Simone Weil (1909–1943)
Writer, philosopher and activist. Born in Paris, she grew up in a secular Jewish family, and became drawn to philosophy from an early age. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure, she became a teacher, but also began to be drawn to political activism, particularly around workers’ rights. As a young woman she was strongly influenced by Marxism and anarchism, and was also an ardent pacifist, though later she grew more critical of Marxism. In 1934, she took a year’s leave from her teaching job so that she could work in a Renault factory on the production line; she felt this was the only way of overcoming her bourgeois background and being able to empathise fully with workers. Although she’d always kept a journal, she also began to write essays on labour issues and reflections on war for anarchist journals and political publications, but her work was not known beyond circles of radical politics. In the late 1930s she began to experience intense religious revelations, and her focus began to shift away from activism and more towards spirituality. In 1942 she left occupied France with her family, first for the United States, but then moving to Britain, where she hoped to work for the French government-in-exile, and volunteer for Resistance activities back in France. However, her health began to deteriorate badly in 1943, just as she was writing her book, The Need for Roots, and her extraordinary essay La personalité humaine, le juste et l’injuste, and she died in the Grosvenor Hall sanatorium in Ashford, Kent in August 1943. The majority of Weil’s work, selected from her journals and notebooks, was published posthumously, Gravity and Grace in 1947, The Need for Roots (1949) and Waiting on God (1950), with her reputation growing greatly in the decades that followed, Camus calling her ‘the only great spirit of our time’. Her writing defies easy classification, but, at its best, has a laser-like clarity and power – ‘La croyance à l’existence d’autres êtres humains comme tels est amour’ (The belief in the existence of other human beings – such a thing is love) or ‘L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité’ (Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity).
Appreciation and Gratitude
The word ‘Acknowledgements’, which traditionally appears at the end of publications, has always seemed to me a very limited word to use as a way of thanking the many people behind the creation and production of any book. And in the case of a sequence of books, which has taken over two decades to come into the world, people certainly need to be thanked fully rather than simply acknowledged. And because I believe that the dead are always with us, I think that they should be thanked as well – so I make no distinction in this appreciation as to whether people are physically alive or alive in spirit.
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First of all my deepest thanks to my family and friends, who have given me so much love and support over the many years this work has taken Thank you to Corinne, Mark, Meg and family, Adam and family, and my nieces and nephews, Anna, Ben, Isabelle and Jacob. And thank you so much to my long-suffering friends, who have endured the numerous ups and downs of this epic journey with humour, conviviality and large quantities of alcohol – James, Em, John, Ann, Mark, Colette, Luca, Emma, Graham, Nicki, Diane, Gareth, Martin, Nick, Helen, Pete, Claire, Denis, Sue, David, Alan, Donald and Peter. I feel very lucky to have you all in my life. And in Hackney, thank you to the families of foxes – several generations now – who have shared the wildness of my garden, and are the real spirit of this place.
Much gratitude and appreciation to all at Platform – the genesis of I You We Them were those exhilarating years from 1996 onwards, when we were all working so closely together on researching the culture and power of transnational corporations, particularly the oil industry, and coming up with the most innovative ways of highlighting the corporate psychology, and consequent environmental devastation and human rights abuses caused. The ideas and energy that emerged from that little workspace by the Thames at 7 Horsleydown Lane – the performances, guided walks, commuter newspapers, meetings, boat discussions, memorials, books, university courses – were years ahead of their time. Thank you to James Marriott, Greg Muttitt, Jane Trowell, John Jordan, Emma McFarland, Diane Wittner, Emma Sangster, Anna Wright, Rosey Hurst, Nick Robins and Wallace Heim for sharing those times and giving so much. And also special appreciation to Andy Rowell and Cindy Baxter, who helped start our ten-year voyage on the 90% CRUDE project.
The Remember Saro-Wiwa campaign, for all its challenges, was the most important work we ever did. Thank you to all at Platform and Maria Saro-Wiwa, Ken Wiwa, David A. Bailey, Anita & Gordon Roddick, Sokari Douglas Camp, Lorne Stockman, Ben Amunwa, Nick McCarthy, Eno Osua, Lazarus Tamana, Terry Ndee, Diana Morant, Kadija Sesay, Simon Murray, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Beth Hamer, Tim Sowula, Jo Hurst-Croft, Michelle Akande, Lola Young, John Sauven, Eric Soul, Nneka, Gus Casely-Hayford, Yinka Shonibare, Ruth Borthwick, Wole Soyinka, Alice Oswald, Lemn Sissay, Helon Habila, Buchi Emecheta, Linton Kwesi Johnson, William Boyd and Angela Davis for helping to make the Living Memorial, and all the associated work and publications, an inspiring reality.
The killing us softly events, which took place at Platform between December 1999 and March 2003, were critical in developing many of the initial themes and ideas for the books that have followed. Warmest appreciation to James, Jane and Emma (Platform) and Kate O’ Connor and Ute Spittler (for the music and production of these events) and to all seventy-two individuals who came to these performances, and contributed their thoughts afterwards (Heike Roms, Nick Stewart, Jane Rendell, Malcolm Miles, Jock Encombe, Claire Gordon, Derek Wax, Sara Boas, Tim Nunn, Bill Hewitt, Patrick Field, Carla Drahorad, Tim Fairs and Sue Palmer – my gratitude for your strong engagement with the work and your additional ideas and support). My deep appreciation to Pete Harrison, not only for friendship and support on this project, but also for all the work at the Wiener Library and British Library in 2005, helping with the research on IG Farben at Buna-Monowitz and also the Austrian lawyer, (an archetypal desk killer), who eventually became secretary-general of the United Nations (and who we’ll meet in Book Three) …
Nothing in the arts is possible without proper funding, so here my strong appreciation goes to: the Lannan Foundation (in particular Patrick Lannan and Jaune Evans) for supporting vital research work, two trips to Poland and Bosnia, and my early writing time; the Ashden Trust (who supported the original killing us softly events); Arts Council England, the Network for Social Change (in particular Anne Robbins and Mark Brown), the Authors’ Foundation, Society of Authors and the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust – all for supporting my writing time. And also huge gratitude to those who’ve helped financially on an individual level in the final stages of editing, when my publishing advances had dwindled to almost nothing. And lastly on funding, a special word of appreciation to Lloyds Bank – who mis-sold me so many loans over the years that the compensation they eventually had to pay supported another year of my writing time!
The places where I’ve written have played such an important role in the work that has emerged, so many thanks to all those who have lent me houses, cottages and cabins to write in: Rosie Thompson for the fisherman’s cabin at Shingle Street – where the odyssey began all those years ago overlooking the ‘German Ocean’; Holly Aylett and Peter Chappell, for use of the house in Pembrokeshire – which contributed greatly to the flow of creativity between 2011 and 2013; (also to Ali and Martin, Sean and Wendy for good times there, and Marion for the Boat House); Kate Wells and the Hughes family for use of Carreg y Ro Bach in 2013 and 2014 – a wonderful and nostalgic return to Traeth Bach after so many years away. Also my thanks to Teresa Elwes (for Aldeburgh), Andrew Kotting (for St. Leonards) and Jay Griffiths (for enabling me to use that magical log cabin in the Welsh beech woods).