of his Memory of Journalism defended in 1986 at the IUT of Bordeaux led
to the publication in 1995 of Liberté sur Paroles. Contribution to the
history of the Action Committee for Prisoners published by AnaliS,
founded by Gilles Durou (2). The Cercle Gramsci is devoting an
evening-debate to the theme of "The prison in question" in which
Christophe is of course the main speaker, alongside its preface
Christine Daure-Serfaty, then President of the International Observatory
of Prisons. If it materializes the diffuse intention of a catharsis, the
pioneering work has nonetheless become a reference for anyone who claims
to understand the origins and issues of prison struggles. The feminist
sociologist Gwénola Ricordeau, abolitionist author of For them all.
During the Movement of the unemployed in the winter of 1997-1998,
Christophe was actively involved (especially in Limoges) in the
traveling occupations of ANPE, ASSEDIC, the Chamber of Commerce, etc.
(3). The demands do not fail to engage in a radical critique of daily
life, structured by a working society at the very foundation of
inequalities, particularly in terms of subsistence and access to
resources. On the occasion of a few festive Decembers, Christophe tasted
the popular joy of the "requisitions of wealth" and other
"self-reductions", operated in the delicatessens and food stores of the
Parisian bourgeoisie. In 2011, he will also publish "Experience of a
productive action of knowledge: Acting together against Unemployment",
in The Collective put to the test of the community,
In the process, he contributes to the birth of a choir, which finds its
origin precisely in the occupation (very musical) of the ASSEDIC
mentioned above. At the end of 1998, the CRS was thus founded: Choir of
Social Resistance, still at work.

Not without resonance with a growing interest in Chinese philosophy
(discovered in prison), nourished more recently by a regular practice of
Qi-gong, this search for political and sensitive breathing is tirelessly
initiated or stimulated by Christophe through his encounters. ,
associations and commitments. From this point of view, the years
2000-2010 undoubtedly bear witness to a new lease of life, consistent
with an ever finer perception and experience of the human, terrestrial
and living worlds.

