“Liberté, Egalité, Flashball”. Resisting Work to Absorb Violent Protests

Abstract

This paper explores how protest movements resist police violence, meaning the justified and unjustified use of physical force against citizens, in the context of violent protests. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the French yellow vest movement, I uncover the crucial role of actors resisting work in absorbing violent protests, in the sense of bearing and making their own. My findings show in particular that the articulation of three organized responses, namely physical care, paralegal assistance and violence publicization, enabled the yellow vests to sustain the deployment of violent protest tactics, through property damage, arsons or physical assaults to the police, while questioning the legitimacy of the use of physical force by the police to answer the conflict. This resisting work allowed actors to effectively resist to police violence, by controlling police behaviors and signaling the question as a public issue. Through this study, I first contribute to the literature looking at the efficacy of resistance by theorizing how activists have been able to challenge the use of physical force as part of protest policing. Second, I expand existing knowledge on the work involved in sustaining violence.