Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings

Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings

Writing the history of children’experiences in exile entails exploring how children refugees have written about these experiences themselves. It is obviously a challenge to find contemporary texts by refugee children, but even when we do, we are faced with a number of methodological issues. This pap...

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Hlavní autor: Keren, Célia
Médium: Article ou chapitre numérique
Jazyk:Français
Vydáno: Les Cahiers de Framespa 2010
On-line přístup:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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description Writing the history of children’experiences in exile entails exploring how children refugees have written about these experiences themselves. It is obviously a challenge to find contemporary texts by refugee children, but even when we do, we are faced with a number of methodological issues. This paper attempts to present and tackle some of those, through the study of fifteen biographical notebooks written around 1940-1941 by Spanish refugee children who lived at La Rouvière in France, in a colony created and run by the American Quakers Friends Service Committee (AFSC). These notebooks form a homogeneous, standardized series, with similar cover and title pages, and a similar structure. They were most certainly composed at the same time, and written as part of the children’s schoolwork in the colony. As much as these children’s experiences, opinions and sentiments, they thus reveal the adult requirements guiding and imposed upon children’s writings. This paper suggests a method for reading such heavily formatted children’s productions as palimpsests, i.e. as the final result of layers of writings applied on top of one another. Each layer constitutes a different narrative about refugee children: the story-writing of humanitarian aid, the Quaker tale of child relief and, finally, the narratives of children’s experiences.
author Keren, Célia
spellingShingle Keren, Célia
Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
author_facet Keren, Célia
author_sort Keren, Célia
title Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
title_short Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
title_full Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
title_fullStr Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
title_full_unstemmed Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings
title_sort autobiographies of spanish refugee children at the quaker home in la rouvière (france, 1940) : humanitarian communication and children’s writings
publisher Les Cahiers de Framespa
publishDate 2010
container_title URI:https://journals.openedition.org/framespa
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/framespa.268
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/framespa/268
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spelling openedition-oai:revues.org:framespa_268 https://doi.org/10.4000/framespa.268 urn:doi:10.4000/framespa.268 fr https://journals.openedition.org/framespa/268 2010-05-12T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/gdl6 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Autobiographies of Spanish Refugee Children at the Quaker Home in La Rouvière (France, 1940) : Humanitarian Communication and Children’s Writings Les Cahiers de Framespa UMR 5136 – FRAMESPA info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1760-4761 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/framespa Keren, Célia Writing the history of children’experiences in exile entails exploring how children refugees have written about these experiences themselves. It is obviously a challenge to find contemporary texts by refugee children, but even when we do, we are faced with a number of methodological issues. This paper attempts to present and tackle some of those, through the study of fifteen biographical notebooks written around 1940-1941 by Spanish refugee children who lived at La Rouvière in France, in a colony created and run by the American Quakers Friends Service Committee (AFSC). These notebooks form a homogeneous, standardized series, with similar cover and title pages, and a similar structure. They were most certainly composed at the same time, and written as part of the children’s schoolwork in the colony. As much as these children’s experiences, opinions and sentiments, they thus reveal the adult requirements guiding and imposed upon children’s writings. This paper suggests a method for reading such heavily formatted children’s productions as palimpsests, i.e. as the final result of layers of writings applied on top of one another. Each layer constitutes a different narrative about refugee children: the story-writing of humanitarian aid, the Quaker tale of child relief and, finally, the narratives of children’s experiences. Écrire l’histoire des expériences enfantines de l’exil suppose de s’intéresser à la manière dont les enfants réfugiés eux-même ont pu écrire sur leurs propres expériences. Or, si la recherche de tels textes, contemporains des faits, représente manifestement un défi, leur découverte nous confronte à des problèmes méthodologiques non moins aigus. Nous tentons ici d’en présenter et d’en aborder quelques-uns, à travers l’étude de quinze cahiers biographiques écrits vers 1940-1941 par des enfants réfugiés espagnols qui vivaient à La Rouvière, en France, dans une colonié créée et gérée par les Quakers de l’American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Ces cahiers forment une série homogène, standardisée, aux pages de couverture et de titre identiques, et à la structure narrative similaire. Ils ont très certainement été rédigés au même moment, dans le cadre du travail scolaire à la colonie. Tout autant que les expériences, les opinions et les sentiments de ces enfants, il nous révèlent donc les exigences adultes qui guidèrent et s’imposèrent aux écritures enfantines. Dans cet article, nous proposons de lire ces textes comme des palimpsestes, c’est-à-dire comme le résultat final d’une succession de couches d’écritures posées les unes sur les autres. Chaque couche constitue une narration distincte autour des enfants réfugiés : la mise en récit de l’aide humanitaire, la fable Quaker de l’aide à l’enfance et, en dernière instance, les écritures des expériences enfantines. Escribir la historia de las experiencias de los niños en el exilio conlleva explorar las formas en las que los propios niños han escrito sobre sus experiencias. Si ya es de por sí difícil encontrar textos contemporáneos escritos por niños refugiados, una vez localizados, estos plantean una seria de problemas metodológicos. Este artículo tiene como objectivo tratar algunas de estas cuestiones a través del análisis de quince cuadernos autobiográficos escritos en torno a 1940-1941 por niños refugiados españoles durante su estancia en La Rouviere, una colonia a cargo del American Quakers Friends Service Committee (ASFC) en Francia. Los cuadernos forman parte de una serie homogénea y estandarizada, con cubiertas, títulos y páginas parecidas, y estructurados de forma similar. Es casi seguro que fueron escritos en la misma éepoca y que formaron parte del trabajo escolar de los niños durante su estancia en la colonia. Al mismo tiempo que reflejan las experiencias, opiniones y sentimientos de los niños,  los cuadernos dejan entrever como los requeriemientos de los adultos se yuxtaponen a los escritos infantiles. El artículo propone como método de aproximación a este material infantil tan fuertemente formateado el palimpsesto, lo que nos haría interpretar los escritos como el resultado final de varias capas narrativas yuxtapuestas. Cada capa constituiría una narrativa diferente sobre los niños refugiados: en primer lugar, el discurso de la ayuda humanitaria; en segundo lugar, la historia cuáquera de socorro infantil y, finalmente, las narrativas de las experiencias de los niños.

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