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NWSA Journal 13.2 (2001) ix-xii



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Introduction: Gleanings


Agnès Varda's new film, The Gleaners and I, examines the community of scavengers, those who take up what the rest of the world throws away or leaves behind. Historically, the law (both secular and religious) gave rights to gleaners: after the harvest, others were allowed into the fields--the poor, the hungry, widows, the unemployed. Sir William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford, 1765-1769) notes that "The poor are allowed to enter and glean upon another's ground after the harvest, without being guilty of trespass." Comparable laws in France (read aloud by robed judges in Varda's film) and other parts of Europe enunciate the same principle. Likewise, religious (Hebraic) law gave rights to gleaners (including outcasts and even foreigners), and we remember that Ruth gleaned in the fields of Boaz, her mother-in-law Naomi's kinsman. As next-of-kin to Ruth's dead father-in-law Elimelech, Boaz exercised his right to marry Ruth to maintain the patriarchal lineage. We observe, however, that the narrator emphasizes Ruth's status as a foreigner, a Moabite. Since Ruth is noted as the great-grandmother of King David, the fact that she is not an Israelite becomes more important than the Levirate law of inheritance (Deut. 25:5) or the rights of gleaners. 1

Traditionally, gleaners worked communally; Varda was inspired by the famous nineteenth-century painting by Jean François Millet, The Gleaners (1857), which shows a group of women gathering grain left behind by the reapers. Varda narrates the contemporary situation in industrialized countries, where gleaning is now more individualistic and the agricultural establishment does not facilitate those who need the food. She visits huge potato fields, where potatoes that are too large or too small or "shaped like a heart" are rejected and thrown out by the truckload. The potatoes rot quickly in the light and air and only some people--those from soup kitchens and shelters, from gypsy and homeless communities--learn soon enough of the dump. Alerted by Varda, they arrive with their bags and boxes to retrieve some of the throwaway wealth. At the Paris produce market, Varda interviews gleaners and scavengers who find celery, parsley, tomatoes, apples, and even meat thrown out because it is slightly bruised, imperfect, or out-of-date. As the market winds down in late morning, needy people gather to rummage through the dumpsters and cartons, gleaning food to be cooked and used immediately. On "large trash day" (Sperrmülltag in Germany) in many European and American cities, scavengers and gleaners remove the copper tubing from broken and abandoned television sets, rescue old refrigerators to make them into art objects and cabinets, furnish houses with what others throw out. Many people keep a map of areas and dates where they find trash to pick through. An inveterate gleaner herself, Varda finds a clock without hands and likes its symbolic timelessness as she looks at the aging spots on her own hands. [End Page ix]

This issue of the NWSA Journal is a miscellany, a gathering collected bit by bit, gleanings and fragments, like the late grape pickings in Germany, the Beerenauslese (select overripe grapes) or even the Trockenbeerenauslese (dry overripe select grapes) that make the sweetest wine. It is like the best gleanings--exceptional, sweet, exciting, heart-tugging. The unemployed biologist in Varda's film finds and eats parsley at the market because of its nutritious vitamin C content, and then, in the evenings, teaches French African immigrants how to read. The gift he accepts from the market then becomes a gift he gives to the illiterate newcomers. So we accept the gleanings of our various authors, edit and arrange, prepare and shape, and bring to our readers.

Marianetta Porter's "Memory and Oblivion" (cover and article) uses fragments of the material culture of African American slave history to re-construct something of the people's lives of the African Diaspora. She offers us the leavings and pickings of labor and memory--the ironing board, the funerary vessels, the washboard, the slave muzzle...

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