Bodies in Protest: Hunger Strikes and Angry Music 9789048528264

Table of contents :
Table of contents
Preface
Hunger strikes
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Angry music
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Bodies in Protest

Protest and Social Movements Recent years have seen an explosion of protest movements around the world, and academic theories are racing to catch up with them. This series aims to further our understanding of the origins, dealings, decisions, and outcomes of social movements by fostering dialogue among many traditions of thought, across European nations and across continents. All theoretical perspectives are welcome. Books in the series typically combine theory with empirical research, dealing with various types of mobilization, from neighborhood groups to revolutions. We especially welcome work that synthesizes or compares different approaches to social movements, such as cultural and structural traditions, micro- and macro-social, economic and ideal, or qualitative and quantitative. Books in the series will be published in English. One goal is to encourage nonnative speakers to introduce their work to Anglophone audiences. Another is to maximize accessibility: all books will be available in open access within a year after printed publication. Series editors Jan Willem Duyvendak is professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam. James M. Jasper teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Bodies in Protest Hunger Strikes and Angry Music

Johanna Siméant and Christophe Traïni With a Preface by James M. Jasper

Amsterdam University Press

Originally published as La musique en colère by Christophe Traini (2008), and La grève de la faim by Johanna Siméant (2009) © Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques Text translated by Katharine Throssell

Cover illustration: Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello playing Occupy Wall Street in New York, October 2011 (Wikimedia Commons, David Shankbone) Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn 978 90 8964 933 1 e-isbn 978 90 4852 826 4 (pdf) doi 10.5117/9789089649331 nur 764 © Johanna Siméant and Christophe Traïni / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2016 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.



Table of contents

Preface 9 James M. Jasper

Hunger strikes Johanna Siméant

Introduction 15 1 From fast to hunger strike Fasting and protest in history A 20th-century political form of action Gandhi and fasting From the Algerian War to the banalisation of the 1960s-1970s

17 17 19 21 22

2 An atypical and irrational method? An ‘individual’ method of action? An irrational method of action? A residual method of action?

25 26 28 30

3 The meaning of bodily violence The limits of the culturalist hypothesis Violence, non-violence and militant traditions Testify and denounce Public denunciation of injustice The authorities as responsible Challenges to the authenticity of engagement Refusing the grip of power The body in struggles over status and recognition

35 35 36 38 38 39 40 41 42

4 Hunger strikes, media and politics Hunger strike, political regimes and the state Faced with the state, public opinion and humanity Different tolerance of protest by different states

47 47 47 48

In the media spotlight Mobilising media: Spectacular and humanitarian Reticence or engagement by journalists Media coverage and reception of hunger strikes Hunger strikes in repertoires of protest action Repertoires and ‘comparative advantages’? Criticism of the legitimacy of the use of hunger strikes Temporality of the use of hunger strikes and protest cycles

50 50 52 52 53 53 54 56

5 Hunger strikers and injustice ‘Little people’ confronting the machine Victims Struggles for status and the world of work ‘Institutional dissidents’ Faced with political repression Pursuing the struggle: Politicising everyday life in prison Disarmed opponents, exemplary opponents Becoming fully recognised citizens: Harkis, refugees, sans papiers In the name of peace and non-violence

59 59 59 61 63 66 67 70 72 74

6 When hunger strikes arise Beginning a hunger strike Choosing a site Burning bridges The time of the strike Running risks, holding on Being credible The escalation process and preventing defection Repressing the strike Force-feeding in prison and the role of the media Divide, accuse and sap the credibility of supporters Police and military intervention Letting them die, making them martyrs Ending the strike Negotiate or persist? Management of feeding and life after the strike

77 77 77 79 80 80 81 83 84 84 89 91 92 93 93 95

Conclusion 97 Select bibliography

99

Angry music Christophe Traïni

Introduction 103 Well-orchestrated protest

1 Protest put to music The weapons of musical polysemy Between contemplation, contestation and legitimization

105 105 108

2 Amplifying protest Dictating adequate emotions Exalting a ‘we’ in movement Criticising the authorities, avoiding censorship Promoting moral values Attracting support and mobilising resources

111 111 113 121 127 132

3 Music and political tactics Subversion and modification of musical conventions From repression to political instrumentalisation From the stage to the political arena

137 137 143 148

4 Protest, art and commerce Musical outlets and youth ‘moratoriums’ Competing artistic vocations Bohemian art The ‘Parnassian’ position Commerce and profit

157 157 163 164 166 167

Conclusion 171 Harmonies and cacophonies 171 Select bibliography

175

Index 177

List of tables and figures Hunger strikes Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

Hunger strikes in France, documented in Le Monde, 1971-1992 31 Type of demands of hunger strikes in France (outside prison) 62 Sites of hunger strikes in France between 1971 and 1992 78

Angry music Table 1 Table 2 Table 3

106 Musical communication and emotional expression The contribution of musical devices to protest initiatives 135 A typology of the social vocations attributed to artists 164

Figure 1

The social uses of musical devices

171

Preface James M. Jasper In the last three decades, theories of social movements have descended from the lofty ether of political opportunities and post-industrial society to observable actions on the ground. From the grand comparative angle of a scholar hovering slightly above the earth, research now reflects the lived experience, the points of view and the feelings, the desires and projects of political participants themselves. Rather than attributing objective interests to them, we look at the goals that protestors themselves articulate. This convergence has reached the point that many scholars believe they can do academic research and engaged activism at the same time. The final landing spot for this descent to earth might be the human body, with the phenomenological recognition that all action entails bodies, not only as subjects and as objects but also as something that is not quite either one. Bodies provide reasons for action, the means of action, as well as being the site where action occurs. This attention to the embodied practices of protest began with feminism, even though feminists’ concerns to show the universality of patriarchy often led them to gloss over differences among bodies beyond that of male-female. In the 1990s queer theory and related endeavours vastly extended this work, with a proliferation of research into physical desires, tattoos and other body modifications, understandings of illness and disability, and the staging, choreography, and performance of protest. Many of the protests that have been studied are about control over sexuality, from slut walks to Egypt’s notoriously abused ‘girl in the blue bra’. Others, including foremost the worldwide gay pride events, are about de-stigmatising collective identities. Some use the vulnerability of the human body to demand human rights and respect, as in the naked protests that have proliferated around the world. Activists have always invented creative ways to use the human body as a political platform. The sweaty, messy details of individual and collective protest have never been so well documented as they are today. This completes a long arc since the 19th century (although stretching back much further): the bodily passions of crowds back then were used to dismiss protestors as bestial and irrational, incapable of the sophisticated discourse necessary to participate in democratic politics. Middle-class commentators were both dismissive and afraid of urban, working-class crowds. Starting in the 1960s, scholarly

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observers grew more sympathetic, having often participated themselves, but they were too eager to portray participants as rational, simply pursuing their self-interests in non-institutional arenas, constrained primarily by distant political structures. Today, we live in an intellectual world in which we at least pay lip service to difference, we celebrate the sensual and erotic attractions of protest and we have developed a rich language for the many emotions that connect us with one another. French scholars Johanna Siméant and Christophe Traïni are at the forefront of developments like these. Originally published as separate volumes in the French Contester series (edited by Nonna Mayer), the two halves of Bodies in protest reflect a resurgence of social movement studies in the last two decades in France, an explosion of research that is still too little known among Anglophone audiences. Beginning in the 1990s a new generation of scholars began to rethink mobilisation and social movements, not only critically recasting American concepts such as political opportunities but also developing a number of new conceptual starting points. Empirically grounded and using a variety of research techniques, this work reflects the wide influence of Pierre Bourdieu, with his concern to attend to culture while placing it in structural contexts, to acknowledge individuals while seeing them as connected to broad social constraints, to engage political issues even while retaining scholarly rigor. His concept of habitus, especially its expression through human bodies, focused on gestures and postures, but it could be applied to a variety of emotional displays as well. So the volume you are reading represents the intersection of two book series, the Contester books published by Sciences Po Press and the new Protest and Social Movements series published by Amsterdam University Press. AUP will publish translations of the Contester series alongside an exciting list of other new books on protest and movements. The most exciting aspect of the AUP series is that the books will all appear in open access only a year after their initial publications. This is a grand experiment in what is clearly the future of publishing. (But please do not stop buying books, as this provides the revenue to support the free versions.) In the book ahead of you, a scholar who has done a lot to describe the emotions of protest, Christophe Traïni, turns to the role of music in social movements. This confluence of interests is no accident, as music is the art form that most extensively involves our bodies. It has often been treated as though it were nothing more than a carrier of cognitive meanings and ideologies, but its power comes even more from the emotions it evokes, and Traïni pays equal attention to these emotions and to the uses of music in

Preface

11

strategic arenas, providing a concise introduction to both fields of research. Music engages us in all sorts of collective endeavours, and to understand how it operates is to understand social action. In her discussion of hunger strikes, Johanna Siméant looks at an unusual deployment of the body. When others are charged with supervising and disciplining your life and body, your body becomes the only thing over which you can still exert some degree of control. To starve yourself, always threatening and sometimes achieving death, is to make a shocking moral statement of protest, which authorities can rarely hide from the public. Although we think of famous historical cases like Britain’s suffragists at the beginning of the 20th century or the members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the 1970s, hunger strikes remain a common strategy today. Even as I write this, struggles continue at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp as Islamic prisoners who refuse to eat are barbarically force-fed. Siméant ably tells us about the reasons, the modes, and the outcomes of this important form of protest. I hope you enjoy these works as much as I have.



Hunger strikes Johanna Siméant



Introduction

Hunger strikes have always provoked extreme reactions, from bitter irony to deepest admiration. Many other protest practices, such as strikes and demonstrations, have now become routine; they have slowly won their legitimacy over the course of history. Yet even today it still seems incongruous or improbable to resort to a hunger strike. This might be explained by the ambivalent status of this practice, on the frontier between the individual and the collective, between violence and non-violence. The relatively low number of hunger strikes also helps reinforce their image as atypical. This uncertain status explains why scientif ic production on this subject is somewhat scarce. The place and visibility of hunger strikes in the repertoire of contemporary protest can be seen in a number of examples: the deadly fast of the ten IRA prisoners in 1981; the hunger strike by the French MP Jean Lassalle in 2006 against the closing of a factory in his constituency; the one carried out by the Indian activist Anna Hazare in 2011, protesting against corruption and claiming the heritage of Mahatma Gandhi; the hunger strikes in Guantanamo Bay; or those by refugees and asylum seekers throughout the world.1 My primary objective is to retrace the genealogy of the use of hunger strikes, because to date there is no historical synthesis of this practice. What are the origins of this practice, beyond the ritually invoked figures of the IRA prisoners, Gandhi, refugees or other political figures fasting to attract attention to their cause? Like all modes of protest action, hunger strikes have a history made of borrowed practices, imitation and contrasting uses. A second objective is to reveal the very great diversity of these strikes and their actors. However, within this diversity there are typical ways in which this practice is used: anonymous individuals confronting administrative injustice, non-violent fasts, strikes by political prisoners etc. Each of these types presents specific characteristics and specific ways of connecting their demands to their means. The third objective is to treat hunger strikes in concrete terms. By hunger strike I am referring to publically depriving oneself of food to accompany a 1 The notion of a contentious repertoire of action refers to the range of means that are most appropriate to the struggle of a group, in a given time and context, and in a specific relationship with the strategies of the authorities. Charles Tilly, ‘Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758-1834’, Social Science History 2 (1993): 253-280.

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particular demand, against an adversary or an authority able to satisfy this proclaimed demand, and most often involving putting oneself in danger. Yet this definition covers very different ways of acting. Before we move into the analysis of its signification, it is important to understand what a hunger strike consists of in concrete terms, whether it is unlimited or not, whether it is carried out by an individual or by a group, in prison or not. We must focus on each of its phases: organisation, medical concerns, intervention of authorities and force-feeding in prisons, relations with the media and support committees, and so forth. It is on the basis of this empirical approach that we can best understand the meaning that the strikers give to their practice; a meaning that does not always refer to a supposed ‘culture’ any more than it is a form of ‘moral blackmail’. Thus the analysis here relies on ethnographic observation of hunger strikes among the sans papiers2 in France as well as secondary documentation and interviews relating to other kinds of hunger strikes. I also aim to distance myself from the sterile debates about the sincerity of hunger strikers, or the manipulative power of a method that plays on emotion. I show what kinds of constraints these men and women must confront to protest in this way. Above all, these chapters provide an analysis of the situation: when a hunger strike begins a specific process begins, with its own rules, temporality and logics, which create a sense of similarity between movements that are otherwise very different. The demonstration is organised around the two axes presented in this introduction. It begins with a focus on the history of hunger strikes (Chapter 1), and a discussion of their atypical nature (Chapter 2). It then moves on to the way in which these strikes are situated within a universe of meaning (Chapter 3) and a political environment (Chapter 4). Chapter 5 then attempts to build a typology of causes that are defended in this way, beyond the diversity of these strikes. Finally, Chapter 6 looks at the processes that unfold when a hunger strike begins.

2 Sans papiers literally translates as ‘without papers’ and refers to the undocumented or illegal immigrants seeking residency or asylum in France. Because of the specific nature of this protest movement in France we will refer to it by its French name.

1

From fast to hunger strike

‘Hunger strike’, ‘grève de la faim’, ‘huelga de hambre’, ‘sciopero della fame’, ‘hungerstreik’, ‘greve da fome’. This expression emerged in many European countries in the 19th century, just at the time when labour strikes were thriving. But the practice of fasting in protest already had a long history.

Fasting and protest in history In principle, hunger strikes are different from fasts. The latter are generally of short duration and do not imply pressure on an adversary – or even the existence of an adversary other than oneself. Fasting is often associated with the idea of non-violence and the values of asceticism and self-control promoted in most religions (Lent in Christianity, Ramadan in Islam, Kippur in Judaism, along with many Buddhist and Hindu fasts). Yet there are certain similarities between these two practices. Historically, not all protest fasts have been of limited duration and, above all, the processes that have led to the hunger strikes that we know today were marked by references to religious fasts. We must try to understand what registers and mechanisms these two practices both mobilise. The very ancient practice of ‘private’ fasting provides real prestige, as we can see in the glorification of saints who constrained themselves to extreme fasts.1 Associated with purification and self-control, these actions demonstrated the exemplary moral character of those who performed them. The Christian structure of European societies thus valued control over one’s body and authorised the action of fasting. However, with the exception of the endura of the Cathars (a not very practical abandonment of food, with the goal of reconciling real life and perfection), it did not encourage its more sacrificial variants. The use of fasting as a gesture of protest remained very marginal until the 19th century. Georges Duby2 evoked a few ‘typically feminine’ cases, such as those of young girls in the Middle Ages who threatened to let themselves 1 Walter Vandereycken and Ron Van Deth, From fasting saints to anorexic girls: The history of self-starvation, New York, New York University Press, 1994. 2 Georges Duby,‘La grève de la faim: aspects historiques’, in Charles Cadoux et al., La grève de la faim ou le dérèglement du sacré, Paris, Economica, 1984, 41-45.

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die of hunger rather than be forced to marry against their will. However, he argues that these practices remained within the private sphere. The use of this method in penitential environments was also documented from the Middle Ages3 onwards, particularly in the Tower of London. Often it began with a simple refusal to eat vile food, and then the realm of claims gradually increased. With the exception of fasts against an offender (a debtor in particular), from the Middle Ages to the modern era, it is difficult to find any trace of any individual protest fasts, let alone collective ones, outside the penitentiary environment. These traditional fasts occur mainly in the history of India and in Ireland. In ancient India, the dharna (a term which today refers to a sit-in) was used by creditors who could not obtain reimbursement from a debtor with higher social status than themselves. It involved brandishing the threat of suicide – in this instance by self-starvation. The creditor took up position in front of the threshold of his debtor and waited to be reimbursed. If other threats of suicide existed, such as the prāya, particularly valued by Brahmins, their position at the summit of the social hierarchy was opposed to the status of the creditors performing the dharna. 4 We can see the same practice inspired by the content of the Brehon Laws in pre-Christian Ireland where the troscad (ritual fast) was used to oppose ‘demanders and defenders of unequal social status’.5 Their objectives were many: to obtain reparation, the favour of a powerful figure, or the misfortune of another. As Damien Lecarpentier argues, ‘credit and debt must be seen here in the broadest sense’.6 The practice would be transformed by certain debtors in dire straits who demanded a period over which to reimburse their debts. In all these essentially individual cases, what is important is the role of public shame inflicted by the plaintiff on the accused. The first collective protest fasts only appeared during the beginnings of the American War of Independence, and often had a religious dimension. 3 Jean-Philippe Mangeon, ‘Aspects contemporains de la grève de la faim’, in Charles Cadoux et al., La grève de la faim ou le dérèglement du sacré, Paris, Economica, 1984, 47-54. 4 Washburn Hopkins, ‘On the Hindu Custom of Dying to Redress a Grievance’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 21 (1900): 146-159. 5 Jean-Pierre Lavaud, La dictature empêchée. La grève de la faim des femmes de mineurs. Bolivie 1977-1978, Paris, CNRS éditions, 1999, 18, quoting P.W. Joyce, A social history of ancient Ireland, Dublin, M.H. Gill and Son Ltd, 1920, vol. 1, 204-207. See also Daniel A. Binchy, ‘A Pre-Christian Survival in Mediaeval Irish Hagiography’, in Dorothy Whitelock, Rosamond McKitterick and David Dumville (eds), Ireland in early mediaeval Europe: studies in memory of Kathleen Hughes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982, 168-178. 6 Damien Lecarpentier, ‘Cesser de s’alimenter pour contraindre une autorité: la grève de la faim comme pratique protestataire’, Cahiers d’économie et sociologie rurales 80 (2006): 78.

From fast to hunger strike

19

They were frequently organised by religious congregations and political groups: the Virginia fast of 1774 against the blockade of the port of Boston, the Rhode Island fast in the same year, or the fast by citizens of Massachusetts in 1775. Thus in May 1774, the members of the Virginia Assembly called for 1 June to be a day of fasting, humbling and prayer in support of their fellow citizens in Boston, where the port was closed by the British. They implored divine intervention against the calamities threatening their civil rights and begged that the King and the Parliament be inspired by ‘wisdom, moderation and justice’. It is only towards the end of the 19th century that we see the emergence of militant hunger strikes within the penitentiary system. Many Russian political prisoners in Siberia or St Petersburg used this method, golodovka, to protest against prison conditions in the 1870s. In 1898, whilst he was in prison, the young Leon Trotsky led a hunger strike with other prisoners against police blackmail, offering his parents the release of their son on the condition that he give up his political activities. In 1912, Akaba Hajime, the socialist author of Nômin no Fukuin (The farmers’ gospel) died of a hunger strike whilst in prison in Japan.

A 20th-century political form of action Two protest groups really adopted this mode of action at the beginning of the 20th century: Irish nationalists and (although they are often forgotten) British suffragettes demanding votes for women. Their hunger strikes, both individual and collective, took place in prison and had a clearly political dimension supported by other collective action. In 1909, the suffragette Marion Wallace Dunlop was sentenced to a month in prison for having posted an extract of the Bill of Rights within the House of Commons. She decided to refuse all food for as long as her status as a political prisoner was not recognised. She was released three days later. All the prisoners from her political family, the Women’s Social and Political Union, used the same tactic. After 40 or so such strikes and the release of all the prisoners, the administration changed tactics and began to force-feed the strikers. This apparently provoked a number of deaths (including that of Mary Clarke who died at home shortly after being force-fed). A law, nicknamed the Cat and Mouse Act, was adopted in 1913 and allowed for the release of prisoners in poor health on the condition that they respect the law. It effectively gave rise to a game of cat and mouse: a suffragette prisoner began a hunger strike, was released, returned to her activism, and

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was imprisoned again, and so on.7 American feminists imprisoned in 1917 also adopted this strategy. The phenomena gained strength in the prisons of the early 20th century. There were hunger strikes in 1914 in the United States by nearly 90 unemployed men imprisoned after hunger marches in Iowa; American conscientious objectors in the two world wars also used the technique. There were also hunger strikes by Trotskyist prisoners in the gulags of Vorkuta and Kolyma in 1936. Some died, others were force-fed and then executed two years later. One hunger strike in 1940 involved nearly 400 communist prisoners protesting against the conditions at their internment camp in Chibron, in south-east France. During the inter-war period and the Second World War, this mode of action spread among communist prisoners throughout the world: Chinese communists in the nationalist jails in the 1930s, Albanian communists imprisoned during the Second World War, communist political prisoners imprisoned in Maribor in Yugoslavia in 1936. This method was also used in labour conflicts: Cuban union leader Oscar Quintela went on a hunger strike while in prison in Havana in 1947, as did more than 200 coal miners in Pécs, Hungary, in February 1937. But it was the hunger strikes by Irish republicans that remain associated with the development and popularisation of this mode of action.8 These strikes took place exclusively in prison. The first so-called ‘unlimited’ strike was that of James Connolly, at Mountjoy Prison in 1913, which led to his release a week later. In 1917, Thomas Ashe died on the sixth day of a hunger strike following an error in the force-feeding procedure, once again at Mountjoy Prison. Terence MacSwiney, lord mayor of Cork, died in October 1920, after resisting attempts to force-feed him, 74 days into a hunger strike. Some 20 other republican prisoners followed his example and became martyrs for the cause. Sinn Féin subsequently abandoned the use of hunger strikes, before renewing it again during the violence in Ulster at the end of the 1960s, with the 1972 hunger strike by Billy McKee and Proinsias MacAirt in Belfast (other hunger strikes would follow, also in Dublin). The sisters Marian and Dolours Price would also be force-fed for 24 of their 30 weeks of hunger 7 Andrew Rosen, Rise up, women! The militant campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union, 1903-1914, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974. 8 On these hunger strikes, see, for example, James Healy, ‘The Civil War Hunger-Strike: October 1923’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 71.283 (1982), 213‑226; Padraig O’Malley, Biting at the grave: The Irish hunger strikes and the politics of despair, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1990; and George Sweeney, ‘Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice’, Journal of Contemporary History 28.3 (1993): 421-437.

From fast to hunger strike

21

strike in 1973-1974. The prison hunger strikes and the deaths they led to culminated in the death of the ten IRA prisoners in 1981, most notably that of Bobby Sands, in the face of the British authorities’ refusal to recognise them as political prisoners.

Gandhi and fasting Although Gandhi is often presented as a precursor of hunger strikes, he never actually used this term. The notion of paternity in protest action is not particularly meaningful, and in this instance it is not found where we might expect, because it was the Irish hunger strikes and Tolstoy’s philosophy that marked the young Gandhi and not the other way around! Yet it was Gandhi’s practice of fasting which – through its propagation and appropriation – contributed to the renewal of hunger strikes as a mode of action from the 1950s. In 1913, Gandhi was already an adept of non-violence and civil disobedience, and a militant for Hindu civil rights in South Africa. He also regularly fasted as a technique of personal purification, publically depriving himself of food for a week at a time. He saw this as a kind of penance for the serious sins committed by two members of the community he had founded.9 The next step was a fast in 1918 to prevent the Ahmedabad mill strikers resorting to violence. Most of Gandhi’s strikes correspond to acts of penance in response to violence by his own partisans. It has also been argued that Gandhi performed more hunger strikes against his friends than against his enemies.10 This is what Gene Sharp called the ‘satyagraphic’ fast, from the Sanskrit word ‘satyâgraha’ (force of truth); the objective is to rally and convert people to whom the fast is addressed – not adversaries but supporters and allies.11 Some of Gandhi’s fasts, however, took on a more militant aspect; such as the three-week-long fast for unity between Hindus and Muslims in 1924, or the so-called ‘fast to the death’ in 1932 against the specific electoral regime of the untouchables, which brought success in just six days. There is also the unlimited fast of 1948 for reconciliation between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi performed some 15 or so fasts of this kind in his lifetime, varying 9 Mohandas Gandhi, An autobiography, or the story of my experiments with truth, Gale, Cengage Learning, 2013. 10 Jean-Marie Muller, Stratégie de l’action non-violente, Paris, Points Seuil, 1981, 156. 11 Gene Sharp, The politics of non-violent action, Boston, Porter Sargent, 1973, 363.

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from five or six days to three weeks (on three different occasions). He did not deny the strategic dimension of this form of action, which conveys urgency when faced with the adversary and ‘can easily take on the flavour of violence’. This broad palette of meanings associated with the Gandhian fast, alternately calling on the exemplarity of the striker, risking their life for the cause; shaming their adversaries; establishing a power struggle; and at the same time adopting a rigorous practice of physical asceticism. All this undeniably contributes to the success of hunger strikes and its multiple appropriations, even beyond anti-colonial struggles.

From the Algerian War to the banalisation of the 1960s-1970s Because it was perceived as efficient, Gandhi’s example was widely embraced, even by those outside of non-violent circles. The contemporary success of hunger strikes results from this imbrication between Gandhian non-violent registers on one hand and the Irish reference and liberation movements – armed or not – on the other. In 1948 the non-violent leader Lanza del Vasto founded the Community of the Ark on the Larzac plateau in France, on the model of Gandhi’s ashrams. He was the first in France to explicitly refer to the Indian leader and he carried out several hunger strikes (in 1957 against the use of torture in Algeria, in 1958 against the atomic bomb, in 1972 against the proposed extension of the military base in Larzac). The Algerian War constituted one of the key moments for the consolidation of the use of hunger strikes: they increased between 1957 and 1961 following the victory of thousands of Algerian Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) political prisoners, led by Ben Bella and the ministers of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic, who led a hunger strike demanding a strict enforcement of Regime A (the status of political prisoner). It is also important to remember the mobilisation of the pacifist activist Louis Lecoin, who had demanded a status for conscientious objectors since 1958, and who began a hunger strike in 1962 for the establishment of this status. It was only after the threat of a second strike in 1963 that the French government decided to promulgate it. Banalisation developed towards the end of the 1960s in the wake of student mobilisations and the radical left. Many student prisoners, such as Alain Geismar in France, resorted to this method. In the United States during the Vietnam War, the Berrigan brothers, a pair of Catholic priests and pacifist activists imprisoned for destroying military documents, carried

From fast to hunger strike

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out a hunger strike in 1969. In 1970, inmates in Soledad Prison in California conducted a massive hunger strike in protest against their conditions of detention. The use of the hunger strike, imitated and adapted by many different protest groups, then had a kind of ‘second wind’. The year 1973 saw hunger strikes by Soviet Jews, by Spanish priests mobilised against Francoism, by political prisoners in India, by Andreas Baader and other members of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany. Similarly 1981 saw many imprisoned autonomist militants carry out hunger strikes directly inspired by the Irish political prisoners. In 2000-2001, hundreds of left-wing military activists, Turks and Kurds, carried out hunger strikes in Turkish prisons. More than 200 of them were described as ‘strikes to the death’. It is also a frequent form of action for Palestinians in Israeli prisons, or for Moroccan political prisoners. In 2004 the Moroccan King Mohammed VI pardoned 33 hunger striking political prisoners including the Franco-Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet. More recently, prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have also used this method of action. Progressively, hunger strikes moved beyond the prison and became more common outside the penal system. In California in 1968, César Chávez, the Chicano union leader, held a hunger strike for 25 days in protest against the exploitation of seasonal farm workers of Mexican origin – often illegal immigrants – by the major landowners. In Andalusia a whole village protested against the landowners’ treatment of day labourers. In France, the current affairs of the 1970s were teeming with small individual hunger strikes, often at the junction between the personal and the political: ‘low-level judges’ subject to professional transfers, social workers sacked for activism, militant filmmakers denied subsidies etc. Hunger strikes developed in the context of labour conflicts, bearing a moral dimension seen as ‘non-negotiable’. In France, the end of the 1970s saw the emergence of collective hunger strikes used by a specific protest group: the sans papiers, undocumented immigrants.12 They repeatedly used this method to obtain the regularisation of their residency status. This technique, also used in many detention camps for illegal immigrants, became frequent in other states where access to residency was limited. Thus in 2011 in Greece, more than 300 undocumented foreigners carried out a hunger strike in Athens and Thessalonica. Hunger strikes outside the prison system were not the prerogative of democratic countries either, as we can see in the almost traditional hunger strikes in Ukraine at the end of the 1960s. Other examples are of the hunger 12 Johanna Siméant, La cause des sans-papiers, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1998.

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strikes by Bolivian miners’ wives in 1977 demanding the dictatorship award amnesty to unionist miners13; or that carried out by more than 90 people, mostly women, fasting in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City to demand the release of political prisoners and the disappeared; or the hunger strike by Liu Xiaobo in 1989 on Tiananmen Square; or the strikes by the mothers of Kenyan political prisoners in 1992. In recent years, French news was marked by several episodes of this nature, such as the hunger strike by MP Jean Lassalle against the offshoring of a factory situated in the Aspe Valley, or that by José Bové against GMO foods, or that by Roland Veuillet, an education advisor, protesting against a punishment transfer. In 2008, Algeria saw some 55 contractual teachers begin a hunger strike to demand the regularisation of their situation and payment of their salaries; in the same year this also happened in both Senegal and Cameroon for comparable reasons. In 2011, the Indian anticorruption campaigner Anna Hazare began a hunger strike to demand the Indian government pass more efficient anti-corruption laws.14 Overall, the use of the hunger strike, without ever becoming ordinary, seems to have become more banal.

13 Lavaud, La dictature empêchée. 14 Miniya Chatterji, ‘The Globalization of Politics: From Egypt to India’. Social Movement Studies 12.1 (2013): 96‑102; Mitu Sengupta, ‘Anna Hazare’s Anti-Corruption Movement and the Limits of Mass Mobilization in India’, Social Movement Studies 13.3 (2014): 406‑413.

2

An atypical and irrational method? The distinction between individual action and collective action constitutes one of the fundamental oppositions upon which is based – often implicitly, because it is so self-evident – the sociology and social history of forms of protest. These disciplines only recognise as a legitimate object those claims that are associated with a social movement, and they reject beyond their sphere of competence and into abnormality (for example into the domain of historical psychoanalysis or social psychiatry), all physical or symbolic violence, demonstrations of revolt, or grievances of which the authors act alone, and which cannot be connected to a series with clear patterns of characteristics, or to economic regularities. – Luc Boltanski, Yann Darré and Marie-Ange Schiltz1

Although all the banal, institutionalised and legally codified means of action – such as demonstrations or strikes – attract analytic attention, there are only a few social science texts in English or French dedicated to hunger strikes. Psychoanalytic approaches sometimes deal with the subject and some research has been done in France focused on the penal environment. But, with one exception, these are doctoral theses and articles in medicine, criminology and criminal law. Until the 21st century, Anglo-Saxon literature, which is more plentiful, essentially focused on the Irish hunger strikes and the research dedicated to specific cases were rare until very recently.2 1 Luc Boltanski, Yann Darré and Marie-Ange Schiltz, ‘La dénonciation’, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 51 (1984): 3. 2 Since the year 2000, in English-language social science publications, see Kevin Grant, ‘British Suffragettes and the Russian Method of Hunger Strike’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 53.1 (2011): 113‑143; Jan Kiely, ‘Performances of Resistance: Communist Hunger Strikes and Demonstrations in Nationalist Prisons, 1928-1937’, Twentieth-Century China 29.2 (2004): 63‑88; JoAnn McGregor, ‘Contestations and Consequences of Deportability: Hunger Strikes and the Political Agency of Non-Citizens’, Citizenship Studies 15.5 (2011): 597‑611; Leith Passmore, ‘The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction’, German History 27.1 (2009): 32‑59; Tim Pratt and James Vernon, ‘“Appeal from this fiery bed…”: The Colonial Politics of Gandhi’s Fasts and Their Metropolitan Reception’, Journal of British Studies 44.1 (2005): 92‑114; Keramet Reiter, ‘The Pelican Bay Hunger Strike: Resistance within the Structural Constraints of a US Supermax Prison’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113.3 (2014): 579‑611; Stephen Scanlan, Laurie Cooper Stoll and Kimberly Lumm, ‘Starving for Change: The Hunger Strike and Nonviolent Action, 1906-2004’, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 28 (2008): 275‑323; Waismel-Manor, ‘Striking Differences’.

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How can this lack of interest be explained? Why would hunger strikes, just 15 years ago, provoke such comments as ‘they’re not really political’, ‘it’s blackmail’, ‘it’s individual’, ‘it’s very rare’? What ostracism strikes this decidedly ‘different’ method of action? Categorised as a form of self-inflicted violence, along with self-immolation and self-mutilation, hunger strikes are generally assimilated with the most extreme forms of protest.

An ‘individual’ method of action? Boltanski’s observation remains true 30 years on. Sociology and history do prioritise collective forms of protest. Practices which do not necessarily require prior mobilisation (hunger strikes, but also immolation, automutilation, graffiti or protest letters) attract less attention from researchers, whether they are individual or collective. It is as though all these forms are considered ‘non-political’ actions, as soon as the political is envisaged as a means to construct the collective. However, neglecting these protest techniques means forgetting that protest does not solely obey the principle of numbers. It also mobilises expertise, virtue, scandal, indignation3 and so forth. Hunger strikes are a method of denunciation, 4 the expression of indignation which spreads – by scandal, for example – and interrupts the ordinary course of things. But just like the letters to the editor that Boltanski studied, hunger strikes provide us with gauges of ‘normality’, and above all must not reveal too great a gap between the ‘importance’ of the form of protest and the cause it is in aid of. The radical Italian MP Marco Pannella,5 strengthened by his notoriety, has carried out several personal protest fasts in defence of general – or even ‘universal’ – political causes: world hunger, universal moratorium against the death penalty, amnesty in Italy and so forth. Each time, he is careful to formulate his demands so that they are specific and feasible6 and to mobilise support for his cause. As an MP, Pannella may expect to be heard, but an anonymous individual who undertakes a hunger strike for a grand cause would have very little hope of getting their message across. Overseas 3 Michel Offerlé, Sociologie des groupes d’intérêt, Paris, Montchrestien, 1994, 112. 4 Boltanski, Darré and Schiltz, ‘La dénonciation’. 5 As was the case at the beginning of the 1960s in France, Lanza del Vasto, Louis Lecoin, or José Bové today. 6 Such as the increase in the portion of the GDP allocated to aid.

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students, anonymous Basque activists and even environmentalists are almost always confronted with the need to begin a hunger strike in order to be heard. The perceived disparity between the method, the importance of the cause in question, and the status of the person defending it may explain the irony that hunger strikes often provoke; they are frequently seen as ‘abnormal’ or ‘ridiculous’. Examples include tobacconists protesting against the rising price of tobacco, an individual sentenced to a suspended sentence for neighbourhood disputes, a filmmaker denied subsidies and so forth. Even the hunger strike by MP Jean Lassalle was considered by some as excessive and exaggerated; it was over an economic conflict and the MP was said to have ‘made too much of himself’. Although they appear anecdotal when seen from a distance, these protests reveal the powerful sense of indignation on the part of the person defending the cause. It is traditional in politics to undermine one’s adversaries, to accuse them of only representing themselves and not the group they claim to speak for. However, hunger strikes are not only individual actions. Most frequently they are collective – both in prison and elsewhere. Of a sample of 544 cases outside the prison environment, collected from a review of the French newspaper Le Monde between 1971 and 1992, there were only 178 individual hunger strikes (32.7%). As we have seen, this method of action has been the object of widespread appropriation by certain social groups, including the sans papiers, who made up some 40% of the hunger strikes involving more than ten people in this sample. Finally, the last accusation against hunger strikes charges them with being ‘individual’ even when they are ‘collective’: they are no more than the simple accumulation of individual ‘cases’ and have no genuine collective project. It is true that in the case of the sans papiers the vast majority of hunger strikers hope that their individual situation will be resolved by the strike. But is it the role of the social sciences to decide a priori what is ‘genuinely’ individual or collective? Surely it is the job of political organisations to construct the collective based on individual cases, or to demand general measures rather than case-by-case humanitarian regularisations? It is difficult to see what would differentiate these hunger-striking sans papiers from the railway workers protesting against the dismantling of the retirement regime, or workers striking for a pay rise. All have a ‘personal’ interest in having their demands met.

