{"id":4429,"date":"2019-01-15T13:53:04","date_gmt":"2019-01-15T18:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4429"},"modified":"2019-01-15T14:21:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-15T19:21:21","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-compagnon-de-route-fellow-traveler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-compagnon-de-route-fellow-traveler\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Compagnon de route [Fellow Traveler]"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Acte IX, 12 janvier 2019 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt<\/p><\/div>\n

On Saturday, January 12, 2019, yellow vest protesters demonstrated in cities across France\u2014from Paris to Bourges, Bordeaux, and Toulouse\u2014in what they called \u201cAct IX\u201d of the yellow vest movement. According to the official count<\/a> by the ministry of the interior of the French government\u2014an interested party, since the French State is the very target of the protests\u2014there were 84,000 protesters across the country, and they faced an equal number of law enforcement officers from the national police, CRS, and gendarmerie<\/em>. 80,000 policemen and women were mobilized and deployed around the country to manage any possible unrest\u2014along with military-grade armored vehicles, flashballs, water cannons, etc.\u2014resulting in an astounding one-to-one ratio: one police for every yellow vest.<\/p>\n

The number of yellow vests at Act IX was up slightly from the week before, and seemed to signal that the yellow vest movement, which began on November 17, 2018, is not dissipating. The conjuncture on January 12\u00a0was especially important: President Emmanuel Macron was slated to deliver his \u201cLettre aux fran\u00e7ais<\/em><\/a>\u201d the next day, and the great \u201cnational debate<\/a>\u201d over the political questions raised by the movement was scheduled to begin in three days.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d read extensively about the movement and spent Saturday afternoon, January 12, 2019, informally observing the protest at the \u00c9toile and along the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. Compared to other Saturdays, Act IX was relatively peaceful, with the weight of power on the side of the overwhelming police force. There were, to be sure, teargas canisters fired and the police used water cannons; but compared to other previous protests\u2014and to ordinary protests in Paris, especially at the \u201ct\u00eate de cort\u00e8ge<\/i>\u201d\u2014the space of protest was relatively subdued.<\/p>\n

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Acte IX, 12 janvier 2019 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt<\/p><\/div>\n

Along the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, steps from the CRS, police, and gendarmes<\/i>, yellow vest protesters tagged the fortified and boarded-up banks and stores, while a few other Parisians and tourists nearby continued to shop in the luxury boutiques.<\/p>\n

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Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, Acte IX, 12 janvier 2019 \u00a0 \u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt<\/p><\/div>\n

The yellow vest movement has been aptly described, by \u00c9tienne Balibar<\/a> and Toni Negri<\/a>, as a \u201ccontre-pouvoir<\/em>,\u201d a counter-power, perhaps one of the only counter-powers to President Macron now in place. Truth is, all of the potential institutions that could serve as a check to executive power are essentially missing-in-action. The Assembly was filled with Macron\u2019s hastily assembled delegates. The S\u00e9nat is hardly to be heard. The judiciary does not play that function in France. The major oppositional parties\u2014the Socialist Party on the left and the Republicans on the right\u2014imploded and have disappeared. The paper press is pretty docile (predominantly opposed to the yellow vest movement). The few voices that can be dimly heard are Jean-Luc M\u00e9lanchon\u2019s insoumis\u00a0<\/em>on the farther left and the new Rassemblement national <\/em>of the far-right (formerly the Front national<\/em>). As a result, the yellow vests really do stand as the counter-power to Macron. Apparently they have the support of a majority of the French. 72% of the French supported the movement<\/a> as of December 1, 2018; it is widely believed that a majority of the French still support them now, even after a series of unfavorable videotaped incidents that went viral.<\/p>\n

