He passed away four years ago this month — within a day of Derek Parfit — but I think John Berger’s writing and BBC documentaries could resonate with many in EA who might not have had a chance to come across Berger. Below are a few links in case others might find his work on migrant workers, gender inequality, and animal welfare thought-provoking.
1. Segment of his Ways of Seeing BBC program focused on inequality (starting at 22:00).
...Hence one of the most striking aphorisms in “Brief as Photos”: “What we mourn for the dead is the loss of their hopes.”
Hope, Berger proposed, is what we counterpoise to the essential revelation of history—that we’ll decline, that we’ll die. “To decide to engage oneself in History requires, even when the decision is a desperate one, hope,” he writes in “Bento’s Sketchbook,” one of his last volumes. Hope names a commitment to change the world, against the fact of finitude. It was hope, I think, that allowed Berger to write so beautifully about death without eliding the tragedy of it...
Berger always returned to the possibility of proximity, seeking to cross the distances that divide us. Throughout his work, every way of seeing starts with a look, and every look promises to become a touch—fumbling hands reaching across the void. The thought of death brings us back to the body, calling on us to act, with and for one another.
The year 1972 was Mr. Berger’s most prolific, with “Ways of Seeing” and the publication of his most critically acclaimed novel, “G.,” …which was awarded the Booker Prize. (Characteristically, Mr. Berger criticized the company that sponsored the prize, saying that it exploited Caribbean workers, and announced that he would split his winnings with the Black Panthers.)
In 1974, when his critical influence was probably at its height in Britain, he left London for Paris and then Geneva. He later decided to leave cities altogether, moving to a remote peasant community, Quincy, in the French Alps, where he lived with his wife, Beverly Bancroft, who died in 2013, and their son, Yves. (Besides his son, he is survived by another son, Jacob, and a daughter, Katya, from a previous marriage.)
In the Alps, where he learned to raise cattle, he wrote a trilogy of unconventional books called “Into Their Labors” — comminglings of short story, poetry and essay — examining the migration of peasants away from their traditions and into cities.
He also successfully dabbled in screenwriting, collaborating with the director Alain Tanner on three films, including the critically praised “Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000” (1976) about a group of radical idealists trying to stay true to their principles.
He passed away four years ago this month — within a day of Derek Parfit — but I think John Berger’s writing and BBC documentaries could resonate with many in EA who might not have had a chance to come across Berger. Below are a few links in case others might find his work on migrant workers, gender inequality, and animal welfare thought-provoking.
1. Segment of his Ways of Seeing BBC program focused on inequality (starting at 22:00).
2. Excerpt from his New Yorker obituary:
3. Excerpt from his New York Times obituary.