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An irrational method of action? Images of emaciated bodies are often alarming and unsettling to the viewer. The photo of the skeletal body of Hans Holger Meins of the RAF, who died in prison in 1974 after his third hunger strike, is a case in point. Images of hollow faces, sunken eyes and elongated, weakened bodies, or police intervention against vulnerable strikers leave few viewers indifferent. Provoking an emotional reaction is one of the goals of the hunger strike. Boltanski’s observation is once again relevant here. Hunger strikes appear irrational or pathological because they involve the risk of death, or other serious implications. Several studies have presented them as an ‘anorexic’ form of protest, comparing them to other practices associated with ‘orality’, or hysteria. The MP Jean Lassalle was treated as a psychiatric case, for example. Accusations increase when the hunger strike is accompanied by other techniques of ‘attack’ on the body. We cannot forget the ‘dirty protest’ campaign by the IRA prisoners in 1978 against their conditions, and specifically the regular beatings they were subject to when they came out of the cells to empty their chamber pots. They began by refusing to wear prison uniforms, and wearing only blankets, then refusing to wash, and finally covering the walls of their cells with their own excrement. We are also reminded of the potentially deadly methods (self-mutilation and self-immolation) used by the Kurdish activists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Should hunger strikes be therefore considered as being in the domain of pathological mental disturbances? Should these protesters be deemed irrational because they could not align their means with their desired ends? Demonstrating, signing a petition or going on strike are not generally considered dangerous in contemporary democracies. Yet the murders of civil rights activists in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, the death of a protester at the G8 meeting in Genoa in 2001, and the death of Rémi Fraisse in France in 2014 are reminders that these practices are not always risk-free. If we look beyond democracies, this even becomes the norm rather than the exception. The use of hunger strikes is not as irrational as it appears; it allows protestors to preserve a mastery over violence – that which they inflict upon themselves. In democracies the use of the hunger strike is subject to criticism because of the range of alternative means for making oneself heard. However, this would be forgetting that even in a democratic regime, the authorities’ tolerance of protest depends on the social group in question; it is notably very low for undocumented immigrants or presumed terrorists. It would also

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be forgetting the helplessness of isolated protesters, or those pressed for time, who have only the weapon of scandal with which to create publicity for their cause. The irrationality associated with hunger strikes is one of the classic arguments of de-legitimisation. Mass movements have long been discredited in the same way. Public fasts by anonymous individuals are even more subject to this stigma. This falls under the category of the ‘institutional dissident’ evoked by Maryvonne David-Jougneau. An isolated protestor, described as paranoid, will be accused of being ‘over the top’; at the most his or her cause may be recognised as legitimate but the means will be considered problematic: ‘what is considered as “pressure”, expression of aggression, even terrorism, is the fact that the dissident, by posing a problem and taking a stand within the institution, in the extreme situations he or she occupies, necessarily orders everyone to take a position’.7 The fact that hunger strikes have historically often been practiced by women8 also contributes to devaluing this method of action which is ipso facto associated with anorexia and hysteria – ‘feminine pathologies’ by definition. The passivity of the fast, the staging of violence, the use of the domestic register – all actions considered as moral blackmail – are depicted as being typically feminine. These ‘feminine’ traits are seen as being opposed to ‘real violence’ and to ‘real politics’. As we have seen above, interesting research has been done on ‘anorectic ways of being in the world’,9 which are socially valued, such as in certain models of sainthood and sacrifice. However, if anorexia and suicide fall within the domain of the social sciences and we can identify their specific rationality, would not the same be true of the hunger strike?10 The hypothesis of irrationality does not hold up to critical examination. Being faithful to ones’ values and expressing indignation in an articulated fashion are not in themselves irrational. Sociology indeed allows us to explain apparently extreme behaviour by revealing the social logics behind 7 Maryvonne David-Jougneau, Le dissident et l’institution ou Alice au pays des normes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989, 145. 8 For example, the case of the suffragettes, and the principle choice of hunger strikes by women protesters in Bolivia, see Stephen Scanlan, ‘Women and Nonviolent Protest: The Hunger Strike and Maternal versus Feminist Collective Action Frames’, paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, 2008, 1. 9 Jacques Maître, Anorexies religieuses, anorexie mentale. Essai de psychanalyse socio historique. De Marie de l’Incarnation à Simone Weil, Paris, Cerf, 2000. 10 Respectively, Muriel Darmon, ‘The Fifth Element: Social Class and the Sociology of Anorexia’, Sociology 43.4 (2009): 717-733; Émile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, New York, Free Press, 1997.

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it: strong group membership, or inversely anomie, social construction of the desire to die for a cause,11 various forms of emotional gratification and so forth. Resorting to hunger strikes may also be as ‘strategic’ as other forms of protest. Interactions between strikers and authorities involve significant tactical equations including managing the credibility of the strike, controlling groups, or reducing the options available to opponents. If in some strikes the instrumental aspect is outweighed by the pleasure of self-affirmation (see Chapter 5), this is in inherent aspect of many kinds of protest actions.

A residual method of action? The image of the hunger strike is an ambivalent one. Although it is still rare and exceptional, it has also been made somewhat banal through its mediatisation. What is really at work here? Responding to this question means tackling the more standard issue of how protest actions can be counted. Because they are unpredictable and less codified by law than the standard unionist repertoire (there is no strike notice for a hunger strike!), it is not easy to provide a satisfactory statistical overview of these practices. Only strikes in prison are well documented by the penal administration, which has carried out many studies on the subject. Between 1992 and 1999, Nicolas Bourgoin thus counted a yearly average of 925 hunger strikes in French prisons.12 An internal memo written at the end of the 1980s by Dr Espinoza at Fresnes Hospital mentions between 1054 and 1713 hunger strikes per year for the period between 1978 and 1986: between 2.9% and 5.6% of all inmates. Despite being incomplete, the media’s catalogue of these strikes at least provides us with the lower limit of an overall figure that is difficult to estimate, because not all hunger strikes attract media attention. I have personally counted13 a total of 544 French cases, outside the prison environment, based on the analytic index of the newspaper Le Monde between 1971 and 1992. This represents at least 30 hunger strikes per year – either individual or collective. This number is clearly an underestimate, given 11 Olivier Grojean, ‘Bringing the Organization Back in: Pro-Kurdish Protest in Europe’, in Marlies Casier and Joost Jongerden (eds), Nationalisms and politics in Turkey: Political Islam, Kemalism and the Kurdish issue, London, Routledge, 2011, 182-196. 12 Nicolas Bourgoin, ‘Les automutilations et les grèves de la faim en prison’, Déviances et société 25.2 (2001/2): 131-145. 13 Johanna Siméant, ‘L’efficacité des corps souffrants: Le recours aux grèves de la faim en France’, Sociétés Contemporaines 31 (1998): 59-79.

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Table 1  Hunger strikes in France, documented in Le Monde, 1971-1992 70 Number of hunger strikes at that me Number of undocumented migrants' hunger strikes

60 50 40 30 20 10

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

1987

1986

1985

1984

1983

1982

1981

1980

1979

1978

1977

1976

1975

1974

1973

1972

1971

0

Legend: Number of strikes indicated at this date/proportion of hunger strikes by sans papiers

that we have frequently discovered cases that were not part of this sample; whether individual hunger strikes by sans papiers that we discovered subsequently in archives or interviews, or by friends indicating a hunger strike in their administration. There are two periods where hunger strikes were used particularly intensively: between 1971 and 1973, and then between 1980 and 1982. Over these two periods, as well as between 1991 and 1992 (to a lesser extent) the sans papiers movement made up a significant proportion of these strikes. This would be even more notable if we counted individuals on strike rather than the number of strikes, given the number of collective hunger strikes by sans papiers. In the 1970s the use of hunger strikes was not characteristic of the sans papiers movement but rather of the extreme left. There are only two years in which the sans papiers strongly resorted to this method, 1973 and 1991. The ‘peak’ in the 1970s was confirmed by Gregory Salle who maintained that the French Directorate of General Intelligence (the police intelligence services), counted 70 strikes for the year 1970 alone.14 14 Grégory Salle, ‘Mettre la prison à l’épreuve. Le GIP en guerre contre “l’Intolérable”’, Cultures et conflits 55 (2004): 80.

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Israël Waismel-Manor counted 164 hunger strikes in Israel and 312 in the United States between 1976 and 2001, based on a press review.15 This represents respectively 1.0513 and 0.0421 cases per year per million citizens (on the basis of our data this would mean 0.47 per year per million citizens). This study nevertheless neglects the fact that the size of the United States makes it less probable that hunger strikes (particularly individual ones) even make the national press. Only 15 or so gained airtime on ABC television between 1989 and 2001. A press review at state level would probably have achieved more substantial results. Olivier Fillieule has emphasised the limits of data coding for the press, which is the most popular method for constructing long series in the study of protest action.16 Police archives should be a better source than newspapers.17 However, given that this method of action is less frequent than demonstrations, collecting data on hunger strikes within complaints made to police would require an enormous amount of work (including collecting documents in several different sites) in order to obtain a sample of strikes large enough to be statistically exploitable and from which correlations could be established. Although useful for comparing different kinds of hunger strikes, collecting press data provides a minimum number, but remains clearly below real figures. Today’s digital resources increase the possibility for accurate counting, given that the internet is less selective than the offline press, and is also the site that many activists choose to circulate information about the cause they defend. In May 2008, the keyword ‘hunger strike’ sent by Google Notifier brought back 15 or so cases in France alone. Extrapolating this over 12 months brings us to 180 cases, 6 times higher than the average established using Le Monde. These cases range from an individual hunger strike by a midwife in protest against the closure of the maternity ward at Carhaix hospital to several collective hunger strikes by sans papiers in detention centres to a strike by a sacked town council worker in Lille to a bank employee in Corsica demanding a rural bonus. The Factiva press 15 Waismel-Manor, ‘Striking Differences’. He searched for the words hunger strike in the LexisNexis database records of three American newspapers: the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today, and two Israeli newspapers: Yediot Aharonot and the Jerusalem Post. 16 Olivier Fillieule, with Manuel Jimenez, ‘The Methodology of Protest Event Analysis and the Media Politics of Reporting Environmental Protest Events’, in Christopher Rootes (ed.), Environmental protest in Western Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003, 258-279. 17 Based on complaints made to police in certain major towns and other police sources, Fillieule has established a sample of demonstrations that enable him to nuance certain over-hasty conclusions about the ‘post-materialist’ aspect of contemporary social movements. Olivier Fillieule, Stratégies de la rue. Les manifestations en France, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1997.

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database, although more ‘selective’, is also very useful. For 2007 in France, it recorded some 75 individual or collective hunger strikes outside the prison system and administrative detention centres. We must not forget that this press sample does not include many regional newspapers. Researchers who study specific causes (Irish or Kurdish nationalism, for example) also count hunger strikes and they are often more able to crossreference the sources relevant for their research. James Healy thus counted approximately 1000 such strikes among Irish republicans in prison between 1913 and 1922, resulting in 7 deaths.18 George Sweeney estimates that in October 1923, more than 8000 political prisoners opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty had used this method.19 Outside the prison system, Olivier Grojean used combined press sources to put forward the figure of 35 hunger strikes between 1986 and 1996, generally collective, in the Kurdish movement in Germany and France.20 Jean-Pierre Lavaud shows just how frequent fasting has been in the protest repertoire in Bolivia since 1949: collective hunger strikes by women associated with the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) in 1951; a three-day fast by President Hernán Siles Zuazo in 1956 to gain the people’s acceptance of unpopular measures; hunger strikes by women in 1961 and 1963 against liberal reforms and the arrest of leaders of the workers movement; another hunger strike in February 1972 shortly after the Coup d’Etat in mid-1971; hunger strike by 30 parents of political prisoners who obtained – with mediation by the Catholic Church – the reopening of their files; many student strikes during the dictatorship; hunger strikes by miners’ wives at the end of 1977.21 Although the frequency of hunger strikes cannot be compared to that of demonstrations or traditional strikes, there is a certain regularity or even a routine to this practice, both inside the prison system and outside it. In the latter case, they are often characterised by a strong mediatisation, as we saw for Jean Lassalle in France, the Mapuche activist Patricia Troncoso in Chile, Marco Pannella in Italy, or, in April 2009, the Bolivian President Evo Morales and 14 union leaders who began a hunger strike to accelerate the Parliament’s vote on presidential elections. Although hunger strikes are not the primary method of action that any protester will resort to, they are undeniably part of the arsenal of protest 18 James Healy, ‘Hunger Strikes Around the World’, Social Studies 8.1 (1984): 81-108. 19 Sweeney, ‘Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice’, 421. 20 Olivier Grojean, La cause kurde, de la Turquie vers l’Europe. Contribution à une sociologie de la transnationalisation des mobilisations, PhD thesis, EHESS, 2008, 437. 21 Lavaud, La dictature empêchée.

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actions. They occupy an essential place in certain specific repertories – those of undocumented immigrants, nationalists or terrorists in prison. This banalisation has been accompanied by a greater medical and administrative knowledge about the process and the risks associated with hunger strikes. However, becoming increasingly banal has also made it more difficult for them to gain access to major media sources.

3

The meaning of bodily violence

Martyrdom, example setting, suffering and non-violence are all images associated with hunger strikes. Violence and moral blackmail are as well. Extracting ‘the’ meaning of this action would be a vain enterprise, given its myriad uses and causes. Without succumbing to the easy solution of culturalist explanations, we can still identify strong symbolic regularities in these practices.

The limits of the culturalist hypothesis The idea that certain social groups resort more easily to this form of protest than others because of their culture, is appealing initially because we spontaneously think both of the IRA and Gandhi when we think of hunger strikes. If we return to the creditor’s fast, both in Ireland and in ancient India, we can see that the efficiency of Gandhi’s fasts can be connected to the validation of fasting in Hinduism, and that the martyrs of the IRA evoke a mythology of sacrifice that runs throughout Irish history. However, although the ‘cultural’ traits of these protest groups are undeniably favourable to the use of one or other form of protest, they are not sufficient explanations in themselves. We could go onto explain the more frequent use of hunger strikes by Turkish and North African immigrants by their practice of the long Ramadan fast. But the fact is that throughout the world, this form of action is often that of foreigners, in detention or not, requesting a right to residency, whatever their religion or ‘culture’ may be: Chinese, Zairian, or Haitian held in the refugee camps in the American South. Moreover, the forms of action elaborated in specif ic historical and cultural contexts are often imported, re-appropriated, transformed and reinterpreted, sometimes in complete disconnection from their initial meaning.1 The generalisation of means of communication allows us to observe protest techniques used successfully ‘elsewhere’ and to adapt them to new contexts. Finally, the memory of forms of action used in the context of certain struggles does not necessarily exist as such. During the movement of the sans papiers in 1991-1992, we observed with surprise that

1 Sean Chabot, ‘Transnational Diffusion and the African American Reinvention of the Gandhian Repertoire’, Mobilization 5.2 (2000): 201-216.

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many of those involved were unaware of the similar movements that had taken place in the early 1970s. If history repeats itself, in the sense that certain groups repeatedly resort to fasting as a political strategy, it is rather through the transmission of concrete and material knowledge; just as these sans papiers performing hunger strikes in France had previously used the protest technique in prison in their countries of origin. Rather than cultures or justifications of particular forms of action, it is above all certain forms of socialisation – such as prison – that are favourable to this kind of practice. This is also true for religious socialisation when it encourages ascetic dispositions, a tradition illustrated in the 1980s by Iranian Shiite students in their hunger strikes against the Shah of Iran. We could also cite non-violent Christians, authors of many individual hunger strikes. In other words, we cannot completely bind the choices of particular modes of action to the social characteristics of protesters. Yet there are (more or less apparent) affinities between protest practices and those who use them.

Violence, non-violence and militant traditions The questions of violence and non-violence are at the heart of the symbolic ambivalence of hunger strikes. Fasting belongs to the non-violent repertoire and owes much to the popularity of the Gandhian practice. There are no books, nor websites, dedicated to the techniques of non-violent action and the stakes of the methods involving fasting that fail to refer to Gandhi, or differentiate limited and unlimited fasting and hunger striking.2 A significant proportion of French hunger strikes stem from this legacy – including that by Father Christian Delorme against the expulsion of foreigners in spring 1981, or the strikes in solidarity with the victims of floods in Bangladesh in the early 1970s. Not all these hunger strikes took a non-violent approach but many benefited from the know-how of activists who inherited this tradition, or left-wing Christian movements also marked by this reference. Jean Lassalle’s hunger strike, beyond his openly non-conventional way of practicing Catholicism, was marked by his experience in the Larzac community run by Lanza del Vasto, a disciple of Gandhi and one of the major French figures of non-violence. This form of violence, supported by defenders of non-violence, is also the result of ‘ancient violence’. Some protestors, unlike part of their support 2 Muller, Stratégie de l’action non-violente; Sharp, The politics of non-violent action.

The meaning of bodily violence

37

base, do not see themselves as ideologically connected to non-violence, but also defend, or even practice, the use of violence (political or otherwise). Those imprisoned for terrorism may have used violence: FLN militants in French prisons during the Algerian War, PKK activists in Turkey, Irish nationalists, members of the RAF, Guantanamo Bay inmates or Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Similarly, some of those engaged in hunger strikes against double penalties3 were sentenced for criminal offences, sometimes involving violence, such as hold-ups, for example. There is a ‘violent’ way to carry out hunger strikes. This is evidenced by the numerous and sometime irreversible lesions it leaves on the strikers, and the deaths among the IRA or the RAF prisoners. As the dominant form of protest in the repertoire of acts against oneself, hunger strikes are often accompanied by techniques of self-mutilation, suicide or other forms of bodily degradation. This mode of action can be experienced very differently by different protesters. Some see it as a part of a legacy of non-violent action. Others see it as the last possible resort, when outward violence is prohibited and inaccessible and one’s own body is the only tool left to the protester, without necessarily investing this action with any kind of superior value. We can see these two conceptions of hunger strikes among unsuccessful asylum seekers and those affected by double penalties. Text 1. Two ways of talking about violence and hunger strikes [Have you ever been on a hunger strike before?] Yeah, a strike in Orleans in 1989 in support of a Zairian asylum seeker who was rejected in revolting conditions. Before I’d done strikes of 4 days, 6 days, on average. I don’t like the idea of unlimited strikes. For the Zairian man, we decided to do a 15-day-long hunger strike, as a nonviolent means… Hunger strikes are a non-violent means but… maybe not how they do it [the Kurds]… There are references to Gandhi to appeal to people’s conscience […] to give some weight to it… so we don’t just content ourselves with signing a petition. (A former priest and defender of the sans papiers, 17 April 1992) The French, the French people, they’ll be subjected to it. Not the ministers in their offices. The kids in the suburbs, they have such violence, such hate… The American phenomenon, it’s us who’ll unleash it without meaning to. It’s not even that they’re sick of it, but that they’re sick of being sick of it… […] Eventually it becomes a violent discourse. […] We’re ready to 3 The double penalty system refers to punishment by incarceration followed by deportation for foreigners found guilty of criminal offences in France.

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take one hundred volunteers and do a hunger strike in a TV studio to force them to talk about us, so that they finally do it because it’s proven that this is government censure. In any case, I’m not against armed struggle if the cause is just. (A member of the committee against double penalties, a hunger striker, during a press conference, 21 January 1992)

This dual approach to the same mode of action does not prevent the strikers from being able to shift from one form to the other: ‘non-violents’ who abandon the protest fast for the unlimited hunger strike, or vice versa, former ‘violents’ who adopt the principles of non-violence and abandon their previously strategic relationship with hunger strikes.

Testify and denounce Public denunciation of injustice By denouncing the persecutor – the state, the justice system, the penal authorities or the employer – hunger strikes provide a public testimony of injustice. Most often the persecutor is also the figure who is able to resolve the situation behind the strike, but this is not always the case, particularly when the higher echelons of an administration are ordered to ensure a lower echelon (a prefect, 4 for example) revise their decisions. It is also not the case when the state is required to resolve a neighbourhood dispute, or to intervene against off-shoring and so forth. By nature hunger strikes have ternary structure. They do not only mobilise the victim against the perpetrator, they also count on having an audience, even if that audience has to be created,5 which cannot be known in advance. Certain strikes, marked by a strong communitarian logic, contribute to the reinforcement of a real or an imagined group, which will appear even more united in instances of collective grief, as was the case for the Irish prisoners.6 The death of the nationalist prisoners called up and reactivated a martyrology, tied up with Irish Catholicism (the hunger strikes of the Easter Rising of 1916 were associated with the sacrifice of 4 The civil servant responsible for administering a prefecture, a French administrative entity in charge of registry office, civil status and granting papers to migrants. 5 John Dewey, The public and its problems, New York, H. Holt and Co., 1927. 6 James Dingley and Marcello Mollica, ‘The Human Body as a Terrorist Weapon: Hunger Strikes and Suicide Bombers’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30.6 (2007): 459-492.

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Christ). Beyond this, the deaths also evoked Ireland’s whole history and its suffering since the Great Famine.7 The public, liable to be moved by the suffering of the strikers and indignant at the indifference and violence of the authorities, is essential. It can very well be situated on the outside of the arena where the protest takes place, as was the case of the public opinion – or even ‘international opinion’ – mobilised in support for Soviet dissidents, or for Tunisian opponents today. Part of the efficiency of the hunger strike is based on raising awareness in this third public, who, without being necessarily sensitive to the cause defended, is moved by the suffering of the strikers and their risk of death. We can therefore be hostile to the idea of opening borders and favourable to the regularisation of groups of undocumented foreigners conducting hunger strikes. Moreover, the physical suffering endured during the fast (by sans papiers, or fathers denied custody of their children, employees wrongfully dismissed etc.) is often emblematic of the suffering and misfortunes already experienced by the striker. Compassion for this ‘here and now’ suffering is encouraged to flow onto the striker’s protest target. The authorities as responsible So we chose to torture ourselves to hurt them. (During a hunger strike against double penalties, 16 January 1992)

During the creditor fasts of old, like in contemporary hunger strikes, the protestor seeks to inflict shame, and then social reprobation on the figure targeted by the strike. They seek the recognition of social responsibility. The suffering of the protestor renders indifference impossible, for the public or for the target. In fact, it calls on the public to get involved. Hunger strikers and their defenders emphasise that this kind of strike is not a form of suicide over which the protestor has sole responsibility. It is indeed the authorities that are accountable for the fate of the protester. If those in power do not give in, or if they are indifferent, then the responsibility for death lies with them. If they intervene to break the strike, they will be criticised for being ‘violent’ and having shown their ‘true nature’. For many British citizens, Margaret Thatcher represented this kind of intransigence faced with the ‘moral blackmail of terrorists’. But for many across the world she also represented the ‘Iron Lady’ who let the strikers in Long Kesh die. 7

Sweeney, ‘Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice’.

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Like other forms of self-inflicted violence, hunger strikes have the target of the protest bear the weight of a significant risk, that of being responsible for a death within a society sensitive to public opinion and the politics of pity.8 Challenges to the authenticity of engagement This contest of ours is not on our side a rivalry of vengeance, but one of endurance – it is not they who can inflict most but they who can suffer most will conquer. (Extract from the inaugural speech by the mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, who died of a hunger strike on 25 October 1920, while in prison)

Etymologically, the martyr is God’s witness. Hunger strikers bear witness through their suffering. But what exactly are they witnessing? More than just their cause. The suffering endured through food deprivation and its lesions bears witness to the authenticity of their engagement. This is the meaning of certain strikes with objectives that are generally difficult to realise – for peace or in solidarity with the Third World. Simone Weil let herself die of hunger with the goal of sharing the suffering of prisoners incarcerated and deported during the Second World War. We can see in this the extreme strength of the witness born by certain fasts. It is precisely because authenticity is measured by the ‘seriousness’ of the hunger strike that any suspicion of concealed food, liable to de-legitimise the struggle, weighs heavily on the protesters. The moral superiority of the strikers is at stake in this protest and would be radically thrown into question by its opponents if the form of the strike leaves room for criticism. In this sense, a hunger strike can be considered a test, providing ‘proof’ in the words of Boltanski and Thévenot.9 The authenticity and legitimacy of the claim are intertwined, not only in light of the emotion that is provoked but also in the signs that attest to the suffering and progressive deterioration in health of the strikers: visible thinness, hospitalisation, medical certificates and so forth. As is the case for other forms of high-risk protest, the protestor ‘throws himself body and soul into an enterprise entailing a physical risk that helps establish its authenticity, as we have seen in the

8 Hannah Arendt, On revolution, New York, Viking Press, 1963; Luc Boltanski, Distant suffering: Morality, media, and politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. 9 Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, On justification: Economies of worth, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2006.

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case of martyrs’.10 When the striker is also protesting about his or her own situation, this becomes a form of denunciation that is uncomfortable and restrictive because it is personalised and has difficulty becoming ‘more general’.11 In this instance the bodily engagement is seen as a gauge of the legitimacy of the claims.

Refusing the grip of power Some fasts have more diff iculty provoking pity than others and their main objective doesn’t seem to reach an external public. This is the case of hunger strikes among prisoners incarcerated for terrorism. Dominique Linhardt reminds us that if the combat of the sans papiers movement is part of a movement for recognition, that of the political prisoners of the urban guerrilla is part of a strategy of total war which prevents any compromise with the state.12 Text 2. Hunger strike declaration by the Red Army Faction, 1974 [the hunger strike lasted from 13 September 1974 to 2 February 1975] The hunger strike is our only means of collective resistance against the pigs’ detention system, against the ‘counter-strategy’ of imperialism that seeks to destroy psychologically and physically, that is, politically, the revolutionaries in prison or prisoners who have begun organised resistance in detention. This is our only possibility because we are disarmed, imprisoned, isolated, we can only use our labour force, our physical and intellectual strength, our identity as human beings, to bring down the monolith that the state of the ruling classes has raised up against us at its own feet. The struggle is in transforming weakness into strength. Isolation is the weapon of the detention system against all prisoners, who have decided to not let themselves be destroyed in prison, who have decided to fight human experiments, brainwashing, and the imperialist detention system.13

10 Ibid., 230. 11 Ibid. 12 Dominique Linhardt, ‘Réclusion révolutionnaire. La confrontation en prison entre des organisations clandestines révolutionnaires et un Etat – le cas de l’Allemagne dans les années 1970’, Cultures et conflits 55 (2004): 113-148. 13 ‘Hungerstreik-Erklärung vom 13.9.1974’, in Martin Hoffmann (ed.), Rote Armee Fraktion: Texte und Materialien zur Geschichte der RAF, Berlin, ID Verlag, 1997, 190.

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Prison hunger strikes, when they involve conflict with the administration and the state, become a paroxysmal confrontation. Of course, supporters of hunger strikers publically decry the liberticidal practices of the state. But is this really only about mobilisation on the outside, when we know that certain regimes have demonstrated their inflexibility regarding this form of protest? It appears that the prison environment, the hostile daily face-off with guards, persecutory and punitive practices (loss of visitation rights, solitary confinement, sexual humiliation, for example, in Guantanamo Bay), violence (beatings for the Irish, Kurdish or Palestinian detainees), but also more direct forms of torture (in Guantanamo Bay) or sensory deprivation (the so-called ‘white torture’ used against the RAF prisoners), all encourage this confrontation that passes through an attack against oneself. Many hunger strikes in prison begin with a simple refusal of inedible food; the affirmation that the prisoners will no longer accept this form of humiliation. It was in protest against their food, that the communist prisoners in the Chibron Camp in the Var region in France began their hunger strike in 1940, but the gesture became more than a simple question of taste. In this way, the prisoners are able to affirm that the authorities will never control them, they can always impose more suffering on themselves than the adversaries can. Both today and throughout history, prison and police authorities have never failed to see the symbolic weight of this affirmation. The extremely painful practice of oral force-feeding enables them to avoid the strikers dying, but appears as an even more brutal and intrusive affirmation of the state’s power over the striker’s body. This symbolic aspect characterises the situations in which the protester’s room for manoeuvre is very limited. Having control over one’s body is not just a strategic gesture (using the only means available), it also radically challenges the state’s supposed monopoly on legitimate physical violence, and in so doing affirms its moral and symbolic superiority over the state.

The body in struggles over status and recognition There are symbolic and strategic repetitions in the otherwise heterogeneous sample of hunger strikes. These practices, often associated with demands for essential recognition, are constructed and invested as such by protestors demanding to be recognised as people, both subjects of their history and legitimate correspondents. The body plays a fundamental role in this. Two practices must be distinguished here. The first concerns the way the body is staged, involving a

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suffering body and a public as a witness, mobilising humanitarian sensibilities and the politics of pity. The second involves a bodily commitment practiced by people more or less inclined to use this form of action. Because a body is never solely biological and the violence inflicted on the body is never solely physical violence, too often opposed to ‘symbolic’ violence. This physical violence of the hunger strike reaches beyond the body to the social identity of the protestors. Suffragettes, sans papiers, Chicanos, detainees, dissidents, nationalists: all demanding political rights, all individuals engaged bodily in protest because their status is threatened or denied. Some of them have a long experience of domination over their bodies, and have sometimes acquired knowledge in this area. Others turn to their bodies because their voices have no weight socially. Hunger strikes in fact reveal the idea of the value of the body, and that some individuals are reduced to their bodies: bodies destined for work or reproduction, prisoners’ bodies at the disposal of the prison, bodies of those without any status. Foreigners threatened with deportation, sans papiers, asylum seekers, those subject to double penalties and other irregular immigrants all figure heavily among populations resorting to hunger strikes.14 Outside the prison environment, they make up the majority of collective hunger strikes. The relations of domination and violence that their bodies have withstood have conditioned their political attitudes towards their bodies. During the hunger strikes we observed, the two groups had already been subject to violence: prison, poor treatment, torture, all inflicted by representatives of the state apparatus. These experiences may explain why certain stigmata are then turned back on themselves in this action, as though these sans papiers move through a series of reductions of their own person, from the status of political subject to the simple physical dimension of the body. Individuals struck by double penalty laws have already been to prison. We know that the physical violence in the prison environment encourages violence against others but also against oneself. Hunger strikes and selfmutilation become a way of reappropriating a body that has been subject 14 Siméant, La cause des sans-papiers; Tristan G. Creek, ‘Starving for Freedom: An Exploration of Australian Government Policies, Human Rights Obligations and Righting the Wrong for Those Seeking Asylum’, International Journal of Human Rights 18.4-5 (2014): 479‑507; Regina Mantanika and Hara Kouki, ‘The Spatiality of a Social Struggle in Greece at the Time of the IMF: Reflections on the 2011 Mass Migrant Hunger Strike in Athens’, City 15.3-4 (2011: 482‑490; McGregor, ‘Contestations and Consequences of Deportability’; Ally Walsh and Myrto Tsilimpounidi, ‘The Disappearing Immigrants: Hunger Strike as Invisible Struggle’, Theory in Action 5.2 (2012): 82‑103.

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to surveillance and prison discipline15 to the massive doses of tranquilisers lavishly prescribed, which often prolong prior drug dependency (which along with drug trafficking is a frequent motive for deportation in the case of double penalties), meticulous body cavity searches etc. All the strikers we met with during the movement against double penalties in 1992 looked to be in a state of health in keeping with former detainees or former drug users, (very) poor dental health, premature baldness etc. Tattoos (several strikers had them), self-mutilation (specif ic prison techniques), and hunger strikes are all ‘bodily techniques’16 of self-inflicted violence in response to violence experienced in the prisons. Most opponents of the double penalty laws had experienced fasting in prison and declared that this violence against themselves, which the domination of the body had taught them to discover and master, sometimes led to more traditional violence such as prison mutinies. Text 3. A hunger striker against double penalties ‘I was part of the mutiny in Bois D’Arcy, where there wasn’t even the legal ration of cubic air per cell. […] I was involved in self-mutilation. Cutting my little finger off… Personally, I have reused things I learnt in prison. My brother was in Fleury, he was part of the movement of those who cut off their little fingers with Knobelspiess [a detainee who always protested against his incarceration for bank robbery and who became a writer against the carceral system and a leader of jail protests, he was an icon of radical left]… When you live in a tough environment like prison, which is outside everything, there aren’t many methods… Or you have a way of getting out… […] I already did one hunger strike. I’ve been to prison four times. Eight years of prison even though I was innocent. I lost 21 kilos. I have a few physical and psychological problems as a result. […] I was put in solitary. It was almost better because I was able to pull myself together. […] Often they use methods that just make you stronger. […] I learnt lots of things in prison. I learnt to enjoy reading, to write […] my thoughts. It is an environment that generates crime. You meet lots of people. You learn everything you weren’t supposed to learn.’ He shows me clear scars on his wrists and arms: self-mutilation inflicted in prison. (A striker against double penalties. Interview, 21 May 1992)

15 See the panopticon described by Michel Foucault, Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison, New York, Pantheon Books, 1977. 16 Marcel Mauss, ‘Les techniques du corps’, Journal de Psychologie 32.3-4 (1936): 363-338.

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Unsuccessful asylum seekers go on hunger strikes to demand that OFPRA (the French Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons) accord them the status of political refugees in the name of the persecution they claim to be victims of in their countries of origin. Even though they have been refused refugee status because of ‘insufficient proof’, many of them have in fact experienced prison, even already performed hunger strikes or been subjected to torture. Proving that one has been tortured is a crucial step in the process of seeking asylum; medical certificates are an important part of the application. Yet medical exams carried out long after the event can often only identify external scars – marks which any experienced torturer would try to avoid. OFPRA rarely takes into consideration accounts of torture unless the refugee is able to provide a ‘credible’ certification. Thus, the word of the hunger strikers is not worth much; only the stigmata on their bodies are considered proof. Only ‘tangible’ suffering of the strikers, public suffering or scars, certified by a system of hospitalisations, medical certificates, and visible and public emaciation, is actually effective, more so than words. If we add the fact that being sans papiers is correlated with the impossibility of easily accessing medical attention (which requires a social security card, health insurance etc.) we can understand the attraction of this relationship with the body that echoes in the sans papiers’ hunger strikes. The ‘internalised’ domination is not limited to this kind of treatment of the body. Not all sans papiers have been tortured or incarcerated. But the representation of the immigrant, doubly absent from the political order, is in the extreme, characterised by a reduction to the biological body and its status as part of the labour force.17 We also often observe a feeling among the strikers and their supporters that only the threat of death is liable to attract the attention of public authorities to their plight. This focus on the body of the illegal immigrant, a body-object that is subject to ‘random’ ID checks and which in revealing its situation become a deported body, is linked to a representation of the immigrant as having no family and no baggage, reduced to the body as an element of labour.18 This is a body that needs to be ‘revealed’ because it is not part of the national order: the unsuccessful, illegal hunger striking immigrant becomes a publically suffering body. The individual makes conscious use of his or her status as a biological body. But mobilising ‘human rights’ rather than citizens’ rights (which are not available to illegal immigrants) through his or her body, benefiting from

17 Abdelmalek Sayad, The suffering of the immigrant, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2004. 18 Ibid.

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‘humanitarian’ treatment, being an object rather than a subject, is indeed being a non-citizen. Carving out an identity, a public existence, taking back the status of political subject from the only resource left when one is deprived of a political body: the affirmation of oneself as a political subject through fasting raises the question of the political body of the strikers. The sans papiers are among the populations whose status is the most clearly threatened in the context of contemporary nation-states, and appear as an extreme case of status deprivation. Their use of hunger strikes provides acts as a magnifying glass for the situation of other protestors who also see themselves as threatened in their status and their dignity.

4

Hunger strikes, media and politics

Hunger strikes take on a different meaning depending on whether they occur in the context of parliamentary democracy or an authoritarian regime, whether they follow urban guerrilla warfare or a sit-in, and whether they take place in prison or in a church. Their political environment is not only a question of the geopolitical opportunity structure, the presence of a state that is ‘strong’ or ‘weak’; it also involves the relationship with the media and other protest groups. It is necessary to define it in relation to other protest techniques. As historian Charles Tilly put it when he connected protest to the modes of coercion and domination in a given society, we need to analyse its status within the ‘repertoire of collective action’.

Hunger strike, political regimes and the state In spite of the diversity of contexts, it is possible that this protest technique is related to forms of state domination. Could hunger strikes be the modus operandi of the weak, those oppressed by majorities – even democratic ones?1 This proposal is both true and insufficient. Threatening to let oneself die requires that at the very least the threat be taken seriously, and thus that equality and respect are considered fundamental values. But it also requires the existence of a ‘public opinion’ in the country, or overseas, that can appeal against the state. Faced with the state, public opinion and humanity For Tilly2 modernisation, the extension of capitalism and the growth of the state have shifted the centres of power and modified forms of collective action. Protest has shifted from communities and the local level to the national level. Public opinion has become a central principle of legitimacy. This combination of factors has encouraged the use of hunger strikes directly targeting the state, whether to demand particular statuses or rights, or to oblige non-state actors to apply them.

1 This is the hypothesis of Serge July, ‘Le journaliste face à la grève de la faim’, in Charles Cadoux et al., La grève de la faim ou le dérèglement du sacré, Paris, Economica, 1984, p. 127-140. 2 Charles Tilly, From mobilization to revolution, Reading, Addison-Wesley, 1978, 143-151.