In an early essay<\/a> published December 8, 2018, \u00c9tienne Balibar presents a nuanced diagnosis of the movement, locating it within the present crisis of neoliberalism and drawing its Gramscian element as a potential \u201creversal of hegemony.\u201d Ludivine Bantigny, in a forthcoming essay<\/a>, situates the uprising in the context of unprecedented inequality and calls it \u201cun \u00e9v\u00e9nement<\/em>.\u201d Toni Negri, in a series of essays<\/a>, sees the multitude in the yellow vests, but warns of what he imagines may come: \u201ca long period of repression.\u201d Balibar ends by offering guidance as to how the movement could gain momentum, specifying<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I therefore suggest that all this could be given concrete form, opening up a dialectic of self-representation and governmentality, if municipalities (starting with some of them that set an example: those most sensitive to the urgency of the situation or most open to democratic invention) now decided to open their doors to the local organization of the movement, and declared themselves ready to pass on its demands or proposals to the government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would take a different angle. I have no standing, nor any interest in assuming the position of what one might call \u201cthe counselor to uprisings.\u201d<\/a>[i] Nor do I subscribe to the various roles that intellectuals have assigned to themselves or to others in the late twentieth century\u2014whether it is the \u201cintellectuel universel\u201d <\/em>supposedly modeled on Jean-Paul Sartre, the \u201cintellectuel specific<\/em>\u201d that Michel Foucault embraced, or even the middle-ground \u201cintellectuel singulier<\/em>\u201d that Balibar uncovers in his most recent book, Libre parole<\/em>: \u201cUn intellectuel qui essaie de dire ce qu\u2019il en est du present, de ses droits et obligations, de l\u2019intol\u00e9rable et du possible qu\u2019il rec\u00e8le<\/em>.\u201d<\/a>[ii] No, I do not consider myself\u2014nor would want to present myself\u2014as an intellectual, but instead, simply, as someone who acts, who implicates himself, who rises up at times, breaks silence at others, litigates most often. I cannot counsel or critique other people\u2019s struggles. I can only critique my own political engagements. In my seminar, Praxis 13\/13<\/a>, I\u2019ve been working through the relation between theory and practice, and at least tentatively, for the moment, have realized that I cannot do critical philosophical work on other people\u2019s political engagements, but only on my own. This imposes on me, I believe, a duty to act\u2014to engage politically, to perform praxis, as the very precondition to critique, but critique and praxis of my own actions.<\/p>\n

And so the question I would want to raise is different, but pointed, and pointed at myself: On Saturday, at the \u00c9toile, why did I not sport a yellow vest? Why do I not consider myself part of the yellow vest movement? Why did I remain an observer? <\/em><\/p>\n

After all, it is a political movement that challenges, at its heart, many of the contemporary political formations that I target in my own political writings and interventions. First, it is aimed, in large part, at neoliberalism and the start-up uberized culture that does not provide for the welfare of people. As Toni Negri<\/a> suggests, the movement represents the \u201cexpression of a rejection of the logics of neoliberalism\u2014a rejection probably brought against those logics in a moment of acute crisis.\u201d There is substantial overlap here with my views<\/a> on neoliberalism. Second, the movement targets police excess and the police state. I\u2019ve been challenging<\/a> that in the United States for decades. If you listen closely, for a moment, to the grievances of the yellow vests, you hear clearly those of the Occupy Wall Street movement.<\/p>\n

Take for instance, the spoken words of Christophe Dettinger, a retired boxer (French light-heavyweight champion in 2007 and 2008) and self-identified yellow vest. There was a lot of controversy surrounding Dettinger because he physically assaulted a policeman at the protests in Paris on January 5, 2019. The video went viral, as did his apology\u2014both of which you can see here<\/a> at the Guardian<\/em>. Supporters of his quickly raised over 110,000 euros on a crowd-funding site, Leetchi, which was shut down by political opposition, in outrage. He then posted this apologia, qua-political manifesto, which he recorded on YouTube<\/a> to explain himself to his fellow yellow vests:<\/p>\n

Chers amis gilets jaunes,<\/p>\n

Voil\u00e0, je me pr\u00e9sente. Je m\u2019appelle Christophe. [\u2026] Je voulais vous pr\u00e9senter les choses comme je le sens.<\/p>\n

J\u2019ai particip\u00e9 aux huit actes. [\u2026] J\u2019ai fait tous les manifestations du samedi sur Paris.<\/p>\n

J\u2019ai vu la r\u00e9pression. J\u2019ai vu la police nous gazer. J\u2019ai vu la police faire mal a des gens avec des flashballs. J\u2019ai vu des gens bless\u00e9s. J\u2019ai vu des retrait\u00e9s se faire gazer.<\/p>\n

Moi, je suis un citoyen normal. Je travaille. J\u2019arrive \u00e0 finir mes fins de mois, mais c\u2019est compliqu\u00e9.<\/p>\n

Mais je manifeste pour les retrait\u00e9s, le future de mes enfants, les femmes c\u00e9libataires\u2026<\/p>\n

Je suis un gilet jaune. J\u2019ai la col\u00e8re du people qui est en moi.<\/p>\n

Je vois tous ces pr\u00e9sidents, je vois tous ces ministres, je vois tout l\u2019\u00c9tat se gaver, se pomper. Ils ne sont m\u00eame pas capables de montrer l\u2019exemple. Ils ne montrent pas l\u2019exemple. Ils se gavent sur notre dos. C\u2019est toujours nous les petits qui payons.<\/p>\n

Je me sens concern\u00e9 parce que je suis fran\u00e7ais. Je suis fier d\u2019\u00eatre fran\u00e7ais. Je ne suis pas d\u2019extr\u00eame gauche, je ne suis pas d\u2019extr\u00eame droite. Je suis un citoyen lambda. Je suis un fran\u00e7ais. J\u2019aime mon pays. J\u2019aime ma patrie. J\u2019aime tout.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n