Notes on militant populism in contemporary France: contextualizing the gilets jaunes
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Notes on militant populism in contemporary France: contextualizing the gilets jaunes Winnie Lem 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
In the vast amount of writing that has appeared, the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) insurgency, journalists, academics, politicians, and pundits have been eager to pronounce on the morphology of a mobilization that has been puzzling in many ways.1 Almost as soon as it surfaced in France in October 2018, observers have hastened to define its features, so some writers have noted, by mapping their assumptions, hopes, or fears onto a mobilization that has confounded politicians, the press and the public alike. Many on the right, for example, see its potential as a force that amplifies the resurgent spirit of nationalism that has been eroded by the political and economic imperatives of globalization. Far-right parties, moreover, hope to ride the wave of its energy to gather support for their ultra-conservative political agendas. On the left side of the political spectrum, some harbor the hope that the gilets jaunes (GJ) insurgency will herald the coming of the next revolution. Others among the left fear its potential as a counter progressive and anti-revolutionary force.2 These pronouncements and speculations prevail despite the cautions issued against projecting one’s assumptions, aspirations, and worries that render the mobilizations into something that observers want it to be rather than confronting the reality of what it is (Artous and Sitel 2019). Indeed, an optic that is too personal may be prone to distortion. Nonetheless, it seems that little work in the academy is devoid of projecting some aspect of the observer’s political, ideological, aspirational, and emotional commitments that frame the questions that animate efforts to understand the world. So here I will try to make some sense of what this popular uprising is by focusing on some issues that warrant consideration, at least in my mind as an anthropologist who has undertaken fieldwork in France.
1
See for example, https://www.contretemps.eu/gilets-jaunes-urgence-acte-kouvelakis/and then http://www. contretemps.eu/apres-commercy-gilets-jaunes/. Also Kouvelakis, S. (2019). 2 These hopes and fears were expressed for example in a conference held on the GJ in 2019 attended by notable figures of the European left. In that event, Etienne Balibar enunciated the more fearful view while Antonio Negri posited a view which cast the GJ’s as participants in building an optimistic future as a people’s movement that contests capitalism. See Susser, (forthcoming)
* Winnie Lem [email protected]
1
International Development Studies, Champlain College, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8, Canada
W. Lem
These notes are based on observation, but not participation in the mobilizations of the GJ in Paris in 2019. While I chatted with some participants in the GJ movement, my conversations during fieldwork were undertaken mostly with those who have not been part of it and in fact who seem to disavow this militancy. They include members of Paris’
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