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Hunger strikes are associated with the ‘psychological habitus’ of the nation-state, because they function on a broad network of interdependences.3 Even if there are no direct connections between us, we cannot let a fellow citizen die. It is ‘public opinion’ that weaves these formerly unimaginable connections. As a result, it enables us to extend the responsibility of the ‘state’ into whose hands the hunger strikers put their lives, to the community of citizens. It is thus impossible to let these strikers die unless their exclusion from the community of citizens can be justified. As a result, we should not be surprised that in certain cases hunger strikers are consciously left to die – not by mistake but by not granting their demands – in cases where the actors are accused of terrorism. We might think, in the context of a hunger strike based on a broad network of interdependence, that this responsibility cannot be extended to those who are outside the ‘national’, or outside the law, such as the sans papiers. The representatives of the public authorities often use this argument regarding support committees for strikers. They argue that clandestine immigrants and sans papiers ‘do not exist’, that their death will therefore have little impact. But humanitarian principles challenges this state monopoly on the attribution of statuses to individuals; blurring the borders between nationals and ‘others’, they defend above all the dignity of humans in need. Humanitarian principles compensate, ‘for want of better’, for the lack of state protection. It is therefore because it relies on the compassionate register and the moral obligation to address human suffering, that hunger strikes give outsiders the possibility to demand integration into the community of insiders. Different tolerance of protest by different states This method is not specific to democracies, however, as we can see in the hunger strike used during the Bolivian dictatorship in 1977, and more recently by Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar or those of the Chinese or Tunisian opposition. Whatever the political regime, the form of state domination influences the use of this form of action. Work in political science based on the notion of the ‘political opportunity structure’ explains the different ways protest is used by the different degrees to which states are open to social demands, along with their varying capacities to intervene in society. Certain authors therefore differentiate 3 On the notion of psychological habitus and networks of interdependence see Norbert Elias, State formation and civilization, Oxford, B. Blackwell, 1982.

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between ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ states in this respect, 4 which are unequal in their responsiveness to society and their abilities to intervene in it. This typology has been justly criticised for its somewhat monolithic vision of the state. However, Israël Waismel-Manor, one of the few to undertake a comparative analysis of protest fasts, does use it. In his work, he sees hunger strikes as being more frequent in Israel than in the United States because of the frequent religious fasts in Judaism, but also and above all because of the respective characteristics of the two political systems. Where the Israeli political tradition is more statist and therefore helps protesters to focus on a particular adversary, the state, the American state and its teams of congressmen tend to resolve many problems before they become paroxysmal.5 This research considers the size of the United States as also contributing to the lack of national visibility of hunger strikes at the local level. Following Waismel-Manor’s logic we can probably make the same hypothesis for the French case. However, the degree to which a state is open or closed is not the only factor involved. It is also important to consider the tolerance of the state with regards to the demands made, and this depends on the protest groups involved. The case of prisoners appears to be the most straightforward. Fasting, unlike other forms of action specific to the penitentiary system (rebellions, burning cells etc.) is undoubtedly one of the only means available to alter power relations without (generally) provoking violent repression. This lack of violence is not the result of the will of the authorities alone. The form of action in itself, because it is non-violent, allows the protesters to hope for indulgence, or even the support of international human rights organisations. This question of the state’s tolerance of contestation can also be posed for authoritarian regimes. One example of this is the Bolivian miners’ wives hunger strike in 1977,6 which took place in a context of strong repression. When the miners’ unions and student unions were silenced, four women (whose husbands had been imprisoned or fired) began a hunger strike in La Paz, in the residence of the Archbishop. They demanded amnesty for political prisoners, the reintegration of unionists who had been fired, freedom to organise trade unions, and the withdrawal of the army from the mining sector. The hunger strike thus appeared to be the only form of 4 Hanspeter Kriesi (ed.), New social movements in Western Europe: A comparative analysis, London, UCL Press, 1995. 5 Waismel-Manor, ‘Striking Differences’. 6 Lavaud, La dictature empêchée.

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action open to them, in confronting the state and its power of repression. Presenting the movement under a ‘humanitarian’ label evoking human rights was a deliberate strategy. It meant gaining the support of part of the religious hierarchy and conducting a protest that was – in the context of a dictatorship – tolerable to the authorities. Beyond this, the hunger strike won international support through solidarity strikes and visits by representatives of international human rights organisations as well as sparked strikes and demonstrations around the country. However, the authorities’ tolerance would not be the same for all protest movements, and in particular those which stem from specific social groups – and this is true for democratic regimes also. Imagine clandestine immigrants demonstrating in the same way as farm workers or fishermen often do in France (who have been quite destructive over the years)! Police repression would be swift and condemnation unanimous against any sans papiers who used these methods. The use of hunger strikes must be analysed in relation to the ‘possible protest’ space – which may be open or not for specific groups. Hunger strikes are without a doubt the only ‘group illegality’ that can be tolerated by a state from actors like clandestine immigrants, or foreign militant guerrilla activists (Iranian mujahideens, Kurdish militants etc.)

In the media spotlight Hunger strikes cannot be conceptualised outside their relationship to the media because they rely on the apparatus of public opinion and the mobilisation of third parties but also on the search for wider audiences and support. As a form of action that is generally spectacular because of the risk it involves, hunger strikes provide a certain compassionate register that mass media feed on. Mobilising media: Spectacular and humanitarian This strategy of ‘scandal’7 allows us to establish a link between the visible suffering of the hunger strikers and the cause that they support. The use of the strike, particularly as a group, is often considered a strategy to access the political sphere and the media. Miserabilism and the humanitarian register are seen as going hand in hand here; they appear to be the only postures 7

Offerlé, Sociologie des groupes d’intérêt, 122.

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that are acceptable in the media because they are relatively de-politicised. We observe them in causes that are superficially seen as not very legitimate (undocumented immigrants, for example), or judged rightly or wrongly to be peripheral (such as the five deaf students demanding literacy training in sign language in 2008 in France). Text 4. Media Strategies We managed to get FR3 [National French television with many local networks] to come, we worked well with the cameraman. He shot me with a high-angle shot, I looked really sad, and the boss was filmed with a low-angle shot. […] We were very organised, we had Le Monde, the TV, and we followed on from the SNCF [national railway company] social movement. […] The advantage of a hunger strike is that the situation is quickly turned around, the guy opposite looks like a bastard, it was very clear’. (Interview with a former hunger striker against the sanction of delegates present during the sequestration of managers at an EDF [national electricity company] centre, 2 June 1997)

The media have a variable attention span when it comes to hunger strikes. How can a movement get the press interested when, even if they are not hostile to the cause, they are not necessarily inclined to give more attention to it than they see fit? Or when their interests at the time are not favourable to the strikers? Once the hunger strike is announced, its spectacular nature and the risk of death and injury encourage media attention and particularly television. Without celebrities, it often takes longer to get attention; which is rapidly satiated because the strike has nothing to offer except death, and even then quite rarely. Once the surprise of launching the strike has worn off, the range of strategic actions and innovations is quite limited. Nothing more routine than a group of people lying down fasting; unless you can count on support from celebrities such as the Abbé Pierre, who fasted alongside unsuccessful asylum seekers in Paris in the winter of 1991-1992, or extreme reactions such as the forced evacuation of the strike (rarely desired by the strikers themselves). Thus, on the morning of 23 August 1996, 525 mobile guards protected by 500 policemen from neighbouring stations, and 480 riot police broke down the door of the Saint-Bernard church in Paris. Nearly 300 clandestine immigrants had taken refuge inside the church – including ten who were on a hunger strike – along with French activists who had come to support them. The media immediately picked up and spread the story

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of the police intervention, and contributed to the emotion that it provoked and to the protest demonstrations that attracted more than 11,000 people on 28 August in Paris. Reticence or engagement by journalists Journalists are more likely to cover stories of hunger strikes when they can portray them as a symptom of a problem or a ‘social issue’ connected to other events or to a more general question (divorced fathers demanding access to their children, midwives challenging the closure of a provincial maternity ward, casual teachers demanding permanent contracts etc.). There have been cases where journalists have been veritable co-producers of the event, alongside the activists. This was the case for the Turkish community in Paris in 1980, for example. Activists from the Turkish political movement Devrimci Yol facilitated Michel Honorin’s investigation into the underground manufacturing sector. They then waited until the day after the television broadcast of the journalist’s report (entitled French Confection) to begin their hunger strike. But journalists can also be reticent to cover these stories. In the name of professional ethics and independence regarding solicitation they might consider that once the hunger strike has been mentioned there is no reason to cover it further if nothing ‘new’ has happened. Hence the strategic aspect of the health reports and hospitalisation of those on hunger strikes which are used as ‘updates’. When harassed by activists, some journalists even sometimes choose to not cover the strikes as a way of responding to what they consider ‘false’ hunger strikes. Journalists who are hostile to a particular cause will often denounce the ‘moral blackmail’ associated with hunger strikes, or lament the fact that ‘you just have to go on a hunger strike to get what you want’. Media coverage and reception of hunger strikes We might consider that the development of hunger strikes is correlated to that of the mass media,8 without being totally dependent on it. The media cannot be seen as an undifferentiated bloc, just as they do not cover all movements homogenously. Hunger strikers therefore do without the ‘big 8 Cf. Jacques Roux, ‘Mettre son corps en cause: la grève de la faim, une forme d’engagement public’, in Jacques Ion and Michel Peroni (eds), Engagement public et exposition de la personne, Paris, L’Aube, 1997, 111-134.

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media’ if they have access to the forms of media that reach the audience most likely to support their cause (major regional newspapers, websites consulted by human rights activists etc.). It is the mobilisation of public opinion in support of the movement that is important. They can also be mobilised by other means than major media sources – including by hostile media. Following a qualitative analysis of the treatment of the IRA prisoners’ hunger strike in 1981 by three major newspapers (Irish Times, London Times, New York Times), Aogán Mulcahy showed that in spite of a ‘nuanced’ coverage of the British response to the problem, and although the policy of criminalisation was criticised, none of the three journals legitimised the cause of the strikers.9 In spite of predominantly hostile media coverage, local perception of hunger strikes nonetheless provided sufficient support for the movement and its longevity. Given the variety of possible readings of the event, we can only deduce that negative media coverage leads to negative reception of that coverage. In the same way, the invisibility of certain hunger strikes at a national level does not necessarily mean they will be ineffective. Who remembers the hunger strike by the Municipal Youth Services Director in Béthune, at the foot of the town belfry in May 2008? Yet the local newspaper reported that the hunger striker returned to his post just a few hours later, after his demands were accepted.

Hunger strikes in repertoires of protest action Every method of action chosen by a protest group must be analysed in relation to the other possible means of action open to the group at that time. Repertoires and ‘comparative advantages’? As we have seen, hunger strikes are a form of protest action that is preferred by specific groups: prisoners and sans papiers,10 ‘institutional dissidents’ who are powerless against blind administration. For each of these groups there are also other forms of action: sit-ins, legal processes, petitions, 9 Aogán Mulcahy, ‘Claims-making and the Construction of Legitimacy: Press Coverage of the 1981 Northern Irish Hunger Strike’, Social Problems 42.4 (1995): 449-467. 10 For confirmation, on these two last groups see Scanlan, Cooper Stoll and Lumm, ‘Starving for Change’.

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boycotts, more rarely rallies and demonstrations, and very occasionally suicide threats among the sans papiers and their support base. The use of hunger strikes by sans papiers is remarkable: between April 1991 and September 1992, roughly 1500 unsuccessful asylum seekers resorted to this method in France. Yet the lack of collective memory of prior mobilisation is often striking. Jean-Gabriel Contamin rightly noted that the fact that a particular method is predominant does not imply that people are necessarily familiar with it. Except for those in non-violent circles, it is quite rare to resort to this techniques more than once in a lifetime. For Contamin, the systematic use can be explained more by the ‘relative durability of the comparative advantages and disadvantages that these groups benefit from, whatever the situation may be’.11 As soon as they ‘go from “what do we do?” to “what do we do now?”’, even if they are reticent to do so they tend to return to the same forms of action, in this case hunger strikes. In the case of undocumented immigrants, the choice is explained by the constraints and the risks associated with it: being arrested, dispersed, having low legitimacy, the advantage of using safe place like a church rather than demonstrating in public, and the need for urgent action in the face of imminent deportation – regardless of the sense of legitimacy that is sometimes associated with the use of strikes. Criticism of the legitimacy of the use of hunger strikes Hunger strikers and those who support them often feel ambivalent about this method. The case of the sans papiers is once again a good example. No one among the non-strikers wants to see themselves reproached for having encouraged what continues to be seen as a ‘last resort’. For example, protesters who had already been on hunger strikes in the highly politicised and risky context of the Turkish military regime saw it as not legitimate to use this technique for a ‘less worthy’ cause, such as that of residency rights. In 1991 no one defended this form of action, yet it allowed some 17,000 regularisations in the wake of the 23 July 1991 circular and thus was revealed to be clearly efficient. Those who support strikers see their roles as ambiguous and do not want to appear to be seen as ‘manipulating’ the strikers, who must not appear to be too strategic in order to not damage the image of the authenticity of their engagement. They avoid publically

11 Jean-Gabriel Contamin, ‘Le choix des armes: les dilemmes pratiques d’un mouvement de doctorants et le modèle des avantages comparatifs’, Genèses 59 (2005): 19.

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recognising its tactical interest and instead emphasise that it is because they had no other options that they undertook this final struggle. In addition to this tension between authenticity and strategy, it does not take long for those who oppose hunger strikes to stress their illegitimacy: authorities, written press, groups that are hostile to the protest’s demands, who are quick to stigmatise the ‘moral blackmail’ of the strikers, their manipulation by extreme and irresponsible groups, and even the increasing banality of this technique. We can see this in the comments on a local council website – for the town of Rouen in this instance – in March 2006. In this context, two high school students had just begun a hunger strike in front of the cathedral against the new youth employment contract (Contrat Premier Embauche [CPE]), which would have led to a lower minimum wage specific to young people. Text 5. Registers for de-legitimising the use of hunger strikes ‘It’s almost fashionable! It’s like we’re not in a democracy anymore!’ ‘It’s ridiculous and what’s more it devalues hunger strikes which shouldn’t be used except as a last resort – which is far from the case here!’ ‘Hunger strikes are no more than blackmail. Useful for attracting attention, in this case it is completely inappropriate.’ ‘Ridiculous! They’ll last 2 or 3 days… or less. It’s going to rain this weekend. A hunger strike is something that should be used as a last resort. This is just laughable. The CPE won’t budge.’ ‘It’s grotesque. What is the legitimacy of this kind of action? What good is it to elect representatives if you can do this?’

All the elements for de-legitimising the use of hunger strikes can be observed here: 1) stigmatisation of the use of protest in favour of a defence of representative democracy, 2) denunciation of blackmail, 3) questioning the courage of the strikers, and casting suspicion on them, 4) criticising the banalisation of this method of action – aggravated by the fact that the MP Jean Lassalle was also on a hunger strike against the offshoring of the Toyal factory at the same time, 5) questioning its efficacy, 6) irony (‘ridiculous’, ‘grotesque’) about a method considered disproportionate to the cause, given other methods hadn’t been used. The legitimate form of hunger strike defended here is one that is ‘absolute’, used as a last resort and for a noble cause. We can see these ideas even within the groups themselves, particularly when this method is experienced as ‘humanitarian’ or ‘miserabilist’. Activists criticise it for focusing attention solely on the strikers themselves, to the detriment of the cause. Or also for addressing a specific audience by

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appealing to its sensitivity – the Christian left, the new middle classes etc. Hunger strikes were therefore heavily criticised in the 1970s by militant groups who preferred the traditional protest techniques of workers’ movements such as demonstrations or strikes. The different representations of legitimate activism play out and confront each other in the use of a particular mode of action. Finally, when it leads to death, hunger strikes are close to suicide. They can thus become the object of theological debates – whether they justify, condemn or excuse it. From as early as 1918-1919 the Irish Ecclesiastical Record published articles reflecting the intensity of the theological debates among Catholics regarding the legitimacy and morality of the use of hunger strikes.12 Similarly there are debates today on the internet concerning the halal or haram13 nature of hunger strikes when carried out by Islamist prisoners in Moroccans jails. Temporality of the use of hunger strikes and protest cycles As Contamin has shown, ‘what is perpetuated from mobilisation to mobilisation is not only the impact of a repertoire that we draw on in the same way. It is also the structure of the repertoire itself, that is, the modes of articulation between the different protest registers chosen’.14 In the case of the repertoires of action used by illegal immigrations, it is not simply the preference for hunger strikes that is remarkable; it is also its decisive role as a ‘detonator’, most often after other less effective attempts to mobilise. The major demonstrations by sans papiers almost always take place after hunger strikes and not before, when the public visibility of leaders and the cause has lowered the risks and costs associated with this kind of action. The hunger strike is not necessarily a last resort action: it can also be the first resort and the main resort, that which enables the use of other protest techniques afterwards. Paradoxically, it is the use of a method that is seen as being heavily marked by individual logics that enables the subsequent use of broader mobilisation and collective action techniques. Hunger strikes appear to be more legitimate at certain times than at others. We can see this in labour conflicts, for example. There may be historical periods that were more favourable to illegal activism of all kinds, such as in the mid-1970s in France, or brief periods such as immediately 12 Sweeney, ‘Irish Hunger Strikes and the Cult of Self-Sacrifice’. 13 Licit and illicit according to Islamic law. 14 Contamin, ‘Le choix des armes’, 24.

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after a highly mediatised hunger strike. For example, there was a window of opportunity for hunger strikes – sometimes fantastical or strange – in April 2006, the month after the MP Jean Lassalle completed his strike. As banal as they may be, the phenomenon of imitation occurs after every mediatised hunger strike (outside the prison system), especially if it was successful. On the other hand, the low level of success of poorly prepared hunger strikes then tends to lead to waning enthusiasm for this kind of action.

5

Hunger strikers and injustice …because life – bursting with conceit over its here-and-now’, but really a most uncertain, even a downright unreal condition – pours itself into the few dozen cake molds of which reality consists… – Robert Musil 1

The feeling of injustice is a powerful resource for hunger strikes. Prisoners of authoritarian regimes, activists in liberation movements, moral consciences committed to a ‘great cause’, there are so many different individuals involved in hunger strikes, so many different ways of fighting. Yet all are small and isolated in the face of the all-powerful machine of an institution or a private enterprise. These strikes can be played out in different ways, in ideal-typical forms around the link between the protestor, his or her cause and the means of action.

‘Little people’ confronting the machine Whether faced with the justice system, the administration or the bosses, hunger strikes generally involve an image of individuals fighting alone against an unseeing machine. Victims demanding the right to be recognised as interlocutors, people fighting to preserve their social identity and for the respect of their status – or to access a status denied them. Victims Undertaking an analysis of daily media at the regional level is a good way of avoiding international comparisons that are often too macro and which overlook the finer details of these events because they use national-level databases. At the regional level, the press often document hunger strikes, most often by individuals or small groups. These are the ‘little people’, from poor or lower-class backgrounds, who rise up against a decision or a situation that appears unjust or inextricable. Not all these cases lead to actual hunger strikes, however, the local press often describes a desire to

1

The man without qualities, New York, Knopf, 1995 [1930], 645.

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‘undertake a hunger strike if necessary’ whether this final step was actually taken or not. This compendium of anonymous miseries can be seen in our overview of the Factiva database, consulted in 2007 (see Chapter 2). There are stories of divorced fathers demanding custody of their children (or even grandparents who have been separated from their grandchildren); women begging for a divorce that is bogged down in the courts; handicapped or unemployed people demanding access to decent housing; a person involved in a complex housing affair lasting over 30 years; a policeman whose pension was truncated after he was forcibly retired due to an injury; a worker who could no longer physically endure his working conditions demanding a transfer; individuals protesting against the changes in zoning that would see their land become a protected natural zone and prevent them from building on it; an artisan who could be saved from financial ruin if his inheritance was settled; and a roadside fruit and vegetable seller protesting against the law prohibiting anyone from selling on private land for more than 60 days in a row. There is a whole world of indignations in the face of judicial and/or administrative systems that are too slow, too blind or simply unfair. This is the cause of the individual case, or even the ‘necessary exception’ to the rule. The reasons are legion: they even involve banks, such as in the case of a business leader demanding the seasonal nature of his activity be recognised so as she could obtain an overdraft reflecting this. Even the automobile industry was affected; there was a hunger strike in 2007 in front of a garage by two individuals who had recently purchased new cars riddled with defects. This feeling of powerlessness concerns other categories of the population feeling the full brunt of an administrative decision. The closure of regional public services can be accompanied by hunger strikes to condemn the dramatic consequences of these closures on local social fabric. In this case they are then more a form of collective action as such, and can mobilise political representatives or members of the middle class. This was the case during the 2007 strikes against the closure of certain regional tribunals (the mayor of Aubusson and then the president of the Bar Association and other lawyers in Moulins began a hunger strike in response). Similarly, in May 2008 a midwife at Carhaix hospital went on a hunger strike in protest over the closure of the maternity and surgery services. Far from simply defending the personal material interests of employees, these hunger strikes against the closure of local social and medical services also show the idea that the actors have of their vocation and their role.

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These little people’s causes, compared to more noble representations of politics, do indeed rarely capture the attention of national media. But they do generally obtain good access to daily regional press, given that the model of the ‘little’ hunger strike in the name of community interests is liable to provoke emotion on a local level and is often the expression of an indignation that is felt by all. Struggles for status and the world of work Victims frequently focus on the justice and administrative systems, as we can see in those modest caravans or tents sometimes set up in front of the courts and halls of justice. But the world of work is not exempt from this kind of demand. Hunger strikes naturally take a residual place in the worker’s repertory of action but there have been a number of cases throughout history – particularly in the 1930s in Europe, where hunger strikes were associated with sit-ins. They were used in certain mines, for example, in Katowice (Poland) in 1934, or in Pécs (Hungary) in 1937, where more than 200 coal miners rose up against the Austrian mining company that employed them. More recently too, there was a hunger strike by miners employed by the major coal mine in Valias during the political troubles associated with the Albanian transition. Scanlon and his co-authors collected a sample of press articles between 1966-2004 and they observed that 7.1% of strikes related to work (a figure that rises to 20% if hunger strikes in prison are removed from the sample, as they have been from ours).2 With our sample, the hunger strikes connected to professional litigation in the public or private sectors are never restricted to simple demands for pay increases. These small groups or individuals are instead demanding specific statuses (demands for permanent contracts for casual employees and assistances, for example), or specific advantages linked to their roles (bonuses for remoteness) or are demanding to be re-appointed to their position. They are challenging dismissals that are considered unjustified (for example, one employee who was fired for having eaten stale croissants from a supermarket where he worked), or dangerous working conditions (six former dock workers with asbestos poisoning demanding an increase in their early retirement benefits), or the failure to implement a law (a replacement teacher demanding to be paid travel allowance payments). There are demands relating to unsuccessful applications for transfer (teachers in French overseas territories applying to return to their original 2

Scanlan, Cooper Stoll and Lumm, ‘Starving for Change’, 296.

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Table 2  Type of demands of hunger strikes in France (outside prison) Motivation for the hunger strike Political causes or appeals to conscience3 Against deportations or for regularisation of work and/or residency situations Litigation (status, dismissal, transfers etc.) in the public sector Contestation of administrative measures (outside previous cases and demands for credits) Demands for official pardons, against imprisonment Litigation (status, dismissals, transfers etc.) in the private sector Demands to obtain credit or material advantages, protests against the abolition of pensions etc. Litigation related to housing (evictions, poor housing conditions etc.) Solidarity/private sector strikes Obtaining employment Other Not specified Total

No.

%

151 90

27.6 16.5

66 59

12.1 10.8

53 51 24

9.7 9.3 4.4

5 2 3 32 11 547

0.9 0.4 0.6 5.8 2 100

Source: Data from the newspaper Le Monde between 1971 and 1992

region), protests against disciplinary sanctions (persecutory transfers or, for example, EDF-GDF workers on a hunger strike out of solidarity with a colleague punished for having sold copper remainders, a practice that was previously tolerated), or against the intimidation and investigation methods in management following the appointment of a new boss responsible for reducing union membership and forcing the resignation of the union representative. Here we have listed only the cases where the statutory aspect of the demands is central, even though demands for material gains also involve a feeling of having ‘statutory’ rights and the social identity of the protestor. Considering this kind of demand simply as ‘materialist’ would clearly be a mistake.3 These statutory demands linked to the world of work are not simply a matter for the ‘wealthy’ or the West. We also see them in poor countries, but more often in the public enterprise sector or the public service, as though the legal recognition of a particular status generated ipso facto the demand that it be respected. In Senegal, workers of Sontac, a formerly state-owned enterprise previously responsible for public transport in Dakar, 3 For example, against world hunger, torture, war in general or a war in particular, for the revision of conscientious objector status, against pollution etc.

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used hunger strikes to demand payment of months of unpaid compensation. There was also the case of 30-odd ex-employees of the Town Hall in Kaolack who demanded the execution of a court ruling granting them millions of CFA francs in compensation for dismissal. Another example is that of the former workers of Africamer (a state company privatised in the 1980s) who demanded payment of three years’ back pay using a hunger strike. In 2014 there were also hunger strikes by over 200 workers from former government agencies. In Burkina Faso, in June 2009, the minimum service workers of the Poura gold mine began a hunger strike to demand payment of salary arrears from June 2003. This type of protest often concerns casual workers in the public service or assistant teachers who are demanding to be made permanent. This is the case both in France and elsewhere. In Algeria in 2008 casual teachers demanded genuine integration into the public service and the payment of back pay with a long hunger strike, without much success. A parallel can be made between those in precarious positions in the private sector aspiring to a decent status and the employees of subcontractors in the private sector who want to have the same conditions and advantages as the ‘privileged’ employees of the group or multinationals their companies are producing for. In Algeria in 2008, 200 security workers on the GL1K gas compound Skidda began a hunger strike to demand they be integrated as permanent workers in the compound instead of being employees of a subcontracted company. ‘Institutional dissidents’ For each protester, resorting to a specific form of struggle corresponds to a choice from the myriad interconnections of possibilities, resources and knowledge. Clearly, certain hunger strikes by public servants, teachers and social and health workers more broadly reflect a kind of ‘institutional dissidence’ described by Maryvonne David-Jougneau. 4 The individual behaviour that governs a hunger strike supposes a strong sentiment of one’s own legitimacy in the public sphere, which is connected to the possession of certain social resources. Action here is in the name of defending ‘principles’, opposed to administrative ‘norms’ denying the identity of the protester and the representation he or she has of their professional vocation. In the context of these conflicts between an institution and its members who consider themselves unjustly sanctioned, the latter (because of the personal nature of their protest) are frequently stigmatised as ‘paranoid 4 David-Jougneau, Le dissident et l’institution ou Alice au pays des normes, 135-180 and 49.

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and only representing themselves’. Everything joins forces once they enter into the vicious cycle and they begin to behave in a way that is seen as increasingly tiresome, aggressive and indeed eventually paranoid. They are criticised on the form of their actions rather than on the content. Maryvonne David-Jougneau outlines several cases, including two which led to hunger strikes. One is the Papinski affair, involving an English teacher demoted by an inspector who did not speak English, and another is the Blache affair which involved an anti-military and ‘non-conventional’ philosophy professor fired in 1984. David-Jougneau emphasises that ‘where the institution feels attacked or threatened in its normative functioning, it will stop at nothing to suppress this speech which relates to principles’ and that ‘what “makes an impact” […] is the speech-act of the dissident who does not accept to dissociate between theory and practice and who inscribes this interrogation at the heart of everyone’s “normal” practice’.5 This book is remarkable in that it identifies some hunger strikes that illustrate very well just how much they are connected to institutional dissidence, combined with other ways of questioning authorities, and the injunction of those authorities to justify their action. More recently, the Roland Veuillet affair, typical of institutional dissidence, would be another illustration of such a psychiatrisation of protest. Text 6. The Roland Veuillet affair: Institutional dissidence and hunger strikes Roland Veuillet was a high-school education adviser and a member of the SUD union, in a senior school in Nîmes, where he denounced the influence the local MEDEF (the employers union) branch had over the content of the school curriculum. In January 2003 he was the only permanent staff member of his school to go on strike against the abolition of the status of assistant teacher and playground supervisor. Faced with the administration’s intimidation of the strikers, Roland Veuillet used his own position to oppose the school principle who sought to ensure minimum service by replacing striking supervisors with prefects, students over 18 who would supervise break times in exchange for free lodging. After initially being suspended, a decision that was overturned by the Disciplinary Council, Roland Veuillet was transferred to Lyon in 2003 as a form of punishment. As a protest he began running as a way of denouncing the arbitrariness of the system. To date he has run some 26,000 km in some 30 ‘Arbitrary-thons’ (some of these races ended at the Ministry for 5

Ibid., 83 and 136.

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Education). Between 30 August and 5 October 2004, he slept in a vehicle parked in front of the ministry, and began his first hunger strike. He only obtained a mediation which did not challenge the sanction. Veuillet fought for an administrative enquiry to establish the facts and took the matter to court, with the support of several unions. In 2005, the Senior Council of the Public Service recommended that the sanctions be lifted. However, this council is only an advisory body and the Minister of Education refused to implement its recommendations. During the trial before the administrative tribunal in 2006, the government commissioner asked for the sanctions to be removed, but the court, ruled on form that they were valid. At the end of December 2007 Veuillet began a new hunger strike in a van parked in front of the administrative tribunal. On his 50th day without food he was hospitalised and asked in writing that he not be fed. A week later he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, against his will. A psychiatrist refused to validate his admission and he was released. In 2007, a new ministerial ruling seemed to overturn his transfer to Lyon but a second ruling revealed this was not the case. He began another 42-day hunger strike in December 2008. On 17 December, the State Council refused to rule because the case did not make it past the pre-selection committee, which did not consider the case as an instance of anti-union repression. Since then, Veuillet continues to condemn the lobbying of the MEDEF and to contest the fact that his professional file contains hundreds of documents related to his union membership. For years he continued his running protests around the prefecture of the Rhône region. In 2014 he was finally transferred to a school in the town of Nîmes.

Roland Veuillet was not content with protesting against his punishment transfer; he also wanted certain documents removed from his file that did not belong there, and he demanded that an administrative enquiry be opened. He also demanded the creation of a body for independent personnel who would be responsible for overseeing facts and procedures and specif ic legal instances within the public service, similar to work inspectors. He was demanding a rehabilitation of his position not just the overturning of his punishment. This is considered an exorbitant condition – even in the eyes of the supporters of institutional dissidents – because, as Maryvonne David-Jougneau points out, these protesters demand to be reintegrated into a superior position, such as Papinski, for example, who demanded reintegration as a permanent teacher rather than as a teaching assistant.

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Why do these institutional dissidents begin hunger strikes? What are their personal resources? We can see that in most cases they have talents that encourage individual public speaking, often associated with a high opinion of their social function. Jacques Roux draws a similar portrait of these strikers, whom he describes as ‘especially ordinary’ individuals, half-way between amateur and professional.6 In the three workplace conflicts I have studied more deeply,7 the strikers demonstrated real political knowledge. All had previously had other conflicts with institutions over the course of their lives, whether religious, political or professional. Even the individual who appeared the most lacking in economic and social resources (the daughter of blue-collar workers with a high-school certificate, who had learnt to be a social worker ‘on the job’) had been a municipal councillor for nearly 15 years, and the two others had extensive activist experience. They all had professional activities (such as social work) that allowed them to pursue their cause as well as their status and to present themselves as independent of organisations and as sensitive to interpersonal relations. The interviews with these strikers reveal the focus on the personalised nature of conflict that opposed these protesters to the institutions: they involved a ‘low-level boss’, a ‘liquidator’, or a ‘pervert’. Even the striker from the most humble social background, the least strategic of the three in her approach to the hunger strike, but also in her way of talking about it, had ended up finding an audience to support her by connecting their ordinary indignations with her own. She prided herself on the material support provided by the ‘little people’ living in the neighbourhood of the Regional Council (which she was striking against), and commented on the numerous visits by anonymous residents, with whom she is still in contact. Some of this support came from local people who had themselves held hunger strikes against administrative and institutional decisions that threatened to destroy or radically alter their identity; a ‘little old lady who had been classed as a member of a cult’, or ‘very nice man who had lost custody of his son’ and so forth.

Faced with political repression The term ‘dissident’ evokes another world; that of protest in the face of political repression in an authoritarian context. It echoes the hunger strikes 6 Roux, ‘Mettre son corps en cause’, 133. 7 Siméant, ‘L’efficacité des corps souffrants’.

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that have marked the history of the Soviet Union, and Russian history before that. Today, hunger strikes are a weapon of political protest used by opponents in states such as Morocco, Armenia, Tunisia, Thailand, Myanmar, China, Kyrgyzstan, Cuba and so on. It is also a political weapon widely used in the prison systems of states which, although democratic, have struggled with various forms of protest (terrorism, political extremes, nationalism etc.) that test their proclaimed attachment to human rights, for example, Turkey, Israel, the United States, West Germany in the 1970s and so forth. This is not to say that all regimes and all hunger strikes ‘against political repression’ are on the same level, but we cannot ignore the fact that all hunger strikes occur in contexts of repression – of unequal intensity of course. It is precisely in the struggle against terrorism that Western democracies stray the most from the respect of human rights that they generally defend. Today, force-feeding (not to be confused with putting an unconscious protester on intravenous fluids), mistreatment of the hunger striker, or the choice to not grant any of the striker’s demands even if it means letting them die, concern precisely and exclusively those incarcerated for political violence. Pursuing the struggle: Politicising everyday life in prison In the context of heavy political repression, the distinction between protest in prison and protest outside prison becomes blurred. Although the prison environment creates its own specific logics, including a massive use of hunger strikes, the existence of political prisoners in this environment leads almost naturally to this. There are a few cases of this from the end of the 19th century. The young Trotsky carried out a number of hunger strikes in prison, and a Japanese union leader died in 1912 as a result of a hunger strike, for example. From the beginning of the 20th century, collective political strikes in prison became more widespread. It would become one of the key forms of protest by Trotskyists and other opponents of Stalinism in the USSR. Among these examples, we can cite: the death of Boutov, Trotsky’s former secretary, from a hunger strike in 1928 in protest against his arrest and interrogation; the hunger strikes by political detainees in the Tomsk prison in 1928, in the penitentiary of Tobolsk, in the Verkhneuralsk isolator between 1931 and 1933; or hundreds of Trotskyist detainees in the gulags of Vorkuta and Kolyma in 1936; as well as Bukharin’s hunger strike in 1937. They are also characteristic of communist prisoners during the 1930s and the Second World War. In Nazi-dominated Poland, the Worker’s Council of Jewish Communists in Czestochowa launched a hunger strike in the ghetto in 1941. Although

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certain collective strikes were fiercely repressed, others indeed improved the fate of the detainees. This was the case in 1913 in Verkhneuralsk, or in the 1953-1955 hunger strikes in Tayshet, Vorkuta, Ekibastuz, Norilsk, or Kengir. Hunger strikes are also a classical element of the anti-colonial repertoire, whether inspired or not by the example of Gandhi. This method evokes the Indian nationalist hunger strikes in the prisons of the Andaman Islands in 1933,8 or the colonial jail of Poulo Condor Island (today Con Son) in Indochina between 1934 and 1936. There were also hunger strikes by FLN members in French prisons. These actions, often with prisoners striking in turn, involved up to a thousand prisoners – both political and non-political. Amnesty was the main demand made by nationalist and communist detainees on strikes from chores and on collective hunger strikes. Torture of political opponents, mass incarceration, the defence of a nationalist cause conveying strong identity affect, and possible access to the media are all factors that encourage big collective hunger strikes. We can see this in the example of Kurds in Turkey (see Text 7). Text 7. Hunger strikes by Kurds and extreme-left prisoners in Turkish prison There is a long tradition of hunger strikes in Turkish prisons. The first Turkish writer to evoke the Armenian genocide, Nazim Hikmet, went on a hunger strike in 1950 as part of a worldwide campaign for his release. Then THKO (People’s Liberation Army of Turkey) activists led by Deniz Gezmis adopted this mode of action in 1971 in Ankara prison. At the end of 1980 this technique became characteristic of the resistance against the Turkish state by prisoners on the radical left, and from 1982 it became the mark of Kurdish activists, particularly the PKK. On 4 March 1981, three days after the beginning of Bobby Sands’s hunger strike, a f irst ‘death strike’ (ölum orucu) was launched in Diyarbakır prison. In 1982, four members of the Central Committee of the PKK died following a hunger strike. At the beginning of 1983, nearly 2500 political prisoners participated in a hunger strike in Istanbul to protest against the wearing of uniforms and prisoners’ rights. In autumn 1988, in more than 20 Turkish prisons, 2000 political prisons performed hunger strikes against the restrictions of their rights. In summer 1995, 13 years to the day after the 1982 hunger strike, more than 8000 PKK detainees performed a hunger strike across 30 prisons. They demanded a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem, an improvement 8 Pramod Kumar Srivastava, ‘Résistance et répression en Inde: grève de la faim dans les prisons cellulaires des îles Andaman en 1933’, Crime, histoire & sociétés 7.2 (2003): 81-102.

