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23.05.2024

Tots Ocells and the Representation of War

per Cristina Llorca

While preparing the three-way conversation between Txell Feixas, Clara Segura, and Cristina Genebat around Tots Ocells, along with Ariadna Fernández, Anna Novell, and Albert Reverendo, we posed several questions to delve deeper into how discourses about war are constructed and represented.

 

How we talk about war, how we write about it, or how we see it,
in other words, how we adapt language to an experience that eludes it.

El silencio de la guerra, Antonio Monegal 1

 

The first major documented battle in history is that of Kadesh, involving the Egyptians and the Hittites, around three thousand years ago. Before this, we find cave paintings depicting warfare, such as the representation of archers in the cave of Morella la Vella, in Castellón, dating back six thousand years. From the earliest civilizations to the present day, we cannot ignore the present in which we live. What role does journalism, theater, or literature play in the explanation, representation, and narration of wartime conflicts? How do cultural products shape the imagination of those who have never experienced war firsthand?

For there to be war, the existence of the enemy is indispensable. The formation of this idea - how the other is created - or the repercussion of this process on those who live between worlds, who participate in different cultural spaces, are aspects reflected in Tots Ocells. The representation of the construction of alterity in the work makes us question the process of identity formation. Can we become aware, through theater or literature, of the multiple perspectives of a conflict? 

The intergenerational legacy of war, the inheritance, and the management of wartime trauma, are present in this and other works of Wajdi Mouawad, such as "Incendies". And, it also addresses all of us. How do different generations relate to the same conflict? Those who experienced it, those who grew up in silence, those seeking answers. "All the Birds" shows us how past wars shape the lives of future generations.

 

CREON: The enemy cannot be a friend even after death!
ANTIGONE: I was not born to share hatred, but love.

 

With this epigraph, Mouawad draws a continuous line between Greek tragedy, Antigone, and his contemporary tragedy. In the case of Tots Ocells, we find a work full of multiple complexities of all kinds: lives lost due to war, family conflicts, displacement, identity, the intergenerational legacy of conflict, violence, political and ethical dilemmas, the possibility of reconciliation... However, among all these folds that shape the plot, we discover a latent, simple truth buried throughout history and revealed following the model of Aristotelian catharsis.

Three thousand years ago, sixteen years after the start of the conflict, Egyptians and Hittites signed the first peace treaty in history. This agreement included the commitment of future generations to respect it and ensured a long period of understanding and collaboration between the two peoples. Today, with Tots Ocells, Wajdi Mouawad invites us to ask ourselves:

How can we become our own enemy? How can we become the amphibious bird?

Monegal, A. (2024). El silencio de la guerra. Acantilado.

Cristina Llorca
President #AsSocPerla