Writing in order to understand
Article that appeared in ATD Fourth World’s “Feuille de route”, issue 392, February 2010
How do we approach the issue of knowledge, or of kinds of knowledge, that we need in order to fight extreme poverty and exclusion without first recalling what the founder of the Movement, Father Joseph Wresinski, did in Noisy-le-Grand in April 1959? Born himself into insecurity and extreme poverty, he began a notebook on that 22nd of April, 1959. He felt the need to write every day to understand more deeply what he had grown up with. Francine de la Gorce [1] quotes him: “April 22: Would I have the courage to continue this in the days ahead? It’s hard to keep a notebook. One needs willpower and inner discipline… The distress of mankind is a mystery. It must be like all that is religious, an object of respect, of faith and of rites. Otherwise, people get used to distress and, when they encounter it, they no longer grow as a result… Someday, maybe, will I write something about the mystery of mankind’s distress?”
At the beginning of “knowledge”, there is therefore the recognition that we are not familiar with it and need to learn about it. We end up surprised, shocked, and puzzled in the face of a mystery. Even if daily writing is one of the basic dimensions of the commitment of Movement volunteers, it is not reserved for them alone. All members of the Movement feel its necessity, in their own way and with the means available to them. Maybe we should speak of works rather than of writing, for there are those who translate the mystery of mankind’s distress through means other than writing: they paint, draw, photograph, record, film…
Without this meditation, and without mediation as well, what would we really see? What would we understand in depth? Undoubtedly, we would have seen and attempted to understand what everyone sees: men and women deprived of housing and work, with damaged bodies and without resources, etc. But would we have understood that beyond all of these exterior signs of poverty, this man (or woman) whom we were meeting was telling us that “the worst part of it all is not being considered a man”. Would we have understood, without having written about it, without having meditated on it, the immensity of a mother’s love when, despite having no resources, she goes broke to buy a huge stuffed animal for the child that was taken away from her—a misunderstood gesture for which she will once again be criticized?
This daily, personal writing remains essential. If it sometimes teaches us something about what people and families in poverty are going through, it also teaches us a lot about ourselves, our preconceived notions, and our prejudices. It is, in this capacity, a school of life. It’s also a political school: “We can only learn political lessons at the heart of the population and we can only do it seriously through very diligent and thorough writing. Political training begins with paper and pencil. We say, ‘The poor are our teachers,’ because, collectively, they tell us things that have major importance for society. We do not simply listen to teachers; we take notes!” [2] Hence other forms of writing—recordings of meetings, of Fourth World People’s Universities, interviews, etc.—are patiently re-transcribed, word for word, and reread with their authors. From personal writing to collective writing, it is the same willingness to “know in order to love, and to love in order to know” that is at work, no matter which tool is used to write: pen, keyboard, paintbrush, camera, video camera…
“Without writing, what would we understand in depth?”
To love in order to know, to know in order to love; but also to know and love in order to act, together, and fight extreme poverty and its root causes. Hence the simultaneous demand of writing and action, in a way that leads to evaluation measured by the only question worth asking: “How do our actions allow the poorest to liberate themselves?” Thus the decision was made at the end of the 1990’s, after nearly 50 years of experience, to gather all of the sources of knowledge patiently collected over the years into the Joseph Wresinski International Center in Baillet-en-France. It is about making sure, together, that none of this history is lost, that nothing falls back into obscurity. “Obscurity, more so than need, is the plague of poverty,” wrote Hannah Arendt. May this effort of continually renewing our knowledge in order to approach (perhaps without ever reaching) the mystery of mankind’s distress never stop. Jean Tonglet
