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Politics in the banlieues… encore

Published on May 31, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Politics, Riots

I couldn’t believe my ears when I head a sociologist saying on a seminar a while ago that the car burning and riot delinquency going on regularly in this country is apolitical. According to him, these riots had neither symbols nor slogans. I can agree that “fuck Sarko” isn’t the most creative slogan you can come up with, but it’s still sort of a slogan. And if the CRS riot police is not a symbol of a certain securitarian policy, well, then, what is? The same goes for the republican schools that were set fire to in the autumn. (I shall agree that it’s not that easy to find the symbolic content in the act of burning your neighbour’s car).
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And here we go again, in Montfermeil and neighbouring Clichy-sous-Bois. What exactly led to the riots this time is contested. The rightwing major claims it’s revenge against him testifying against a violent delinquent. On the other hand, many local youth and leftwing politicians put it down to a brutal police action (teargas and police custody) against a mother of a 14-year-old supposed thief. “She was even barefoot…,” as a local young man explained.

Montfermeil and it’s major made it to the headlines about a month ago, when he tried to put into action a legislation forbidding all 15-18 year olds to be together more than three in public spaces, in order to fight gang delinquency… The judiciary system stopped the major’s attempt, but it clearly says something about the political climate in this area.

Today the news on France 3 has documented the massive police presence at the moment in Montfermeil. There were helicopters lightening up the streets and the towerblocks, and there were loads and loads of CRS police. And Sarkozy has been there, as always surrounded by loads of tv cameras, which, as always, disseminates all over France how he gets into heated debates with the locals… (The last I heard is that the hottest socialist presidential candidate has jumped on the securitarian bandwagon, as well…).

To add to the complexity of the case: the severely burnt, but only surviving victim from the (presumed) police chase to the power transformer in Clichy-sous-Bois October last year, Muhittin Altun, was arrested during the riots yesterday, for having – according to the police – thrown a stone at the CRS. His lawyer denies this accusation and says the police only want to discredit the 18-year old, as it is today the reconstruction of the possible police chase in Clichy-sous-Bois should take place. Television news reminded us that they only a few weeks ago broadcasted an interview with Muhittin, where he once again expressed how utterly fed up he was with the constant stop-and-search and identity papers routine carried out by the police in the area.

Finally, I should add that most sociologists I’ve listened to do not depoliticise what’s happening in the banlieues in this way. The opposite is rather the case. (Only a few days ago Loïc Wacquant went (something like); the riots last autumn was in fact a bonne nouvelle for the French society, as it was a sign of refusal of a normalisation of insecurity…). Sociologists, and even some politicians (e.g. an interview I recently heard from the 80s with Mitterand talking about discrimination and all that…) have for 25 years had a very clear vision of what’s going on. However, it’s not this particular understanding of events that gains ground here, rather the opposite, it seems to me. There seems to be a real political battle going on, but unfortunately, I’m afraid that it’s not the scientifically informed interpretation that’s winning. Enough for now, the whole thing makes me a bit fed up…

“Elle va se faire draguer”

Published on May 27, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Distinctions, Fieldwork, Places, Spaces

Every blog post I’ve tried to write on gender strands for some reason or another before they reach the web. The following text was meant to be a simple and silly account of a quick bike trip around Belleville. However, when I let it rest for a moment in order to start sorting out the huge heap of paper – flyers, magazines, newspapers, brochures… -that was threatening to cover more and more of the surface space in my little office-cum-livingroom-cum-kitchen, I came a cross an old article about a café that I had just passed on my trip. This café reached the national media right after the Mohammad caricature affaire because they put up an exhibition with blasphemous caricatures right in the heart of Belleville. Well, the article in itself wasn’t enough to put me off track. It was rather it’s point of view, or framing, that threatened to put my experiences on my little trip in a new light. I started worrying that my silly little text had to become a bit more complicated.
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In one of my French classes in the autumn, my teacher made my research into a little subject of discussion. According to her, a fieldwork in Belleville would be difficult for me, as the local boys would “try to chat me up” (elle va se faire draguer). I’ve been reminded of her words recently, as the season of la drague obviously is well on its way.

The way men and women communicate or not communicate in public spaces in this city is a part of French society I can’t really get my grips on. People exchange glances, or look casually at each other or around themselves, far less in the street here than I’m used to. I think men as well as women feel that that they should keep their eyes to themselves – unless they have certain intentions, that is – but it seems obvious to me that men’s gaze is far freer than women’s.

