[On the occasion of the Paris summer riots of 2023]
Without sleeping and definitely being able to read the reportages of the Algerian national television, I am looking for new French news across the Canary Islands and neigeux d'un mauvais téléviseur. This can be used to identify the silhouette of the family of the presenter of the daily journal. J'étais curieux de savoir comment la mort de Machelin allait être traitée.
The images do not correspond to the cells that illustrate the habitation of a violent death: there are large plans on the fatal sidewalk, there is no insight into the journey or the panoramic plans on the barres of habitation. Elles faisaient au contraire the object d'un traitement absolutely spectacular: voitures incendiées, bandes de jeunes lançant des projectiles sur les caméras, appeals au calme et à l'émeute entremêlés.
It takes a few minutes to learn how to see another event. Nous n'étions pas à Épinay-sur-Seine mais à l'autre extrémité du 93, à Clichy-sous-Bois. This is the death of Machelin, which provokes this kind of violence, this is the cell of two adolescents who, on the other side of the transformer, is electrically powered, in the circuits encore confuses, but this implies a poursuite police.
Les plus importantes émeutes urbaines qu'avait connues la France venaient de commencer.
My friends in Paris are on the other side of the house, plus they have not yet passed, so that they can change en Rien, and Paris will also be accompanied by the émeutiers, and they will not have access to the French barrier peripheral. Vue d'Algérie, à travers le filtre exclusif des chains d'information, qu'elles soient françaises, américaines ou qataries, la France était en feu.
On n'avait pas vu ça depuis Mai 68 — et Mai 68, encore, était une référence rassurante, c'était l'insurrection de la youth étudiante, quelque chose qui relevait plus de l'insolence que de la violence, cela était été une manière festive et précipitée de finir la grande révolution bourgeoise en affirmant, de façon beaucoup plus raisonnée et structurée qu'il n'y paraissait, que celle-ci devait maintenant s'étendre aux mœurs. Mais on avait affaire ici à des populations beaucoup moins prévisibles et aux objectifs beaucoup moins clairs, à des populations sans ethos et sans mœurs, à des populations qui ne possédaient rien, ni capital économique ni capital culturel — à des populations qui n'avaient rien à perdre. C'était une insurrection venue de la périphérie plutôt que du center, c'était quelque chose qui rappelait au fond plus la Terreur de 1793, issue d'une émeute du faubourg Saint-Antoine, que la fête de 1968, presque entièrement contenue par la montagne Sainte-Geneviève.
Nous sommes restés encore une semaine à Timimoun, dans l'hôtel soudain vidé de all ses cardiologues, passant nos nuits impuissantes devant les images des émeutes et nos journées, effrayées et vacantes, à recevoir, du personnel de l'hôtel, de nos guides touaregs ou de simples passants croisés dans les rues de Timimoun, des messages de soutien pour notre pays en proie à la guerre civile — et j'avais alors l'impression que je ne le retrouverais jamais, que je devrais m'installer ici pour toujours, dans la chaleur hostile du Grand Erg occidental.
Prisonniers d'un program que Machelin avait fixé à l'avance et que Lossac me faisait suivre à la lettre, comme un rituel funéraire rassurant dans l'immense chaos qu'allaient devenir nos vies, j'accomplissais mécaniquement mes devoirs touristiques, visitant des ksars Ensables, montant à dromadaire, apprenant à escalader les dunes and participants aux festivities that mark the end of Ramadan. Tout semblait fait pour que j'apprenne en accéléré le folklore du désert, pour que je m'acclimate à lui comme si je ne devais jamais en ressortir.
J'étais mieux ici qu'à Paris, me répétait Lossac.
Nous avons enfin atteint Adrar, notre terminus, alors que le gouvernement français venait de proclamer l'état d'urgence et le couvre-feu.
Aurélien Bellanger, Le Grand Paris (Gallimard, 2017).
Unable to sleep and utterly bored by the reports on Algerian state television, I began searching for news from France on the static-filled foreign channels of a cheap television. Finally, I recognized the blurry but familiar silhouette of a late-night news anchor. I was curious to see how Machelin's death would be handled.