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in their prison conditions and official recognition as prisoners of war. Dozens of hunger strikes were organised in solidarity, in both Europe and the United States. In 1996, during the strike to the death by nearly 500 political prisoners in more than 30 prisons, 12 died, 4 from lack of adequate medical attention. An agreement was reached however between the authorities and the strikers, and they obtained the closure of the Eskisehir maximum security prison as well as improvements in detention conditions. Shortly afterwards, another strike mobilised more than 10,000 prisoners in protest against the Diyarbakir prison massacre. Finally, in 2000, PKK political prisoners began a ‘death strike’ with the support of more than 2000 prisoners. The movement was brutally repressed (see Chapter 6). This inventory does not include hunger strikes on a local level or smaller scale, nor those carried out for the Kurdish cause in other countries, such as the month-long strike by 700 people in Brussels in January 1993.9

Israeli prisons are also a site for collective strikes. In 2004, thousands of Palestinian political prisoners, some imprisoned without trial, began a hunger strike to protest against their prison conditions and their treatment within the Israeli prison system. In both Turkey and in Israel, the concentration of thousands of prisoners detained for the same cause enables these political movements to be in a powerful situation of control, regarding these populations. The Turkish case is paradigmatic in this respect. The life within prisons is almost de facto sub-contracted to certain militant organisations which guarantee an effective compliance during collective hunger strikes. In democratic countries, apart from these two extreme cases, it is imprisoned nationalist militants (such as Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans in France) who make up most of those who use hunger strikes in prison. There are also individual strikes within this register too, like the strike by Mapuche activist Patricia Troncoso Robles, which was widely mediatised in hispanophone countries. Troncoso Robles was imprisoned in Chile in 2001 for associating with terrorists and participating in a fire; her imprisonment led to several hunger strikes, in particular, between 2007 and 2008, a 107-day-long hunger strike (with force-feeding) against the anti-terrorist

9 Grojean, La cause kurde, 415 in particular.

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laws and the treatment of the Mapuches regarding land rights. Subsequent collective hunger strikes were taken up by Mapuches.10 On a smaller scale, (non-nationalist) activists imprisoned for terrorism also make the jail the site of their struggle against the state. As Dominique Linhardt argues, it is not so much a policy of recognition as a policy of confrontation in this case. The prison appears as ‘the paroxysmal form of the hobbling of “resistants”’.11 For the RAF prisoners it was necessary to ‘exploit the idiosyncratic footholds provided by the prison as a site for action’, among which figures the hunger strike. In any case, the intensity of the repression of organised groups explains the extreme dimension of hunger strikes. The indignity of detention conditions also provides an important impetus for the launching of these strikes. The refusal of food is a classic starting point for collective strikes, which begin by demanding better prison conditions and then increase their demands to more general political issues. Disarmed opponents, exemplary opponents The most prestigious type of hunger strike is clearly that of the political dissident in prison (or even outside prison) because it reflects a form of political exemplarity. Without necessarily invoking the heritage of Gandhi, it rules out any use of violence, whatever the cause or intensity of state control, the vulnerability or the moral choices of the strikers. This type of hunger strike is inseparable from the protest model of dissidents in the former Soviet bloc. It particularly evokes the hunger strikes by Andrei Sakharov in the 1970s, to attract attention to the plight of Soviet Jews, and in 1980 while he was confined to his residence in Gorki. The strikes by Anatoly Shcharansky in prison, or by Anatoly Marchenko, who died of a hunger strike in December 1986, are further examples of this. In the rest of the Soviet bloc the use of hunger strikes was particularly frequent in Ukraine. From the end of the 1960s, hunger strikes became a veritable tradition at the commemoration of historical events: 10 December (Human Rights Day), 5 September (Anniversary of the Signature of the 1918 decree establishing the Red Terror and the creation of camps for political prisoners), 12 January (Day of the Ukrainian political prisoner), 10 On the Mapuche hunger strikes, cf. Leith Passmore, ‘Force-Feeding and Mapuche Autonomy: Performing Collective Rights in Individual Prison Cells in Chile’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 23.1 (2014): 1‑16. 11 Linhardt, ‘Réclusion révolutionnaire’.

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and 30 October (Day of the Soviet political prisoner). On 17 October 1990, students in Kiev used a hunger strike to demand the resignation of the government, the organisation of new parliamentary elections, and the prohibition of military service outside Ukraine. Still within the Communist sphere, it is important to remember the students who began an unlimited hunger strike on 12 May 1989 in Tiananmen Square, under the eyes of cameramen there to witness Gorbachev’s historical visit to China. This strike would eventually involve more than a thousand people and would generate strong popular support before being violently repressed. In Latin America, major hunger strikes have marked the history of the struggle against dictatorships in Bolivia and in Mexico. In the latter case, a hunger strike was organised on 28 August 1978 by 84 women – essentially mothers of people who had disappeared – and 4 men, in Mexico City’s Metropolitan Cathedral. They demanded the liberation of political prisoners and disappeared people. A veritable challenge to the political authorities, this action revealed the existence of the dirty war and brought about the first political amnesty. In Asia, the muse of Myanmar’s democratic movement, Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest from 1989, conducted numerous hunger strikes. In 1990 she was awarded the Sakharov Prize, and in 1991, the Nobel Peace Prize. In Thailand, after the 1991 military coup, young people demonstrated in opposition to the military regime. Following the elections on 22 March 1992, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, chief commander of the armed forces was appointed prime minister on 7 April. Immediately, a politician named Chalard Worachat began a hunger strike outside the Parliament in opposition to the fact that the prime minister had not been chosen from the elected representatives. While tens of thousands demonstrated, he was joined by other protestors, and then in May he was joined by the leader of the Buddhist opposition, Chamlong Srimuang. Following violent confrontations between demonstrators and police, a state of emergency was declared and the intervention of King Bhumibol calmed the situation on 20 May. General Kraprayoon presented his resignation on 24 May, after the amnesty was granted to the leaders of the repression that had resulted in more than 40 deaths. In June, the Parliament almost unanimously adopted the revision of the Constitution demanded by the opposition. September saw the electoral victory of the opponents of the military regime. In the Maghreb, hunger strikes are a tradition way for opponents to be heard, notably in the jails of Morocco and Tunisia (particularly before 2011, under Ben Ali’s regime). Journalists, opponents and activists, harassed by police, often do not have any other means to be heard locally or to attract

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international support. Lawyer and human rights activist Radhia Nasraoui has thus performed several hunger strikes, as has the journalist and political opponent Taoufik ben Brik, and in 2009 these methods saw him to finally obtain a passport from the authorities. Hunger strikes have been a regular occurrence in Tunisian political life. In April 2008, journalists from the weekly opposition paper Al-Mawkif began a hunger strike in protest against censure and repression. Cases outside the prison system are complemented by the numerous strikes by opposition members in prison, serving sentences handed down in unfair trials. Examples include hunger strikes in 2008 by Abderrahmane Tlili, opponent and former presidential candidate, and Slim Boukhdir, journalist and founding member of an organisation for the defence of liberties, and the hunger strikes of November 2007 by prisoners of conscience remanded because of the anti-terrorism law.

Becoming fully recognised citizens: Harkis, refugees, sans papiers Collective hunger strikes by foreigners demanding a specific status, a right to residency or the right to be more than a silent invisible worker, mark the everyday life of rich democracies, in prison, in detention centres but also outside the penitentiary system. In France, this practice has developed since the beginning of the 1970s, and has been used by foreigners threatened with deportation due to changes in legislation (protests against the MarcellinFontanet circular in the early 1970s12), seasonal workers, undocumented or illegal immigrants, failed asylum seekers because of restrictions in the conditions required for political asylum, foreign parents of French children, people threatened with double penalties and foreigners held in administrative detention centres under threat of deportation.13 However, it has also been used in Belgium, Italy, Great Britain, Spain, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Canada and even in South Africa. This phenomenon has developed in refugee camps in countries with sea borders, in camps for Haitian boat people in Florida and the Italian island of Lampedusa, which sees thousands of immigrants arriving from Africa. In the United States, this protest practice was a feature of the ‘Chicano’ protests by Mexican residents in the 1960s and 1970s. The union organiser 12 Which suddenly linked the ability to obtain a residency permit to having a work permit, limited regularisations and therefore made many foreign workers illegal.  13 Siméant, La cause des sans-papiers.

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César Chavez carried out three hunger strikes in the name of Mexican farm workers and he remains a key figure in the history of Latinos in the United States.14 This mode of action in defence of the Chicano cause reoccurred regularly until a hunger strike in favour of the creation of a university department of Chicano studies at the University of California in Los Angeles in 1993. In October 2008, a collective hunger strike was held in the run-up to the presidential election on 4 November, obtaining signatures from one million people committed to voting for immigrants’ rights. This hunger strike, which spread through the United States and Latin America, was directly inspired by the examples of Gandhi and Chavez. In France, illegal or irregular immigrants make up the social group that most often uses collective hunger strikes as a means of protest (outside the prison system), generally in churches. The town of Lille and the Nord region are characterised by strong tensions and controversies on this question, expressed without compassion by the prefect of the Nord department in 2007: ‘Do you realise? Thirteen hunger strikes since 1996!’ At every press conference, the prefect expresses his surprise. He sees his mission as ‘breaking the assumption that hunger strikes equal regularisation. Henceforth, hunger strikes equal deportation. That is the shift’.15 We have already seen in the case of the sans papiers (Chapter 3) the bodily inscription of this claim to residency. We have also seen this expression of social urgency combined with a demand for recognition and an official status by the Harki population, whose members do have French nationality but who have legitimate doubt as to whether they are recognised as citizens. The term Harki refers to all the Muslims, military auxiliaries or civilians recruited by the French administration during the Algerian War. It has come to refer to any Algerian, or family member thereof, who sided with France during the war. The number of former Harkis and their children is estimated at between 300,000 and 400,000, but community organisations claim it is double that. In 1962, the Évian Accords ignored the future of the Harkis, circulars gave instructions that military personnel not repatriate their auxiliaries, who were to be disarmed and left to the mercy of the FLN. Tens of thousands of them were executed. Many others were repatriated (illegally, generally with the help of the military), others reached France by their own means. Officially considered undesirables, former Harkis 14 Matt Garcia, From the jaws of victory: The triumph and tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the farm worker movement, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012. 15 Stéphanie Maurice, ‘A Lille, pas de pitié pour les grévistes sans-papiers’, Libération, 22 August 2007.

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and their families were put in so-called ‘temporary’ camps. They were locked up in a painful situation: seen as traitors by Algerians in France, they were considered ‘immigrants’ (Arabs) by the French and subject to racism. Interning them in camps where they were guarded by the military cut them off from the rest of society and contributed to their isolation, literacy problems and unemployment. The state’s help often took the form of clientelism that was not directed towards integration. Assistance allocated by the French authorities did not contribute to combating the difficulties that the children of Harkis experienced in finding work or housing. They appeared indifferent to the symbolic weight of the recognition demanded by the Harki organisations. This explains why protests by former Harkis always inseparably combine material demands and demands for recognition. Former Harkis, their children and even their grandchildren have increasingly engaged in protests since the beginning of the 1970s. Even though they would probably reject such a comparison, it is difficult to avoid making a parallel between their situation and that of the sans papiers or immigrant movements. We can see the same use of demonstrations, protest marches and especially collective hunger strikes, as well as the same indignation in the face of a lack of recognition in terms of official status. The use of violence and rioting is more frequent during mobilisations by former Harkis – probably made possible by virtue of their French nationality and France’s debt towards them. Yet there was a Harki hunger strike in Evreux in December 1974, at the same time as one held by sans papiers in Valence, another in 1976, and other in 1988 in Narbonne. Two more were held on the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris in summer 1997, the first instigated by Abdelkrim Klech (a demonstration that led to the foundation of the National Justice for Harkis Collective), who held another in 2000. Some of these strikes demanded that the state recognise its responsibilities in the abandonment of the Harkis in 1962.

In the name of peace and non-violence Finally, the use of hunger strikes is also characteristic of activists claiming allegiance to the history of non-violent or pacifist movements. Thus in June 2008, two Czech opponents, Jan Tamas and Jan Bednar, began a hunger strike against the deployment of American anti-missile radar in the Czech Republic. As much as the cause itself, it is the moral exception of this mode of action that is so appreciated by protestors. It is based on historical figures

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who engaged in non-violence, first and foremost Gandhi and his doctrine of ahimsa, meaning ‘non-violence’, as well as ‘kindness to all living things’. Here, it is important that a just cause be inseparable from a morally acceptable way of obtaining it. The history of anti-colonial and pacifist struggles and, even more so, the struggle against colonial or imperial wars has been marked by the use of hunger strikes. Numerous hunger strikes can be seen within this universe of meaning characterised by non-violence, such as those performed by people linked to the Mouvement pour une alternative non-violente (MAN; Movement for a Non-violent Alternative), led by Jean-Marie Muller, the author of several books on non-violence, and by Father Christian Delorme. This movement is associated with the struggle against the Algerian War, the defence of nonsubmission or the status of conscientious objector (Louis Lecoin’s strikes). It was even used by an anti-colonialist activist like René Vautier in the fight against political censure in cinema. In France, it is within this non-violent heritage, favourable to civil disobedience or even anti-imperialism, that José Bové has situated himself. In the winter of 1989-1990, Bové supported the peasants of Larzac during the sheep-industry crisis with a 23-day-long hunger strike in Rodez. The former leader of the Peasants’ Confederation and a supporter of Kanak independence, he led another hunger strike in January 2008 to ensure the government respected its commitment to use the safety clause against GMO and ultimately bring about a moratorium on the use of GMO in France. We can see this same reference to the non-violent, pacif ist and/or Christian sphere in Marco Pannella’s actions. The radical Italian MP has carried out a number of hunger strikes for major causes, such as peace or world hunger. In the United States, defenders of conscientious objectors who refused to participate in the Second World War also used hunger strikes. These strikes are generally carried out by people who are already wellknown, or who at least have a mandate – either political or religious. It is as though in order to be taken seriously the individual has to be ‘important or renowned’ in order to take up a major cause. On 27 April 2009, the actor and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow began a hunger strike to draw public opinion to the fate of the population of Darfur. The billionaire Richard Branson was to take up the cause for three days. Yet major causes are also the object of collective strikes, most often limited, in solidarity with the third world, for peace and the planet. They are often driven by religious leaders, such as in April 2006 when Pope Benedict XVI encouraged the faithful to perform two days of prayer and fasting for peace in Iraq and the world. In January 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu called

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on South Africans to fast in symbolic solidarity with the Zimbabweans suffering from famine. Finally, we have seen this reference to non-violence appear where we did not expect it, in strikers from other countries. This is often the case in mobilisations in support of undocumented foreigners, supported by left-wing Christian circles. These sometimes very strong connections between different forms of hunger strikes, different demands or individual situations do not detract from the meaning of the hunger strike itself. As soon as it is launched, the specific logic of the hunger strike unfolds.

6

When hunger strikes arise

Hunger strikes follow their own rules, much like war, according to Clausewitz’s analysis.1 Whatever the specific contexts that brought them about, whatever the subjective or objective reasons behind them, once they are in place a specific situation unfolds, with its own constraints and its own logic.

Beginning a hunger strike Choosing a site Except for prisons, where the question of choosing a site is not relevant, beginning a hunger strike means finding the most appropriate site to combine publicity and security, to enable visits from the media and supporters and still ensure minimal comfort. The site will become a rallying point, including mobilisations that involve other forms of protest. The stakes are high in this decision because as the hunger strike progresses the physical condition of the striker will deteriorate. In addition to the practical aspect, there is a strong symbolic element in this choice. If Jean Lassalle chose to carry out his strike in the Quatre Colonnes room in the National Assembly, it was because his office (as an MP) was there. The access to an appropriate site is often cruelly lacking for many. The list of possible hunger sites is long: places of worship or other sites linked to religious organisations, political party offices (or more rarely union offices), offices of dissident newspapers in authoritarian regimes (for example, Ben Tunisia), but also administrative buildings squatted for the occasion. Sometimes strikes are even held on the steps or forecourts of buildings housing the adversaries of the strike, when it is impossible to enter. Sometimes they are held in tents and caravans in front of such buildings when they are locked. Of course the choice of the site is even more delicate when there are a number of strikers and the police are liable to intervene to prevent the strike. 1 Carl von Clausewitz, On war, New York, Barnes & Noble, 1956, according to the interpretation by Michel Dobry, ‘Ce dont sont faites les logiques de situation’, in Pierre Favre, Olivier Fillieule and Fabien Jobard (eds), L’atelier du politiste. Théories, actions, représentations, Paris, La Découverte, 2007, 119-148.

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As we can see in this brief statistical overview, Catholic places of worship and the striker’s place of work are among the most frequently chosen sites for hunger strikes in France. Table 3  Sites of hunger strikes in France between 1971 and 1992 Site

Catholic church or parish building Protestant church or parish building Other place of worship Professional organisation Community centre or youth centre Political party offices Inside administrative or institutional offices In front of an administrative or institutional building (especially if incriminated) Other public place (outside) Place of work or study of the striker Other sites Total

Total strikes

%

Sanspapiers

%

Total minus sanspapiers

%

141 11

39.2 3.06

42 3

82.4 5.88

99 8

32 2.59

1 8 10 1 27

0.28 2.22 2.78 0.28 7.5

0 3 1 0 1

0 5.88 1.96 0 1.96

1 5 9 1 26

0.32 1.62 2.91 0.32 8.41

28

7.78

0

0

28

9.06

20 84 29 360

5.56 23.3 8.06 100

0 0 1 51

0 0 1.96 100

20 84 28 309

6.47 27.2 9.06 100

Source: Le Monde, 1971-1992

Although Catholic churches and workplaces appear to be the most popular choices overall, the sans papiers overwhelmingly choose to strike in churches. There are three reasons for this, which are all interconnected: 1) the sans papiers carry out collective hunger strikes and therefore need sites that can accommodate large groups; 2) the support networks for immigrants are close to left-wing Christian circles in France, which facilitates their access to the churches; 3) the traditional image of places of worship as providing ‘sanctuary’ continues to exist, even if it no longer has a legal basis. In France, churches are in fact the property of the state, unlike other parish buildings. Mobilisations around hunger strikes often lead to the places where they take place becoming ‘free zones’ temporarily outside the control of the state. However, the political power struggle associated with the image of places of worship as providing sanctuary has more to do with this than the law.

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Frequently, protesters set up in a site without the agreement of the owners or managers. Often these actions combine both hunger strikes and illegal occupation. In fact, few priests are delighted at the occupation of the churches they administer, even when they do (sometimes) support the movement. When they choose not to ask the police to remove the occupants, they have to manage the complaints of their congregations who do not necessarily support the demands of the strikers, especially when the latter are generally not Catholic. Some priests try to find a compromise by offering the strikers a parish building but not the church itself. This choice may be wiser both in terms of comfort but also because not all parish buildings are state property, unlike churches constructed before 1905. The strikers are better protected against the intervention of security forces in such spaces, but the symbolic weight of the site is lessened. Because they are physically fragile, hunger strikers (and particularly sans papiers) are always potentially vulnerable to negative reactions from the local population when they occupy places of worship. This hostility may manifest itself by local demonstrations against the hunger strike. In Avignon in 1982, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a church harbouring a hundred sans papiers as well as seasonal farm workers on a hunger strike. The attack was claimed by a group called ‘OAS Returns’.2 A few days later in Nîmes, a ‘Committee to liberate the Cathedral’ was formed by the extreme-right, calling for the evacuation of Cathedral Saint-Castor. Burning bridges There is […] a related set of tactics that consists of manoeuvring oneself into a position in which one no longer has any effective choice over how he shall behave or respond. The purpose of these tactics is to get rid of an embarrassing initiative, making the outcome depend solely on the other party’s choice. – Thomas C. Schelling 3

Thomas Schelling’s study of the situations in which one appropriates power to ‘bind oneself’ is perfectly adapted to the analysis of hunger strikes. By 2 ‘OAS’ [Organisation armée secrète] refers to the name of the secret politico-military organisation created in 1961 to defend France’s presence in Algeria during the end of the Algerian War, known for its use of terrorism. 3 Thomas C. Schelling, The strategy of conflict, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960, 137-138.

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threatening to die if one does not obtain what one desires, and supposing that one’s adversary will back down before this threat is realised, the ‘power of the weak’ consists in rendering their behaviour and that of their supporters entirely predictable. ‘Renouncing initiative’ in this way is linked to the ‘ratchet effect’, which makes it impossible to go backwards once the movement has begun. There are several reasons for this, both symbolic and practical. First, there is the public aspect of the protest: renouncing the hunger strike without having obtained results, abandoning a line of action once it has begun, would mean losing face in the eyes of both one’s adversaries and one’s supporters. Yet we know that rationales of honour and credibility are central in all forms of protest that rely on a threat to use extreme action. On a more prosaic level, beginning a hunger strike sometimes means leaving one’s job or housing (even if these are only temporary), and even entering into conflict with one’s family members who are opposed to the strategy. It is often difficult to go back. As for the striking sans papiers, they reveal their situation in a radical way; they abandon their secrecy and are directly identified by the police. For foreigners from authoritarian countries, the risk of a public protest is thus still greater. Any return to the country of origin (independent of pre-existing risk) would be dangerous. Binding oneself to the movement means making any deportation unimaginable and non-negotiable, in other words, locking oneself into this action. Committing to a hunger strike is therefore often a point of no return.

The time of the strike Hunger strikes are a point of strategic and symbolic interaction inscribed in time, which draws their efficacy from the demonstration of the strikers’ commitment seen in the duration of their strike. Running risks, holding on Today doctors agree that a hunger strike becomes dangerous for a healthy person after three weeks of fasting, at which point there is a risk of irreversible neurological damage. Death is not the only risk involved in hunger strikes. Many former strikers suffer long-term consequences as a result: hormonal problems, poor vision, neurological disorders etc. The spread of medical knowledge within the administration poses problems and genuine paradoxes. Many administrations therefore pretend

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to ignore hunger strikes for the first three weeks. In order to be taken seriously – or to expect to be – the strikers therefore have to extend the length of their movement, even if this strategy casts a shadow of doubt over the strike itself, because strikes that go on too long without the hospitalisation of the striker lose their credibility. How do they manage to hold on? This problem is (sometimes) resolved by ‘adapted’ strikes that enable the strikers to manage until the public authorities get interested and agree to negotiate. This explains the impressive increase in the length of hunger strikes by sans papiers which now sometimes reach 60 days. Everything occurs as though both sides are continually increasing the stakes, pushing the strikes to last longer and longer. On one hand the public representatives declare that ‘it is not enough to just go on a hunger strike’ to get what you want, and on the other, the strikers try to ‘hold on’ by whatever means, long enough so that their demands are taken seriously. Medical knowledge of fasting is not evenly distributed and the ways of conducting a hunger strike are very varied. Members of non-violent circles, who are typically familiar with fasting techniques, often make physical preparations for such strikes. In a different tradition, Turks and Kurds often resort to drinking tea with sugar. Other strikers, on the other hand, refuse to consume calories of any kind but take vitamins and mineral salts that reduce the risk of long-term damage to the body. Finally, contrary to some assumptions, certain techniques of adapted strikes which allow sugar or food in pill form involve their own risks. Taking sugar, for example, can increase neurological risk because it contributes to the weakening of the body’s vitamin reserves. The ability to ‘hold on’ clearly cannot be reduced to a question of calorie intake. Other factors are involved: the material conditions of the strike (availability of heating or not, outside or not etc.), the quality of support provided to the strikers, possible admiration (another fuel for engagement) by the members of the support committee, media coverage of the strike etc. There are many different aspects that can facilitate the continuation of a hunger strike or, on the contrary, discourage the strikers from persisting with a strategy that appears hopeless. Being credible The threat of this irreversible violence turned against oneself is a major resource for the efficiency of hunger strikes. Yet the near-total absence of deaths (outside the prison system) may lead us to think that public authorities in France can allow themselves to be indifferent. The statistics show

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only one certain death from a hunger strike in more than 30 years; that of a unionist Mireille Bressolles, who had carried out a very isolated hunger strike and most likely died of the coma that resulted. There was another case in April 2008 which was less clear. Nicos Aslamazidis, a Greek employee of a sub-contractor who worked on construction sites in Saint-Nazaire in western France, died shortly after he returned to his country following a three-week-long hunger strike. Not accepting that death is a real possibility when one engages in a hunger strike is the best way of causing it, and to do so ignores the political cost of such perceived cruelty. Finally, the physical damages caused by this action may be significant. The threat of both permanent damage as well as the risk of death are used by both sides – public authorities and the strikers’ support groups – to blame each other for the protestors’ suffering. The principle stakes here lie in convincing the authorities of the strikers’ determination to pursue their action. The instrumentalisation by both parties of the health of the strikers (medical files, doctors’ declarations etc.) takes on considerable importance here. The use of medical expertise is a necessary part of hunger strikes, particularly in the form of disseminating medical certificates stating the risk of ‘imminent lesions’. Frequently, sympathetic doctors make alarmist statements that sometimes result from negotiations with strikers who they attempt to persuade to receive medical attention. Sometime they monitor the progress of the strikers and their diagnoses are accompanied by press statements that are clearly non-neutral. Other doctors, particularly those who have worked in prisons and are therefore more used to hunger strikes, or who consider this position more efficient, will be more nuanced in their approach and limit themselves to the role of expert. This question of credibility can lead to real tension between hunger strikers and activists on the support committees in the (relatively rare) cases of ‘adapted strikes’. Although certain activists encourage, or at least tolerate, clandestine feeding it is essential that this remains secret. If some strikers ‘cheat’ and the administration no longer takes hunger strikes seriously, then the risk of accidents for those who ‘really’ strike becomes much more significant. The pursuit of reliable data on the health of strikers, which allows the authorities to refuse all negotiation without risk of them falling into a coma, leads them to gather as much information as possible on the state of the strikers’ health. It means that the support committees and the press use the number of hospitalisations as an argument for the seriousness of the situation. GPs concerned about phenomena that they rarely encounter often suggest hospitalisation, and sometimes the strikers themselves request

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it when subject to the effects of the strike (vertigo, nausea, headaches, insomnia). These hospitalisations, which are not meaningful in themselves when they occur after just ten days of strike, nevertheless remain a good way to access the press. Journalists prefer ‘facts’ and ‘figures’ to conjecture about ‘imminent’ irreversible damages. The escalation process and preventing defection What happens when the striker has burnt all their bridges and yet the authorities seem to remain indifferent? The first stage of escalation is specific to the prison system and involves persisting in the strike while the prison authorities ‘retake control of the striker’s body’ by giving them food intravenously or by feeding tube. This explains the length of certain hunger strikes, such as the over-200-day-long strike by Marian and Dolours Price in Ireland. The striker is kept alive, although he or she continues to refuse food. The pursuit of hunger strikes until death essentially occurs in prison during political hunger strikes. What may look like suicide may in fact be the abandonment of behaviour that was strictly strategic. Yet this sacrifice may still benefit the cause. The pride and solidarity of the group, the feeling of not being able to give in, the increased hatred of the jailers, all play an important role here. It is clear that following the death of IRA prisoner Bobby Sands, further deaths would have had no effect on the determination of Margaret Thatcher. But it was clearly unimaginable for his already exhausted comrades to give up this line of action, with the feeling that their sacrifice would serve the prisoners that came after them. Outside the prison context, if the authorities do not seem convinced that the strikers will ‘go all the way’, the latter can take further steps – thirst strikes, stopping vitamins, medicines or tea with sugar. These are their last resorts, preciously conserved, which is why all the previous techniques aim to prolong the strike without incurring permanent physical damage to the striker. The sans papiers, for example, know that ‘you can’t die of a hunger strike in France’, that is, they will be hospitalised if they fall into a coma. The outcome of a hunger strike often occurs after a crisis point at which the strikers refuse to drink or take vitamins. The results are usually rapid: widespread hospitalisation, rarely comas. It is extremely rare that this does not immediately lead to negotiations between the support committee and the authorities. During the hunger strikes by the RAF in the 1970s, the authorities tried the tactic of removing the strikers’ drinking water to force them to drink

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energy drinks. In response the strikers stopped drinking altogether. Other kinds of escalation exist, such as threats of self-immolation (sometimes seen among Turks and Kurds in PKK protests, or the sans papiers movements) or other forms of suicide. It is thus the apparent irrationality of this kind of action that gives the strikers their strategic advantage. 4 This almost-sacrificial behaviour confers a strong moral authority on those who threaten to take action, and thus increases their influence over their followers. These forms of escalation reflect another essential aspect of collective hunger strikes: the importance of group control and the desire to prevent the collapse of the collective by any means possible. The support committees are often very uncomfortable with these phenomena, particularly in cases where there are language difficulties, if the strikers are foreigners. Their tactics for gauging the actual desire to pursue the strike, particularly in the frequent case where translators are suspected of not giving the strikers all the information about their situation, is the use of a secret ballot on whether the strike should be continued or not. In fact, the mutual control by the strikers who live together 24 hours a day is generally enough to prevent defection. This control is fundamental because they have to convince the support committee that they are ready to die. Because it is the committee who will have to negotiate, it is important that they are convinced of the determination and the desperate situation of the strikers. They might even appear panicked, in a sufficiently credible way, to the authorities, which is why hunger strikers spend much of their time convincing the members of the support committee that they are willing to go ‘all the way’.

Repressing the strike That hunger strikes are considered a non-violent form of action does not in any way suppose that the authorities remain passive to them. Depending on the political contexts and the degree of legitimacy of the protest, the repressive strategies used range from modest challenges to brutal repression. Force-feeding in prison and the role of the media Force-feeding is undoubtedly the oldest technique to repress hunger strikes in prison. It is combined with the ‘rationalisation’ and the theorisation of force-feeding of the ‘insane’ in the 19th century. As we have already seen 4

Ibid., 17.

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above, it was used in British prisons from the beginning of the 20th century, notably on suffragettes and Irish nationalists. There are many well-known examples of massive force-feeding policies in prison, which are used today in Israeli prisons and in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and in the past on the RAF prisoners by German authorities or in the Soviet gulags.5 Without being systematic, there have also been several cases in France, which up until the 1980s concerned political hunger strikes. For example, in 1981 Corsican inmates due to appear before the State Security Tribunal were force-fed intravenously after 53 days without food by a decision of the general medical inspector of the prisons. In 1983, the prison health service was moved under the responsibility of the minister of health, which reduced this kind of intervention in France. Force-feeding is not solely concerned with saving the strikers’ lives, as is sometimes suggested. Death is disastrous for the authorities, in particular because the penal administration is responsible for detainees. However, beyond this calculation, which is more concerned with the image of power than the lives of the strikers, force-feeding expresses in the crudest possible way the fact that the protesters are not masters of their own bodies or themselves. Force-feeding a hunger striker, means taking back control of a body that is asserting its independence of state control. The practice of force-feeding is thus a good indicator of a lack of prisoners’ rights, and, in particular, political rights. The very term ‘force-feeding’ is extremely vague. It can be used to refer to practices that are unequally brutal and painful. Giving intravenous fluids to an unconscious striker is a far cry from feeding an unwilling person by forcing a tube down his or her nose or throat. The choice of a painful method is also part of the repressive arsenal. In Guantanamo, for example, the lawyers of 200 prisoners condemned the force-feeding methods used on their clients, which involved tubes forced down the nose and throat without sedatives or anaesthetics. 5 Beyond the specific medical literature dedicated to the question, see Jennian F. Geddes, ‘Culpable Complicity: The Medical Profession and the Forcible Feeding of Suffragettes, 1909-1914’, Women’s History Review 17.1 (2008): 79‑94; Kurt Groenewold, ‘The German Federal Republic’s Response and Civil Liberties’, Terrorism & Political Violence 4.4 (1992): 136-150; Corinna Howland, ‘To Feed or Not to Feed: Violent State Care and the Contested Medicalization of Incarcerated Hunger-strikers in Britain, Turkey and Guantanamo Bay’, New Zealand Sociology 28.1 (2013): 101‑16; Ian Miller, ‘“A Prostitution of the Profession”? Forcible Feeding, Prison Doctors, Suffrage and the British State, 1909-1914’, Social History of Medicine 26.2 (2013): 225‑245; Passmore, ‘ForceFeeding and Mapuche Autonomy’; and Leith Passmore, ‘The Ethics and Politics of Force-Feeding Terror Suspects in West German Prisons’, Social History of Medicine 25.2 (2012): 481‑499.

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Text 8. Those who have experienced force-feeding I was… surrounded, forced back on the chair, which was tilted backwards. There were about then of them. The doctor then forced my mouth so as to form a pouch and held me while one of the wardresses poured some liquid from a spoon; it was milk and brandy… [O]n Saturday afternoon, the Wardresses forced me on to the bed and the two doctors came in with them, and while I was held down a nasal tube was inserted. It is two yards long with a funnel at the end – there is a glass junction in the middle to see if the liquid is passing. The end is put up the nostril, one one day, and the other nostril, the other. Great pain is experienced during the process… [T]he drums of the ear seem to be bursting, [and there is] a horrible pain in the throat and the breast. The tube is pushed down 20 inches. I have to lie on the bed, pinned down by Wardresses, one doctor stands up on a chair holding the funnel at arm’s length, so as to have the funnel end above the level, and then the other doctor, who is behind, forces the other end up the nostrils. The one holding the funnel end pours the liquid down; about a pint of milk, sometimes egg and milk are used… Before and after use, they test my heart and make a lot of examination. The after effects are a feeling of faintness, a sense of great pain in the diaphragm or breast bone, in the nose and the ears. (Mary Leigh, a British suffragette imprisoned in Birmingham, 1909)6 On 20 December [1933], strikers were dragged from one cell to another, so they could search. Then they started to force-feed us. It was an unforgettable sight; there were fights between the strikers and the wardens. Of course the first were beaten. Exhausted, we were fed by the throat with the appropriate pumps. It was unprecedented torment. They forced big rubber tubes down our throats, strikers were dragged like dogs into the ‘feeding cell’. No one gave in separately. On the 15th day of the strike, our strike committee decided to end it because lots of the strikers were trying to commit suicide. (Arven A. Davtian, known as Tarov, a hunger striker at the Verkhneuralsk isolator)7 5-6 greens [German police wear green uniforms], 2-3 medics, 1 doctor. The greens grab, push, and drag me to an operating chair. Really it’s an 6 Rosen, Rise up, women!, 123-124. 7 ‘Tarov’s Appeal to World Proletariat’, Vérité, 11 October 1935; Bulletin de l’Opposition 45, September 1935.

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operating table with all the bells and whistles: it can be swivelled in any direction etc. […] Strapped down: two pairs of handcuffs and foot shackles, a 30 cm wide strap around the waist, two leather straps with 4 belts from the elbow to the wrist on the left arm, on the right arm another two at the wrist and elbow, and one across the chest. Behind me a green or a medic who holds my head firmly against the headrest with both hands on my forehead. (In the case of active resistance at head level, two others, one on the left, one on the right, hold on to my hair, my beard, and my neck. In this way, my entire body is immobilized, and if it’s necessary another holds my knees or shoulders. The only possible motion is muscular movement ‘inside’ the body. This week they tied the belts and straps very tightly, so that blood accumulated in my hands, which turned bluish etc.). […] Force-feeding: A red stomach pipe (not a tube) is used, about the thickness of a middle finger (in my case between the joints). It is greased, but doesn’t manage to go down without causing me to gag, because it is only between 1 and 3 mm narrower than the digestive tract (this can only be avoided if one makes a swallowing motion and remains completely still). The slightest irritation when the pipe is introduced causes gagging and nausea and the cramping of the chest and stomach muscles, setting off a chain reaction of extremely intense convulsions throughout the body, causing one to buck against the pipe. The more extreme and the longer this lasts, the worse it is. A single gag or vomiting reflex is accompanied by waves of cramps. […] The pipe is, regardless of circumstances, torture. (Hans Holger Meins, 11 October 1974, an RAF prisoner incarcerated in Wittich)8

The brutality of force-feeding can result in death in cases where the tube is wrongly inserted or inserted into the trachea, mistakes that were frequent in the early 20th century. There were numerous deaths of this nature among the suffragettes and the Irish nationalists. The prison authorities were then faced with two possibilities: having forcefeeding performed by the wardens who were not medically trained, with the risk of increasing the number of accidents, or (like in Guantanamo Bay) having it performed by trained doctors and nurses. How can the question of the doctors’ role be avoided here? Force-feeding procedures are the subject of heated debate in the medical community. It effectively pits two visions of medicine against one another: one is oriented towards the preservation 8 ‘Holger Meins’ Report on Force-Feeding, October 11 1974’, German Guerilla website, http:// germanguerilla.com/1974/10/11/holger-meins-report-on-force-feeding/.

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of life, even when it means being at the service of political power, and the other is more sensitive to the wishes of the individual. It is no surprise that prison medicine is the most directly confronted with these questions. Although during the 19th century a doctor could declare in his doctoral thesis that ‘social laws’ authorised the force-feeding of a prisoner,9 doctors are generally less intrusive today in their positions. In 1909 more than a hundred British doctors condemned the force-feeding of suffragettes. Two of these doctors, themselves ardent defenders of the suffragist movement, resigned from their editorial positions at the Daily News because of the newspaper’s support of force-feeding. They wrote, ‘[W]e cannot denounce torture in Russia and support it in England’.10 The 1970s were also a moment of intense discussions within the medical body as to the legitimacy of forcefeeding. The second World Assembly of Penitentiary Medicine published a declaration in 1975, of which Article 6 stipulates that ‘any prisoner conscious of the medical implications of a hunger strike should not be artificially fed’. Yet certain doctors continue to set aside the question of protest, pretending to see the strikers simply as invalids and assimilating their behaviour to a medical pathology: ‘people refusing to eat’. At the World Congress of Prison Medicine in Dijon in 1978, Dr Raymond Cohen Haddad outlined the attitudes then adopted in Israel regarding hunger strikes: ‘For us there are no hunger strikes: there are only detainees who refuse to eat. […] When that gets complicated, it is because a whole prison refuses to eat. We simply feed them orally, and then, if they refuse, by gastric probe, or intravenously. We once managed to successfully feed 400 prisoners by gastric probe at the same time, in the same prison.’11 In fact, doctors’ actual practices vacillate between these two poles. Although generally the respect of the ‘rational’ decision of strikers seems to prevail, there are certain persistent limits and constraints. Among these are the risk of criminal charges for not aiding a person in danger,12 or even encouraging a suicide, and the impossibility of assessing the rationality of the striker’s decision particularly when the latter is unconscious (which is the logical conclusion of a hunger strike). The decision must be confirmed by at least two doctors. Another restriction, particularly in prison environments, 9 Quoted in Jean-Philippe Mangeon, Grève de la faim et institution médicale, PhD thesis, University of Clermont-Ferrand, 1982. 10 Rosen, Rise up, women!, 125. 11 Claire Brisset, ‘En Israël. Quand une prison entière refuse de manger’, Le Monde, 28 November 1978. 12 The duty to provide assistance to a person in danger is inscribed in French law. Failure to provide this assistance may result in criminal liability.

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is Article 223-6 of the New French Penal Code, which makes not assisting a person in danger punishable by law, whereas the previous version of the penal code allowed for assistance ‘even against their will, of a person considered to be in a life-threatening situation’. Yet Article 36 of the Medical Deontology Code allows for the invalid’s wishes to be respected. But is the hunger striker an invalid? Does he or she want to be helped by a doctor? Article D 364 of the French Penal Procedure Code expresses this ambivalence in its specification that ‘if a detainee undertakes a prolonged hunger strike, they must not be treated without their consent, unless the state of their health becomes radically altered and only following medical decision and surveillance’. The previous version of the penal code was still more directive: ‘if a detainee undertakes a prolonged hunger strike, they can be force-fed, but only following medical surveillance and decision and when their life is at risk’. In the case of hunger strikers accused of terrorism, the prison doctors can take extreme repressive action, acting as the objective allies of the authorities. The penal administration and the prison doctors generally begin to take more or less coercive measures (intravenous feeding) towards the fourth week of a strike, or even a little later, when the inmate becomes semiconscious or unconscious, or when their short-term survival is threatened. Before this point, they repeatedly inform the hunger striker of the risks they are running and ensure that food is regularly proposed. In fact, and this is also the case for hunger strikes outside the prison system, wherever possible the doctors attempt to leave a door open for the striker in case they change their mind, on a pretext that would ‘allow them to save face’. In other words they provide a means, enabling individuals either to feed themselves or to submit to intravenous solutions (vitamins, in particular), without necessarily accepting food orally. The prison doctors are not the only ones to make decisions; they are also made by the prison administration. In France, the circular of 14 December 1998 allows that ‘it may be necessary, for reasons of order and security in the establishment, for example in the case of a hunger strike provoking a risk of support or collective movement, to place an inmate on a hunger strike in solitary confinement’. Divide, accuse and sap the credibility of supporters The authorities frequently tend to attack the credibility and legitimacy of the hunger strikers’ claims. They may provoke hostile mobilisations against the hunger strike as a mode of action associated with moral blackmail against democratic voices, or as a form of sedition, or simply against the

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demands made through the strike. At the end of 1977, the Bolivian government launched a call for a generalised strike against the hunger strike then underway by the Bolivian miners’ wives, and against ‘subversion’. The authorities can also challenge the hunger strikers’ credibility by condemning a ridiculous or superficial aspect of their demands, or by collecting information proving that certain strikers are not ‘really’ fasting. Spreading negative information about strikers is also particularly useful against strikers who have resorted to violence in the past, either political or criminal. A police chief may imply to journalists (not without irony sometimes) that the crimes committed by certain protesters deprive them of the humanitarian sympathy they seek through the hunger strike. Solange Troisier, a significant figure in Gaullist politics and a former medical inspector general of the penal administration, thus joked about ‘Nathalie Ménigon’s weight-loss programme’, in reference to the Action directe activist on a hunger strike in prison in 1988. In Bolivia during the summer of 2008, the governors of the wealthy regions launched a hunger strike in opposition to the socialist president, Evo Morales, and the state’s appropriation of part of the tax on hydrocarbons to fund social reforms. In response to this, Juan Ramon Quintana, the minister for the presidency, said ironically, ‘the rich don’t go on hunger strikes, they go on a diet’. Overall, the authorities tend to respond to the compassionate reflex by deploring the ‘mediatisation’, ‘moral blackmail’, even the ‘duplicity’ of the strikers who are not ‘really’ striking. Hence the strategic importance of medical information as mentioned above. In 1991, after intervention by the police, the prefect of the Gironde region publically expressed his doubts as to the authenticity of the hunger strike given its duration, and simultaneously affirmed a humanitarian concern given the ‘strikers’ lack of free will’. These strategies for detracting from the credibility of the strike depend on the cooperation of the press and the possibility of censoring images of the strikers. Thus, Gandhi’s strike in 1932 was presented in a confusing way by the British press, without photos of his emaciated body. In 1943, in a context of wartime censorship, nutrition experts demystified his action. Once again no photos were permitted. However, by contrast, his 1948 strike following India’s independence was acclaimed by the press and accompanied by photos.13 The ternary structure of the hunger strike – authorities/strikers/support team – also leads to accusations against those who support the strikers. They are accused of being irresponsible because they encourage the hunger 13 Pratt and Vernon, ‘“Appeal from this fiery bed…”’.

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strikers to put their health or even their lives at stake, without risking their own lives. The argument of not assisting people in danger can be made here too. Protesters become portrayed as very dependent, incapable of making their own minds up, and as being manipulated by their support teams. In 1997, Jean-Pierre Chevènement (then minister of the interior) stigmatised the ‘foreign Trotskyist factions’, presumed supporters of the sans papiers movements. Everything is set up so that the emotional objective of the hunger strike is diffused by the revelation of its purely ‘political’ dimension. Finally, collective strikes are particularly vulnerable to propositions and negotiations on a case-by-case basis which ‘crumble’ collective demands in favour of individual solutions, depending on the specific situation of each striker. The most famous case of this is the sans papiers. Faced with propositions for regularisation on a case-by-case basis, the demand for general regularisation is often weakened. If the highly humanitarian dimension of the hunger strike allows for mobilisation beyond the traditional audience of a particular cause, because it successfully mobilises a policy of pity, it becomes limited when it is based solely on demands for individual solutions. Police and military intervention Intervention by security forces may take place in both prison and during mass hunger strikes. In December 2000, during a death strike launched by nearly 2000 prisoners, special units of the Turkish police and army launched an assault on 20 prisons. There were over 30 people killed, and hundreds of inmates were sent to prison hospitals or solitary confinement. Similarly, in the Verkhneuralsk gulag in the winter of 1930 the director had prisoners chained up naked and hosed with cold water to force them to put an end to their action. Although there are many other cases of police interventions during hunger strikes by the sans papiers, that of 23 April 1996 remains one of the most famous. On that date, 1500 members of the security forces broke down the doors of the Saint-Bernard church in Paris, in which nearly 300 sans papiers, including ten hunger strikers and the French activists supporting them, had taken shelter. Two arguments are put forward by the authorities, sometimes in combination, to justify intervention by security forces to end a hunger strike. One is related to public order because many hunger strikes also involve occupying public or private buildings which can easily be considered illegal. The other argument refers to the health risk the strikers are running, with

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police intervention motivated by humanitarian concerns or the argument of a legal responsibility to assist those in danger. In Delhi in 1998, the Indian police intervened in a hunger strike in defence of Tibet. Six hunger strikers were forcibly hospitalised, and one other burnt himself alive. In France, a confidential circular of 24 January 1972, addressed to the regional police prefects, indicates the ways this kind of action can be avoided. It reflects the irritation of the then minister for the interior, Raymond Marcellin, who was faced with an increase in the number of these strikes. The main argument was that of a duty to assist those in danger; in the case of collective strikes the minister went so far as to envisage, according to the Penal Code, the possibility of ‘non-assistance between “strikers”. This situation can occur in the hypothesis of a collective “hunger strike”. Indeed, it may happen that if one “striker” is less weak than another, their failure to demand assistance for their comrades who are unable to request such assistance, would be a breach of the law’. Although tube and intravenous feeding are rare in prisons today, police interventions during hunger strikes almost always occur in the name of the impossibility of leaving the strikers to die. The intervention by security forces is therefore backed up by ambulance staff and a proposal to take the strikers to hospital. The latter are often sent to different hospitals, which even when it does not explicitly aim to divide the movement, often results in dispersing the mobilisation. Letting them die, making them martyrs Hunger strikes extend responsibilities. The state, but also the passer-by who witnesses the strike, are responsible for the lives of the strikers. The latter present themselves as victims, but the authorities tend to reject this claim by confronting them with other victims – their victims. François Mitterrand declared on 20 February 1988, regarding the hunger strike by four leaders of Action directe in prison, that ‘[his] pity goes firstly to their victims’. It is worth repeating that terrorists are the only hunger strikers that states will consciously allow to die, by not giving in to their demands. Is this a message of strength directed at other candidates for hunger strikes? Or is it a message to the potential enemies of the sovereign state? Refusing to submit runs the risk of contributing to and amplifying the strikers’ cause. Consider the emotion provoked by Thatcher’s choice to refuse that the IRA hunger strikers in the Maze Prison be recognised as prisoners of war. Ten strikers died. We know the place that these ten have in the collective memory of the movement and Irish Catholic memory more

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broadly, where they have joined the pantheon of Irish martyrs, alongside Thomas Ashe or Terence MacSwiney. By their deaths they demonstrated the inhumanity of the power they were confronting and by correlation proved that their cause was just. In 2001, Barry Horne, the animal rights defender, died after a series of extremely difficult hunger strikes in protest against the vivisection of animals. He had been incarcerated in Great Britain since 1996 for terrorist acts, having set up incendiary devices in shops selling animal products. Widely described as a terrorist in the British press, he is today seen as a martyr by animal rights activists who consider his use of violent methods as justified in the name of those who cannot defend themselves. Although public authorities refuse to give in to demands by terrorists, they are also aware of the possible implications of an opponent on a hunger strike. They generally do all they can to avoid this extreme situation because they know it will be held against them in the future.

Ending the strike How is a hunger strike, apparently such a radical method, eventually resolved? How can life return to normal after such extremes? Negotiate or persist? As the strike progresses, the entourage of hunger strikers, the family or the support committee, are often in an increasingly uncomfortable position. Because of the deterioration of the strikers’ health, they become the main point of contact with the authorities. At the beginning of the strike, the goal is to increase the ‘stakes’ and to not accept the first propositions by the authorities, because only the reality of the hunger strike is able to establish a power relation favourable to the striker. Yet it rapidly becomes difficult for the striker’s entourage to avoid feeling responsible for the health of the strikers. This continues to the point where the intermediaries may end up – out of fear of compromising the life or health of the strikers by their intransigence – convincing themselves of the authorities’ good intentions. Yet it is these same intermediaries who relate these negotiations back to the strikers themselves. The strikers’ evaluation of their chances of success will depend largely on the way their support team sees the situation and their degree of conviction.

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Similarly, the authorities often give family members the responsibility of having to decide whether or not to allow the force-feeding of strikers once the latter are unconscious. This can lead to the strikers’ proclaimed determination to ‘go all the way’ being radically weakened. The relation between the strikers and their support teams is necessarily complex. Supporters may hesitate to push the strikers to the extreme and find themselves weakened in negotiations as a result. Hunger strikers are in a much stronger negotiating position when they are conscious and able to negotiate directly without depending on intermediaries. The gratification that results from protest action may in itself explain some reticence to negotiate and to put an end to the strike: a pride in stepping out of the shadows – explicit in the case of the sans papiers, a public affirmation of a cause, an expression of moral choices and so forth. Yet there may also be relief in articulating demands with a form of passivism – lying down and waiting for a reaction – that breaks with the previously endless fruitless actions. Finally, the hunger strike, through the physical and moral commitment that it demands, is a process in which the strikers may discover that they can be admired for their courage, their suffering and even their selflessness. Thus, hunger strikes, like many other kinds of protest action, often constitute a space of militant socialisation and allow the redefinition of the protester’s identity. It is sometimes difficult to renounce this moment of collective enchantment, as we can see in this comment by a striker against double penalties, just when the question of possible negotiation was emerging clearly: There are people to whom I owe this hunger strike. I can’t leave just like that. I want a document to show my son that his father did go on a hunger strike, because it’s true that even a good friend of mine said, ‘Go on, stop it. I know you’re not really on a hunger strike’. I want to go out on a high note. I’m happy, I learnt things here. And they [indicating T., one of the leaders of the support committee] did something valuable for us. (Field notes, 17 January 1992)

Of course, this is not to naively neglect the potentially ‘self-interested’ dimension of engaging in a hunger strike. But the motivations that drive people to persist are not necessarily the same as those that led them to begin the strike in the first place. Hunger strikes encourage painful re-organisations of personal identity, and not only when they demand the acceptance of promises that are more restrictive than those that motivated the action. Strikes in favour of the sans papiers benefit the strikers above all, or it is the collective that collapses at

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the end of the strike. Continuing the strike means persisting in an identity that is positively defined in the eyes of other strikers and supporters. Members of the support committees must sometimes condemn the ‘gratuitous’ or more gratifying aspects of the strike in order to convince the strikers that it is time to put an end to the action. Management of feeding and life after the strike The end of a hunger strike is a moment of great physical vulnerability, given the weakness of the strikers and the medical framework of the process of the return to feeding. This process must be progressive, beginning with liquid or semi-liquid food, and finally solids. Many health accidents arise when former strikers return to their homes and families and no longer benefit from appropriate medical attention. The end of the strike is a return to reality: it is the end of the outpourings of support and public attention on the strikers, and even in the case of collective strikes the end of the feeling of community among the strikers and the care of the support committee. This moral vulnerability is shadowed by a political vulnerability. The time after a strike is the moment when any return to this action would be difficult on a political and media level, and particularly ‘delicate’ in terms of the strikers’ health. Many supporters find themselves committed to following ‘cases’ of strikers after the strike is over. They follow their medical treatment but also their legal treatment in cases linked to worker’s rights or the sans papiers. Once again, routine replaces heroic outpourings and this is a delicate moment because it is difficult to gauge whether the authorities are acting in good faith. Certain administrative delays are not always their fault, while others reflect a ‘lapse’, so much so that this moment of uncertainty makes it difficult to be sure whether the cause was ‘won’ or ‘lost’. Evaluating the success or failure of a protest action remains risky and varies depending on the time scale that is used.

Conclusion A method of action that is ‘not quite like others’ because of its moral connotations and the risk of death that it implies, hunger strikes have progressively become a part of the protest actions of the 20th century. It has become possible to envisage this form of protest both individually and collectively. Today, hunger strikes have a prominent place in the protest arsenal of low-resource groups, such as prisoners and undocumented immigrants. It is typically a weapon of last resort, used with urgency; a weapon of indignation, refusal of cooperation. It is often a weapon of extreme action in deadlocked situations. We might be tempted to consider it the weapon of the weak, but it is also used by those who are famous, well-known and respected, who see it as a way to add their weight to the balance. Nor are hunger strikes a method of protest reserved for democratic countries, a reflection of humanitarian feeling and the weight of the media in Western democracies. They have shown their effectiveness in authoritarian regimes and their prisons; they have brought dictatorships to their knees. This technique reveals the minimal room for manoeuvre opponents have in the most repressive regimes; but also the variable tolerance of authorities in democratic countries regarding certain protest groups. When each and every person can protest or strike without fear, the groups who use hunger strikes are often those who have the most difficulty mobilising more ‘traditional’ methods of action. The place hunger strikes have come to occupy in the repertoires of protest action does not contribute to its banalisation, nor to its perception as a legitimate form of protest ‘like any other’. The emotion (and sometimes the irony) that this method provokes is proof of this, as are the accusations of moral blackmail it often attracts. Other forms of protest action are similarly criticised when they interrupt the ordinary course of things to establish a power relationship and propose an alternative voice to that resulting from the ballot box. The risk of death is not sufficient in itself to set hunger strikes apart. So what can be said of unease felt by many observers when faced with hunger strikes with apparently far-fetched or superficial motives? It is true that it is possible to undertake a hunger strike to obtain the replacement of a faulty vehicle, or because one’s business is in financial straits. These strikes should not be held up against a nobler conception of politics. Instead, we should study these cases where the seriousness of the method appears disproportionate to the objectively relatively trivial nature of the problem.

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They reveal an important element: the suffering and risk involved in the hunger strike demonstrate the intensity of the striker’s commitment to the cause. Through this physical suffering, perceived as proof of authenticity, the greatness of the cause and the commitment of the strikers are inextricably connected; through this suffering they are examined and evaluated. In this, the hunger strike is indeed a test, for the person undertaking it of course, but also in terms of the particular meaning given to this term in pragmatic sociology. It is also a situation that puts to the test the solidity of an object or a group of actions whilst also providing justification. It is not simply an instrument used to reach particular ends. In the eyes of the public, as well as the hunger strikers, and their supporters, it attests to the dual authenticity of both the commitment to the cause and the cause’s value in itself.



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Boltanski, Luc, Distant suffering: Morality, media, and politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999. Bourgoin, Nicolas, ‘Les automutilations et les grèves de la faim en prison’, Déviances et société, 25.2, 2001/2: 131-145. Cadoux, Charles et al., La grève de la faim ou le dérèglement du sacré, Paris, Economica, 1984. David-Jougneau, Maryvonne, Le dissident et l’institution ou Alice au pays des normes, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1989. Dingley, James and Marcello Mollica, ‘The human body as a terrorist weapon: Hunger strikes and suicidebombers’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 30(6), 2007: 459–492. Geddes, Jennian F., ‘Culpable Complicity: The Medical Profession and the Forcible Feeding of Suffragettes, 1909-1914’, Women’s History Review, 17 (1), 2008: 79‑94. Grant, Kevin, ‘British Suffragettes and the Russian Method of Hunger Strike’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53 (1), 2011: 113‑143. Groenewold, Kurt, ‘The German Federal Republic’s Response and Civil Liberties’, Terrorism & Political Violence, 4 (4), 1992: 136-150. Healy, James, ‘The Civil War Hunger-Strike: October 1923’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 71 (283), 1982: 213‑226. Howland, Corinna, ‘To Feed or Not to Feed: Violent State Care and the Contested Medicalization of Incarcerated Hunger-strikers in Britain, Turkey and Guantanamo Bay’, New Zealand Sociology, 28 (1), 2013: 101‑16. Kiely, Jan, ‘Performances of Resistance: Communist Hunger Strikes and Demonstrations in Nationalist Prisons, 1928-1937’, Twentieth-Century China, 29 (2), 2004: 63‑88. Kumar Srivastava, Pramod, ‘Résistance et répression en Inde: grève de la faim dans les prisons cellulaires des îles Andaman en 1933’, Crime, histoire & sociétés 7.2 (2003): 81-102. Lavaud, Jean-Pierre, La dictature empêchée. La grève de la faim des femmes de mineurs. Bolivie 1977-1978, Paris, CNRS éditions, 1999. Linhardt, Dominique, ‘Réclusion révolutionnaire. La confrontation en prison entre des organisations clandestines révolutionnaires et un État – le cas de l’Allemagne dans les années 1970’, Cultures et conflits 55 (2004): 113-148. Maître, Jacques, Anorexies religieuses, anorexie mentale. Essai de psychanalyse socio historique. De Marie de l’Incarnation à Simone Weil, Paris, Cerf, 2000. McGregor, JoAnn, ‘Contestations and Consequences of Deportability: Hunger Strikes and the Political Agency of Non-Citizens’, Citizenship Studies 15.5 (2011): 597‑611. Miller, Ian, ‘“A Prostitution of the Profession”? Forcible Feeding, Prison Doctors, Suffrage and the British State, 1909-1914’, Social History of Medicine 26.2 (2013): 225‑245. Mulcahy, Aogán, ‘Claims-making and the Construction of Legitimacy: Press Coverage of the 1981 Northern Irish Hunger Strike’, Social Problems 42.4 (1995): 449-467. O’Malley, Padraig, Biting at the grave: The Irish hunger strikes and the politics of despair, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1990. Orbach, Susie, Hunger Strike: The Anorectic’s Struggle as a Metaphor for our Age, Norton, New York, 1986. Passmore, Leith, ‘The Art of Hunger: Self-Starvation in the Red Army Faction’, German History, 27 (1), 2009: 32‑59. Passmore, Leith, ‘The Ethics and Politics of Force-Feeding Terror Suspects in West German Prisons’, Social History of Medicine, 25.2 (2012): 481‑499.

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Angry music Christophe Traïni

Introduction Well-orchestrated protest On 23 March 2006, crowds of people1 took to the streets in France to demand the withdrawal of the Villepin government’s proposed ‘First Job Contract’ (Contrat Première Embauche [CPE]). Passers-by saw long processions of demonstrators brandishing placards and yelling slogans, while sound systems mounted on the backs of trucks provided a constant musical accompaniment. Groups sang ‘Motivated, Motivated! Must get motivated!’, a line that the band Zebda had recently added to the ‘Chant des partisans’, the famous anthem of the French Resistance during the Second World War. Further on, younger demonstrated made a show of anger by raising their clenched fists whilst the Diam’s rap song ‘La Boulette’ echoed in the background: ‘so yeah, we f*ck around / yeah yeah, we shock you / nah nah it ain’t the school that dictates our rules / nah nah, generation nah nah’.2 This musical accompaniment to a protest march is nothing new. No revolt, no significant social mobilisation, seems to have been able to do without musical and choral practices. The nationalist movements and revolutions of the 19th century, for example, the result of the entry of the masses into politics, cannot be dissociated from the large repertoire of romantic anthems and other operatic songs. As for the ideologies that clashed in the first half of the 20th century, such as fascism, Nazism and communism, they were all just as hungry for fanfares and drum rolls. They were often staged with pomp and grandiloquence, involving forceful and virile choirs. In the United States, the Civil Rights Movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century was marked by the resurgence of gospel music, the emergence of soul, and the support of white American protest singers. During the boycott of the segregationist busses in Montgomery in 1955 (one of the high points of the movement), the long, exhausting marches took on an even more political dimension because they were accompanied by the spiritual song ‘Walk Together Children’: ‘Walk together children / Don’t get weary / […] There’s a great camp meeting in the promised Land’.3 1 Three million according to the organisers, two hundred thousand according to the police. 2 ‘Alors ouais, on déconne / Ouais, ouais, on étonne / Nan, nan, c’est pas l’école qui nous a dicté nos codes / Nan, nan, génération nan, nan’. 3 Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison, Music and social movements: Mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, 98.

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This book seeks to explore the complexity of the relations between protest and the musical forms that accompany its different situations. Often the musical proclamation of moral, religious or cultural principles, or the development of alternative ways of life, is more focused on reaching listeners than influencing politics. At other times it focuses on the fight against injustices of political authorities and the orchestration of popular movements with the goal of overthrowing a political regime (or more simply a government majority). Even more often, it involves the participation in diverse and temporary demonstrations of opposition to projects or decisions made by political authorities, either at the local, national or international level.

1

Protest put to music

A definition of the word ‘music’ might seem like stating the obvious: at first glance the word refers to nothing more than the art of combining sounds in a melodic, rhythmic and harmonic fashion, following different rules depending on the period and civilisation. This definition is too laconic, however, to enable us to understand how this singular art form can also be used as a tool for protest. From this perspective, certain characteristics that are specific to musical communication must be examined more closely.

The weapons of musical polysemy Music cannot be reduced to its mathematical and physical foundation, even though this foundation is real. Humanity has always granted it an expressive function. Indeed, by producing certain sounds, musicians deploy a sort of conventional language that communicates meanings perceivable by those who listen. But what does the music express? Suggestive emotional content rather than well-articulated statements with precise semantics. In Antiquity, authors such as Plato, Aristotle or Aristoxenus recognised in music the rare ability to express and provoke feelings and moods. It is true that musical communication is based on a certain foundation – mode, tempo, pitch, rhythm, harmony, volume – which are capable of evoking and provoking varied affective states (see Table 1). This is further accentuated by the fact that the instruments used may be culturally assimilated to specific emotional characters: brass suggests a triumphant or grotesque nature, strings indicate sadness, piano implies introspective tranquillity, wind instruments lend an air of melancholy or awkwardness, and so forth. In fact, the cheerful, exalted, aggressive, bellicose, solemn, sad, or melancholic nature of any music is immediately grasped by its auditors. However, music suggests not only specific affective states but also bodily postures. Jean-Jacques Rousseau liked to remark that music is ‘capable of physically acting on the body’.1 Certain musical arrangements can encourage you to dance, want to have fun, to click your fingers; others may provide a feeling of well-being, relaxation, provoke serenity and make you abandon yourself; others might give you goosebumps, a lump in your throat, a tremble 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collection complète des œuvres de J.J. Rousseau, tome 9, Dictionnaire de musique, Paris, Armand-Aubrée, 1832, 359.

106 Christophe Tr aïni Table 1  Musical communication and emotional expression Emotional expression Serious Sad Romantic Serene Humoristic Joyous Excited Majestic Frightening

Musical elements Mode

Tempo

Pitch

Rhythm

Harmony

Volume

Major Minor Minor Major Major Major Major Major Minor

Slow Slow Slow Slow Fast Fast Fast Moderate Slow

Low Low Moderate Moderate High High Moderate Moderate Low

Clear Clear Flowing Flowing Flowing Flowing Uneven Clear Uneven

Consonant Dissonant Consonant Consonant Consonant Consonant Dissonant Dissonant Dissonant

Moderate Soft Soft Soft Moderate Moderate Loud Loud Variable

Source: François-Xavier Yvart, L’Émotion musicale: du rôle du contexte socio-émotionnel au partage social de l’émotion musicale, PhD thesis, University Lille-3, 2004

in your voice and tears in your eyes. Still others might excite or exasperate listeners, call them to arms, to parade or encourage solemnity and reverence. Frequently, these musical styles are associated with bodily postures, styles of dress, actions and gestures that appear to be a challenge to the established social order. Therefore, at the time when American patriots were exalting the martial qualities required to rid Vietnam of communism, hippy music was instead encouraging young people to be placid, pacifist, to love flowers and one another. The slogans of ‘Flower Power’ and ‘Peace and Love’ were expressed as much in the songs of this movement as in the ostensibly nonchalant bodies of its participants. Inversely, although the subjects of Her Majesty typically pride themselves on ancestral dignity, unshakable composure, self-control and impeccable attire, the rebellion of young British punks in 1976 relished vociferation, gesticulation, sloppiness and dishevelment. Several decades earlier, the emergence of rock ’n’ roll had already shown how young white Americans appropriated ‘bad boy’ behaviour but also adopted the ‘gut beat’. This ‘get-under-your-skin’ rhythm was created by black rhythm and blues musicians in order to free themselves from the puritanical and rigorist prescriptions of their parents. In hindsight, we can only be surprised by the virulence of the reaction from those selfproclaimed guardians of white America who decried what they considered an attack on appropriate bodily expression. According to the mentality of the time, the new style of music was described as the ‘openly animalistic obscenity of the horde of Negro rock’n rollers’. Through its ‘basic heavy beat’,

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its ‘indecent and vulgar performances’, ‘sensuous Negro Music’ was accused of ensuring that ‘the utter beast is brought to the surface’ and provoking the regression of ‘white girls and boys […] to the level of the animal’.2 Certain defenders of the social order, so unduly threatened by these pernicious musical arrangements, even went so far as to affirm that by dancing to rock ‘young people follow the devil, because it stimulates frenetic sexuality, provokes contempt for the law and presents a very serious danger to the balance of their nervous system’.3  Often music combines the language of sounds and bodies with sung discourses that carry their own meaning. Here it is important to underline that these words and songs don’t tend to make explicit content that is already present in the music, but rather to intensify and make more complex the range of meanings transmitted to listeners. Indeed, the staging, choreography or alternating vocals between solos and back-up singers can also provide additional symbolic content. Thus, for example, a song sung by a single person could never convey the same power and determination of the Red Army Choir. Similarly, many of the freedom songs which marked the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, were sung by people while holding hands, or linking arms, symbolising the unfailing solidarity of the defenders of the cause. The fact that these human chains can be associated with men and women, black and white alike, was in itself a powerful protest against the racial segregation of the period. To this we must yet add the socio-political context in which these songs emerge. Thus, in 1985, the group Carte de Séjour, 4 made up of several firstand second-generation French citizens, performed a cover of the famous song ‘Douce France’ by Charles Trenet.5 The addition of oriental tones and vocals in a deliberate Moroccan accent were enough to transform a simple, suave melody into a veritable political manifesto. The song’s chorus ‘Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance’ (Sweet France, dear country of my childhood) thus immediately becomes an appeal against racism and exclusion. For many listeners of the time, the musicians in the group, led by the frontman Rachid Taha, did more than simply pay homage to Trenet; they strongly affirmed that all children of immigrants in France were a part 2 Quoted in Brian Ward, Just my soul responding: Rhythm and blues, black consciousness and race relations, London, UCL Press, 1998, 100-110. 3 Peter Blecha, Taboo tunes. La musica fuorilegge, Roma, Fazi Editore, 2005, 51. In English: Taboo tunes: A history of banned bands and censored songs, San Francisco, Backbeat Books, 2004. 4 Literally, ‘residency permit’ 5 Trenet was a French singer and songwriter whose music was very popular between the 1930s and the 1950s, although his career continued up until the 1990s.

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of the French nation. Of course, this was a period marked by the very first instances of the right wing aligning themselves with the electoral themes of the Front National (FN). As a sign of protest, left-wing MPs distributed Carte de Séjour’s CD in the National Assembly. By this time, the political and media success of the song had entirely escaped the control of the musicians who created it. Musical arrangements, bodily postures, lyrics, staging and socio-political context: we can see just how much the ‘musical framework’ is important in transmitting messages of protest. We will see, however, that these messages are far from being as systematic and univocal as those that stem from written or oral discourses. Musical performance constitutes a form of communication that remains ambiguous, in the sense that it leaves a large amount of room for interpretative ambivalence, the possibility of allusions that are more or less concealed, expressions of double meaning, ironic ostentation, and of course multiple and diverging evaluations.

Between contemplation, contestation and legitimization Analysing the contributions of music to protest phenomena must not make us forget that music does not have a subversive dimension in itself. A great many kinds of music fulfil social functions that are not favourable to the development of tendencies to protest. Thus the ditties, nursery rhymes, love songs or pop hits that deliberately cultivate frivolity and trifles exclude any kind of political statement. The ultimate objective of these songs is often simply recreational. In Pantagruelian tradition, music may be considered one of the pillars of a certain Epicurean wisdom, consisting of eating, drinking, singing and being merry. Of course, this frivolity is not always appropriate and it is not unusual for music to take on the noblest concerns of religion or art. When dedicated to the praises of divinities or aesthetic contemplations, destined to elevate souls and minds, music remains remote from the prosaic preoccupations of political struggle. Even when musical frameworks find themselves mixed up in political processes in spite of everything, nothing predisposes them to stand against the established socio-political order. On the contrary, Plato advised governors to carefully regulate the use of music. To control a people, you must first control its music, warned the philosopher. Maintaining order within the city meant that magistrates were not only responsible for defining the musical models appropriate for each social status, but also for ensuring that these models were respected in each new creation. Those who governed the

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socio-political order had to ensure that ‘no one voice anything or make any dance movement contrary to the public and sacred songs or the whole choral exercise of the young, any more than he would go against any of the other “laws”’.6 This very political consideration regarding the uses of music can be found in the heart of most of the totalitarian and authoritarian regimes of the modern era. Under Nazism, a great many composers were persecuted, accused of subscribing to a degenerate art form supposedly incompatible with the Aryan race. Inversely, a range of heroic music was used to serve the purposes of the ideological propaganda of the regime. More particularly the theatrics of Wagner’s work were also instrumentalised in order to exalt the violence and the force, the messianic mission of the Führer and the rebirth of the Thousand Year Reich. Totalitarian regimes are clearly an extreme example, but generally speaking musical frameworks are often used to support the legitimacy of political regimes, including democratic ones. Anthems, fanfares and orchestras appear often, less as forms of revolt than as tools to celebrate orthodoxy and respect for existing political institutions. This point is worth remembering, given that the border between contestation and celebration of institutions can be extremely porous. We can see this in the example of the French anthem ‘La Marseillaise’ or ‘The International’, which, from having long been revolutionary songs, have now become the official anthems of contemporary political regimes. Finally, it is not unusual today for the media notoriety of musicians to be methodically exploited as part of professional communication strategies in politics. For example, in 2007, during the French presidential election campaign, both of the two main candidates publically celebrated the support they received from a number of famous popular singers. As we have seen, music is omnipresent, in its myriad forms; whether it is assigned to frivolous distraction, to contemplation, to the legitimization or the contestation of conventional political institutions. In this book, we will propose a series of analytic tools that will enable us to identify the conditions and methods which lead music to contribute to the development of protest movements.

6 Plato, The laws of Plato, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, book VII, [800b], 189.

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Amplifying protest

Dictating adequate emotions As a result of their prejudice against the masses, the first theorists of collective action satisfied themselves with equating protest movements, riots and revolutions with the overflow of uncontrolled emotions.1 As a reaction against the simplistic standpoint of ‘crowd psychology’, researchers in the 20th century worked on considering acts of protest as rational choices dictated by utilitarian or strategic goals. Only recently have several American authors reaffirmed the legitimacy and usefulness of examining the role of emotions in collective mobilisations.2 From this perspective, the use of musical devices is a unique vantage point. Taking into account the expressive properties of certain musical arrangements, the latter can be seen as awareness-raising devices, that is, material supports, organisation of objects and staging that activists use to provoke affective reactions that predispose listeners to support the cause.3 The use of music also embeds political claims in a pre-reflexive sensibility that is stronger and more engaging than simple discursive formulations. This is why publicising militant principles often involves a musical accompaniment that deserves close analysis. From this perspective, the methods used by anti-bullfighting organisations are very informative. The website of the International Movement Against Bullfights (IMAB) reveals images of the terrible injuries inflicted on the bulls while the song ‘Free Me’, by Goldfinger, plays in the background. In this song, the plaintive voice of the singer is that of the animal itself, begging the torturer whose motives it can’t understand: ‘I’ve done nothing wrong / so free me / what the hell do you want from me / kill me if you just don’t know how / or free me’. We can see a similar approach, evoking the direct voice of the victim through song, on the Italian website of the International Organisation for the Protection of Animals, with a meditative song from Prodemo. Similarly, the French organisation Comité radicalement anti-corrida (CRAC; Radical Anti-Corrida Committee) encourages the public both to sign a petition against bullfighting and to listen to the very introspective 1 Susanna Barrows, Miroirs déformants. Réflexions sur la foule en France à la fin du xixe siècle, Paris, Aubier, 1990. 2 Jeff Goodwin, James M. Jasper and Francesca Polletta, Passionate politics: emotions and social movements, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2001. 3 Christophe Traïni (ed.), Emotions… mobilisations !, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009.

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song ‘Por favor’. In this song, the author, Gérald Fontaine, also presents the voice of the bull, revealing his final thoughts. The CD of Nathalie Karsenti’s song ‘Je ne me laisserai pas faire’ (I won’t go down without a fight) is sold as militant material along with the stickers, brochures and posters of the movement. Karsenti sings, ‘like you I am a target for violence / like you El Toro, I won’t go down without a fight […] / In the name of what? In whose name? / Tell me why you do this?’ The recurrence of this technique shows that the goal is indeed to provoke sympathy for the victim, anger against the perpetrators and generally prevent indifference to the animal’s fate, all thanks to the expressive and emotional qualities of the music. Furthermore, by suggesting a dialogue, or even a form of direct identification with the persecuted bull, these musical devices contribute to stirring up the kind of near-visceral revolt that is an important source of motivation for supporters of the anti-bullfighting cause. In this way, the emotions conveyed through these songs persuade those who experience them of the urgent need to defend this cause. Another emblematic case can be seen in the video Dura realidad (Harsh reality), produced by anti-abortionists of the international Pro-Life movement. Unbearable images of a recently aborted foetus are accompanied by a soundtrack made up of a lullaby interrupted by a heartbeat, then the sound of lighting, and finally what sounds like a hymn. The final sequences of the video alternate between repugnant images of aborted foetuses and shots of Pro-Life militants brutally clashing with law enforcement officers. It is clear that the whole montage is designed to provoke what the American specialist in collective action James M. Jasper would call a moral shock. 4 The lullaby and the hymn used in the video, although a priori antithetical to the images they accompany, are highly effective in creating this moral shock; a phenomenon which is composed of four complimentary traits. A moral shock generally results from an event that is unexpected, a sudden surprising change in the environment of individuals. It also implies a reaction that is very vivid, visceral and sometimes even physically nauseating or vertiginous. It leads the person experiencing it to judge the way in which the actual order of the world appears to abandon values normally adhered to (hence the usefulness of a hymn, evoking prayers and faith, in the eyes of militant Christians). Finally, this experience provokes a feeling that is 4 James M. Jasper, The art of moral protest: Culture, biography and creativity in social movements, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997; Christophe Traïni, ‘Choc moral’, in Olivier Fillieule, Lilian Mathieu and Cécile Péchu (eds), Dictionnaire des mouvements sociaux, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009.

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harrowing and enraging, one that requires immediate action and demands commitment to that action. We can clearly see here how a clever use of appropriate music can provoke upheavals experienced as an awakening, leading to a conversion to the cause and driving militant action. This sometimes even implies standing against the law and confronting law enforcement. Musical devices also appear to be extremely useful in the context of protest movements that are obliged – for tactical reasons – to modulate their modes of action and the affective states their sympathisers manifest according to the circumstances. Thus, over the course of the anti-segregationist struggle in the United States, certain Civil Rights songs were directly taken from the gospel repertoire because of their messages of hope, determination, pride, confidence and joy in movement. As a result these often provided the protesters with the bodily posture needed to overcome the fear of confrontation with law enforcement and/or members of the Ku Klux Klan.5 A song like ‘Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do)’, characterised by well-defined exclamations, crescendo beat, choral reprises and hand clapping, urged singers to adopt an unshakable resolve. A song like ‘Carry It On’ enabled the evacuation of fear among the more reticent: ‘They will tell their empty stories / Send their dogs to bite our bodies / They will lock us up in prison / Carry on, carry it on!’ Yet this determination could not on any account contravene the message of non-violence that characterised these protests, for a large part orchestrated by churchmen such as Martin Luther King. Therefore, during the summer of 1963, when the recent violent clashes in St Augustine raised fears that activists would give in to anger and a desire for vengeance, the song ‘I Love Everybody’ reminded demonstrators of the calm that movement’s idea expected of them. More generally, the expressiveness and diversity of songs provides great latitude for the modulation of emotive postures deemed necessary by the ‘entrepreneurs of the cause’, depending on the situation and forces at work, and what is considered most strategically relevant: boldness, rage, disdain, solemnity, sorrow, ridicule etc.

Exalting a ‘we’ in movement Mancur Olson’s book The logic of collective action: Public goods and the theory of groups (1965) had a considerable impact on the study of protest 5 Aldon Morris, The origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black communities organizing for change, New York, The Free Press, 1984.

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movements. This text has often encouraged researchers to take a utilitarian approach (borrowed from economics) which tends to reduce the motivations for political behaviour to a competitive rational of the appropriation of goods. In several texts Alessandro Pizzorno has emphasised that this extension of utilitarian theories to political activism too often ignores the fact that social movements are often based on a logic of identification. For the Italian political scientist Pizzorno, commitment to political action fundamentally results from a quest for ‘the recognition of the self by a certain collective’. Participation in a political movement, by connecting the individual to one group rather than to another, provides him or her a certain ‘continuity of the self’ and simultaneously reduces the uncertainty of values that enables the individual to make their choices.6 Yet the analysis of how musical devices are used allows us to identify certain procedures which enable and affirm the ‘belonging’ of individuals to a group in movement. To the extent that they require the synchronisation of gestures and voices, as well as a shared aesthetic and repertoire, musical and choral practices form a kind of collective action par excellence. The act of singing together is a clear materialisation of the determination of group members to act together in a coordinated fashion. Mobilisations for protest thus appear to be often closely linked to a tradition of ritualised performance, which use songs that symbolise a group in movement to assert the existence of a group of individuals with characteristics, desires and destiny that are all shared. In joining in singing the chorus of these group songs, individuals participate in the construction of a ‘togetherness’ exalting solidarity, sharing, union, strength and creativity.7 More than any other practice, singing enables this feeling of ‘communalisation’ to be fostered and objectified. According to Max Weber, this notion of ‘communalisation’ characterises the relationships of those who love and understand each other, and who thus take pleasure in belonging to a single collective entity.8 In this we can see a different kind of reward for militancy, to the extent that this feeling of ‘communalism’ provides each person with the gratification of belonging to a group that is seen as positive. Moreover, these musical devices extend an invitation to those who hear them to join in the chorus; the repetition of a song on many different occasions responds to the need 6 Alessandro Pizzorno, ‘Considérations sur les théories des mouvements sociaux’, Politix. Revue des sciences sociales du politique 9 (1990): 74-80. 7 Jacques Cheyronnaud, Musique, politique, religion. De quelques menus objets de culture, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003. 8 Max Weber, Économie et Société, Paris, Agora, 1995.

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to constitute a ‘mass movement’, to incarnate a group that is large enough to challenge the power in place. The words that accompany the musical and staging arrangement aim to accentuate the invitation to mobilise that is extended to all who are ready to listen. An anthem overwhelmingly uses the third person plural, the exclamative and imperative forms as well as a prophetic future tense: ‘Get up! Stand up!’, ‘Raise the scarlet standard high!’, ‘Allons, enfants!’, ‘Marchons! Marchons!’, ‘Avanti popolo!’ Thus, the text of the ‘Internationale’, composed in 1871 by Eugène Pottier and long considered the prime example of a revolutionary anthem, emphatically exalts this mobilised group and promises a better destiny for tomorrow: ‘Arise ye prisoners of starvation / Arise ye damned of the earth / […] Arise ye slaves no more in thrall […] / The earth will rise on new foundations / We have been naught we shall be all / […] Let each stand in his place / the International Union shall be the human race / […] We toiler’s from all fields united / join hands with all who work’. Less romantic in style, ‘We Shall Overcome’ was a gospel song initially used during a black workers’ strike at the American Tobacco Company in 1946, and then reworked by the Highlander Folk School in 1947, and which eventually became the ultimate American rallying song, particularly during the Civil Rights Movement. It uses the same discursive techniques: ‘We walk hand in hand / We are not afraid / We will be free one day / We are not alone / We will overcome / We will overcome one day’. It is clear that the pounding rhythms and repeated choruses, as well as the act of performing the song on many different occasions, appears to be the best techniques for achieving what sociologist Robert Merton called ‘a self-fulfilling prophecy’.9 Indeed, the individuals brought together by the song prefigure the creation of the mass movement, made up of all those eventually destined to join the group celebrated by the song. The actual mobilisation of the greater number is likely to occur through the very fact that it is constantly announced in a song whose progressive diffusion overlaps with the expansion of the ‘we’ the lyrics refer to. Two other discursive processes can also help protest movements benefit from this crucial resource which is the choral glorification of a fated community: conflictualisation and historic legacy. The exaltation of the inclusive ‘we’ in song often appears to be inseparable from the denunciation of a ‘they’ referring to those profiting from injustice (oppressors, tyrants etc.), that is, the enemies of the burgeoning movement. These songs often 9 Robert K. Merton, ‘The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy’, Antioch Review 8.2 (1948): 193-210; reprinted in Robert K. Merton, Éléments de théorie et de méthode sociologique, Paris, Armand Colin, 1997.

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resemble warnings about the threatening behaviour of adversaries. ‘La Marseillaise’ is a case in point, warning citizens about the ‘ferocious soldiers, who come into our very midst, to slaughter our wives and our companions’. ‘A las barricadas’, the anthem of the anarchist-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT; National Workers Confederation) during the Spanish Civil War, evokes the ‘black storms that sweep the sky, the dark clouds that blind us’, to conclude that ‘duty calls us against the enemy’. ‘Bandiera rossa’, the Italian communist anthem composed in 1908, calls the people ‘to the rescue’. ‘Le chant des Partisans’, the French Resistance song popular with the Maquis in the Second World War, mobilises this threatening vision: ‘Friend do you heard the muffled cries of a country in chains? / Hey there, partisans, workers and peasants, this is the alarm! / Tonight the enemy will know the price of blood and tears’. In Italy in the 1920s, activists in the fascist movement that was then in full expansion sang ‘All’armi siam fascisti’: ‘To arms! To arms! We are fascists / We are terror to the communists […] / Always singing for our Fatherland / Which, united, we will defend / Against enemies and traitors / Because they love neither Fatherland nor family / Because they are mud and rubbish / That we must despise and pursue’. The objective here is to produce affective states that are useful for collective mobilisation. In the first instance, the feeling of imminent danger demands immediate reaction and justif ies commitment in a conflict against an enemy that is revealed in song. As a result it also mobilises a feeling of animosity, hostility and hatred towards those who threaten the accomplishment of the militants’ historic mission. The anthem contributes to constructing a system of complementary affective reactions that provide a shared emotional culture to all group members.10 Towards the ‘we’ in the movement: self-esteem, admiration, compassion for the injustices suffered in the past, hubris, enthusiastic pride in collective action for a better world. Towards the ‘others’ outside the movement: indignation, contempt, anger, fear quickly exorcised by the promise of immanent punishment, and general hostility that is emboldened by the galvanising effect of the song. ‘Us’ against ‘them’ suggest the songs; ‘Peace among us, war on tyrants!’ This conflictualisation is often prolonged through the construction of a historical legacy that establishes a shared memory of combat. The songs frequently present the conflict between ‘us’ and ‘them’ as being the heritage of a history that is so long and so costly that it would be immoral to seek to withdraw from it. In such a way the fated community for which the 10 Jasper, The art of moral protest.

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activists of today are fighting, appears to have been forged by their illustrious predecessors – whose heroics can only be an example. Thus ‘Yugurthen’, a song in the Tamazight language written by Hamid Cheriet, known as Idir, mobilises the figure of Jugurtha, a Numidian king who stood against the Romans, to evoke the Berber nationalist claims commonly expressed through folk songs, in the continuation of a combat that is much older than the Arabisation of Kabylia. In the same way, in 1963 a group of young Irish musicians named their band the Wolfe Tones after the man considered to be the founder of Irish republican nationalism, Theobald Wolfe Tone, for the military ventures he launched against the English (with the help of Napoleon) in 1798. In this way, the rediscovery of Celtic folk music of the 1960s came to represent itself as Irish rebel music and proposed the continuation of the secular struggle against the British invader. This work of historical legacy often led musicians to evoke the memory of the martyrs of the cause in their songs of protest. Thus a large repertoire of songs linked to the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were dedicated to the martyrs of non-violence, assassinated by the movement’s opponents. On William Moore, or Herbert Lee, killed in 1962, Bertha Gober sang: ‘We have hung our heads and cried / Cried for those like Lee who died / Died for you, and died for me / Died for the cause of equality’. The 1963 assassination of Medgar Evers, Mississippi delegate to the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), became the subject of a song by Bob Dylan. The memory of James Chaney, tortured and assassinated the following year by defenders of racial segregation, would be preserved in song by Tom Paxton: ‘James Chaney your body exploded in pain / the beating they gave you is pounding in my brain’. On the other side of the Atlantic, in Italy, in the summer of 1960, the formation of the Tramboni government with help from the neo-fascist party, the Italian Social Movement (MSI), provoked numerous protests. The resulting confrontations with law enforcement left ten people dead and hundreds wounded. In response, Fausto Amodei composed ‘Per I morti di Reggio Emilia’ (To the dead of Reggio Emilia), whose couplets list off the names of the five activist workers of the Communist Party shot by the police, who were encouraged by the government open fire ‘in case of emergency’. Like so many others, this song was prompted by the results of confrontation and is used to magnify the duty of solidarity and demand that survivors continue the struggle begun by those who gave their lives for the group. ‘Friend, if you fall, a friend from the shadows will take your place’ proclaims ‘Le chant des Partisans’. Breaking the great chain that links yesterday’s soldiers to those of today, would be like betraying those

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who sacrificed themselves for the good of the group.11 Rising up against ingratitude and forgetting, provoking the feeling of a debt to those who came before, these songs suggest the existence of an eternal and atemporal ‘we’. Thus the author of ‘Per I morti di Reggio Emilia’ did not hesitate to invite the dead to rise from their tombs to join the living and sing ‘Bandiera rossa’ by their sides (see Text 1). Text 1. Communalisation, conflictualisation and historic legacy: ‘Per i morti di Reggio Emilia’ (To the dead of Reggio Emilia), Fausto Amodei, 1960 Comrades, citizens / Brothers in arms / Let us join hands / In these dark days / Once again in Reggio Emilia / Once again in Sicily / Comrades are dead / Killed by the fascists / Once again like before / In all of Italy / The winds howl and the tempests rage / […] Just 19 years old / Ovidio Franchi died / For those who gave up / Or are still undecided / Lauro Farioli died / For those who have already forgotten / Ducio Galimberti / Dead at 20 years old / For our future / They died like old partisans […] / Comrades let it be clear / This blood is bitter / Spilt in Reggio Emilia / This is the blood of us all […] / Our enemy today / Is still and always the same / The one that we fight / In our hills and in Spain / It is always the same song / That we must sing / ‘Our shoes are broken yet we must march on’ / […] Comrade Ovidio Franchi / Comrade Afro Tondelli / And you, Marino Serri / Reverberi and Farioli / We must all stand together now / Have you by our sides / To no longer feel alone / You the dead of Reggio Emilia / Rise up from your graves! / Come out and sing ‘Bandiera rossa’ with us!

This work of historical legacy cannot be reduced to simply evoking heroic victims in song, in order to prolong their struggle. The entrepreneurs of protest can also refer to musicians who are well-known for their past commitments. Thus the soft Celtic ballads such as ‘Back Home in Derry’ or ‘McIlhatton’ have a strong political connotation not so much for their content but because they were composed by Bobby Sands, who died in prison in 1981 following a hunger strike in protest against the British government’s refusal to grant IRA members the status of political prisoners. The successive interpretations of these songs exalt the duty of all to act in solidarity with the nationalist cause, depicting Sands not as the diabolical terrorist the Thatcher government presented him as, but rather as a sensitive and delicate poet. The musical devices used in these Celtic ballads prolong 11 Christophe Traïni, ‘Tradition’, in Olivier Fillieule, Lilian Mathieu and Cécile Péchu (eds), Dictionnaire des mouvements sociaux, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009.

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and amplify the effects of a method of action – the hunger strike – that aims above all to attract public opinion to a condemnation of the blind violence exerted by the state.12 However, the past engagements of composers do not have to be marked by such tragic incidents for promoters of the cause to refer to them. Certain musical works seem so deeply associated with militant actions that simply reinterpreting them can contribute to bolstering later causes, by presenting them as a struggle aiming to preserve a valuable heritage of protest. This is the case of Joan Baez’s performance at Woodstock in 1969, which is often considered as one of the most emblematic moments in the US protest movement of the 1960s. Baez performed the song ‘Joe Hill’, a song regularly performed by Pete Seeger over his 50-year-long career. Seeger was also known for his compilation of political songs, entitled Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People, written with Woody Guthrie and Alan Lomax and issued in 1967. The song ‘Joe Hill’ was composed in 1938 by members of the Industrial Workers of the World union (IWW), better known as the Wobblies, in tribute to one of their members unjustly condemned to death in 1915. Through the song’s text, the singer recounts a dream in which he was able to speak with Joe Hill, whose death had not weakened his determination: ‘The copper bosses killed you Joe / They shot you Joe, says I / Takes more than guns to kill a man / Says Joe ‘I didn’t die’ / […] Says Joe, what they forgot to kill / Went on to organize / […] Joe Hill ain’t never died / Where working men are out on strike / Joe Hill is by their side / […] Where working men defend their rights / That’s where you’ll find Joe Hill’. This is not simply a tribute to the memory of simple martyr. Joe Hill was also the composer of 25 songs collected in The Little Red Songbook, of which a copy was given to every new member of the IWW. Woody Guthrie, another very popular singer in the United States, received a copy in 1930 when he participated in the protest movements for itinerant and homeless workers as a member of this union. Ten years later he shared it with Seeger who at the time was beginning his career as a singer and activist. We can see just to what extent Baez’s performance in 1969 helped place that protest movement (which the Woodstock festival sought to transmit) within a long line of political struggles in which political engagements and the music exalting them are inextricably entwined. This heritage included the struggles of the Wobblies and Joe Hill’s own songs from the beginning of the 20th century, the movements of the 1930s in which Guthrie participated, Seeger’s involvement

12 Siméant, La cause des sans-papiers.

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with the Communist Party, and finally the protest songs of the new 1960s generation incarnated by Baez and Bob Dylan among many others. We can see this same kind of historical legacy in the song ‘Per i morti di Reggio Emilia’ (see Text 1). Far from simply evoking those killed in 1960, in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the Italian Resistance (1943-1945), it also refers to the song ‘Bandiera rossa’, as well as to one of the verses of the anti-fascist song ‘Fischia il vento’ (‘Our shoes are broken yet we must march on’). Once again this is an attempt to give historic depth to contemporary engagement thanks to the continuity and faithfulness suggested in the choruses enumerating the activists of old who also fought in song. In such conditions, it is not surprising that songbooks such as The Little Red Songbook, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People or Lotta Continua’s Canzoniere del proletariato represent precious militant resources for protest, which always benefit from the idea that they are part of a long line of historic political struggles. This power inherent in music appears even more clearly when it borrows from choral traditions linked to musical sensibilities belonging to wellstructured groups separate from the elites in power. In these situations, the protest movements benefit from that crucial resource which – according to Anthony Oberschall – is the feeling of pre-existing solidarity which can be reactivated in the pursuit of collective goals.13 Thus the use of Negro spirituals and gospel songs gave the activists of the Civil Rights Movement an immediate connection and had a familiar resonance to the black population used to singing them in their churches. It enabled the activists of the movement to be more easily perceived as natural representatives of the concerns and aspirations of the black community.14 Similarly, the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848 seem to have been in part prepared by the so-called goguette singing societies. Created in the tradition of epicurean societies such as the Caveau, vaudeville suppers or Les Soupers de Momus; this form of sociability seems to have been originally exclusively dedicated to drinking and bawdiness. Yet the first years of the Restoration were marked by the emergence of lower-class singing societies that spread all the more rapidly because of the reactionary policy of the newly restored aristocracy, which severely limited the right of people to assemble. At a time when the press was muzzled, the goguettes seemed to be one of the last spaces of expression left to the dominated classes and provided a meeting place for the burgeoning workers’ movement and marginal 13 Lilian Mathieu, Comment lutter? Sociologie et mouvements sociaux, Paris, Textuel, 2004; Erik Neveu, Sociologie des mouvements sociaux, Paris, La Découverte, 1996. 14 Morris, The origins of the Civil Rights Movement.

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poets, sometimes of bourgeois origin, who came to find the success they were refused in high society. In 1818, there were 300 goguettes in Paris, and nearly 500 in 1836.15 Of course these clubs, with names like ‘Le Gigot’, ‘Les Francs-Gaillards’, ‘Les Joyeux’, or ‘Les Braillards’ (names which generally convey associations of boisterous merriment), were apparently set up only for their members to drink, eat and sing. However, frequenting these places enabled people to hear songs taunting the government and the church, exalting the utopia glimpsed in the unfinished revolution, maintaining the cult of Napoleon and even celebrating the pride in belonging to a ‘people’ which would be called upon to take revenge against the restored monarchy.

Criticising the authorities, avoiding censorship Through its affinities with the sphere of light-hearted entertainment, music can easily reject the respectful solemnity that the established authorities generally demand. In the Middle Ages the goliards (students who had taken minor orders but had broken with the church hierarchy) made a name for themselves with their repertoire of satirical songs ridiculing the established social order. Vagabonding through Europe, they sang of wine and eroticism without shame, parodied religious ceremonies and railed against the ecclesiastical authorities, including the pope. In 1300, outraged by this insolence, the bishops brought together at a council in Cologne forbade all members of the church from participating in the activities of the goliards. Songs that aim to reject the authority of established powers appear at many other points in history. Under the Ancien Régime, crowds pressed onto the Pont Neuf in Paris to hear the songs of the travelling singers, well-known for their burlesque and bawdy works which often directly resembled political pamphlets. Sometimes commissioned by the princes, for whom they represented a clever way of setting public opinion against their adversaries, these songs caricatured and condemned the powerful. In 1650, the Mazarinades taunted Cardinal Mazarin, the superintendant of the government, to a melody well known by all: ‘He fucks our regent / And takes her gold / And the guy he crows / That he took her from behind / Sound the alarm! / Din din din / To hang Mazarin!’16 The spread of songs striving to sap 15 Jean Touchard, La Gloire de Béranger, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1968. 16 ‘Il fout nostre régente / Et luy prend ses écus / Et le bougre se vante / Qu’il l’a foutue en cul / Faut sonner le tocsin / Din guin din / Pour pendre Mazarin!’ Marc Robine, Anthologie de la chanson française, Paris, Albin Michel, 1994.

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the authority of political adversaries can be seen throughout the following century, particularly with the singers of Montmartre who showered abuse on those in power, the clergy, the bosses and the bourgeoisie. Jules Jouy, for example, was the author of some 3000 songs, who became particularly prominent during the Boulangist crisis, which he fought by publishing daily in the newspaper Le Cri du peuple (The cry of the people). Every day he published the text of a song that discredited Boulanger, even as others celebrated him as the providential man. Through this daily column, the saga of General Boulanger was depicted as a burlesque foolish farce, which could only provoke irony and contempt. In more recent times, when commentators have predicted crises in political representation in Western democracies, the talents of musicians have considerably contributed to criticism of the elites and representatives of professional politics. Certain actors in the musical sphere have even taken a stance in asserting a syllogism of festive and participative democracy. Through a primordial proposition, the musicians emphasise their ability to conduct enthusiastic festivities which allow the participation of all their fellow citizens in the form of dances, choruses, acclamations etc. A secondary proposition is based on the fact that political competition obeys a professional logic that now only interests the minority of specialists who work in it. The conclusion of this implicit reasoning consists in presenting the musicians as the heralds of a participative democracy rising up against the professional politicians, who now only represent themselves. The protest musician is thus better equipped to combat the disenchantment of representative democracy and the exclusion of ordinary citizens which results from the professionalisation of politics. This idea underlies many of the activities and discourses of groups that proclaim their opposition to political centralism in France, such as Massilia Sound System or the Fabulous Trobadors. The watchwords of these two groups from Marseilles and Toulouse cannot be limited to simply valorising the local dialects in an attempt to recuse the pluri-secular cultural hegemony and domination of the Parisian centre over the French regions. One of the clear objectives also consists in making local community life more animated and stimulating the development of a collective voice, clearly orchestrated by the musicians, in order to get around the confiscation of power by professional politicians. Thus Claude Sicre, the singer in the Fabulous Trobadors, has conducted several local cultural events for residents of Toulouse, along the lines of the Weekly Neighbourhood Meals programme, which he launched in 1991. Sicre can thus present himself as a ‘cultural agitator’, who stirs up forces of contestation, a natural spokesperson for

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ordinary citizens and thus the most able to defy the notables of the town. The rhetoric used by the artist in his music also tends to disqualify elected representatives and denounce the closed nature of the local political system in order to be heard. The song that Sicre addressed to Dominique Baudis, the then mayor of Toulouse, particularly demonstrates this double movement, consisting on one hand in discrediting the media strategy and opportunism of this professional politician, and on the other hand celebrating the authenticity and cultural dynamism instilled by the artist (see Text 2). In 1982 the musicians of The English Beat adopted an even more critical attitude towards the authoritarian policies of Margaret Thatcher and accused her of driving the country in to apathy and moroseness. To a frenzied Caribbean rhythm, with festive and colourful staging, the group of young English and Jamaican musicians encouraged the audience to chant the chorus of ‘Stand down Margaret’. The band members pitted their enthusiasm and their ability to mobilise their fellow citizens against the cold distant professionalism of politics. ‘I said I see no joy, I see only sorrow / I see no chance of your bright new tomorrow / So stand down Margaret, stand down please, stand down […]. Our lives seem petty in your cold grey hands / Would you give a second thought, would you ever give a damn? / I doubt it / Stand down Margaret / Everybody shout it / Stand down Margaret’. Text 2. The cultural agitator vs the political notable: ‘Come on Every Baudis’, Claude Sicre (1993) Baudis you’re young and handsome / Tele-photogenic […] / Everywhere on your photo portraits / We gaze / But it’s not enough / That you’re a pretty boy / Don’t care about the posters / Don’t care about the media / We’ll leave the clichés / To the crazies who adore them / Gotta be clear for us / Your look is secondary […] / Baudis get down off your balcony […] / We want Capital Toulouse / Who says bugger Paris? / Without provincial shame / And at no one’s mercy […] / Don’t say it’s impossible! / It is if you want it to be / This idea is accessible / But it will take more than votes […] / To succeed on this path / There’s only one solution / We have to be heard / Democracy to the max / A forum for all / Let people united / Take part in decisions / That’s what we’re talking about […] / You’re clever / You’ve got influence / You’ve got talent in the shows […] / You’ve got an eye for the good deals / You can see which way is up […] / You fascinate the suckers / With your blah blah blah / Don’t give us your fine words / If you won’t do more than that […] / Baudis get down off your balcony […] / Take your neighbourhood in hand / Come share your ideas / The more we are the less stupid we are / That’s what we want […] / That what we still

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ask for / We love to shout / Down with the pretty D / D for Dominique / But why should we ask? / Freedom is for the taking / Why ask him for it? / We must act and impose it!

As far as specifically authoritarian contexts are concerned, the interpretative equivocity specific to musical devices is a means of getting around the censorship of the powerful. The history of the first African-American musicians is perfect example of this. The plantation owners, undoubtedly well aware of music’s potential for contestation, were careful to control and limit the musical practice of their slaves. The use of drums was forbidden out of fear that they might be used as a means of communication leading to rebellion. Slave songs had to appear to be neither offensive nor insolent, provoke neither melancholy nor nostalgia. Only the field hollers and work songs were encouraged in order to boost the fervour and productivity of the workers. As good self-respecting Christians, the slave owners also tolerated hymns in praise of the Lord. For a long time, as confined and limited as it was, Negro spiritual music was therefore the only space within which black Americans could express, if not overly explicit revolt, then a condemnation of their conditions and a hope for a better life. Often the biblical images exalted in these songs designate as much the events of the lives of the slaves themselves as the characters of Christian mythology. Thus the evocation of the torments of the people of Israel, held as slaves before their liberation by Moses, suggested the possibility of future emancipation.17 Canaan, the promised land of the Jews, was assimilated to Canada, a country where slavery was outlawed; the Jordan River was the Mississippi. This technique of playing on double meanings was occasionally much more audacious, as in the case of the song ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’. The lyrics of this particular song reveal, in code, the way to get out of Alabama and the Mississippi (the gourd in the title refers to the Big Dipper constellation that showed the way north). The severity of the authoritarian control by the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority seems to have been extended well beyond the abolition of slavery, which left a deep-seated and persistent racism in its wake. An indication of this is the overly metaphoric language that Abel Meeropol had to use in 1939 to denounce the numerous lynchings of blacks in the Southern states. In his song ‘Strange Fruit’, popularised by the black jazz singer Billie Holiday, this Jewish teacher, originally from Russia, condemned 17 Alain Darré (ed.), Musique et politique: les répertoires de l’identité, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996.

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the lynching and racism in terms that are both poetic and understated: ‘Southern trees bear strange fruit / Blood on the leaves and blood at the root / black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze / Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees’. The song was shunned by the recording studies, and finally distributed by a small Jewish recording house in New York, then boycotted by most of the nation’s radio stations. Yet ‘Strange Fruit’ nevertheless struck a chord, and is ensuing popularity meant that it is considered today as the first significant public protest against racism in the United States. In many other countries, double meanings, allusions and innuendo provided by musical devices also provided a way around censorship and repression that would otherwise not have failed to crush more foolishly explicit protests. In this regard, the role of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera during the Risorgimento movement, leading to the formation of the Italian nationstate, has become almost legendary. The staging of the Hebrew slave choir in Nabucco was enthusiastically perceived by the Italian nationalists as a metaphorical representation of the Italian nation ridding itself of Austrian domination. The name of the composer was soon interpreted as an acronym for ‘Vittorio Emanuele Re D’Italia’ (Victor Emanuel II, King of Italy), so much so that the cry ‘Long live Verdi’ became a call for the creation of an independent Italian kingdom, a coded message right under the noses of the Austrian police. Similarly, more than a century later, the movement for an independent Zimbabwe gave rise to a large repertoire of chimurenga songs, which reused melodies traditionally sung in homage of ancestors, by incorporating extremely well-coded political messages into them. The metaphoric images described in the Shona language by the composers of these songs, can indeed only be deciphered by those who are familiar with the most subtle arcana.18 More generally, in situations of strong authoritarian control, the most apparently anodyne music can fool the censors and constitute a form of defiance that prefigures more open opposition. Thus, while France was occupied by the German army, the whistling of a light-hearted tune such as ‘Si tous les cocus’ could be seen as an act of resistance. This was because of a parody that was played by the BBC: ‘If all the Nazis / Had bells on / Every time that Russia / Clobbered them one / It’d raise such a ruckus / That we couldn’t hear ourselves think’. Similarly, the approach of militia and other collaborators could be discretely signalled by whistling ‘Les Gars de la marine’, because the chorus had been parodied by Pierre Dac as ‘It’s you, 18 Denis-Constant Martin, ‘“Chanter l’amour”. Musique, fierté et pouvoir’, Terrain 37 (2001): 89-104.

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you guys are vermin’ (see Text 3). It is worth noting that from 1943 Dac, a French humorist, produced a series of radio broadcasts for the BBC’s Radio Londres for Occupied France. In these programmes he performed several covers of popular songs rewritten to denounce those who collaborated with Pétain’s regime, such as the ‘Cucaracha’ converted into ‘Radio-Paris lies, Radio-Paris lies, Radio-Paris is German’. Text 3. ‘Les Gars de la vermine’ (The guys of vermin), Pierre Dac (1943) (to the tune of ‘Les Gars de la marine’) When you’re a bastard / A true, a pure, a beautiful one / You go to work / For the firm Himmler / Then you preach to others / To totally obey / Whatever the whim may be / At the orders of the Fuhrer / The swastika on your brow / You show with pride / What a champion you are / In the race to disgrace / CHORUS: You are the guys, the guys of vermin / The knights of baseness / Here are the Waffen SS / See how they’re proud / They’re the cream of the heinous lot / Before we exterminate them all / Take a closer look / You are the guys of vermin / From the smallest to the biggest / From the simple thug to Darnand 19 / They’re all Germans!

These processes are clearly very useful, not just because they manage to avoid censorship, but also because they reinforce this feeling of communalism which we have already established is very important. Indeed, laughing together at the expense of the adversary, thanks to a coded double meaning inaccessible to the enemy, is all the more powerful in an unfortunate situation. It most likely constitutes one of the most important vectors of feelings of solidarity and shared intelligence. Thus, from 1844, a municipal sergeant was sent to the goguettes so that he might interrupt any song challenging dominant mores, the Church or the government. Unexpectedly this new restriction only further accentuated the success of these places where a number of the regimes’ opponents congregated. In fact, certain apparently banal songs concealed political critique (with ever increasing ingenuity), which pleased the public all the more because the delicacy of their allusions went over the head of the police officer.20

19 Aimé-Joseph Darnand was the founder and leader of the French Milice, a para-military organisation which assisted the Gestapo in hunting Jews, resistance members and those defying compulsory work service between 1943-1945. 20 Touchard, La Gloire de Béranger.

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Promoting moral values Up until now we have seen the extent to which musical devices can be powerful vectors of involvement, able to provide foundations for prereflexive agreements between people who share affective, or even ‘visceral’, reactions.21 The words of songs extend this socialisation by feeding a process of moralisation. This is a discursive explanation of the principles which are used to judge behaviour and situations as being just, desirable, worthy of praise, or, on the contrary, unjust, scandalous and reprehensible. This brings us to the concerns of those who promote frame analysis, analysing the arguments through which the entrepreneurs of a given cause attempt to convince their audience. David Snow and Robert Benford have focused their attention on the production of these ‘frames of perception’ which allow us to diagnose a problem, propose a solution and motivate action.22 William Gamson, for his part, has observed how individuals confronted with unfairness in authority tend to mobilise a ‘frame of injustice’ in order to draw those around them into communal revolt.23 Yet if songs are sometime described as ‘protest songs’ it is because they tend to condemn the injustices of the social order and base their critique on collective values that they contribute to defining and promoting. Of course the different visions of the desirable that can be transmitted by the songs remain potentially unlimited, for better or worse (racism, xenophobia, warmongering, fascism, sexism etc.). It is thus important to be wary of any pretention to an exhaustive portrayal. We restrict ourselves here to two of the most frequently recurring moral themes in protest music: ‘isogory’ on one hand and pacifism on the other. To the extent that popular songs do not require any particular skills and can be taken up by anyone, they are particularly well adapted to the celebration of isogoric values. The term isogory refers to the perfect equality between citizens regarding the access to public speech. Many musical styles have contributed to fostering the right to expression of sections of the population often excluded from public forums and political arenas. The invention of reggae, for example, meant that the most marginalised musical practices in the ghetto were seen in a positive light; this music was even able to participate in a form of social rehabilitation of the formerly 21 Luc Boltanski, La Souffrance à distance. Morale humanitaire, médias et politiques, Paris, Éditions Métailié, 1993. 22 David A. Snow and Robert D. Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization’, International Social Movement Research 1 (1988): 197-217. 23 William Gamson, Bruce Fireman and Steven Rytina, Encounters with Unjust Authority, Homewood, The Dorsey Press, 1982.

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stigmatised groups that practiced them: Rastafarians and burru drummers. By demonstrating that these populations were able to attract interest from overseas, reggae music provided members of these disadvantaged groups with a form of social recognition within Jamaica itself.24 The aesthetic positions of other musical styles have similarly helped give voice to those who are ordinarily kept silent. Thus, punk and rap reject musical virtuosity (seen as being necessarily elitist) in preference of forms that are easy to appropriate even for those who have no musical training or material means. In spite of their differences, punk and rap share the same ‘do-it-yourself’ ethos, defending the idea that it is not necessary to be a ‘good’ musician in order to express one’s rage and be heard. The protest aspect often attributed to rap is not simply due to the texts that denounce the misery, inactivity and lack of a future for those who live in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Instead, it is more to do with the verbal virtuosity that values popular idioms previously considered worthless and without legitimacy: black American slang, black English, the slang of the ghettos or the barrios etc. By transforming this heterodox eloquence into legitimate artistic objects, the rappers are attempting to refuse the social exclusion that normally hits those who don’t have any other means of expression. As a result, there is often a belief that they fulfil the role of the ‘tribune’ or spokespeople most able to express the concerns of those on the margins of ordinary political institutions. Thus certain Brazilian rappers have come to be seen as the natural representatives of the inhabitants of the favelas and have been able to get involved in militant actions for them as a result.25 Other musicians exalt the right to free and equal speech to condemn the marginalisation of minority ethnicities and cultures in their country. To do this, they must adopt their own traditional instruments and use native (minority) languages for their texts. This is why Irish nationalists have adopted Celtic instruments (uilleann pipes, bodhrán, tin whistle etc.), Berber singers use abendayar drums, Aboriginal Australians play the didgeridoo, Occitan singers use tambourines, and polyphonic songs are performed in the Corsican language. The use of these musical devices often works as a plea in favour of the recognition of threatened cultures. Given the multitude of cases like this, it does not seem excessive to consider 24 Denis-Constant Martin, Aux sources du reggae. Musique, société et politique en Jamaïque, Marseille, Parenthèses, 1982. 25 Olivier Dabène, Exclusion et politique à São Paulo. Les outsiders de la démocratie au Brésil, Paris, Karthala, 2006.

