Silence, Rebellion, and Acting-Out of a Silenced Past: Understanding the French Riots From a Postcolonial and Transcultural Perspective.

Jonathan Lachal,Malika Mansouri,Marie Rose Moro,Elisabetta Dozio,Mayssa’ El Husseini,Marion Feldman

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00909

Abstract

Context and Objectives: According to a sociological study, the adolescents involved in the “suburban riots” of November 2005 were French nationals with a foreign background, including 55% of North African descent. Numerous attempts to interpret the “riots” have been made, but none of them has discussed the impact of the “silenced” colonial history on their filiation. For this reason, the present research set out to overcome this shortfall. Methods: Using a complementarist, transcultural, qualitative research methodology, 15 interviews with French adolescents of Algerian descent were analysed. Results, Analysis and Discussion: The analysis of these interviews highlighted the impact of the past violence in France’s colonial history on family dynamics and intergenerational relationships, which seemed to play a crucial role in the unconscious component of transmission within these families. This discovery led us to a new understanding of the 2005 revolt, envisaging it as a symptom of a disorder situated on several levels: on the level of subjectivity, of trans-generational relationships, and also on the level of social cohesion within French society. The interviews showed how the young interviewees related their current anger to French colonial and post-colonial history. Conclusions: These observations led to a new understanding of the “riots” as a form of acting-out of anger linked to contemporary and past experiences of domination and exclusion.

Highlights

In a similar way to that described by Schneider [21] in the United States, in France minorities derived from the former colonies start riots because they are reduced to a sense of powerlessness, with no alternative, and because they have to face discriminatory police violence that is sometimes fatal and remains unpunished
This was the case in the United Kingdom, with the death of a young black man called Mark Duggan who was killed by the police in August 2011 in Tottenham
In his book entitled “Why I am no longer talking to white people about race” (2017), Eddo-Lodge documented racial riots and confrontations involving fatalities in the United Kingdom from the 1960s up to the present

Summary

Objectives

According to a sociological study [2, 3], the adolescents involved in these “suburban riots” were French nationals with a foreign background, including 55% of North African descent. The peculiarity of these rioters appears as their links with the history of France and its former ancient colonies. There have been many attempts to explain the “riots”, the impact of a “silenced” colonial history on these young people (including the impact on trans-generational relationships) has never been explored. We sought to understand what motivates French teenagers’ contemporary affiliations, and how they perceive their contemporary world

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion