Matt Mahlen
It has become fashionable again among a few artists and groups in some alternative publishing companies here in France - but also, I believe, in Belgium, Switzerland, the US, Canada, and Britain - to talk about culture and resistance...
For me the topic conjures up this comment: agriculture and culture are both spaces of struggle against the elements, wastelands of liberties, areas of autonomy. This is also the place where the forces, hopes and actions to change the world lie.
…In France, the strong ties that bind the national education system and the army are as old as compulsory schooling itself. Both institutions served in the building of the nation.
Schools served as one of the coloniser's main means of acculturation, enrolling pupils in 1914 to send out letters to the front or to organise fund-raising fairs which helped to maintain hatred and the warlike frenzy of the time. The Second World War saw the Marshal Petain1 children trained to sing…
