On the occasion of the anniversary of the Sainte-Soline demonstration,
in March 2023, a book was released composed by the Loriot collective,made up of sociologists, and whose challenge is to counter the media
stories that have been produced on this demonstration. This book is made
up of testimonies, based on the model of The Misery of the World,
directed by Bourdieu, and it is interspersed with analytical texts. We
must take the work for what it is: a live testimony from participants
and reflections on what happened at that time. Some interesting elements
emerge, but, without the necessary hindsight, it is difficult to know
what is anecdote or interpretation bias. That being said, we would like
to return to certain points raised in the book.
Youth in Sainte-Soline
A concern of the collection is perhaps the bias of focusing on young
people in Sainte-Soline, which somewhat blurs the realities of the
movement. In itself, it is not a problem to work on this specific group
of people who demonstrated in Sainte-Soline, but it necessarily raises
questions when we see the age of the people who invest themselves in the
struggle all year round. against the basins. We will not return to the
very awkward parallel with Being 20 years old in the Aurès, and
therefore with the Algerian war[1].
Some analytical texts proposed in the collection do not seem very
informed: "From the Uprisings of the Earth to the Uprisings of
Nanterre..." by Florence Ihaddadene, for example, offers a parallel
between the fight against basins and the revolts of the suburbs based on
the youth of the participants. If those convicted for the riots
following Nahel's death are indeed for the most part very young, even
minors, this is not true of the participants in the Sainte-Soline
demonstration as a whole nor of those who took part in the "
violence"[2]. Youth is not what pushes people to throw stones at the
police nor is it the driving force behind the revolt. It would have been
more interesting to see why people react in similar ways to the State,
in different socio-political contexts.
A little aside on the construction of the fight against bedpans
The collection is not intended to be a historical synthesis of the fight
against basins. However, in one of the only testimonies that talk about
it, that of Marcelle, a member of the Uprisings of the Earth, there is a
very partisan statement that it would have been good not to give as is:
"What I found beautiful in Sainte-Soline, is that there were a plurality
of people present with varied political cultures and that all these
people managed to come together while respecting each other's choices of
modalities of action. This art of composition that the movement is
learning is constitutive of the Uprisings of the Earth" (p. 127). We
must nevertheless remember that, if the Uprisings brought certain media
coverage and momentum to the fight against basins, this "art of
composition" was present before. In reality, this diversity of tactics
and the integration of large sections of the population to support
various types of actions are rather the result of a struggle well
established in a territory (as was the case in Notre-Dame- Lands).
The question of care and feminism
The question of care came up a lot after Sainte-Soline: it is present in
the book, in the questions following the number of injured and
traumatized people. There is no doubt that many people experienced this
manifestation very badly, whether due to injuries, the situation,
stress, powerlessness to act... But the presence of the notion of care
raises questions . Why use this anglicism to talk about care in the
fight or, more generally in society, the attention paid to others?
The militant practices of canteens, doctors, and solidarity have been
part of the activist repertoire for a long time. Conversely, the
introduction of care is rather recent[3], and some will note that the
valorization of care goes hand in hand with a reduction in public
services and the means allocated to care, social services, etc. So:
promote free or very poorly paid work, the vast majority produced by
women. However, care is carried out in certain feminist circles, who see
it as an ethical relationship with the world based on attention to
others and to living things. In Being 20 Years Old in Sainte-Soline,
only the women interviewed seem to be concerned about care, the fact
that their partner/companion is not injured, their fear of going "into
confrontation", etc. The men interviewed do not mention it. The
stereotypes about social roles are so well replayed that we hope that
there is an interpretation bias due to the profiles interviewed[4]and
the expectations of investigators. Indeed, there is no testimony of
women "throwing stones", even if they were present. And there are no
testimonies of men having been traumatized, even if there are many of them.
To the point also that we can wonder if this ethics of care does not
come to essentialize women as potential victims. We leave the book, but
we stay in Sainte-Soline where, during the demonstration last fall, a
brigade against sexist and sexual violence had been set up and was in
charge of monitoring the site, in particular during the party which
followed the demonstration. The author of these lines experienced a very
disturbing moment of care there: while she was rolling in the grass with
a good friend, a lady with the little light garland, designating her as
a representative against violence (sexist and sexual), came to interrupt
all this to ask if "everything was going well" and introduce herself
etc. "A very embarrassing moment, especially since I didn't seem
distressed and I was able to wonder if, deep down, all this care was not
rather hiding a sort of league of virtue...".
We can see that questions of care in the struggle have become a
necessary step and a central question in the debates, to the point of
slightly eclipsing other strategic issues regarding the continuation of
the movement. It is also regrettable that some women legitimize their
role in a struggle by replaying the old stereotypes of the nurse, the
canteen worker, etc. We can also regret that the female figures who have
emerged often overplay their frail and insecure side, which their male
counterparts obviously do not do. Léna Lazare, for example, who is very
present in the media for years very often gives the spectacle of her
discomfort and her hesitations. As if young women can only be
embarrassed to speak publicly... Whereas, to only talk about the fight
against bedpans, the spokespersons (self-appointed or appointed by the
courts) are only men , it is notable that women who speak[5]do so in a
very specific register, whether by miming slurred speech or by focusing
on paying attention to others. We obviously must not allow ourselves to
be confined to this.
Camille
Notes
[1]After the demonstration, the entire lexical field of war was used, by
the demonstrators as well as by the government. In a global context of
harsh conflicts, perhaps it would be good to reserve the term "butchery"
for what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine or North Kivu, for example...
[2]Of around 2,000 convictions for the Nanterre riots, the average age
ranges from 17 to 23, depending on the sources. If we take an average of
the age of those convicted for Sainte-Soline, excluding those who were
convicted for organizing the demonstration, we are more likely to be 32
years old.
[3]See, on Cairn, "The ethics of care, a new way of caring", by Agata
Zielinski.
[4]Rather educated women, even from the bourgeoisie.
[5]Excluding politicians and scientists.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4223
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