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BORN DEAD
(J.B. Lenoir)
by Laurence
Pierrepont & SoundCircus
Jocelyn Bonnerave, Pierre Carsalade, François Lorin,
Alexandre Pierrepont & Romain Tesler)
&
1 Time is
of the essence ; the essence is beyond time (Matthew Shipp &
Other Dimensions in Music)
1830 :
Algeria’s takeover by France.
1851 :
Introduction of the « droit du sol » (right to ground) principle (but
the foreigners can renounce to their French nationality when they come
of age)
1881-1919:
French
colonization of parts of Africa and Asia.
1881:
Introduction of the Indigenous code: exceptional jurisdiction for the
Algerian Muslims.
1914-1918:
Recruitment of the Indigenous for the trenches and war factories. First
generation of Northern African immigrants in France.
1954-1962:
Wave
of French decolonization:
-
1954-1962: Algerian war.
-
1961:
Curfew imposed on Algerian Muslims on the French territory.
-
October 17th, 1961:
Prefect
Papon orders the slaughter of hundreds of Algerians who were peacefully
demonstrating in Paris.
1945-1974:
Massive call of a foreign workforce throughout a period
of strong economical growth. Immigration is strictly perceived as work
immigration.
1960-1980:
Urban
politics of the “Grands Ensembles”: birth of the “banlieues”, relegation
of immigrant families to the outskirts of major cities.
1973:
Start
of the economic crisis.
1974:
First
decision to suspend immigration.
1977:
Beginning of the assistance to go back politics.
1980:
With
the familial regrouping, the work immigration becomes a populating
immigration.
1981:
“La
Gauche” (the left) is in power and wants to “change peoples’ lives”…
1983:
Economic politics of “rigueur” (strictness): drastic reduction of the
government’s social spending.
1983:
Riots at the Minguettes, in the banlieue of Lyon.
1983:
Demonstration of the “children of immigration” for equality (the Beurs)
1984:
strengthening of the politics of assistance to go back, beginning of the
rise of the Front National (nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic
political party).
1991:
Jacques Chirac condemns the foreigners who “earn 50 000 francs a month”
(around 8 000$), their “noise” and their “smell”.
1993:
Restriction of the right to ground use (Pasqua/Debré laws): “France does
not want to be an immigration country.” (Charles Pasqua, Secretary of
the Interior)
April 2002:
Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the Front National, runs for
the second round of the presidential election.
2003:
Strengthening of the immigration legislation under Nicolas Sarkozy,
Secretary of the Interior.
Today,
immigrants are estimated at 9.6% of the total French population.
2
There’s a riot goin’ on (Sly & The Family Stone)
On October 27th 2005, at Clichy Sous Bois (10 miles on the outskirts of
Paris), Zyed Benna (17 years old) and Bouna Traoré (15 years old) died
electrocuted inside an electrical transformer where they had found
refuge. Muhttin Altun (17 years old) was also heavily wounded in the
same circumstances. The three youths were running away from the police
and they were so scared that they chose the risk of dying to the
certainty of humiliation and violence – a certainty which regulates the
daily confrontations between these “youth from the banlieues” and the
police force.
Everything has
been indeed truly set for such a feeling of humiliation and anger to
reign within the population. A few months earlier, the Secretary of
Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy had manifested in a most vulgar way his
cleansing impulses of using a “karcher” (high-pressure water cleaner) to
blast off the “racailles” (thugs) from the banlieues. At the paroxysm of
the crisis, as many rioters were asking for his resignation (an old
French tradition…), he proudly stuck to his injurious talk and stand.
The next day, Nicolas Sarkozy (candidate to the 2007 presidential
elections) and the Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (candidate to
the 2007 presidential elections) tried to justify the police blunder for
the TV audience by talking about a robbery attempt, worsening the
feeling of injustice for the Clichy Sous Bois inhabitants: a recent
investigation showed that the three youths had nothing to do with the
robbery, and that the police were chasing them strictly for “preventive”
reasons.
