'Taking Risks' - Azouz Begag in UCC

The French writer, sociologist and sometimes politician, Azouz Begag was in University College Cork on Friday 8 April 2011. He was invited to Cork to launch France, Ireland and Rebellion, Proceedings of the 5th AFIS Conference, (2011), a book based on conference papers from the AFIS (Association of Franco Irish Studies) conference that was held in 2009.

In the morning, Mr Begag read excerpts from some of his work and later delivered a lecture on immigration. He said that this was his third visit to Ireland and his first to Cork. He began by saying that when he thinks of Ireland he thinks of his father, who had travelled from Algeria to France in search of work. He said that the Irish (like the Algerians) who travelled abroad to look for work went with the myth that they would return home in their luggage and that this gave them strength to travel and sustained them when outside of Ireland or Algeria.

I had read his book about his life growing up in a shanty town in Lyon and his book about being the Minister for Equal Opportunities in Dominique de Villepin's goverment. In Un Mouton dans la baignoire , Begag describes how stressful political life can be and how a rift grew between him and Nicolas Sarkozy over something that was said and misinterpreted. He has written fiction and non-fiction and he said that he was inspired to become a writer when he realised that his father couldn't sign his own name.

The power of LANGUAGE
From listening to Mr Begag speaking in Cork, I learned that he sees language as a valuable weapon in life. Immigrants can use it like a passport to help them to advance themselves in the country in which they're living. He said that verlan, the slang that many young people use in France is more of handicap to them than anything else. It acts like a barrier that locks them up and keeps them segregated from the mainstream.

I called this post Taking risks, because Mr Begag said that he likes it when people who are learning a foreign language take risks with language and try to speak the foreign language even if they are not very very good at it. It shows that they have courage and are willing to take risks, and don't mind looking foolish, as we invariably feel when we try to communicate in a language that isn't our mother tongue.

The picture shows Mr Begag reading from his book Le Gone du Chaba in the O'Rahilly Building in UCC. The book deals with his life growing up in a shanty town in the outskirts of Lyon. He describes the deprivation that he and his poor family experienced and his integration into the French society through the education system. He said that the book is still very relevant today, 24 years after it was published, because of the profound sociological lessons to be learned from it.