When I cycled through Belleville the other day, I wasn’t more than giving a young boy a little resigned smile after he – who probably was almost half my age – had leaned out in the street in front of me and called me ma chérie, before he found it opportune to announced to the whole street that one est chaude!. In my hometown Oslo, this – which in my opinion can be categorised as light verbal sexual harassment – has happened to me only a couple of times. At one occasion, when I told the kids to have some respect, they quickly excused themselves. Here, I avoid all further exchanges. I don’t know if that is the best way, but as I said, I don’t understand this interaction. And at occasions when I have answered back, it usually comes to some kind of scene where the man for some reason feels obliged to display a lot of hurt feelings and start an argument.

In another French class we discussed these strange Latin gender relations in public spaces, and una bella Italiana said she appreciated attention in the street. I don’t know if the attention the two of us get is exactly the same, but I didn’t get much support in my class – which for the day consisted of various Latins – for the view that this is limiting women’s freedom.

The kid who called me chaude (“hot”) was probably of North-African origin (either Muslim or Jew, I don’t know – it was right in the Jewish Tunisian part of Belleville). A Danish woman (mid twenties) I discussed this with, said she mostly got attention from men of North-African origin. However, I must say that I’ve experienced approaches by French men of all colours and ages – from old men coming close and almost whispering bonjour (as if I was looking like a prostitute?! – a less “prostitute-like” desscode than mine is hard to find), to such kids – and it happens all over the city. My worst experience took place when I was 17, when two men literally tried to abduct me at Les Halles (they were white French, a point I remember because the police asked specifically about their skin colour).

And it was around here my post stranded some weeks ago. From this point I can wrap up with some more comments on French gender relations in public spaces, – or I can change the framing towards the question of class relations in Belleville, and ask, as they did on posters in a similar quarter in Marseille; à qui appartient la rue? (“to whom belongs the street?”)

I can’t tell how the guy’s sexualising insult should be interpreted. Certainly, it was not a good point of departure for really trying to me draguer. I guess he was probably acting cool in front of his mates. (But why is that a way to act cool, one can ask?) However, the article I found in Le Nouvel Observateur looked at the controversy around public spaces in Belleville in a class perspective.

There is a process of gentrification going on in Belleville and Ménilmontant, where the bourgeois-bohemians are moving into this working-class and cosmopolitan area. And just by Parc de Belleville, a new chic café had decided to make their own little caricature affaire, where they put up religious caricatures on their bright red walls, clearly visible for the passers-byes. (Part of) the local Muslim youth didn’t think that was such a good idea. And then there were discussions (à la français – i.e. loud arguments) and a little destruction, and some national media coverage.

This was certainly a negotiation of space going on, which I, when I read the article, felt was reverberating down to my own recent bike trip. Coincidentally, perhaps, I never experienced any similar incidents on my many trips around Belleville last autumn. Initially, I took all this male expressiveness to be signs of spring, (which seems to affect the locals stronger than elsewhere :D ), but as one of the opening lines in the article went: “the intellos come there with their bikes, while the roughs charge with their Vespas…” I suddenly felt part of a bigger scheme.

As I’ve decided to get this first text on gender relations out on the web now, I’ll not linger any further…

From La Sorbonne to Université de Saint-Denis

Published on May 20, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Places, Spaces

For those who read French, I can recommend Le Bondy Blog. A couple of journalists from the Swiss magazine L’Hebdo settled in the banlieue Bondy during the November revolts, and stayed there for more than 4 months. Before they left, 8 local youth got training in journalism and took over the blog after the professionals. Every post they write – be it miniskirts or soldiers from the colonies helping out France during the war – initiates a lively debate. I had just read Hanane Kaddour’s very instructive post on how geography determines which university you can apply for when I had the opportunity to have a closer look at 4 different university locales in the Paris area in just a few days.
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I didn’t know about this sectorisation of the universities before I read this post, and I have to say that that knowledge gave an extra edge to my trip from La Sorbonne to Université de Saint-Denis. I suspect the amphitheatre I visited at Sorbonne must have been one of the more prestigious ones, because prestigious it was indeed. I don’t think the Royal Palace in Oslo have a hall that could match this amphitheatre. Along the walls the French greatnesses were lined up; Molière, Descartes, Racine… In the ceiling, there was a painting of a man reading a huge book amidst antiquity ruins, and over his head the Muses, presumably, and some angels were playing. There were red carpets on the floor and the desks were made of dark, visibly old and worn, wood.

I would never dream of mocking such a presence of history. Far from it. One of the few, or probably only, collective identities I’ve ever felt any affiliation with is that I’m almost a little bit proud of having been a pupil at Norway’s oldest school. We were impregnated with such an identity from the moment we started there. It’s almost a thousand years old and it’s connected to a cathedral (too grand for it’s city ☺ ). On the walls of the cathedral, a pupil three-four hundred years ago has made a tag (in Latin of course) about a gay teacher, which our (gay) teacher showed us. (Here I’ll not fall into the trap of more nostalgia).