As with any
police blunder, the anger of the Clichy Sous Bois youth was once again
sparked off. The same evening, cars were lit on fire, firemen thrown
rocks at. On the evening of October 30th, the crisis
heightened in intensity after a second police blunder: a tear gas
grenade was thrown by the police towards Clichy’s mosque, which was
quickly evacuated after the gas seeped in. As soon as the next day’s
evening, the number of burnt cars and vandalized public buildings
(nurseries, schools, police stations, multimedia libraries, or shops)
drastically increased, and the violence propagated throughout the entire
department (Ile-de-France), and soon the entire country. The violence’s
climax was reached on November 7th (10th night of
rioting) with over 1,400 burnt vehicles. At the same time, “citizen
vigils” were being organized by the residents of many communities to
protect some public buildings (schools, gymnasiums) and engage in
discussion with the rioters. On November 8th, the government
declared the metropolitan territory to be under a “state of emergency”,
allowing itself to restrict civil liberties – particularly the right to
rally and to move about freely. This decree was only used once in the
République’s history while facing difficulties with events concerning
the Algerian independence war, and became another provoking factor for
the rioters, whose majority come from families of immigrant descent.
The state of
emergency is still in effect today.
President Chirac
made his first declarations to the French people (radio and TV) on
November 14th, after more than two weeks of silence. He
exalted the French République’s ideals, called on to justice and
firmness, without even suggesting anything concrete. Nicolas Sarkozy has
talked about the possibility of selecting a “useful” immigration. Within
the institutional intellectual world, Hélène Carrère d’Encausse
(historian and member of the Académie Française) expressed an opinion
well shared within her body of work by fustigating the polygamy of
African families in France, which would be the main reason for the
riots. Everything seems to be in order today, yet the same anger is
still growling. Its very existence is found within structural reasons
which are still neither looked at, nor understood or even discussed
about.
3
Ghost Dog Theme (“The RZA”)
A
different picture of the rioter
The
rioter is not an organized threat; he joins others in the emergency,
then vanishes.
The
rioter is not a revolutionary; he is a rebel. He doesn’t confront the
dominant system, he’s burning with anger until he can find a place in
it. Revolutionaries may be of those who, with a different anger, study
until night time in the high schools.
The
rioter is not illiterate; he writes with burnt schools, because he’s not
heard when he speaks with the language they have taught him.
The
rioter is not a promising sportsman; he’s a young man whose blood is
boiling, even to the point of setting gymnasiums on fire.
The
rioter is not a notorious drug dealer; where drugs are about, heavy
peace reigns. Main drug dealers hate disorder. They’re not the only
ones.
The
rioter is not a fundamentalist; where fundamentalists are, calm reigns.
Fundamentalists hate disorder. They are not the only ones.
The
rioter doesn’t wear the rich people’s clothes; he wears the poverty of a
poor world, and yes it’s true, sometimes he steals his poverty from the
world.
The
rioter is not a famous rapper who makes his music with electronic
machines; he was killed by electric machines, and he only became
notorious after his electrocution.
The
rioter is not a living wolf; he’s a ghost dog.
4 Inner
(and Outer) City Blues
(Marvin Gaye)
What is a « banlieue »? During the 1950’s and up to the 70’s, the French
government decided to build the « grands ensembles » (literally, the
“great togethers”) in response to the housing crisis right after World
War II, and with the intent to socially modernize its environment. These
structures were built on the outskirts of major cities in shapes of bars
or towers, holding between 500 and 1000 housing units available to those
with lesser revenues. As the baby boom came along, the population of
these peripheral neighbourhoods became increasingly younger. In 1962,
many studies showed that 50% of the population of these grands ensembles
were under 25 (compared to 29% for Paris for 0-24 years old). One of the
many problems were the lack of social and cultural centers to
accommodate the youth, and it wasn’t until as late as the 70s that some
of these structures were introduced in the neighborhoods.
The grands
ensembles have become a world of their own, marginalizing the
individuals from the main « city life » – a round-trip into the city can
cost between 10 and 15$; these banlieues are theoretically dependent on
the cities to which they are attached to but do not reflect their
ideals. Hence are created multifaceted « urban » (or outer-urban)
practices, such as hip-hop, graffiti, etc. giving the possibility for
the shunned youth to shine. In France, we don’t have the Innercity
Blues, but the Outercity Blues. It is the outskirts: a vibrant place
so full of life where you might still feel forgotten and abandoned
because of your social condition; where police incursions occur daily,
fully padded and armed as if they were entering into « enemy
territory » ; a place where the youth tries to voice their frustration
from their geographic and social marginalization, but still yet not
heard.