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music as the most appropriate auxiliary for an apology of multicultural democratic values. Finally, the promotion of isogory is also apparent in songs that rebel against the monopoly and control of information. Some uses of song in fact predated the development of alternative media that spread independent, financially disinterested information, and which refused to toe the editorial line imposed by the major press groups. Since well before the development of free radios, alternative press and internet sites offering independent information, the repeated diffusion of song lyrics has long been one of the best ways of informing the public of events that are not relayed in dominant media. For example, in the 18th century, leading up to the French Revolution, the singers of the Pont Neuf – far from providing a simple satire of the powerful – helped to provide regular updates on the political situation of the kingdom. As for Anglo-Saxon music, it has always seen topical songs as important, as tools to relate a social or political event. These songs are above all characterised by texts that combine narrative, evaluative and didactic registers as well as moral commentary. Thus at the beginning of the 1940s, the Almanac Singers, made up of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, offered the American public a wide repertoire of songs that could be adapted to political news. The musicians commented on the most recent workers’ strikes, criticised the choices of the government, defended American neutrality and then supported the war effort when the USSR was attacked by Hitler. This tradition would be taken up by Bob Dylan, Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, a former journalist convinced there was greater freedom of expression in song than in the press. From 1962, Broadcast, a folk magazine and music label, produced the Broadside Ballads albums, where these singers provided their daily news commentary: the excesses of the ‘witch hunt’ against American leftists, the ambient warmongering in the context of the Cold War, the acquittal of the white assassins of a young black man and so forth. The news spread in topical songs can be seen as decisive for the future of a protest movement. Thus, in 1970 at the Kent State University in Ohio, during a protest march against Nixon’s order to invade Cambodia, national guardsmen opened fire on students, leaving four dead and nine wounded. In the days that followed, Neil Young composed the song ‘Ohio’: ‘Four dead in Ohio / Soldiers are cutting us down’. The considerable success of this song within the university campuses would contribute to reinforcing the student movements against the war in Vietnam. The development of counter-information along musical lines can also be seen in other national contexts. Thus, from the 1980s, groups of Aboriginal

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Australian musicians tried to spread information that was often neglected by dominant Australian media: the trauma of the stolen generations, the 100,000 Aboriginal children taken from their families between 1910 and 1970; the issue of land rights; and the sale of and desecration of Aboriginal sacred sites by the mining industry. Some songs also take a didactic tone warning the Aboriginal population against the evils that threaten them, the spread of AIDS, the dangers of alcohol and drug abuse, and glue and petrol sniffing by children. The values of pacifism provide the foundation for a second moral theme often dealt with in protest songs. Although popular wisdom has it that music soothes the soul, certain observations – particularly to do with conflictualisation – tend to refute this generality. However, it is undeniable that the frequent association of music with amusement and festivity, or peaceful and meditative states, makes it particularly favourable for the evacuation of aggressive or bellicose attitudes. Of course, anti-militarist popular song emerged in the wake of the development of state-organised conscription. From 1810, ‘Le Départ du conscript’ (The conscript’s departure) testifies to the opposition to compulsory conscription: ‘The mayor and the prefect […] / they draw us out of a hat / to send us to death’. However, this theme would remain relatively marginal over the course of the 19th century, which was much more sensitive to the celebration of the virtues of revolutionary or nationalist wars. At the dawn of the next century, the tone was still favourable to the bellicose and vengeful songs such as ‘Le Fils de l’allemand’ (The German’s son) or ‘Vous n’aurez pas l’Alsace et la Lorraine’ (You won’t have Alsace and Loraine). In fact, it was the horror and carnage of the First World War that led to the development of a significant repertoire of pacifist songs. Following the Second Battle of the Aisne (1917) and the ensuing massacre which left 147,000 dead and 100,000 wounded in just two weeks, numerous mutinies broke out within the French army. Five hundred death sentences were pronounced to punish those who refused to obey orders, and according to a legend the authorities would have promised a reward of a million gold francs and immediate demobilisation for any soldier who would give up the identity of the author of ‘La Chanson de Craonne’ (The song of Craonne). The spread of this song in the trenches was considered by the generals to be largely responsible for the success of the mutiny: ‘But it’s finished, we’ve had enough / No one wants to walk any further […] / It’s over, for good / This vile war / Those with the money, they’ll come back / Because it’s for them that we’re dying / But it’s over, because the soldiers / Are all on strike!’ The author of this song was never identified (Marival, 2004). During the four years of the First World War, numerous anonymous songs were composed by soldiers faced with terrible conditions, such as ‘Non non,

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plus de combats’ (No, no, no more fighting) or ‘Dans les tranchées de Lagny’ (In the Trenches of Lagny). Around the same time in the United States, those who opposed the country’s entry into the war composed songs that would later become major elements of pacifist heritage: ‘I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier’, or ‘Don’t Take My Darling Boy Away’. The trauma that this terrible conflict would cause on both sides provided inspiration for composers anxious to describe the horror and absurdity of war for years to come. Since then, each new conflict gives rise to new musical performances and works that condemn the bellicose urges of governments accused of warmongering. Thus, in 1954, at the end of the First Indochina War and the eve of the Algerian War, Boris Vian composed a very famous song entitled ‘Le Déserteur’ (The deserter). This song was prohibited on French radio because of the last couplet, which was considered to be too seditious: ‘If you follow me, let the police know that I have a gun and I know how to shoot’. The author later modified this line to ‘let the police know that I won’t have a gun and that they can shoot’. We can see that this one modification is enough to transform a dangerous call for insurrection into a standard for non-violent civil disobedience. In fact, Vian’s song was often used by conscientious objectors and those who opposed the war. Thus, ‘The Deserter’ also found an unexpected echo in the United States, when Peter Paul and Mary performed it in support of the opposition to America’s engagement in Vietnam. The protest movement against Nixon’s policy in South-East Asia would also be the inspiration for hundreds of songs lambasting militaristic urges. At the dawn of the 1970s this musical opposition to the war clearly owed a lot to the postures and slogans of the burgeoning hippie movement. Thus, in March 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono declared they would protest against the war and in favour of world peace by staying in bed for a whole week. The ‘bed-in’ of these stars attracted the attention of the world’s media. John Lennon’s song ‘Give Peace a Chance’ later became the anthem of the half a million people who participated in the grand march for a moratorium on Vietnam, in Washington, DC, on 15 November 1969. These aff inities between musical practices and the denunciation of warmongering policies would be demonstrated on numerous other occasions, as we can see in the recent opposition to the American intervention in Iraq. Seventy artists, including Sheryl Crow, Peter Gabriel and Massive Attack, did not hesitate to found the Musicians United to Win Without War movement. They sought to use their fame for the benefit of a militant cause that had a lot of difficulty gaining support in the American public opinion in the early years.

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Attracting support and mobilising resources We have already seen the limits of the utilitarian assumptions according to which the resources of militant activism are the result of an irresistible desire for individuals to obtain maximum goods at minimum cost. However, it is important not to neglect the essential contribution of the resource mobilisation paradigm. The perspective opened by John McCarthy and Mayer Zald has the merit of reminding us that protest must be considered as an ‘enterprise’ in and of itself. In this respect, it is important to realise that projected action can only develop in the wake of long-term efforts to bring together appropriate means, coordinate action and attract support from as many people as possible.26 Thus, the entrepreneurs of the cause generally focus on obtaining support well beyond their initial militant base, by mobilising fundamental material and financial means. This is why some of the examples we have seen encourage us to examine more closely one of the essential contributions of music to the development of protest movements: long-distance calls for support. The way songs spread is one of the most efficient ways to draw support from initially indifferent publics. This power considerably increased in the second half of the 20th century due to the development of a mass music industry. This provided stars with the possibility of reaching increasingly widespread audiences, through radio, records, tapes, CDs, concerts and video clips. The presentation of musicians favourable to the cause could also constitute, in the words of Mancur Olson, a form of ‘selective incitation’ encouraging the involvement of individuals who were initially less attracted by the cause in question than by the artists who promoted it. In other words, subscribing to militant content could sometimes be determined by the pre-existing musical taste of the individual, who was then affected by the musical performances aiming to raise awareness of the issue. On this point, it is important to note the extent to which the two last decades of the 20th century were marked by the development of what has been called ‘charity rock’. In 1984, Bob Geldof, an Irish rock star, founded Band Aid, made up of the biggest stars in British rock at the time. It aimed to collect funds to fight against the famine in Ethiopia, and encountered unexpected and undreamed of success. Three million copies of the single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ brought in six million pounds sterling. This success encouraged the Americans to record a single to raise money for 26 John D. McCarthy and Mayer Zald, ‘Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory’, American Journal of Sociology 82 (1977): 1212-1241.

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Ethiopia too; ‘We Are the World’ sold more than seven and a half million copies. The media impact was even greater when Geldof organised a gigantic live concert, Live Aid, in July 1985, which was broadcast in more than a hundred countries before an estimated television audience of over a billion people. This model became the inspiration of other similar operations. In France, there are several examples from this period: Chanteurs sans frontières, also dedicated to the Ethiopian famine in 1985; Enfoirés, which began in 1986 organised by the comedian Coluche to fund the Restos du Coeur food support charity; and Pour toi Armenie, in 1989, dedicated to the victims of the Armenian earthquake. Of course, some object that these benefit concerts are more to do with cleansing the consciences of the ‘benefactors’ than with fighting against social injustice. It is clear that, whatever the case may be, using popular music can be a very efficient support for the promotion of shared interests.27 The essential work of providing a protest movement with legitimacy often benefits from the prestige associated with the artists involved, a prestige that then spreads to all the partisans of the cause. Moreover, the diversity of musicians and publics that come together during these spectacular concerts responds remarkably well to the need for ‘mass movement’ and the extension of the mobilised group – to the as yet un-politicised fans of crooners, hard rockers, pop stars and rappers. Finally, the commercialisation of the productions of militant stars, as we have seen, serves as a fundraiser which provides an essential resource for the future of militant organisations. Regarding this instrumentalisation of music for militant ends, it is important to note that the segmentation of audiences according to different musical styles appears to be a constraint that the entrepreneurs have to learn to deal with. In 2003, for example, several associations were involved in organising a campaign to denounce the ‘double sentence’ that targeted immigrant delinquents, who were to be expelled from France after serving their prison sentence. The choice of musicians involved in a campaign can have a direct effect on the kind of public likely to be made aware of this problem.28 The way the posters for the support concert were drawn up became a critical issue for the future of the movement. If the concert only involved singers who were not very famous, or who all performed the same kind of music, the denunciation of the problem would be limited to an overly restrictive audience. If rap took 27 Michel Offerlé, Sociologie des groupes d’intérêt. 28 Lilian Mathieu, ‘Les dispositifs de sensibilisation par l’art: le cas du mouvement contre la double peine’, in Christophe Traïni (ed.), Émotions… mobilisation !, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009.

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up too great a place at the concert or was too visible in the publicity – in spite of its affinities with the victims of this ‘double sentence’ – the organisers feared that a broader audience (initially unaware of the problem) would not be reached. It is clear that to mobilise broad support the ‘promoters of the cause’ must involve several artists and different musical styles in order to avoid limiting their message to a restricted groups of fans. It was this same constraint that persuaded the leaders of the nationalist revolutionary movement in France, anxious to convert young people to the beliefs of the extreme right, of the need to develop ‘French identity rock’. They needed a form that could borrow from the different musical trends popular with the young: hard, metal, electronica, rap, ska and regional music.29 Initiatives of this type demonstrate just to what extent the entrepreneurs of a given cause understand the role of music in political socialisation, in the sense that it contributes to inculcating (particularly with young people) the values that organise the perception of political cleavages and issues. In Italy, the occupied and autonomous social centres (a network of over a hundred squats) provide young people with both cheap access to rock, alternative, punk, reggae and rap concerts and encourage them to identify with left-wing radicalism.30 The names of the groups, the themes of the songs, the proximity with militants from the Years of Lead, show that the adepts of these social centres identify with the more revolutionary wing of communism. So much so that the young people who frequent them to produce or listen to music are simultaneously and inseparably socialised to political issues. Along the same lines, in France, regionalist activism of the 1970s has recently found an unexpected second wind among young adepts of Jamaican dancehall raggamuffin, who have been exposed to the Occitan cause by groups such as the Fabulous Trobadors or Massilia Sound System. It is thanks to their enthusiasm for sounds of rub-a-dub and rap that the fans of these groups have become concerned about the political treatment of minority languages and the need to renew Occitan activism – even though they initially had no direct connection to this cause.31 29 Lilian Mathieu, ‘Une musique groupusculaire: le rock identitaire français’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 121-136. 30 Isabelle Sommier, ‘Le rap engagé en Italie: un f il rouge entre les années 1968 et les années 1990?’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 137-151. 31 Christophe Traïni, ‘L’anticentralisme multiculturel de la Ligne Imaginot. Art occitan et échange de l’estime réciproque’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 47-63.

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Below is a list summarising the twelve musical contributions to protest movements that we have seen in this second chapter (Table 2). This primary analytical path has been all the more necessary given that the categories which are provided in this purely didactic inventory are often inextricably intertwined. Indeed, it is precisely because they present these multiple and often inseparable aspects that musical devices are able to become precious auxiliaries to protest action, as we have seen. Table 2  The contribution of musical devices to protest initiatives 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Challenging emotions to encourage conversion to the cause Prescribing emotive postures that are tactically appropriate to the situation Activating a process of communalisation (exalting an inclusive ‘we’) Creation of conflictualisation (designation of an adversary) Creation of historical legacy and responsibility of collective memory Criticism and de-legitimisation of authorities In authoritarian regimes, circumventing censure In democratic regimes, spreading counter-information Definition of moral values justifying this criticism Long-distance calls for support from those initially unaware of the cause Fundraising through sale of works or concerts for the benefit of the cause Political socialisation of young people

Source: Table developed by the author

3

Music and political tactics

To what extent do political institutions have an impact on the form and future of protest actions? This is a crucial question for those who specialise in the study of collective action. William Gamson is one of the first to have shown how the characteristics of protests by ‘challengers’ are dependent on the nature of their relations to the members of the polity who control the government and the means of coercion over the population.1 Although it appeared excessive, given this, to attribute the resources of social movements exclusively to the political structures and situations, it is nonetheless true that the different phases of contestation appear to be closely linked to the interactions established between the members of the political systems and the challengers. These multiple actors sometimes make alliances (and more often exchange blows) to create initiatives through which they oblige all the protagonists involved to act according to the definition of the situation they have managed to impose. Over the course of this new chapter, we will see in what capacity these musical performances may be involved, more or less directly and deliberately, in the use of these interdependent tactics.

Subversion and modification of musical conventions The skill and knowledge of musicians involves being able to manipulate the recognised social conventions that define different styles (jazz, rock, reggae, rap etc.), repertoires of songs or types of performances, which respond to the expectations of their audiences. Generally, the use of traditional practices means that present situations can be linked to the past actions of previous generations.2 We have already seen how the production of certain musical works can participate in the construction of a historical legacy which is useful in legitimating institutions as well as encouraging protest. However, it isn’t unusual for musical performances to demonstrate a certain creativity that consists in amending or supplementing pre-existing musical conventions with unusual or unprecedented elements. Three ways of approaching musical convention can be distinguished here: diversion, innovation and syncretism. Diversion is indisputably a form of ‘political coup’ in the most restrictive sense of the word. Innovation and syncretism instead seem 1 2

William Gamson, The strategy of social protest, Belmont, Wadsworth, 1990. Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements.

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to be exclusively dictated by concerns about musical creativity. Yet we observe that the promotion of unprecedented artistic postures sometimes contributes to the modification of perceptions of the social situation. It can also encourage the mobilisation of demands that would previously have been improbable. Diverting pre-existing musical conventions represents one of the most ostentatious forms of protest. Thus, ‘La Marseillaise’, which we have seen is an important anthem, has also been the object of several alternative wordings aiming to subvert the values that were initially attributed to it. Thus, from 1793, the partisans of the monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church spread a royalist version of ‘La Marseillaise’ in order to recuse the strong association in the song between the French nation and the principle of revolution. This version called instead for, ‘Agitator citizens! Rebellious battalions! Tremble, Tremble! A noble blood will avenge the Bourbons! Knights, to arms! Defend your name! Save him, Save him! The illustrious offspring of Henri!’ A similar process of subversion occurred during the regime of Marshal Pétain, at a time when schoolchildren all over France were encouraged to celebrate the new order by singing the anthem ‘Maréchal, nous voilà’ (Marshal, here we are). The partisans of the Resistance showed their dissidence by modifying the words of the song – officially intended to honour Pétain – to be ‘Marshal! There they are! These sell-outs, these false heroes! Marshal! There they are! They’ll follow in the Fuhrer’s footsteps! Across the Atlantic, during the American War of Independence, the insurgents had already focused on reversing the meaning of the songs traditionally sung to exalt the allegiance to the British crown. Thus, ‘God Save the King’, was transformed into ‘God Save the Thirteen States’ in 1781. The tune of ‘The British Grenadiers’ would be used as a base for the words of ‘Free America’. Several centuries later, changes made to ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’, the national anthem of what had become the United States of America, in turn became an expression of political protest. Jimmy Hendrix’s performance of the anthem at Woodstock in 1969 has often been described as one of the high points of the youth movement against the Vietnam War. In the saturation and long vibratos of Hendrix’s electric guitar, the opponents of the war heard a condemnation of the falling bombs, explosions and murderous gunfire of the national army in South-East Asia. More recently, in 2006, the mobilisation against immigration reform in the United States gave rise to a Latino version of the anthem, re-baptised ‘Nuestro Himno’ (Our hymn). The song in question was recorded on a collective album entitled Somos Americanos (We are Americans), sold to raise funds for militant organisations fighting against a law accused of criminalising clandestine

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immigrants. The strongly oppositional tone of the song came not only from the texts in English denouncing the immigration laws, but above all from the fact that the American national anthem was translated into Spanish – suggesting an unwavering connection between Spanish-speaking populations and the territory of the United States. As for musical innovation, the deliberate abandonment of pre-existing musical canons can be seen as an initiative providing a challenge to the present social order. Its durability is always challenged to a certain extent by musical arrangements which are both unprecedented and unorthodox and which thus encourage a break and experimenting with alternatives that hadn’t been previously explored. Thus, in 1967, when several Brazilian musicians attracted attention to themselves for their creativity and their goal of creating an unprecedented musical style (‘tropicalism’), the military dictatorship did not waste time before intervening. Accused of anti-governmental activity, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil were imprisoned for several months before being forced into exile in London: the innovative nature of their musical performances was considered a criticism of the inflexible nature of the socio-political order preserved by the junta.3 In the United States this time, and over a much longer period, it is striking to note how certain innovations marked the history of AfricanAmerican music and accompanied the evolution of forms of opposition to racial discrimination. 4 In early 1960, the musical devices of the Civil Rights Movement were to a large extent borrowed from Negro spirituals and gospel music. Several members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) set up the Freedom Singers in order to promote the cause and raise funds. The group was led by Bernice Johnson Reagon, a pastor’s daughter. The group’s concert tour helped familiarise people with a gospel repertoire long confined to the church, as well as raising awareness in American public opinion about the extensive racial discrimination in the South. The systematic use of religious songs gave the movement several of the benefits mentioned earlier. It enabled the entrepreneurs of the cause to appear to be the natural spokespeople of the black population, who immediately recognised themselves in these choral performances that they regularly participated in. For white Christian America, gospel repertoire reflects the respectability and harmlessness of this movement which sought to be revolutionary within the strict limits of non-violence. This perception 3 Caetano Veloso, Pop tropicale et révolution, Paris, Le Serpent à Plumes, 2003. 4 Ward, Just my soul responding.

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of the movement considerably assisted its audience among certain white American elites who did not hesitate to support it. It thus met with great success and in 1954 the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The following year the bus boycott in Montgomery led to a new Supreme Court ruling condemning racial segregation in public transport. However, the enormous hope provoked by these first successes progressively gave way to the belief that the non-violent strategy could only achieve simple legal victories that wouldn’t have much actual impact on the living conditions of black people. Martin Luther King’s pacifism tinted with religiosity, which was carefully staged by the use of gospel music was then accused of feeding the vision of the ‘good Negro’, resigned to their position, anxious not to upset the white masters, and who focused their prayers on the afterlife. This criticism intensified as soul music emerged around the same time. Soul drew on elements of gospel as well as on rhythm and blues, which the black elites had long since stigmatised for not being respectable. The innovations behind soul valued the popular language and postures of the urban ghettos. Moreover, this musical style aimed to affirm the idea that the black community is inhabited by an essence, an energy, an inflexible and inextinguishable blackness. Its adepts used the slogan ‘black is beautiful’ and even emphasised connections to Africa that the descendants of slaves often wanted to forget. A new interest in ‘Afro-textured hairstyles’ replaced previous fashions for bleaching and straightening hair in emulation of the white population. Clothes, mannerisms and intonations: the adepts of soul music used them all carefully to set themselves apart from the ‘Uncle Tom’ stereotype, that humble, jovial and good-natured black man, incarnated in the eyes of white America by someone like Louis Armstrong. At the heart of the musical arrangements of soul, the use of instruments like bongo drums or woodblocks is also part of a proud assertion of African heritage. The resources of this movement are far from independent of the commercial opportunities provided by the rich market of afro fashion and soul music globally centred around sentimental themes (‘I love you, baby!’). However, beyond its romantic, glamorous image, soul actively participated in the development of black pride, audacity and a positive definition of what it meant to be black in that era – which had all been lacking previously. It contributed to redefining a context that weighed heavily on the way public discourses by black Americans could be expressed and understood. In 1967, Aretha Franklin’s song ‘Respect’, although it mobilised a narrative of a woman talking to her lover, would be interpreted as a message of protest

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against discrimination: ‘R.E.S.P.E.C.T! Find out what it means to me!’5 Other songs were more explicitly incisive and demanding. In 1968, James Brown’s ‘Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud’, took a tone that would have been inconceivable just a few years earlier: ‘Now we demand a chance to do things for ourselves / We’re tired of beating our heads against the wall / And working for someone else / […] We’d rather die on our feet / Than live on our knees / Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud’. The following year, Nina Simone Composed ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’, while Sly and the Family Stone sang ‘Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey!’ Evangelical patience, the proclamation of an unshakeable faith in a God of universal love, are no longer the focus here, in neither the songs nor the militant modes of action. The old spiritual song ‘We Shall Overcome’ was progressively replaced by more thunderous slogans, such as ‘Black Power’. The militant Black Muslims organisation rejected the assimilationist strategy of the Civil Rights Movement and some, inspired by members of the Black Panther Party, argued for a radicalisation of the struggle in order to eradicate the exploitation of the black working classes. With this new position, the fight against racial discrimination lost the support of the white elite who progressively turned away from it. In the streets of Harlem, four members of the Black Muslims recited furious rhythmic poems, such as ‘Wake Up Niggers!’ They called themselves the Last Poets, in reference to a text by the South African Willie Kgositsile, which called for revolt against Apartheid and proclaimed the need for armed violence over unfruitful words and poetry. These Last Poets introduced a new verbal declamatory style, both aggressive and provocative, which would be adopted and developed in the 1980s by the adepts of rap. Thus, and although it is impossible to speak of a causal link here, it is undeniable that the succession of African-American musical innovation from gospel to soul to rap, reflects the history of the orientations of protest against segregation: from enthusiastic confidence, to impatience and then to radicalisation. A third form of alteration to pre-existing musical conventions, the fusion of heterogeneous elements into syncretic forms, also reveals critical attitudes towards the social and political order. In this respect it is worth considering the amalgamation of various borrowings from reggae.6 This musical style owes much to the way in which Jamaican musicians appropriated American soul, combining it with their own indigenous forms such as calypso or mento. This tropism, oriented towards the North American model, emerged 5 Ibid. 6 Martin, Aux sources du reggae.

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at the moment when emigration (which had long represented the only way out of the misery of life in Jamaica) was effectively stopped by the adoption in 1952 of very restrictive immigration legislation regarding West Indian populations. Reggae also borrowed from the musical traditions of the most disadvantaged social groups living in the ghettos: the rhythmic burru drums used by the descendants of slaves from rural areas after they moved to urban areas, and religious songs of the Rastafarian messianic movement, that advocates the ritual use of cannabis, justified by certain biblical passages (‘Smoke rose from his nostrils’ [2 Samuel 22:9]). Rastafarianism developed in Jamaica after the accession of Haile Selassie to the throne of Ethiopia in 1932. The adepts of the movement saw in this the accomplishment of a prophesy attributed to Marcus Garvey: ‘Look to Africa for the crowning of a black king, for the day of deliverance is at hand’ The redemption was no longer a matter for the next world, but would soon come in the form of a repatriation towards mother Africa, in the image of the return of the Jewish people towards the promised land. As Denis-Constant Martin has noted, this immediacy of messianic hope, which assigns the origin and future of believers outside Jamaica, is a form of dissidence; radical denunciation of a social system assimilated to the biblical image of impure and alienating Babylon. Reggae, although it has become the international symbol of Jamaica, is the fruit of a syncretism combining elements that reveal a critical attitude towards the social order that produced it: a fascination for the North American model of soul music, integration of the musical traditions of the most marginalised people in the ghettos and finally the messianic myth of exodus. As has been the case in other national contexts, musical syncretism can challenge those who deny the rights of immigrant population to fully assimilate into their host society. From this perspective, the development of the chutney soca in Trinidad appears one of the most significant. By combining soca music with sounds and instruments specific to Hindu culture, these musicians of Indian origin sought success within the popular culture of their host country by demonstrating the tangible and undisputed character of successful integration – all the more successful because it enriched the most indigenous forms of popular culture.7 The convergence of punk and reggae, which developed in Great Britain from 1976 to 1978, presents a similar political claim but adopts a more explicitly protest tone, due to its close links to a genuine move for mobilisation. In 7

Martin, ‘“Chanter l’amour’”.

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a context marked by the success of the National Front in local elections and reactions against Eric Clapton’s comments urging people to ‘Keep Britain White’, four musicians founded the Rock Against Racism movement. They were heard by numerous groups as well as by the Anti-Nazi League, which organised several concerts and demonstrations throughout the country. The movement benefited from the support of groups that were then part of the astronomical ascension of punk culture, such as The Clash, the Tom Robinson Band, and Sham 69. The events organised by the movement Rock Against Racism also gave reggae a strong visibility, not only because of the engagement of groups like Aswad or Steel Pulse, but also because punk musicians voluntarily incorporated Jamaican sounds into their own compositions. The promoters of the movement above all insisted that they wanted to fight against xenophobic – or even neo-Nazi – tendencies that threatened to become popular among followers of punk. In bringing young people from working-class areas, of both British and immigrant heritage, together around a shared musical passion, the Rock Against Racism concerts refuted (more effectively than any oratory plea could have) claims that such a cohabitation would be impossible.

From repression to political instrumentalisation We have seen how the interpretative equivocity of musical communication makes it particularly well-adapted to avoiding censure and authoritarian controls. It is important now to examine its role in the political game in which both political actors and protestors participate. The charges brought against the songwriter Pierre-Jean de Béranger in 1821 and 1828 provide us with a textbook example of this. 8 Known to his fans simply as Béranger (dropping the ‘de’ enabled them to ignore his aristocratic origins), he began his career as a songwriter in 1813 as part of the Caveau Moderne, a light-hearted epicurean society where people came together to improvise verse generally dedicated to women and wine. After having gained a name for himself through his (mainly licentious and bacchanalian) verse, De Béranger progressively moved towards the tradition of political song and the satirical ponts-neuf (famous melodies of songs used to disseminate texts criticizing the power). The success of his ‘Roi d’Yvetot’, an entirely allusive song, made him appear to be an opponent of the authoritarianism of the imperial regime. However, after 8 Touchard, La Gloire de Béranger.

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the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, the songwriter (who had been raised by an aunt according to Rousseauist patriotic principles) ranted even more violently against the reactionary policies of the nobility and the clergy. He managed this in spite of the restrictions against the right to assemble, which (as we have seen) led to an increase in the number of goguettes on the fringes of the city and attracted workers, artisans, low-level employees and former soldiers of the Empire. Here De Béranger’s songs celebrating freedom and anti-clericalism were very warmly welcomed. The song ‘Le Marquis de Carabas’ denounced the arrogance of aristocrats who, returning from exile, tried to reclaim the prerogatives that the Revolution and the Empire had temporarily denied them. ‘See this old Marquis / treats us like a conquered people / his scrawny steed / has brought him back from far away’. ‘Le Vieux drapeau’ (The old flag) exacerbates the revolutionary nostalgia and enthusiasm for the military glories of the Empire which was then embraced by in popular circles: ‘He is hidden under humble straw / where I lie poor and maimed / He who, sure of victory, flew / 20 years from battle to battle! / Crowned with laurels and flowers / he shone on all of Europe / When will I shake off the dust / which fades his noble colours? […] / But he is here, close by my sword / For a second we dare to glimpse him / Come flag, come hope! / It is for you to dry my tears / Of a soldier who cries / the heavens will hear the prayer / Yes, I will shake off the dust / that fades your noble colours’. In the goguettes on the outskirts of Paris, De Béranger was celebrated as the poet who incarnated the suffering and aspirations of the lower classes, unjustly deprived of the liberties they had glimpse during the Revolution by the reaction of the aristocracy. In 1821 the songwriter published a collection of songs of which 10,000 copies were sold in less than eight days. The authorities reacted to this defiance by dragging De Béranger before the courts where he was heard before an exceptionally large crowd. Outrage to good manners, outrage to public and religious morals, offense to the person of the King, and incitation to the public wearing an external sign of affiliation not authorised by the law (the old revolutionary flag): the charges against him were many. Yet the trial quickly led to a process with effects that the authorities had not counted on. The opposing pleas during the trial provided a remarkable illustration of the dangerous game the authorities were involved in when they attempted to reveal the reprehensible meaning of the songs in question. The lawyer for the songwriter enjoyed emphasising how ridiculous it was to base an inquisitorial process on such a light-hearted practice, saying ‘but these are only songs!’ The pretence of decrypting within the solemn context

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of the court, the references contained in verse that was habitually sung in the joyous chaos of the goguettes, quickly seemed laughable and derisory.9 In order to counter this argument aiming to minimise the motives of the process, the accusation could only increase the political and subversive nature of the incriminated songs, thereby implying that the authorities were weak enough to feel threatened by simple songs. The prosecution’s closing speech condemned an author seen as threatening public order by combining the power of suggestion with poetry and the contagious effect of song. The prosecutor argued that the author’s deleterious influence was all the more reprehensible because its effects played out on a vast and uncontrollable social group. The advocate general said, ‘While the most guilty brochure only exerted its bad influence on a small circle, song, a thousand times more contagious, can infect even the very air we breathe’. In this way, the plea of the prosecution paradoxically set De Béranger up as a dangerous agitator, an opinion leader, the apostle of the rebels who clamoured for the emancipation of the lower classes. His condemnation would see him become the quasi-official spokesperson for the detractors of the monarchy, who did not fear being exposed to repression. During the three months that he spent in prison, De Béranger received numerous tokens of admiration and support and definitively went from being seen as an epicurean songwriter to a martyr for liberalism. Full of the glory granted him by the authorities, he was henceforth referred to as the ‘national poet’ and wrote a new collection of poems. The publication of this collection in 1828 took, this time, the form of a deliberate political coup. At the very moment that the liberals of the opposition sought to demonstrate their conciliation towards Minister Martignac, De Béranger appeared intransigent and impatient, as a reflection of the popular mood. This challenge, ostensibly presented by the songwriter, earned him a new trial. The prosecution emphasised the fact that the song ‘Sacre de Charles le Simple’ was not likely to be subject to any double interpretation and represents an offence of insulting the person of the King. Although the songwriter was condemned to nine months’ imprisonment and a 10,000 franc fine, the crowd invaded the courtroom and several newspapers published the incriminated songs. Popular emotion was running high and the police reports expressed concern at the extent of the demonstrations of discontent, particularly among the students in the Latin Quarter. Two years later, in 9 Jacques Cheyronnaud, ‘Chansons au prétoire. Autour du procès de décembre 1821 de Pierre Jean de Béranger’, in La Chanson en politique, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Hall de la chanson, 2003.

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1830, the insurrection known as the July Revolution or the ‘Trois Glorieuses’ led to the overthrow of the regime. Many commentators of the era gave De Béranger (and particularly his song ‘Le Vieux drapeau’) responsibility for the sentiment of exasperation combined with enthusiasm that was behind this new revolution. An engraving by Sandoz indeed popularised the idea according to which the songwriter exerted a decisive influence in unleashing the insurrection, in its depiction of a young woman presenting De Béranger with an immense tricolour flag that she had darned during the night so that the ‘national poet’ might brandish it himself from the highest point in the capital. Eighteen years later, in 1848, it was the turn of Louis Philippe I’s regime to be overthrown by a new revolution. With the establishment of the Second Republic, the authority of De Béranger’s songs had in working-class areas encouraged many political actors of the era to present themselves as songwriters. Thus, the newly formed republican government, anxious to found its legitimacy, organised a Celebration of Childhood under the patronage of De Béranger, who was also called on to chair a committee responsible for receiving patriotic donations to the nation. When he was put forward for election, the songwriter begged electors not to vote for him, publishing a letter that provoked a volley of protests. The newspaper La Liberté tried to reassure its readers: ‘Whatever he says, whatever he does, he has to accept the votes of his fellow citizens. The people, who his songs have so often consoled, the people will cover all resistance with its great voice, and this voice is the voice of God’. Despite the popular support, De Béranger presented his resignation to the National Assembly. This was unanimously refused by the MPs only too happy to count the songwriter among them. It was only after a second letter of resignation – even more pleading – that the members of the Assembly finally grudgingly accepted. Even though the artist refused to use the success of his songs in order to weigh in on the political game, other actors took to appropriating the credits that they had accumulated through reaching the public. Thus several candidates in the elections were careful to claim allegiance with De Béranger in order to win votes. However, it was the beginning of the Second Empire that the equivocal character of the ‘national poet’s’ songs revealed even more clearly the risk of political instrumentalisation. After the period of reaction following the insurrection in June 1848, Bonapartist propaganda had the ingenious idea of using De Béranger’s support by methodically drawing attention to certain of his songs that had fed the myth of Napoleon (particularly for the peasant classes). Thus, musical works initially composed to protest against the restoration of the monarchy were

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eventually used (unbeknownst to the author) as part of a manoeuvre to overthrow the Second Republic in favour of a new imperial regime. The equivocal nature of the protests that borrow such musical forms thus presents as many advantages as disadvantages. Euphemistic and ambiguous language, which under certain conditions is a very precious characteristic, also has clear limits in terms of the possible instrumentalisation that it allows. From this perspective, the misadventures of the African musician Thomas Mapfumo are also very instructive.10 In the 1970s, the Republic of Rhodesia, directed by a white government under Ian Smith, was challenged by the guerrilla force led by the Zimbabwean African National Union (ZANU). Numerous musicians participated in the combat for the independence of their country, notably by developing chimurenga songs. These songs spoke of the war of liberation and introduced political messages in musical forms inspired by melodies traditionally associated with homage to the ancestors. Censorship by those in power was such that the musicians had to use different means of subterfuge in order to protect themselves from possible retaliation. Mapfumo was careful to express his protests against the regime in forms that were all the more cryptic given that the equivocal images used were often depicted in Shona, a language not well mastered by the political authorities. ‘Butsu Mutandarika’, for example, denounces the excessive cost of the war between the army and the guerrilla through lyrics in Shona that refer to shoes that are too big. Of course this sibylline allusion had the advantage of getting around the censors, but it was not enough to protect the musician from political instrumentalisation. After his arrest in 1978, Mapfumo was forced to perform a concert under the patronage of the Methodist pastor Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa, who was favourable to an agreement with Ian Smith’s government. The event provided fuel for a political coup attempting to forcibly accredit itself with the support, not only of the musician but by extension of the people themselves, because he seemed to be their natural spokesperson. The country was literally inundated with photographs of Mapfumo and Muzorewa, while in rural areas helicopters dropped leaflets and blasted out political slogans mixed with extracts from the song ‘Butsu Mutandarika’. Along these same lines it would be simplistic to restrict the history of reggae to just the phase of its invention during which it indeed emerged as a form of protest against the Jamaican social order. It is essential to not 10 Robin Denselow, When the music’s over: The story of political pop, London, Faber and Faber, 1989.

