{"id":146,"date":"2006-03-23T02:56:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-23T10:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2006-03-23T02:56:00","modified_gmt":"2006-03-23T10:56:00","slug":"student-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/student-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The French student uprisings \u2014 now also involving many highschools \u2014 warm the cockles of my old \u201968ish heart. Though I wonder if what drives today\u2019s uprising is the same desire to find the beach under the paving stones\u2026 There is also the question of what links or divides the present student unrest and the car-burning demonstrations by the underpriviled, unemployed youth of a few months ago. In today\u2019s Die Zeit<\/span>, Alain Touraine speculates on some of these matters. Here is an extract of that interview, with thanks to signandsight<\/a>:<\/p>\n

In an interview with Michael M\u00f6nniger, French sociologist<\/a> Alain Touraine<\/b> explains<\/a> why the protests in France are not a sign of political hope but rather of fear and distrust<\/b> (and therefore not \u201ca new social movement\u201d), and what distinguishes them from the revolts in the suburbs. \u201cImmigrants are completely disoriented<\/b> socially. They set cars on fire because they can\u2019t articulate themselves and have no spokesmen. The students on the other hand are much more privileged and are getting enormous support form the unions. At the same time, the immigrants and the students share a feeling of discrimination and exclusion<\/b>. The youth of the suburbs have stood for a long time outside of society, while the students are afraid that their future has been ruined, and that that will make them outsiders as well.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And it does seem to be true that what the students demand \u2014 the abrogation of the CPE (First Employment Contract) \u2014 can be read as simply wanting an easier and safer integration into the bourgeois-capitalist workplace. And is thus very far from the various utopian\/ revolutionary demands of the year 68. Is the present movement thus just a sort of \u201cnew realism,\u201d or will the right-wing French government\u2019s obdurate refusal to respond to the students\u2019 (and labor unions\u2019) demands to abrogate or at leat soften the CPE, eventually frustrate the students so much that they will begin to think beyond the \u201cfirst job contract\u201d and, as Touraine suggests, make them realize that they too, albeit priviled, are finally outsiders \u2014 and thus provoke a desire to ally themselves with the other outsiders, the immigrants? But that would alreday entail a revolutionary crossing of class- and race-strictures. But maybe, just maybe, the Chirac geriatric oligarchy (despite the Prime Minister\u2019s looks of a youthful intellectual Tarzan, and his book of critical essays on French poetry) is so rigid and self-righteous that it will provide the necessary spark that will lead to just this transformation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The French student uprisings \u2014 now also involving many highschools \u2014 warm the cockles of my old \u201968ish heart. Though I wonder if what drives today\u2019s uprising is the same desire to find the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}