5 Outer
Nothingness (Sun Ra)
The riots of November 2005 provoked a “sharp commotion” amongst the
French political and media classes – two classes which, in France as in
everywhere else, live their parasitic existence, apart from the social
body on which they proliferate, answering to their own needs. Whatever
the degree of awareness of the rioters, they have committed the crime of
attacking the public order of which these two classes are responsible
for (a lot more than the peoples whose only duty is to elect the former
democratically) and which they defended with the usual weapons:
repression (police and judiciary) and ideology. In this case, the
ideological fight implies isolating the culprits, who obviously are
irresponsible and antisocial, from the rest of the population, who
obviously are honest and hardworking. As a matter of fact, if other
categories of the population (the sons and daughters of the
middle-class, for example) had taken part in these troubles, we
surely wouldn’t have heard about riots and rioters (a term as of now
used to condemn a furious youth), but about rebellion and rebels, or
insurrection and insurgents. Instead, the political class’
argumentation, with its media accomplice, only had to work around
variations of the term “racailles” (thugs), used and reused endlessly by
Nicolas Sarkozy, chief of the government’s police. First teaching: we
know today that the French society is made up of dozens, even hundreds
of thousands of “racailles”, which means savages. When we started
worrying about finding other reasons to the “savagery” of the urban
violence, it was to incriminate the illiteracy or the polygamy of the
rioters’ parents. What can the fathers, mothers and families of savages
be other then savages themselves? We are asked therefore to believe
that men and women who don’t know how to read and write – the French
language of course – are incapable of transmitting certain values to
their children. That the thought, the judgment and the discernment come
with literacy only. To believe that all the lovers and mistresses
of the men and women in politics (obviously married, therefore
civilized), who as a matter of fact are one of the tabloids’
favorite
topic, presenting them as the “people’s elected” in their most human
light, are nothing but a more subtle or superior form of culture? And we
are asked to prefer such “clarifications” to more materialistic
explications, which would inconveniently show the outbreak of outlaws
in so-called democratic societies. The rioters of November are too
disoriented to represent the avant-garde of any kind of
revolutionary movement; on the other hand they are in the best position
to personify these outlaws: a youth issued from the immigration (meaning
colonies which, we are reminded, were educated by the West), a
youth without work, without gratitude, without hope, without ideals and
soon without youth, subject to constant harassment and ordinary racism
from the forces of order, truly useless and knowing it, a youth
that only needs to be calmed down by the law of show-business über
alles – the most efficient secret police of the new world order. The
vacuity of these riots (vandalizing places where you hang out, that you
have a use for) shows the uneasiness of these societies where even the
fact of saying and thinking misery, yours or other peoples’, has
become miserable, shameful, where it is less and less necessary to
assume that there is an everyday life and a reality. By creating
havoc, no more no less, this crazed youth has unwillingly helped us
all out: because the “savagery” called forth by the political and media
class is first and foremost the cache-misère of the
“civilization”. Let’s not get our minds off this myth as it is about to
betray itself.
6
Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday & Lewis Alan)
“After all the violated treaties, the propagated lies, all these
tolerated punitive expeditions, all these tortured patriots, this racist
pride encouraged […], there is poison instilled into Europe’s
veins, and the slow but sure progress of the continent becoming savage.”
