Riots or revolts? The legacy of the 2005 uprising in French banlieue narratives

Abstract

The 2005 banlieue uprisings were the most important acts of contestation in France since May 1968, yet unlike the earlier student protests, they were largely interpreted as aimless violence rather than political dissent. While the authors of the upheavals remained silent, unable or unwilling to explain their motivations, social scientists and other commentators advanced the most divergent interpretations and made various claims on their behalf. This paper proposes to confront these readings with the analysis of three novels published in the wake of the 2005 riots by Mabrouck Rachedi, Wilfried N’Sondé and Rachid Santaki. Comparing these banlieue narratives with a range of scholarly readings proposed by sociologists will help us construct an alternative interpretative framework in which riots appear to be collective demands for justice, equality and social mobility. The conclusion will assess whether the riots are likely to leave a legacy comparable with May 1968.

Résumé

Bien que les émeutes de 2005 fussent les actes de contestation les plus importants en France depuis mai 1968, contrairement à la révolte estudiantine, elles ont généralement été interprétées comme de la violence gratuite plutôt que des protestations politiques. Alors que les auteurs des agitations sont restés silencieux, soit par refus, soit par incapacité d’expliquer leurs motivations, des chercheurs en sciences sociales et d’autres commentateurs ont forgé diverses interprétations et articulé des demandes à leur place. Cet article propose de confronter ces lectures avec l’analyse de trois romans publiés à la suite des émeutes de 2005 par Mabrouck Rachedi, Wilfried N’Sondé et Rachid Santaki. Comparer ces récits de banlieue à des grilles de lecture sociologiques nous permettra de construire un cadre interprétatif alternatif dans lequel les émeutes apparaissent comme des demandes collectives de justice, d’égalité et de mobilité sociale continuellement ignorées par l’élite politique. La conclusion cherchera à évaluer si les émeutes de 2005 réussiront à laisser un héritage comparable à celui de mai 1968.

Notes

1. The world became aware of police repression in the French banlieues from Mathieu Kassovitz’s internationally recognised film La Haine, which certainly remains the most influential example of French banlieue cinema until today. The escalating violence is underscored by the song ‘Burnin’ and Lootin’, by Bob Marley, playing in the film’s memorable first scene, which captures the confrontation between police forces equipped with guns, shields and helmets, and civilians solely armed with stones.

2. CPE protests have also been compared to.

3. The French word bavure is a euphemism generally used to downplay the police’s responsibility for the accidental deaths of banlieue residents that occur either in custody or fleeing from law enforcement. It is generally translated into English as ‘blunder’, ‘slipup’ or ‘accident,’ but none of these terms corresponds exactly to the French meaning because their playfulness is ill-suited to the gravity of the phenomenon they describe.

4. The exclusive use of police information in certain biased media representations of the French banlieue has been demonstrated by Berthaut (2013), while Sedel (2009) has shown the rise of commercial rather than political logic of written media accounts from the banlieues, resulting in their transfer from the ‘society’ section of newspapers to crime and popular entertainment.

5. ‘Régler leur compte aux bougnoules et aux négros’ (FB: 98).

6. The term was first coined by Hargreaves (1991) and Michel Laronde (1993), but this articulation relies on Carrie Tarr’s (2005) definition, borrowed from film studies, that does well to highlight the coherence between ethnic/racial and territorial identities in artistic expressions of the French suburbs.

7. Both official and unofficial discrimination against immigrants have been demonstrated by Hargreaves (2007).