The images did not conform to the usual depictions of a violent death: no close-ups of the sidewalk, no neighborhood interviews, or panoramic shots of apartment blocks. Instead, they were treated in an absolutely spectacular way: cars set on fire, youth gangs throwing projectiles at the cameras, calls for calm and calls for rebellion interwoven.
It took me a few minutes to realize that this was a different event. We weren't in Épinay-sur-Seine, but at the other end of Route 93, in Clichy-sous-Bois. This outbreak of violence hadn't been triggered by Machelin's death, but by the deaths of two teenagers who had climbed onto the roof of a transformer and, under still unclear circumstances that involved a police chase, had been electrocuted.
The biggest urban unrest France had ever experienced had just begun.
My Parisian friends later told me that nothing had happened, that their lives hadn't changed, that Paris hadn't been besieged by rioters, and that their actions had almost never crossed the boundaries of the ring road. From Algeria's perspective, through the exclusive filter of the news channels—be they French, American, or Qatari—France was ablaze.
Nothing like this had happened since May '68—and May '68 was still a reassuring reference point; it was the student uprising, something that meant more audacity than violence, a festive and impulsive way of bringing the great bourgeois revolution to a close by asserting, in a far more rational and structured manner than it appeared, that it now had to extend to morals. But here we were dealing with far less predictable populations and far less clear goals, with populations without ethos or morals, with populations that possessed nothing, neither economic nor cultural capital—with populations that had nothing to lose. It was an uprising that originated from the periphery rather than the center; it was something that was basically more reminiscent of the Terror of 1793, which had emerged from an uprising in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, than of the 1968 party, which was almost entirely contained by the Sainte-Geneviève mountain.
We stayed another week in Timimoun, in the hotel suddenly vacated by all its cardiologists, spending our nights helplessly before the images of the unrest and our days frightened and empty, waiting for messages of support for our civil war-torn country from the hotel staff, our Tuareg guides, or ordinary passers-by they met in the streets of Timimoun — and I felt that I would never find it again, that I would have to settle here forever in the hostile heat of the Grand Erg Occidental.
Trapped in a program pre-arranged by Machelin, which Lossac made me follow strictly like a comforting funeral ritual amidst the vast chaos that was to become our lives, I mechanically fulfilled my tourist obligations: visiting deserted ksars, riding camels, learning to climb dunes, and participating in the celebrations marking the end of Ramadan. Everything seemed designed to give me a crash course in desert folklore, to acclimatize me to it as if I would never leave.
"I was better off here than in Paris," Lossac kept saying.
We finally reached Adrar, our last stop, just as the French government had declared a state of emergency and a curfew. 1
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- “Alexandre Belgrand grew up in western Paris, in the shadow of the towers of La Défense, on the edge of the Royal Route, which leads from the Louvre to the Grande Arche and serves as a timeline of French history. A self-proclaimed heir to this majestic narrative, he attends a business school and is certain that upon graduation he will belong to the nation’s elite.”
One of his professors initiated him into the secret history of the capital before he entered the service of the strongman of the right—'the Prince'—who was well on his way to winning the next presidential election. Prior to this, he had been forced to complete his urban planning training in the Algerian desert, from where he helplessly witnessed the uprising in the eastern neighborhoods of Paris in the autumn of 2005.
On the evening of May 6, 2007, he was among the very inner circle at Fouquet's and ready to enter the Prince's inner circle. For Alexandre, this was followed by two years of happy drinking, hard work, and late-night friendships in the heart of Paris's Golden Triangle. He wrote one of the Prince's most widely read speeches, which kicked off a major architectural consultation on the future of Paris, and he was also the one who envisioned equipping the new metropolis with a large, automated metro system, the Grand Paris Express. He prided himself on considering himself indestructible.
His unforeseen and brutal downfall leads him to the cursed east of the great metropolis. There, he must sink into his increasingly mystical quest for a reconciled city and fulfill his destiny as an urban planner until his final conversion, just as it had been foretold to him in the middle of the desert: 'We urban planners speak more to the gods than to men.' (Translation of the publisher's announcement.)>>>