Aimé Césaire (in “Speech on colonialism”, Présence Africaine , 1955)
Fifty years
later, the same Aimé Césaire refused to receive on his own land the
French government’s representative who pretends to sandblast “his”
banlieues’ walls by reactivating the former colonial law of curfew (1955
law revived in November 2005), and wants to reconcile the French people
by teaching the positive impact of colonialism and by compensating
former convicted OAS members, a racist movement fighting against
Algeria’s independence during the 1960’s (February 23rd 2005
law). The poison is still following its course as planned within the
capillary vessels of a République which boasts its indifference towards
difference, as it had built its conception of the Universal on one of
the most coherent systems of exploitation of a people by another. The
model brought about by the République’s ideals at the dawn of the
colonial enterprise was truly built on the certainty of the French
Revolution’s ecumenical vocation of social and political values,
safe-keepers of the world’s peoples happiness. Within this unilateral
perspective, the Other’s voice must be confiscated because it cannot be
meaningful; the Other is the conqueror’s inverted mirror, and his only
symbolical function is to reassure him in his ‘charitable work’. Hence
the need for the “native’s” invisibility, who can neither be singular,
nor thinking or acting, and unto whom the colonist must assign certain
identifying aspects which encourage the confusion and justify their
submission: thief, lazy, deceitful, savage, cannibalistic, sex-craving,
etc. If his body is shown too much, it might interfere with the
colonist’s certitudes, and he therefore might truly be facing
destruction – the colonial violence is often committed by relentless
ritualistic acts on the body: eviscerations, decapitations, torture,
rape…
The contemporary
resonance of this system is obvious. The ones who are today called
blacks, tan, muslims, hooded, sons of polygamous fathers, incompetent,
hoodlums, thugs; pointing fingers at their sisters and mothers – who are
potentially veiled and raped; they are therefore genetically amputated
from a part of their humanity, since they burn their own schools and
their neighbors’ cars.
Ain’t they our
children, those ghostly figures who hide their faces and their age
underneath dark hoods? Children who consume themselves from the inside
from being invisible in a land which, for most, is not a welcoming land
but a cradle instead, and who cry for this France which is rejecting
them like incompatible transplants? France throws up its children.
They are the worm within the fruit. strange fruit. France’s colonial
past’s history has not yet quieted down, and the minds still need to be
decolonised. To reactivate the former legislative tools of the colonial
era, and revive the traditional stereotypes, is an insult to the
“indigenous” fathers and mothers, and is a reminder to their children
that they are still Earth’s orphans.
7
Burnt ‘till recognition (Henry Threadgdill)
It is essential to denounce the idea that obscure Islamic movements are
at the origin of the riots. If there is truly a debate which involves
Islam in the hoods, this popular and spontaneous rousing does not rest
on the ethnic origin or the hypothetical religious background of the
rioters, but on the common experience of these “banlieues youth” who
feel excluded from the French society, an experience that has been
socially put together and kept as such. Outburst of words, confusion of
the senses, contrary to what some would like us to believe, there are
neither “racailles” (thugs) nor “Intifada” in the French banlieues.
Three weeks after
the violence had receded, the newspaper “Le Parisien” published a report
from the “Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux”, which is
dependent on the Ministry of Interior, and of which we could have
expected its description of the events to be biased. On the contrary,
the report shows that the Islamic groups had “no role in the triggering
of the violence or its expansion”, and that they actually would have
found it “more useful for peace to come back in order to avoid the
confusion.”
In France,
Sarkozy’s speech, pointing fingers at organized groups, was indeed
intended to maintain a climate of law-and-order paranoia before the
looming presidential elections. As for the dominating American media
which has been incriminating the Islamic groups, it is a result of their
full allegiance to the Bush administration. Since September 11th,
the USA has been invested with a supreme civilizing mission which
consists in defending western democracy from a crawling, gnawing “evil”,
incarnated by the Islamic groups. “May the western world burn under
their assaults!” One more lie from the Bush administration won’t hurt it
in its mission to legitimize its external affairs politics.
8
Free Money (Patti Smith)
When an industrial group fires 600 of its employees,
there’s nothing unusual about it; it is not called violent. When a few
youths put fire to a carpet store and 30 people are temporarily laid off
during the repairs, not only is this violent, but also intolerable!
[A little
reminder: let’s remember that we live in a liberal system which favors
capital over work, sees economic growth as the ultimate end while
trampling any belief of personal or collective blooming. These values
are today engrained in our social organization, our infrastructures, and
individuals are almost only looked upon in terms of their economic
value. Investment is king. The political class has massively given in to
this system, and the concept of readjusting the balance only works by
default to soften the perverse effects of liberalism. The banlieues are
the antechamber of this system.]
