Long Sunday, Paris, and New Orleans
The more I read, the more uneasy theory makes me. Abstraction tends to obscure individuality, which tends not only to mask over the most interesting aspects of human behaviour, but also to dehumanise subjects, allowing many kinds of oppression and violence. Thus, a post-modern philosophical blog like Long Sunday tends to make me a little uneasy. However, Long Sunday regularly surprises me in a very positive way. Right now, Amie Marker has a great post on the civil disturbances outside Paris. This was, to me, the most interesting paragraph:
Is the democratic State listening? How does it respond? To discrimination and injustice, it adds insult and provocation. To social crisis it has nothing more to say than “it is necessary to establish order,” and anyone in the way is a criminal. So the State enforces a “state of emergency” which was last put in place, not in 1968, but during the Algerian war in 1955.
Two things: First, the first four sentences could have been applied equally well to the United States federal government in the beginning of September. (See my post from 5 September.) These clunking monoliths are so accustomed to being in control that they’ve no idea what to do when another sort of democracy takes the streets. They are incapable of rational engagement, and can respond only with force. [Side note: Barbara Boxer was on the radio, yesterday morning, criticising the French government for not taking stronger police action. She never drew a parallel to the US attempts to restore "order" in New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina.]
Second, it is tempting to see a parallel between the harsh reaction to Muslim French and Muslim immigrants today and that to their colonial grandparents. The obvious racism and the neat half century marker are intellectually satisfying. However, I think there’s something else at work: The rioters, so-called, may be dealt with harshly because they are of no account in French society — that much is true. But they must be dealt with harshly in order to convince those of some account that something is being done. In 1968, the French state was under a serious attack from an enormous, spontaneous alliance. A harsh reaction was impossible, for it would admit the fragility and impermanence of the state before a whimsical foe that fought as much through rhyme and impudence as through bricks and fists.
It’s not just the social place of the dissidents that matters, but the nature and the threat of the dissent. Authority can only afford to be serious when it knows it’s going to win.
Aw, look… Do you see what I just did? I ended with theory. Damn it…
15 November 2005 at 17:06
Immigate to France. Set up household. Be married to another immigant. Have kids born in France. They grow up, marry other descendants of immigrants. In turn, their kids grow up, have kids with other immigrants, kids of immigrants or grandchildren of immigrants … and THOSE kids (born in France of people born in France who were born of others born in France) are not French citizens.
Generations removed from the country they emigrated from; generations born and living in the country … but no rights of citizenship. Wonder why they feel alienated … wonder why they ACT alienated which is the real point. “Feel alienated all you want. We won’t stop you. It is when you start fire-bombing property that we have to bring in the police, then the army, then the curfews, then the declarations of martial law for 3 months TO STOP YOU acting alienated … you non-citizens.”