Les manifestations de rue en France (1918-1968)

Abstract

The parliamentary system deprives the street demonstration of all legitimacy. Therefore, "street demonstration" is not in France a constitutional right. Nethertheless, we have collected 15000 street demonstrations all around the country between 1918 and 1968, without any interruption, even during the German occupation. Every political party, from the left to the right, every association, every component of French society, every agglomeration was concerned. Furthermore, street demonstrations may played a decisive part in some of the main political or social French crises, in 1934 and 1968 mainly. The probleme raised by their history is to understand how they have succeeded in compelling recognition and, occasionally, in becoming of central importance in the French political system. This dissertation aims to shows that they are a substitute for lost practices of sociability, a way of social and political integration but, mostly, a political action. Its original features can't be understood without taking into account the French Revolution, its relations with street action, and the political system. The dissertaion analyses their process of "nationalization" and "naturalization". It shows how they express the integration in the national culture of people taking part in such events, how street demonstrations were able to become a way of regulation of the political system, how they were integrated by a political system and how this system was affected by them. It considers street demonstration as a symbolical substitute for the vanishing revolution, a mobilizing social myth replacing the general strike.