The next scene
could take place in the cafeteria of a big industrial site, maybe in
front of a few video cameras. The CEO of this industrial group meets
with one of the rioters during his lunch break. Clean cut and relaxed,
he tells him in an overly benevolent manner:
-By attacking
the businesses, not only are you directly responsible for your neighbors
and parents being laid off, but also for your neighborhood’s social and
economic death. You leave companies no other choice than to invest
elsewhere.
- As long as
you and yours’ behavior remains the same, no progress will be made. You
are a real burden to society, welfare scroungers who take advantage of
the honest people’s work and who destroy public goods. If you want to
make it out of this, have access to all kinds of consumer goods, you
must do like everybody else. Roll up your sleeves, work hard in your
company and believe me, you will get the life you deserve.
On the other
hand, he doesn’t tell him:
- You are
stuck. You are the system’s victim and catalyst at the same time.
Liberalism divides the population into segments and widens the gaps on a
worldwide scale. To stay alive, this system needs you as a “banlieue
youth” in two ways. First as a customer, for the less educated you are,
the more you may be sensitive to and be part of the consumer culture.
Education is the enemy of liberalism for it enables you to build
yourself as an individual with your own values and references, and not
the ones we choose for you. That is why capitalism is so preoccupied
with culture. Second, you will be used as workforce, for you don’t need
to have diplomas to work on an assembly line or as security. Once you
are neutralized, you will hold a precarious job in a company, allowing
it to further free up more benefits.
-
Globalization has effects on space and time; only the trades between
major cities are accelerated. On a worldwide scale, entire towns and
regions are dying; on a local scale, entire neighborhoods are cast
aside. These new peripheral areas are deliberately sacrificed. This
exacerbated tension between the Global and Local builds places of
“non-lieux” within the territories, deep holes within which you must
hide.
- Liberalism
doesn’t care about existence and sucks the lifeblood of individuals.
Wars and cataclysms are of the same order: they may thwart the trade
some, but they allow above all for the reorganization of the economy and
the signing of new contracts. So the system’s internal logics call for
the systematic diversion of any form of opposition or anti-establishment
stance. As far as the riots you took part in, we decided to wave the
law-and-order flag, in the name of safeguarding public order. For they
mostly were pointing out the contradictions of the dominant liberal
order. Your alarm system has been rapidly neutralized, the flames doused
out, and once again, you will be the ones to suffer from these events.
Convenient smiles and handshakes. The young rioter didn’t get a chance
to say a word. The CEO pays the bill and leaves a sizeable tip.
9 The
Revolution will not be televised (Gil Scott-Heron)
Any large scale social conflict – violent or not, organized or not – is
a particular means of communication between two masses of individuals
which have no or little means to discuss.
If this
communication becomes an incomprehensible monologue (in this case,
self-destructive and rather nihilistic), it is only the result of
chronic deafness. For over 20 years, the French politicians have ignored
the banlieues’ social problems and revelled in ineffective publicity
campaigns, which’s only purpose is to legitimize, maintain or renew
their rule in office. The system’s forgotten are an invisible mass,
whose representation is only shown through the media, and remains
stereotypical: they are the threat from within, the repressed barbarism
within the civilization.
Barbarian: in
ancient greek, the word barbarian was employed to qualify peoples of
whom the language was not understood, or seemed inarticulate.
Not one politician has taken the time to talk to the rioters, except
only to insult them (“racailles”, meaning “thugs”). What can you reply
to a question you don’t understand? The simulation of a dialogue brought
forth by the media was only intended to the “honest French people” – the
insults themselves were nothing but a conniving wink addressed to this
reasonable population. The political language of the “hommes d’Etat”
(statesmen) doesn’t seem to be addressed to these “invisible
barbarians”, who can only be submissive to or subdued by the social
scene – never brought in the so-called dialogue.
“Zero
Tolerance” pounded Nicolas Sarkozy, Rudolph Giulani’s French
disciple. The words and the method are American.
Isn’t civilization
universal?
The rioters did not have any political message, not even slogans. They
only spoke through the permitted set-up of the media of our glorious
“society of information” – a unilateral system of communication, which
truly started despising life so much when it began representing it
through its daily talk-shows.
