At the end of March, a video shot in a restaurant in Saint-Etienne and then another on the terrace of a café in Bordeaux “ignited” social networks. These two sequences showed quiet-looking French people remaining at tables while small street fires linked to the mobilization against the pension reform burned in the background.
The British, in particular, welcomed this phlegm and, more generally, the know-how in terms of demonstrations that it is customary to attribute to the French.
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These scenes caused reactions beyond the United Kingdom. In the United States in particular, where the ABC News channel shared one of the two videos, in a tweet seen by tens of thousands of people:
But what is it really? Are the French the world champions of the demonstration or is it only a received idea? We put the question to two historians specializing in social movements. And their lighting is exciting.
“Fire without endangering people”
So, what do the two aforementioned unusual scenes mean in which the fire of revolt and imperturbable citizens mingle? For Mathilde Larrère, historian of the 19th century revolutionse century and citizenship, “It’s about showing off. It’s about showing that we’re here.”. However, this “form of appropriation of public space by fire” takes place “without endangering public space, without endangering buildings, without endangering people”, continues the lecturer in contemporary history at the Gustave-Eiffel University of Marne-la-Vallée (Seine-et-Marne). Also, it is not surprising that people “can sit on the terrace seeing this (…). There is (at their home) an awareness that it is not a question of putting them in danger”. And to emphasize:
“The threat does not come from the groups of militants who resort to this violence against property. In fact, the real danger when you are on the terrace is a charge from the police. »
Only, as if through a magnifying glass, “when the television channels on a loop, and from there the foreign press, seize some of these images, it can give the feeling of a city and a country which are constantly in flames”, underlines Danielle Tartakowsky, professor emeritus of contemporary history at the University of Paris-8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, specialist in social movements.
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In fact, the campaign of demonstrations against the pension reform has been extensively covered, by the media but also on social networks. “We have thousands of images, and it’s great”says Danielle Tartakowsky, this abundance of visual documentation “ creates the trap of choosing this or that image. And we can see very well that when the continuous TV channels favor the flames in the streets of Paris or Bordeaux on a loop with images that are very exactly identical to those that we saw during the “yellow vests” (…)it makes it possible to impose comparisons, which as we know, are not right”.
“It is essential that we have these images, but at the same time it is essential that everyone learns to have a critical approach to what images are, and especially to their use”, summarizes the historian.
– Street story. From antiquity to the present day, by Danielle Tartakowsky (under her direction, with Joël Cornette, Emmanuel Fureix, Claude Gauvard, Catherine Saliou), Tallandier editions, 2022.– Guns and Roses, The Objects of Feminist Struggles, by Mathilde Larrère (illustrations by Fred Sochard), Détour editions, 2020.
