Paris – 3 weeks on

Tributes to the Bataclan victims. Demotix/Infosart. All rights reserved.It has been three weeks
since the tragic events in Paris. I did not lose anybody close to me, but had a
few huge scares – a good friend was miraculously only lightly injured by some
debris of bullets and some people I know are still between life and death at
the moment. Both my brothers live within a 200 metre radius from the attacks
and my younger one lives where I used to live, 50 metres away from Le Carillon
and Le Petit Cambodge restaurants. It is still hard, heartbreaking and
nerve-racking, depressing and so often panicking. We are in the “oeil du
cyclone”, and we are like headless chickens, too dazed to grasp the many
complex layers explaining what happened on the 13 November. We are in the “oeil du cyclone”, and we are like headless
chickens, too dazed to grasp the many complex layers explaining what happened
on the 13 November.

What has been unfolding in
the last weeks could unfortunately have been predicted: a “state of emergency”
provoking countless arrests with very limited results and many blunders, the
rise of Islamophobia and now, as I write these words, the Front National
winning the first round of the Regional
elections in six out of thirteen regions. It feels like a Greek tragedy:
the attacks, the State of Emergency limiting our rights tremendously and
criminalizing all together radical Muslims, ecologists or migrants, the aerial
warfare conducted in Syria and Iraq and the probable alliance of circumstance
with Bashar Al-Assad. At last Marine Le Pen confirms her power in France, while
the Front National, everywhere, ends its process of “de-demonization”. What
will happen next?

Our
gentrified/precarious/educated or not/ multicultural/openminded generation, our
neighborhood and way of life have been targeted, and it’s hard to move on. If
you consider in addition the flows of racist, liberticide, pro-war,
extreme-right bullshit pervading the media and almost all political discourse,
it is tough. Hollande’s securitarian speech
in Versailles on the 16 November was only the beginning. Marine Le Pen
could not have done better, yet a quarter of the population voting in France
preferred the original to the copy. I can only imagine what could happen if she
gets elected after his reform of the constitution.

Hollande’s “Bushian”
neologism to characterize the war is also striking: after the war against
terrorism, the war on terror, we are now in a “terrorism of war”. The contours
of this war, for the majority of the population, are as blurry as they were for
Afghanistan, Libya and Mali, even if ISIS, with its geographical frontiers,
seems easier to map. The enemy however remains as shadowy and invisible as
before. Yet, as Bush said in 2001, we will “eradicate terrorism”
(repeated twice in Congress). I think that my knowledge of official US
discourses and representations during the War on Terror makes it worse.

The
population voting for Marine Le Pen in majority is under 34 years old. The
terrorists in Paris were French …and were between 20 and 30 years old. This is a definitely
a turning point here in so many ways: it questions our role and function in our
society, and imposes the urge to act and resist. On Sunday evening, however, I
felt trapped and like many of my friends doubly wounded. The population voting
for Marine Le Pen in majority is less than 34 years old. The terrorists in Paris
were French, often, like me, third generation immigrants, and were between 20
and 30 years old. Both radicalizations, while incomparable, are deeply grounded
within French social, economic and cultural disintegration. How, between those
two phenomenon, can we create alternative discourses? How can we earn space
within the public sphere, especially since it is this alternative
voice that was targeted on the 13 November?

Let’s hope that at least
some positive things will come from it. Yet the political and the cultural
aftermaths, for the moment, show the opposite. During a speech
to the Senate on November 26, our Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared that he
had “had enough with people constantly looking for excuses and cultural or
sociological explanations of what happened”. There are no excuses, yet it is
fundamental to search for explanations within our society, notably the social
and economic exclusion of part of the population in France.

Valls chose, on the contrary, to locate the origin of the threat
in Iraq or Syria. He continues blindly to oppose “us” to “them”. This strategy
has only led many in France to confuse “them” with the Muslim population in
France, and breeds ground for the Front National. On the 11 January 2015, a
huge crowd marched
in Paris and other cities to reaffirm the sense of this “us”, fundamental here.
The interdiction to gather, this time, laid bare the fragility of our cohesion,
cohesion that we after all never discussed. The very notion of “us” becomes
even less clear after the attacks and the elections, especially if we consider
the dogmatic position of the authorities on laïcité, the social, economical and cultural divide
in the country, and the refusal to account for the aftermaths of the colonial
fractures it produced. How can we earn space within the public sphere, especially since it is this alternative voice that was targeted on the 13 November?

Paris is a strange city
though, strong and unpredictable. Small memorials were spontaneously created
near all of the venues attacked. We can neither march nor gather; yet there are
always small groups near the sites, people come and light candles or leave
flowers, constantly replaced. Every time I pass
by one of these places, there are new texts, poems, tributes, drawings and even
books left by people wanting to share their thoughts, their anger or their
reflections. This shows how wounded is the city and its population nearly a
month after the attacks. Yet, beyond the crowns of flowers left by French
institutions and international authorities, these papers convey advice and
unveil fears and incomprehension, but also reveal hopes and desires. In cafés
or in the bus, in the metro, in the street, people still talk, argue, try to
make sense of what happened. Sometimes the speech is harsh and racist, and
sometimes simply fatalist or cynical. We can neither march nor gather; yet there are always small groups near the sites, people come and light candles or leave flowers, constantly replaced.

Often though people
confront each other and attempt to find within their own historical or
political knowledge, but also their own background, education, and even
religion, ways to condemn the attacks and find solutions for a better future.
One should not underestimate these popular and spontaneous attempts, this
irrepressible need to understand and share our experience, and connect us, as
individuals, with our society. We are all limited and facing
“a dead-end”, as Judith Butler recalled
in Liberation in the week following the attacks. These exchanges and
confrontations, beyond the editorialists, experts or politics explaining,
rationalizing and synthesizing the situation in the media (often in
the heat of the moment), are the visible traces of a collective attempt –
surely imperfect and fragmented – to make together something of what happened.

One last note: a small story about the
resilience of Parisians. Sunday 15 November, in a very crowded and mixed bar in
Belleville, the Folies, there was an alert. The alert related to the one that panicked the people
at Place de La République one hour earlier (people had braved the interdiction
to gather), and it basically reached Belleville, not too far to the north. The
terrace of the bar was full and as soon as someone came running and said « they
are there! », everybody was on the ground, tables were knocked over, beer all
over, and people were crawling and escaping. Five minutes later, the bar was
completely full again and people were yelling at waiters to bring more beer.
It’s absolutely derisory yet it made me laugh.

There is an acute and growing tension between the concern for safety and the protection of our freedoms. How do we handle this? Read more from the World Forum for Democracy partnership.