The journal Emancipations has published a new article by BSIS PhD researcher Thomas Chevalier, where he examines the urban riots that took place in France at the end of June and early July 2023, assessing the levels of violence and the response of the French government.
The open access article can be downloaded here.
In this commentary, Chevalier argues that the unrest did not represent the brink of a civil war, as wrongly claimed by dark journalistic assessments and dominant right-wing political discourses, but pertained to a more profound condition of metacrisis (a state where a crisis enters a crisis of its own and a dangerous situation of social strife ensues). Tracing recent discourses and imaginaries of civil war in France and discussing political theorist Albena Azmanova’s notion of metacrisis in relation to Thucydides’s notion of stasis (social strife), he further reflects on how the banlieues (the marginalised suburbs from where the riots originated) crystallise France’s metacrisis, that is, how crisis in the banlieues became a crisis of its own and was already a multi-crisis grounded in France’s (post)colonial heritage, deindustrialisation strategy, and problematic policing politics, and how it echoes other pleas for decent politics and social justice in France.
More information on Chevalier’s research can be found on his Kent profile page. To keep up with the research published by our researchers and other BSIS news, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.