4 hours of
television a day: you can be sure people don’t talk to each other
anymore.
The only possible converzation is a televisual monologue to which it is
impossible to respond – try talking to your TV!? – unless through the
saddening spectacle of self-destruction in front of the cameras. The
media, by reproducing their perpetual role of social control, have
therefore determined for the rioters to communicate their despair
through the very means which condemns them in front of the “honest
French people”: spectacular violence (we went from the individual news
brief to the mass news brief).
As of that, they confiscated a voice which never had the chance of being
heard:
-
by focusing on destruction (inadmissible)
- by
relaying a stereotypical image of the “youth from the banlieues” (a“racaille”,
a “barbarian”)
-
by focusing on the instant news, without allowing a long-term debate.
-
by
forbidding any kind of exhaustive reflection, which would require giving
all the needed time for talk, a “temps de parole” (talking time) which
would not be dictated by the imperatives of TV news.
Today, peace
reigns in the banlieues. Nothing ever happened. There’s nothing to talk
about anymore on the 8 o’clock news.
The message is simple, sadly a sign of the times: move along, nothing to
see – or rather, do not move along, and watch your television.
10
From “Poor Righteous Teachers” to “Cash Money
Millionaires”…
Following the riots, and in need to find a scapegoat for the violence
that occurred, 200 French deputies have decided to take it up against a
few rap artists, trying to mute their voices through “exemplary” prison
time and fines. The front page of the daily Parisian newspaper, Le
Parisien read today, on November 29th, “Should we be
afraid of rap?” (this reminds us of other recent headlines, “should we
be afraid of the bird flu?”) Hip hop seems to have become a disease that
we need to get vaccinated against, protect our children from, shelter
our sensible and orderly minds from these mindless spirits, who only try
to propagate violence, disrespect and hate for the French, or even
worse, France.
France has always
been a big producer of hip-hop, for some time second in the
international market after the US. There may be many reasons to this:
that hip-hop is story-telling, an open window from one of those gigantic
public housing towers into the rhythmic world of urban life; a way to
value yourself as an individual through your rhyming, deejaying,
dancing, or graffiti-making skills in a society which undermines in many
ways any creativity which does not follow certain formatted structures;
an escape from daily struggles through fantasized lifestyles; a voice to
express social issues and conditions, anguish, rage, or condemn police
brutality and harassment (Grandmaster Flash’s The Message has not
aged a day); or simply a voice to express love and brotherhood, passion
and reason.
Yes, hip-hop has
many functions as a social regulator. But the face of “hip-hop” has
changed. As certain producers have realized the amount of money that can
be made from this expanding music market (didn’t this already happen
with jazz, soul, etc?), a few rappers have been able to “Get rich or
die trying”, making money the focus for many aspiring artists as a
means to rise up from “Pure Poverty.” Money being such a
better-understood means of communication by the media mass, the
corporations, the commercial world, it has become the centre piece for
most of the “hip-hop” invading our airwaves today. In 1993, Poor
Righteous Teachers were dropping some “conscious style” on BET. Ten
years later, the “Lil’s” had invaded Rap City (Lil Wayne, Lil’ Zane,
Lil’Jon, etc.) and the new kings of rap were the Cash Money
Millionaires. French hip-hop has also undergone the same kind of
“pressure” to change, to become part of the commercial language, to
become translated into euro/dollar bills. Yes, hip-hop is a money-making
business here too, but not as exacerbated as in the US (where wealth can
become quickly obscene). Some rappers understand that to become rich,
you must muffle your voice, follow the system, or avoid talking about
“sensitive” issues. Unfortunately, that is not the reality of life, and
many who are not “taken in“ by the system find revenge through even more
provocative lyrics in order to show that they are still alive and “fuck
France” if she doesn’t want to hear them. It is enraging when you feel
non-existent, abnegated in the eyes of the nation you were born in.
Sometimes the only way to be heard is to scream even louder. This
desperate scream has hurt sensitive ears, and instead of trying to
understand “why the scream?”, it seems a better solution to sow the
mouth shut.
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