The day after we were at Sorbonne the seminar I attended moved to the old Faculté de Médecin, which is in another grandiose building in the Latin Quarter. High ceilings, broad marble stairs, busts, statues, a memorial for medicine students and teachers lost in the First World War, tapestries and Greek myths… It was all very nice. And then I cycled home and took the metro to its final destination, in Saint-Denis.

The people seemed very nice. There was an “Intercultural festival” going on when I was there, so in the vestibule they sold food – French and North African – and played North African music. But I was quite surprised of how dilapidated and worn out the buildings seemed. And there were security guards walking around, and a huge security post right in the entrance hall. The women’s toilet didn’t have a sign – I don’t know if that was intentional – and the walls in the booths were full of holes filled with toilet paper. And the amphitheatre was full of graffiti! I almost had to laugh because the contrast from the central Parisian etablissements I had just left was so great. I didn’t take any photos because that would feel, I don’t know, strange… but I hope to go back, as I said, there seemed to be interesting things going on there. (And the Wikipendia entry on the Paris 8 university shows that it’s been a hotbed for radicalism since it was established far away from the city by de Gaulle after 1968 :D – they even say “tu” to eachother…)

The fourth and last teaching establishment I’ve been to the last week was not a university like Sorbonne and Saint-Denis, but a Grande Ecole, which is supposed to be more elitist (but I don’t know the ranging of La Sorbonne (Pantheon) within this). It was the EHESS – Ecole de hautes études en science sociale – which I’ve mentioned here before. This building is 1950-60s style and in the centre of Paris, but not in the Latin Quarter. Funnily, EHESS was full of graffiti as well. It was occupied long time ago during the protests against the CPE and there were photos available on the internet showing the vandalism, or what to call it, right after the squatters were thrown out. But that is months ago, and the harsh juridical repression in various CPE law cases have already been going on for a long time. But for some reason they haven’t yet removed the scribble, not even what’s written with chalk. I wonder why.

I understand Bondy Blog’s Hanane Kaddour’s concern about being geographically limited to Saint-Denis or some other banlieue university. Especially since which university, or rather Grande Ecole, you go to, have everything to say when you try to get a job afterwards. But at the same time I like the other France as well (and Saint-Denis’ Philosophy department is founded by Michel Foucault!). So why can’t the two of them – the old and historical and the new and vibrant – just come a little closer together?

I’ve left the digression to the end this time: When I was checking a word on Britannica.com I learnt that it’s Malcolm X’ birthday today (1925-1965). His autobiography (written by Alex Haley) is a very, very good book about identity politics, as well as history, jazz and other things, and I can strongly recommend it. When I was writing now, one particular scene from the book, as well as the film (by Spike Lee) came to mind. Malcolm was the best pupil in class, and for a while neither he nor the others seemed to take much notice that he was the only black boy there. However, the teacher did. So, one day he asked his brightest and perhaps favourite pupil what he wanted to do when he grew up, and the young boy answered “lawyer”. But the teacher thought, perhaps rightly, that that could never happen in a segregated America, so he suggested that Malcolm opted for carpentry instead. A suggestion that, as far as I remember, terminated Malcolm’s formal schooling.

For those who read French, I can recommend Le Bondy Blog. A couple of journalists from the Swiss magazine L’Hebdo settled in the banlieue Bondy during the November revolts, and stayed there for more than 4 months. Before they left,…

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Published on May 10, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Anthropological notes, Cicilie among the Parisians

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French versus Germanic national identity

Published on May 9, 2006 by cicilie Posted in Cicilie among the Parisians, Philosophies of integration

I don’t have the habit of commenting news here, but an article in Der Spiegel (English version, link by Erkan’s fielddiary) caught my attention. First I didn’t really understand what it was about; natality rate in Germany going down…? Yes, that was obviously the case, but I was soon to discover that this was not the main challenge presented in the article. Further down I read that: “German pre-schools will soon be filling up with children who are neither German nor Christian.” Got to change your naturalisation procedures then, I thought.

But as I read on, I understood that changing the way German nationality is obtained wouldn’t help: “Germans are not only dying out, but they’re slowly being replaced by non-Germans.” And so on. (“Will the German national anthem one day be sung in Turkish?”).

I should in fact have got the clue from the title “On becoming Un-German”. And curiously, I should also have got the clue from a news reportage I’d watched just a few minutes before. It was about the children born to French women and German soldiers during World War 2. The reporter said that the ideology of Nazism didn’t encourage the Germans to have relations with the French women, who contrary to the Danes and Norwegians, were seen as abâtardi (“degenerated”, from “bastard”).

A similar discourse on “Norwegians” slowly being replaced by “non-Norwegains” is present in Norway as well. One can say many things on the republican notion of French identity, but at least it’s not overtly racialised. Thus, I doubt that a text like the one in Der Spiegel could have been written in a major French newspaper.