 From 2004 to 2017, Christophe "chaired" the ParOles theater-action
company (founded in Limoges in 1993 by Denis Lepage and Martine
Panardie) whose workshops and creations involved people from
working-class neighborhoods on the outskirts of Limoges, immigrant
workers, others with disabilities, prisoners, etc. In 2005, he carried
out a survey and analysis work on ParOles, "Art, Cultures and Free",
carried out with the help of FASILD (Fund for Action and Support for
Integration and the Fight against Discriminations) within the more
general framework of a collective research on solidarity economy in
Limousin.
In 2005, it was the decisive meeting with Armand Gatti, for whom
Christophe already nourished a certain admiration, and Hélène Châtelain
his companion. It was the beginning of a human, intellectual and
artistic adventure, punctuated by two creations by Gatti in intimate
connection with Limousin: a poem in homage to Georges Guingouin, read in
2006 in the forest of La Berbeyrolle, near Tarnac, where the young
19-year-old Gatti joined the Corrèze maquis in 1943; a theatrical
experiment conducted in Neuvic d'Ussel (19) in honor of the women in
black of Tarnac (July-August 2010). These creations are part of a
particular situation, marked on November 11, 2008 by the questioning of
(then the support for) several people who have been living in the town
of Tarnac for a few years, some of them having actively contributed to
preparing the reading of the poem in homage to Guingouin. From the
confidence and intensity that emanated from the exchanges with the
playwright, the idea of a story around Gatti and Limousin was born. A
long-term research begins, in which Christophe, his friend and comrade
Francis Juchereau (Cercle Gramsci) as well as Hélène Châtelain plan to
lead the writing process together. The latter will continue beyond the
death of Gatti (2017), then of his companion herself (2020), before
being temporarily suspended by the sudden disappearance of Christophe.
In 2011, in Peyrelevade (19), Hélène Châtelain pointed out in these
terms the essential approach of the book, in perfect resonance with
Christophe's aspirations: "To make a book, it's extending the very
special and concrete relationship that has begun to develop here between
us and what you have established on the Plateau. It is this relationship
that is the primary driving force behind this journey: this feeling that
exists here of living in a Commune".
Thus, Christophe's enthusiasm for the ZAD of Notre-Dame-des-Landes (in
October 2016, he participated with emotion in the "Oath of the sticks")
but also for the Limousin Mountain, the emergence of his Syndicate in
2014 and the original story of his rural communism, intersects with his
commitments in favor of the political and social autonomy of the
Commons, following the example of what he wrote in 2014 in CA (n°240):
"...from the "lived space, one can engage in politics, self-organise,
share experiences and create solidarity under other standards than those
imposed by the State and its institutions"; and to defend "the
vernacular dimension[of]this sensitive space where relationships of
solidarity are forged in the experiences made up of multitudes of human
relationships". We recognize here all the interest of Christophe for the
thought of Henri Lefebvre about alternative ways of inhabiting the
social space or of Rancière for whom the political experience of the
sensitive and the sensitive experience of the political are inseparable.
Double experience, lived in the same way within the anti-globalization
villages and self-managed camps in which Christophe participates during
counter-summits (Nice in 2000, etc.).
In addition, its creation (collegial) of a Citizen Forestry Group in the
Monts de Blond (87) in the winter of 2021 testifies to a full awareness
(both local and global) of the ecological and social devastation caused
by the management industrial and mercantile nature of the forest, as
well as a sensitivity (always) to the sensory and imaginary dimensions
of an ecumene (4) increasingly subject to the ruthless reign of
capitalist predation.
Similarly, gardens are for Christophe the privileged places of a quest:
that of a certain food autonomy, always shared, always united; that of
appeasement, at a distance from aggressive postures and petrified roles
- including militants...
Worthy of note in this regard is the informal and friendly film club
that Christophe has hosted in recent years, always accompanied by a
shared meal. In this respect, how can we fail to mention the generous
and delicate cuisine he produced marvelously, in the epicurean pleasure
of a libertarian hospitality which will be remembered in particular by
the comrades who took part in the spring CJ of Courant Alternatif, which
he hosted for a long time in his Limousin village of Arnac, near
Oradour-sur-Glane.

Therefore, it will be understood that the confinement of the year 2020,
with its certificates of open-air incarceration, revives in Christophe
the anxieties once experienced but never really dissipated from his
inaugural and traumatic experience of confinement.
Then it is the operation of June 15, 2021 carried out under the
"anti-terrorist" flag in different places in Limousin, for a story of
Enedis vehicles and relay antennas burned, in contestation of
technological totalitarianism and its world. The endless search of his
home by a hooded armada of cops, the seizure of personal belongings, the
paranoid, humiliating and absurd interrogations of a three-day GAV
(together with that of Monique), deal a blow - perhaps fatal - to
Christophe, even though neither he nor his partner are the subject of
any "prosecution" (5). And for good reason! In this case, it is as much
his political and prison past as the ecological, cultural and social
commitments of his present that the cops essentially blame Christophe for.
Life resumes its course, for better or worse. As for the gardens, they
still offer the help of their regenerative cycles. But a wound has
reopened, so vivid in the heightened silences of the storyteller, in the
unforgettable modesty of his smiles.

The ashes of our friend and comrade enamel the mossy foot of a tutelary
chestnut tree.

William

* Thanks to the people who contributed their testimonies and memories to
the writing of this tribute, especially to Monique.

Notes
1. Christophe often recalled his striking encounter in Brive with an old
Spanish anarchist who had learned to read in a libertarian athenaeum
from L'Homme et la Terre by Élisée Reclus.
2. Freedom on Words is distributed by the CRAS:
https://cras31.info/spip.php?article20
3. During a round table co-organized in May 2002 by the Cercle Gramsci
and the association Mémoire Ouvrière en Limousin, Christophe declares:
"By linking the political questions to very concrete lived situations,
the occupation of the places is not only physical, it was political".
4. In the sense of Augustin Berque, of whom Christophe was an attentive
reader.
5. First three, then two indicted persons are subject to judicial
review; pending trial.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3915
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