L’Ethique ou le Kilomètre 0,0
I will try to be short and start bottom up, that is when after over an hour of presentation and a few back-and-forth between the audience, the main speaker and the moderator, the screens were eventually turned off, after I did manage to convey some opinionated questioning and I carried on sharing with our host the flowing of my wondering and wandering, …
We are the 19th of october 2020. Three days ago, in France, a professor teaching history and geography in a public highschool and a remote suburb of Paris, was assassinated, murdered, in one of the state of the art barbarian technique that separates the dimensions of life, the organic, the somatic, the place of the biological life and reproduction of the human specy, from the place of the cerebral life ; the man was beheaded.
Teacher in a non-religious better said a secular school, his life was taken away because as part of his program he was opening the critical minds of the children, hoping to brooming them and grooming them to grow into active citizens of a secular democracy.
230 years ago, France innovated its First Republic by beheading the representatives of the intertwined Royal and Catholic powers.
230 years later a barbarian representative of Islam proceeded the same way, beheading, except this time, the victim that was chosen is a representative of the cult of our modernity : in french -the « laïcité », in english -the secularity.
Decentering the debating amongst engineering professionals of perspectives and materials, I whispered, …
ND has lived many lives.
A medieval history professor of universities named Jacques Le Goff, who died in 2014, has documented and recounted in his book Héros et Merveilles du Moyen-Âge the variety of changes that ND went through since the start in 1163 of its construction -which spanned over almost 200 years to end in 1345, until now.
We can learn for instance that it was sketching the first ring of Paris, built on the island of La Cité, surrounded by shorter and taller trade and craftmen houses that were standing just a few bodies away from its walls, all of which were painted in rather more than less vivid colors,
If « All roads lead to Roma », ND is kilometr 0,0 ; all roads that lead to the shores and the borders of France have for starting mileage ND.
The Rue Saint-Jacques that paves the footsteps of pilgrims to the spanish town of Compostelle for 1432km kick off on the parvis of the cathedral.
France is righteously accused of being a centralised political organisation and administration, the epicentrum of its centralisation is its Km 0,0, that is ND, the highest symbol of the Catholic faith and cult,
The ethic issue that some may want to put at the heart of the reconstruction of ND, whenever refering and using words, ideas, such as monument, cultural monument, architecture competition, be it domestic or international, … can be shrinked to the following :
Re-building (à l’identique) the main symbol of the catholic church in France, or re-building (and convert) a monument and totem of the international consumerism culture,
Bear in mind that ND is not a monument, it is a church, a cathedral, hence, it doesnt belong to cult-ure, it belongs to cult,
As a jew i could not care less about the fate of ND. I have never been a fan and whenever crossing with any church of any country i’d prefer to change sidewalk vs. paying it a visit.
However, reckoning with the actualisation of the power plays between the two main cults encompassing most of the planet earth populations, Islam and Catholicism, the inner war between a more and a less radical form of the muslims’ faith, the reconversion in Istanbul of the Sainte-Sophie basilicum …
I am, personally, in favor of the reconstruction as a symbol of the catholic faith.
It is 2000 years of history.
It shouldnt be rebuilt as a monument of the new-age barbarian cult of capitalism and consumerism.