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misunderstand the fact that reggae musicians could be enrolled in the political competition that for many years opposed the People’s National Party (PNP) and the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). In 1972 the latter had already governed the country for ten years when the legislative campaign was marked by the strong support of reggae musician for the PNP candidate Michael Manley. The latter could thus make multiple references to the Rastafarian code in order to reach disadvantaged populations ordinarily not concerned with a political competition generally subject to the votecatching strategies. Manley, for example, did not hesitate to brandish a cane given to him by Haile Selassie in order to deliver Jamaica from its woes. Ultimately, the PNP would emerge triumphant from this electoral campaign in which the party, thanks to the support of reggae musicians, was able to present itself as being the sole representative of the discontent expressed by the disadvantaged. However, in spite of its victory the PNP appeared too involved in vote-catching exchanges to not disappoint the enormous hopes placed in them by the poorest in society. The situation on the island became considerably worse due to the increase in violence that followed the involvement of the ghetto gangs in the clashes between different partisan groups. Of course, posterity remembers the image of Bob Marley inviting Michael Manley and Edward Seaga, the leaders of the PNP and JLP respectively, up onto stage to shake hands while ‘Jammin’’ played in the background. Yet, in hindsight, the succession of political coups that claimed to be inspired by reggae seem above all to trace a trajectory from the contestation of the established social order, to the social control of the people who were the most reticent about Jamaican political institutions. Originally created as a musical form to express the dissatisfaction of the most disadvantaged, reggae was progressively transformed into an instrument for political and ideological control.11

From the stage to the political arena Over the course of our previous analyses we have often distinguished the respective roles and relations between musicians, protest entrepreneurs and political actors (those in power, members of partisan organisations, election candidates etc.). Although these analytic distinctions often justify themselves, it is not unusual for certain individuals to take on (simultaneously or successively) each of the modes of action specific to these categories. 11 Martin, Aux sources du reggae.

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It is therefore necessary to not lose sight of the fact that these musicians are also citizens who can take hold of the full range of political behaviour possible in a pluralist democracy. When Margaret Thatcher arrived in power in 1979, the political history of Great Britain was marked by a series of unusual concerts. The ultraliberal and conservative policies of the ‘Iron Lady’ provoked much opposition in the milieu of British rock and pop. The prime minister’s inflexibility during the UK miners’ strike of 1984-1985 unleashed the first reactions of several musicians who organised concerts to raise funds for the miners’ families. Certain artists directly participated in the picket lines, preventing miners who wanted to go back to work access to the pits. Among them were the Flying Pickets, whose members came from a theatre group entitled ‘7:84’, a title that reflected the fact that in 1974 7% of the British population held 84% of the national wealth. After incarnating the scenes of the miners’ strike in a musical show, the artists of the Flying Pickets decided to contribute to the show of strength emerging between the government and the strikers. Other musicians got together to form the Council Collective to record a single in support of the miners. The B side of this disk was a long interview with miners on strike, and the words of the song ‘Soul Deep’ took up the slogan: ‘We can’t afford to let the government win. It means death to the trade unions.’ In March 1985 Billy Bragg and Elvis Costello decided to transform the increasing hostility towards Thatcher in the musical world into a genuine support for the only political organisation able to take power from the Conservatives. In agreement with Neil Kinnock, the leader of the Labour Party, the musicians thus set out to persuade young British citizens of the importance of voting for the Conservatives’ opponents. To this end they organised the Jobs for Youth Tour, a series of concerts which aimed to bring the opposition closer to young voters, who were avid consumers of pop and rock. During these concerts, labour MPs circulated in the audience, talking to spectators, collecting signatures against budget cuts in local councils or distributing party membership forms. With the elections approaching, the musicians decided to intensify their struggle against the opposition. On 21 November 1985, from the House of Commons and in the company of leading figures in the Labour Party, a group of musicians, including Tom Robinson, singers from The Jam and The Communards, very publically founded the collective group the Red Wedge. In so doing they launched the first electoral campaign with an official pop soundtrack. The name of this singular project, the ‘Red Wedge’, is in fact a reference to Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, a painting by Russian constructivist artist El Lissitzky that encouraged the use of art for political propaganda purposes.

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Some months later, the musicians associated with the movement travelled the country performing concerts in which many of the most well-known groups of the era participated, including Madness, Lloyd Cole, The Smiths, The The etc. Throughout these performances, pop music was intricately woven with more or less explicit political messages. As well as their usual songs, the musicians worked on the historic legacy of their struggle by singing songs with strong militant connotations, such as ‘Bandiera rossa’, or ‘We’ll Meet Again’ by Vera Lynn, or ‘Move on Up’ by Curtis Mayfield. Certain artists made statements – or commented through their music, and with bitter irony – on the most recent declarations of Margaret Thatcher. At the same time, leaflets entitled ‘Move on Up. Go for Labour’, with a preface by the Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, were distributed to the audience. Not long before the elections, the Blow Monkeys, members of the Red Wedge, produced an album largely dedicated to political critique of the Conservatives, of which the title – She Was Only a Grocer’s Daughter – was a direct reference to Thatcher’s personal trajectory. However, the energy that was put into this atypical election campaign (which borrowed as much from pop culture as from protest culture) did not have the desired effect. In June 1987, the Conservative Party was voted in for the third consecutive time, albeit with a slightly reduced majority. However, the adventures of the Red Wedge indeed contributed to encouraging young people to vote Labour, and over the course of this unprecedented operation, the party was able to somewhat rejuvenate its rather tired old image. It is also worth mentioning another progressive transition from protest music to electoral commitments that was happening on the other side of the Channel. The trajectory of the members of the band Zebda reveals an unusual syncretism between socio-political engagement, so-called ‘committed’ music, political activism and iconoclastic, joyful electoral projects. At the beginning of the 1980s the future members of the group were adolescents living in the suburbs of Toulouse, in an area populated by North African and Gypsy families. Here they met Maïté Débats, a youth worker, feminist and left-wing activist, working at the Prevention Club in the northern suburbs of Toulouse. Débats was the impetus for the creation of Vitécri, an association which aimed to encourage the social insertion of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by encouraging them to find their voices through cultural activities, such as video, theatre, writing and so forth. Three future members of Zebda thus participated in the creation of a short film which made an impact in socio-educative circles at the time. Thanks to subsidies to this association, Magyd Cherfi, the future singer of the band, was recruited to fill one of the two permanent positions

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responsible for organising cultural activities in these neighbourhoods. This formative experience was decisive for his subsequent political engagement, which he would later share with the other members of the association.12 From 1983 to 1986 during a period marked by the early electoral successes of the FN, the members of Vitécri went to Paris to participate in the marches for equality and against racism (also known as the ‘March of the Beurs’, ‘beur’ being a slang word for Arab). Although they quickly distanced themselves from partisan organisations such as SOS Racism, the group members, Magyd Cherfi, Mustafa Amokrane and Hakim Amokrane, took away from this experience the need to transcribe their local-level activities into political terms at the national level. As a result their artistic engagement aimed to transcend the local level. In 1985 they participated in a new film, called Salah, Malik, Beurs. The script called for a fictional rock band called Zebda Bird, and they recruited Pascal Cabero and Joël Saurin to help them stage it. Ultimately the band outlived the film and became (after the successive arrival of four new members) the ideal vector for the messages tested in the earlier video experiments of Vitécri. These messages revolved around relating the experience of life in these disadvantaged neighbourhoods, condemning discrimination against the children of immigrants, and demanding a right to political expression – even if it meant bending the rules a little.13 Once again the protest aspect of the music developed by the group (from 1985) sought to publically condemn the obstacles that often prevent the political expression of minorities in France. A large number of musical compositions and staging devices adopted by this group were focused on condemning the fact that the children of immigrants (f irst-generation French) often suffered from a marginalisation similar to that of their parents – in spite of being French citizens. The name chosen for the band is significant here, because it refers to the awkward designation of this category of the population. The Arabic word ‘zebda’ is translated into French as ‘beurre’ (butter), and is a play on the French homophone ‘beur’ used to refer to French people of North African origin. The term ‘beur’ is itself an inversed slang reworking of the word ‘Arab’ (‘be-ra-a’, ‘re-beu’, ‘beur’). 12 Danielle Marx-Scouras, La France de Zebda, 1981-2004. Faire de la musique un acte politique, Paris, Autrement, 2005. 13 Baptiste Giraud, ‘Les Zebda: la réinvention des pratiques musicales en mode d’engagement politique critique’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 29-45.

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The group continued to affirm its connection to French society, rapidly becoming an emblem of the housing estate in Toulouse in which they were rooted. Thus the members of the group sang with the strong accent of south-west France, their concerts were often decorated with a large flag featuring Arabic script in the form of the gallic rooster against a background of Occitan colours. This iconography evokes three forms of discrimination condemned by the band: against people from disadvantaged neighbourhoods, against children of immigrants perpetually associated with their ethnic origin and also against regions that are rarely taken into account by the capital. For Zebda, like for the Fabulous Trobadors or Massilia Sound System, the republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity invariably dictate that artists have a responsibility to open up to transnationalism, and to cultural diversity at the local level. It is important to stress that these musicians from Toulouse incarnate this fiercely dissenting multicultural creativity very well. The band is made up of ‘three beurs, and four gaulois’, and cleverly combine the sounds of rock, rap, rai, reggae and also French pop. In so doing their musical performances automatically produces a response to the problems that they decry, by provoking a sense of community in the public, who identify with them and thus advocate the joy of belonging to a multicultural ‘we’ that is proud of its diversity. The militant impact of Zebda’s musical devices also owes much to the text of their songs. Thus the song ‘La France (au Chaoui)’ (‘Chaoui’ refers to a group of Berber tribes) celebrates combined national culinary traditions, ‘couscous with duck magret, and tajine with cassoulet’. The song ‘Tout semble si’ (Everything seems so) encourages the public to consider the arrival of the FN in power in four French towns. Another song, ‘Je crois que ça ne va pas être possible’ (I don’t think that will be possible) describes the forms of discrimination that non-white French people are subject to in everyday life. Even more violent contestation invigorates the title song on the album Le Bruit et l’odeur (The noise and the smell), which contains an extract from a speech delivered by Jacques Chirac in 1991, when he was mayor of Paris (see Text 4). This text, which sets a speech considered unacceptable against a highly accentuated musical arrangement, aims to provoke a moral shock. The indignation is designed to be all the more immediate because the work of Zebda is in itself (in the eyes of its fans) a rebuttal of the stereotype of the unassimilable immigrant that Chirac was using for vote-catching purposes. Text 4. ‘Le Bruit et l’odeur’ (The noise and the smell), Zebda (1995) Rather than be from a people that has suffered too much / I prefer to formulate a thesis / Not to let these men / Who legislate, pin ancestors /

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On me […] / Even though we’re born / On the left bank of the Garonne / And talk with the accent of the crickets / […] We can die on the frontline / And fight all the wars / And defend such a pretty flag / They always need more / Yet there is a homage to pay / To those who fell at Monte Cassino […] / Who built this road? / Who built this town? / Who doesn’t live here? […] / When I understood the law, I understood my defeat / Son of immigrants, you have to integrate into the country it said, but it was already done / The noise and the smell / The noise and the smell / The noise of the sledgehammer. Jacques Chirac’s speech inserted into the song: ‘How can a French worker […] working with his wife, who together earn about 15,000 francs and who sees his neighbour in their council estate, a packed-in family with a father, three or four wives and 20-odd kids, who all earn about 50,000 from benefits, without working, naturally! If you add to that the noise and the smell! Well, the French worker will go mad […] and it’s not racist to say that!’

These musicians from Toulouse saw their artistic practices as an instrument of struggle for the redefinition of legitimate ways of participating in politics; this was all the more easy for them because it was a continuation of their previous socio-cultural volunteer work. From 1990 to 1994, the group from Vitécri organised a festival entitled ‘Ca bouge au Nord’ (Movement in the North), which aimed to refute the negative image of the northern suburbs of Toulouse, too often described as ghettos. Over several days the inhabitants of Izards and neighbouring areas were directly involved in ensuring the festival ran smoothly. The success of the event was guaranteed by the participation of major stars such as Manu Chao, Yvette Horner, Noir Désir and so forth. In spite of this success, however, relations with the Toulouse city council became progressively strained. In 1996, the leaders of Vitécri gave up their public funding (which restricted them to an exclusively socio-cultural vocation) in order to set up a new collective that was more combative and militant, called Tactikollectif. This new association achieved financial autonomy thanks to the success of the album Motivés, chants de lutte (Motivated: A collection of protest songs), which sold more than 150,000 copies, and which was co-produced with the extreme-left Ligue communiste revolutionnaire (LCR; Revolutionary Communist League) of the Haute-Garonne. This CD reveals the work of historical legacy – which we are now familiar with – through which the activists attempt to present their current engagement as being a prolongation of the struggle begun by heroic predecessors. The three

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singers of Zebda, along with 18 musicians from the Toulouse musical scene, performed covers of a number of classic protest songs such as ‘El Paso del Ebro’, ‘Bella ciao’, ‘La Butte rouge’, ‘Hasta siempre’, ‘Bandiera rossa’ and ‘Le Temps des cerises’. By thus evoking the manifold memory of collective struggle, the members of Tactikollectif were engaged in suggesting the connection between the beats of yesterday and those of today, between past struggles and those still to come. The album also received sponsorship and support which reinforced its position on the extreme left. The LCR, which put up the production costs, was joined by Lucie Aubrac, Bernard Thibault from the General Confederation of Labour (CGT) and Leïla Chahid, the representative of the Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine (OLP) in France. On the album, Zebda set themselves apart with a joyful cover of the ‘Chant des Partisans’, composed in 1942 by Joseph Kessel and Maurice Druon, and to which the Toulousian musicians added an extra chorus ‘Motivated, motivated, we have to get motivated!’ Ever since, this cover by Zebda has become a near-compulsory soundtrack for any kind of protest demonstrations in France. Having set political engagement at the heart of their artistic production, the members of Tactikollectif finally made music the heart of an unprecedented electoral project. In 1998, the association presented two candidates as part of a list of candidates entitled ‘100% Left’, at the regional elections. Three years later, another electoral list entitled ‘Motivated’, led by Salah Amokrane, the brother of the Zebda singer, joined the local election campaign in Toulouse. The event attracted a lot of attention from the national media, fascinated by this highly unusual involvement in electoral competition; It is true that in 2000, Zebda received the Victoire award for Best Album and Best Song of the Year for ‘Tomber la chemise’ (Take off your shirt) during the Victoires de la Musique awards. This propelled the group to the ranks of the most popular French artists. This national award for a group ‘made in Toulouse’ was a precious resource over the course of the electoral battle to win the town hall. It enabled the candidates on the ‘Motivated’ list not only to emphasise their famous links with Toulouse but even more so to set themselves apart from the partisan strategy of Philippe Douste-Blazy, the former mayor of Lourdes, who was trying to replace his colleague in the right-wing Union pour la démocratie française (UDF) party, Dominique Baudis.14

14 Baptiste Giraud, ‘Les Motivé-e-s de Toulouse à la frontière de la politique’, Cahiers du Grip 1 (2005): 32-40.

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After the first round, the ‘Motivated’ candidate list had won 12.4% of the vote and allied itself with the left-wing list headed by Socialist candidate François Simon. Between the two rounds of the election, Zebda’s shadow weighed heavily on the campaign. Rallies and demonstrations were held to the sound of ‘Ouste Douste’, a song composed by the band especially to criticise the UDF candidate and which illustrates remarkably well the syllogistic processes of festive and participative democracy. As for the former mayor of Lourdes, he accentuated as much as possible the Arabic consonance of the names of the ‘Motivated’ candidates, who thus saw themselves once again thrust into a position of foreignness designed to alarm conservative voters. The second round of the election saw the UDF candidate elected with 55% of the vote. This was a cruel disappointment for the ‘Motivated’ candidates. Their eccentric image had been not served them well against the right-wing candidates, who were able to rally their local support network, which was firmly established and anxious to maintain the status quo. Furthermore, and against all expectation, the ‘Motivated’ list received 20% of the vote in the bourgeois centre of town, and only 8-10% in the most disadvantaged peripheral areas – a result of the segmentation of markets and musical tastes, most likely. Zebda’s music and the electoral project that it supported seem to have successfully appealed to the (often more educated) middle classes and the media. However, it was not able to mobilise the more disadvantaged populations, and particularly the younger generations, more likely to identify with rap music than the style of these musicians from Toulouse.

4

Protest, art and commerce

Many studies have demonstrated the need to consider protest as a continual process which is prolonged beyond the simple phase of the action itself. Militant activism reveals itself as more or less durable depending on a number of very variable connections that mean that it is either congruent with or opposed to commitments in professional, affective and family life.1 At the level of militant organisations this phenomena can be seen in the permanent toing-and-froing of those who join, leave or maintain their involvement in protest movements. It is therefore important to study how these militant careers are marked by successive phases of intensification or retraction of membership, according to the duration of involvement and the social and professional trajectories of different individuals.2 In this last chapter we will see to what extent the use of musical devices particularly encourages these intertwining memberships and detachments. Because of the multitude of ways in which music is used for protest, its exploitation is part of a series of concurrent alternatives, of which some are not so much to do with subversion as the subordination of pre-existing social norms. Careful examination of the logics that characterise these different alternatives will lead us to shed light on a fact that initially appears paradoxical. Although, under certain conditions, music may contribute to challenging the social order, it can also tend to neutralise or nuance the criticism that is necessary to the development of collective conflict and mobilisation.

Musical outlets and youth ‘moratoriums’ Specialists of collective action tend to examine the pre-existing conditions that facilitate individuals’ involvement in protest movements. In this respect Albert Hirschman has demonstrated that protest is simply one of three possible alternatives. On one hand there is also ‘loyalty’ to institutions, which annihilates all possible temptations of criticism, and on the other hand there are the various forms of ‘exit’ which prevent the expression of discontent which might provide resolution (for example, in the form of emigration out of a tyrannical country, resignation from a disappointing 1 Olivier Fillieule and Nonna Mayer (eds), ‘Devenirs militants’, Revue française de science politique 51.1-2 (2001): 19-25. 2 Olivier Fillieule (ed.), Le Désengagement militant, Paris, Belin, 2005.

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organisation, membership to other organisations etc.).3 However, the work of Norbert Elias on the trajectory of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart invites us to consider affective involvement in musical composition as an additional alternative to this trio. Elias’s analysis shows how Mozart used his music to sublimate an emotional complex due to his social position that was both unsolvable and unbearable. 4 From a very young age, he was literally trained by his father to demonstrate his musical virtuosity, which earned him the beneficence of the greatest courts in Europe. However, once he became an adult, Mozart was constantly subjected to the humiliation of having the position of a servant; musicians then having similar status to gardeners or cooks, obliged to fulfil the sophisticated whims of the aristocracy. In the absence of a market for art which would have enabled him to live autonomously, Mozart was obliged to exhaust himself in attempting to obtain recognition by the aristocracy equal to that he had learned to expect as a child. Faced with this humiliating status, Mozart could not envisage any form of exit from the milieu of which he had internalised the canons and musical tastes – which he had himself perfected. Open and frank protest was also impossible for him because it would have threatened the goal of his family’s social ascension, assigned to him by his father. At the time, it was also entirely improbable to hope to provoke collective action able to modify the power relations between the noble benefactors and their servants, even those of bourgeois origin. In this way, Mozart was subject to ambivalent affective tensions and desire which came close to the most intense psychological suffering. Unable to individually alter the status of bourgeois musicians within aristocratic courts, and dependent on the only public at his disposal, desirous to be recognised by the very people he despised, he transposed and magnified the emotions that tormented him (the desire for recognition, outrage, anger, insolent jubilation etc.) into his work, which posterity would glorify as genius. In his lifetime, and even as he was treated as a servant, he saw musical sublimation as a comforting outlet for a revolt that could not be expressed more radically without depriving the artist of their means of a livelihood. Indeed, the work of Mozart provides a remarkable opportunity to identify a type of musical performance that presents itself as an alternative to protest and which exalts oppressed subjects to enjoy the aesthetic 3 Albert Hirschman, Exit, voice, and loyalty: Responses to decline in firms, organizations, and states, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1970. 4 Norbert Elias, Mozart: Portrait of a genius, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993.

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representation of their own torments. As evidence of this we need only consider – among other examples – how much the final dramatic intensity of the final scene of Don Giovanni owes to the staging of the oppressed artist’s fantasy of revenge: a sublime and moving song by the statue of the Commendatore, who arrives to damn the arrogant aristocrat who, only moments before was demanding that his servant whistle to entertain him as he gorged himself on food. We can talk about an outlet in as much as this designates the very specific situations where the impossibility of either criticising the social order or defecting from it leads to musical performances of this kind. To paraphrase Karl Marx when he described religion as the ‘opiate of the masses’, we could say that music here is the sigh of the oppressed, the soul of a world without a heart, the illusion of happiness in the very place it would be impossible to live without illusion. To a significant extent, it is in the realm of religious music that the clearest outlets can be seen. In this it is important to not overestimate the protest dimension of Negro spirituals which, as we have mentioned, play on this double meaning in the suggestion of the possibility of a better life. Of course, the most audacious might draw from this music the energy to rebel to the point of envisaging an actual escape from the slave states. However, slavery and intimidation were such that most blacks could not see in these songs anything more than a meagre consolation celebrating the freedom to come in heaven, but certainly not here on earth. Thus, the great majority of the messages in these spiritual songs remain limited to recording the misery in this life, represented as being proportional to the promised salvation in the next: ‘I have a home in the promised land […] / No tears here / No more sorrow / I’m in the realm of Jesus’.5 The soothing nature of collective song, which authorises a strictly limited escape into musical and religious ecstasy, prevents any attempt at protest or real escape to less hostile lands. The conditions are still far from favourable to the emergence of songs that are able to contribute, as we saw above, to the construction of collective action against racial discrimination. This would only be possible after the militant work of several generations of activists had finally had an effect. In the meantime, the black community in America would be marked by the development of a more individualised musical outlet than was the traditional Negro spirituals: the blues. Indeed, music historians consider the birth of the blues as an innovation all the more 5 Alain Darré, ‘Negro Spiritual et construction identitaire, in Alain Darré (ed.), Musique et politique: les répertoires de l’identité, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996, 239.

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enigmatic and important for the fact that this style, which would lead into jazz, rhythm ’n’ blues and thus rock, was not just the simple prolongation of pre-existing African-American traditions such as work songs, Negro spirituals or gospel music. By the same token, it is essential to question what precisely its apparition owes to the evolution of the living conditions of the black community within white America.6 The blues developed within the first generation of African-Americans who, although liberated from the yoke of slavery, were confronted with difficult social situations which led them to experience ambiguous feelings. The abolition of slavery had developed a form of panic and a desire for revenge within the white population – particularly in the Southern states. The condescending goodwill towards the slave had been replaced by an aggressive racism against black people, henceforth considered as illegitimate rivals. The latter, who should have been rejoicing in their freedom, realised that they were far from having won better living conditions. The pride that they took in their new status was combined with the feelings resulting from the painful experiences it engendered, confrontation with growing racism, misery and hunger, risky and itinerant work, dependency on the uncertainties of the labour market, and in this context, the responsibilities of being a breadwinner and the head of a household. It is the specific emotional complex that results from this situation that the inventors of the blues tried to express through their musical compositions. In a very signif icant way and from the very beginning, blues musicians unanimously associated this music with an indefinable feeling that is often too hastily associated with melancholy, depression or dejection. This singular emotional tone is technically conveyed by the use of dissonant chords of the seventh or the ninth, a syncopated ternary rhythm, and a pentatonic minor scale completed by the famous ‘blue note’, the diminished fifth. Far from relating simple pessimistic affective states, the blues tend to express a paradoxical jubilation, ambivalent feelings in which joy is inextricably intertwined with sorrow.7 Condemned to endure this new freedom that they valued above all else, the forefathers of the blues invested in and invented an outlet that allowed them to accommodate this unavoidable situation as well as they could. Neither blind loyalty towards the dominant social order, nor virulent protest, nor genuine exit, the blues 6 Leroi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Blues people: Negro music in white America, New York, Morrow, 1963. 7 Ray Pratt, Rhythm and resistance: Explorations in the political uses of popular music, New York: Praeger, 1990.

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are a soothing compromise that makes life more liveable, for want of being able to change it. Once again, musical performances like this discourage the expression of revolt all the more because they encourage individuals to delight in a form of sublimated distress. Such substitutes for protest also develop as a reaction to the temporary conditions of youth. In this respect, the psychologist Erik Erikson used the expression ‘psychosocial moratorium’ to describe these periods of transition that each society and each culture institutionalise in order to allow those emerging from childhood to experiment with roles that do not yet imply submission to the requirements of adult life. These transition phases are often marked by relative indeterminacy, an identity crisis that encourages adolescents to adopt attitudes that are all the more critical because they refuse to remain children but don’t yet consider themselves adults. As everyone knows, adolescents are frequently happy to oppose parent figures and systematically take the opposite stance to the norms proposed by social authorities. Over the course of this critical period, music often provides the primary form of expression of this ostensibly insolent opposition. Since the Middle Ages, the practice of goliard songs (of which we have already seen the irreverent nature) has been particularly appreciated during the transitory phases of young people. The passing audacity of the original goliards did not by any means prevent them falling back into line, once they were older and more experienced – even to the point of sometimes appearing among the most stable supports for established society. Trajectories of this type are even more easily perpetuated over the centuries because European academic circles have often maintained the tradition of the disrespectful goliard songs. Successive generations of medical students, in particular, have perpetuated sexually and morbidly connoted farces punctuated by loud and bawdy refrains. We cannot lose sight of the fact that the eccentricity of these rites of passage specif ic to medical student traditions was never incompatible with the fact that the students revelling in them were destined for the most notable and respectable professions. The considerable increase in living standards, from the 1950s to today, encouraged the development of new musical styles susceptible of fulfilling this essential function of the ‘moratorium’. Thus, from the beginning of the 1950s, the growing success of rock ’n’ roll in the United States, as we have already seen, appears inseparable from the fact that white middle class youth were manifesting their opposition to the world of their parents by appropriating the attitudes of ‘hoods’ normally attributed to the most

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socially marginal groups.8 Over the decades that followed, the prolongation of the phases of the moratorium was boosted by the development of the record industry and the institutionalisation of ‘teen culture’. Even more powerful was the extension of the transition to adulthood that resulted from the combined effects of broader access to higher education and the progressively later entry of the young into the workforce and maternity. In these conditions, there was nothing surprising in the fact that other musical styles, following on from the development of rock, emerged to defy the propriety and normative prescriptions laid out by previous generations. The beginning of the 1970s thus appears to be heavily marked by the hippie movement, encouraging the young people of the era to systematically oppose the materialist and puritanical values of their parents. Of course, as we have seen, the non-conformity and pacifism exalted by hippie music were sometimes important in supporting protest actions. However, the nonchalance of the hippie movement more generally tended to separate the young from concerns they assimilated to the much despised world of ‘older generations’. There was therefore great value associated with life in small communes, reserved for those of their age, in which the hedonistic and sexual pleasures forbidden by ‘bourgeois morals’ could be properly celebrated. This was a time for the exploration of internal worlds, the discovery of hallucinogenic drugs, the ‘ego trip’ of those who sought revolution only in themselves. The de-politicisation that resulted was such that an urban legend even suggested that the CIA itself was responsible for providing LSD to the young for exactly that purpose. Some argued that this hallucinogenic psychoactive drug was developed by Sandoz Pharmaceuticals in response to contracts with the American army looking to develop an incapacitating weapon. According to yet another conspiracy theory, which clearly deserves a deal of scepticism, encouragements to indulge in psychedelic drugs were nothing more than the result of a strategy to distract young people from protesting against the war in Vietnam. On the other hand it is undeniable that the hippie movement was indeed one of the many ‘moratoriums’ through which young people in developed societies were able to experiment with countercultures awarding an important place to music. Many other musical styles followed it, as successive generations moved into music that intensified the radical nature of rock: punk, heavy metal, thrash metal, gothic metal, death metal, black metal, hardcore rap etc. These styles used both the expressive violence and speed of their musical arrangements and the manipulation of themes most able 8

Eyerman and Jamison, Music and social movements.

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to shock the ordinary morality of the status quo. Thus the militaristic iconography and warlike postures of hard rock borrow certain references from the Nazi regime, along with the names of American groups like Kiss or Slayer, whose ‘s’s evoke those of the Nazi Party. Moreover, the specific design of hard rock mobilises a menagerie of animals evoking fear or aversion: Scorpions, Whitesnake, Venom, The Black Crowes, DragonForce etc. The only reference to a dove is generally associated with the legendary anecdote according to which Ozzy Osbourne, the lead vocalist of Black Sabbath, once ripped the head of one with his teeth. The story continues that Osbourne did not hesitate to repeat the operation on a second occasion, this time with a bat that was thrown by a fan during a concert. The sepulchral and satanic iconographies are other leitmotifs of metal culture, along with so-called gothic music. This register of provocation is not surprising. Within societies marked by an increasing embarrassment and awkwardness around death – as the work of Norbert Elias and Philippe Ariès have shown – the ostentatious use of funerary images is guaranteed to challenge ordinary sensibilities. In countries heavily influenced by puritanism and Christian dogma, such as the United States, the operation is even more effective when groups like Christian Death or Marilyn Manson find ways to subvert religious symbols. Although these apparent outrages against good morals essentially respect a search for a rebelliousness that is entirely adolescent, it is always possible that they might provoke – as hoped – violent reactions from adults concerned about the alarming development of a ‘social problem’.9

Competing artistic vocations The format of this book has so far obliged us to deal indifferently with very different cases. On one hand, protest entrepreneurs momentarily using musical devices to promote their causes; on the other, musicians more or less occasionally participating in collective mobilisation against the injustices of the time. It is important to shed light on the specificity of the latter configuration by demonstrating to what extent professional musicians are never simple activists. The relations between artistic practices and protest against the social order generally turn out to be all the more complex when they depend on very old controversies relating to the social vocation of the 9 Benoît Doumergue, Culture barock et gothic flamboyant. La musique extrême: un écho surgi des abîmes, Paris, François-Xavier De Guibert, 2000.

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artist. For want of space, we will have to content ourselves with a résumé of the content of these debates with the help of a relatively basic typology. The social missions assigned to the artist can be characterised by a relationship with the social order that manifests either a critical attitude, or a compliant attitude that is more or less conformist. Moreover, the higher norms to which artistic practices must, in principle be subordinated may be assessed differently. From a certain perspective, art is sufficient in itself and obeys specific rules that cannot be reduced to any other requirement, whether religious, political or commercial. In this case we can say that art seeks to be autonomous. From an alternative perspective, art would find its genuine raison d’être in partially foreign principles that go beyond it and dictate to it the paths necessary to experience its social usefulness. One of the most obvious forms of this conception culminates in the figure of ‘activist’ art, generally for the benefit of a subversive protest but which, depending on the circumstances, can be led to evolve towards a form of official propaganda. Table 3  A typology of the social vocations attributed to artists Attitudes towards the economic, social and political order Status of art

Compliant attitudes

Critical attitudes

Autonomous Heteronomous

Posture  “Parnassienne” Commerce and profits Official propaganda

Bohemian art Activist art

Source: Table developed by the author

The convergences between musical practice and participation in collective protest appear more or less probable depending on these four conceptions of the social vocation of artists. According to this perspective, we must not lose sight of the fact that the different kinds of attitudes that we distinguish here are in fact interchangeable and can be adopted successively by a single artist. Given that the figures of activist art and official propaganda precisely refer to the problems evoked in the two previous chapters, we will focus here on the two alternative types of art. Bohemian art The bohemian position reveals both a critique of social order and a tendency towards a somewhat hampered professionalisation of the artist. From the 19th century onwards, it was constructed in parallel with the development

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of industrial capitalist society and generally concerns individuals who cannot be satisfied with the social roles prescribed to them by their social origins.10 In the prolongation of the Romantic movement, the adepts of ‘bohemian life’ celebrated the unlimited creative freedoms of an artist almost exclusively defined by their ability to free themselves from material constraints in order to gain access to the world of inspired subjectivity. The adepts of bohemianism despised both the routine hardworking life of capitalism and the straight-laced moral conservatism of the bourgeois life which underpinned it. The stereotypes forged by the disciples of bohemianism are also responsible for the aversion to the standardisation of norms, prescribed roles and all kinds of submission liable to restrict imagination. In opposition to conservative academicism and resistance to change, this vision of art presents freedom, unfettered creativity and autonomy of which the artist is the incontestable champion.11 This definition of the vocation of the artist also rejects the fact that preexisting and unquestionable hierarchies should convey on each individual, irreversibly and inescapably, the honours of success or the stigma of failure. Bohemianism, which evokes the disorder and vagrancy of vagabonds, owes its name to an aestheticisation of the most marginal ways of life (nomads, prostitutes, beggars, delinquents etc.). This aesthetic invalidates social ascension, according to dominant socially accepted criteria. The nonconformism of the artist is what encourages them to proclaim the greatness of the unworthy, the radiance of the dishonourable and the virtues of what is considered immoral, abject and scandalous. In this respect, the etymology of many musical styles, sometimes subject to debate, takes on new meaning. The term ‘jazz’, for example, stems from a Cajun colloquial term given to the prostitutes of New Orleans, ‘to jazz’ referring to the act of intercourse and excitement with an erotic and rhythmic connotation. Similarly, ‘funk’ owes its name to an adjective describing sweat, dirt, body odour and other nauseating emanations generally associated with places of bad company. The term ‘reggae’ can be seen either in light of the Jamaican slang word ‘steggae’, for an easy woman, or to the English word ‘raggedy’, referring to those who went barefoot and in rags. As for punk music, it takes its name from a term that initially signified junk, waste, objects that are ugly and of no value; in short a not very gratifying 10 Jerrold Seigel, Paris bohème. Culture et politique aux marges de la vie bourgeoise (1830-1930), Paris, Gallimard, 1991. 11 Ève Chiapello, Artistes versus managers. Le management culturel face à la critique artistique, Paris, Éditions Métailié, 1998.

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adjective, sometimes even used to refer to prisoners who are sexually abused by other prisoners. All these denominations reflect the desire to reverse the order of ordinary judgements and establish contempt for material well-being and social decorum as a form of pride. Investment in artistic practise is here resolutely anti-institutional in the sense that it leads to a revolt against established norms, social conventions, academic honours and the recognition of the art market. It is precisely this valorisation of inalienable creative indiscipline that sets artists up as precious auxiliaries in rebellions against the establishment, and which encourages them to move away from the two other alternative forms of art in our typology. The ‘Parnassian’ position The affirmation of the autonomy of the artist is sometimes such that it can be accompanied by a sort of stoic retreat from the world. The radical refusal of subservience can even lead them to refuse to recognise that there is any interest in a criticism of the current social order. Aesthetic pleasure to which creative work provides access is sufficient in itself, and cannot be brought down to any social or political concerns. However, this absolute autonomy of art requires specific expertise that forms the definition of art as a profession in its own right. The professional artist, who lives from his or her practice, can thus be distinguished from the amateur, who tries in vain to do so. In relation to this specific conception of the alleged characteristics of art, we can speak of a ‘Parnassian’ position. Parnassianism was a movement of French poets in the second half of the 19th century which claimed to rebel against the revolutionary zeal of Romantic art. Its adepts refused social and political engagement, encouraged at the time by authors such as Alphonse de Lamartine, and called for ‘art for art’s sake’. Combining the beauty of art with the sound and fury of the word, and worse still with political concerns and responsibilities, would be to irrevocably corrupt it. The vocation of the artist must lie exclusively in exploring formal perfection, seeking virtuosity and technical rigor, entirely devoted to aesthetic and spiritual elevation that is not without evoking the mediation of ascetics who shut themselves off from the secular world in order to better serve it. Therefore, when he was elected as a member for Paris in 1848, in spite of himself, De Béranger did not waste time in lecturing his electors, in the most eloquent terms: ‘Since 1815, I have been one of the echoes of your pains and your hopes. You have often called upon me to console you: do not be ungrateful. In assigning me too great an importance, you will deprive my

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counsel of the weight accorded it by my exceptional position. […] Do not tear me away for the solitude where, collected in myself, I have appeared to you to have the give of prophecy. […] Let me therefore finish dying as I have lived, and do not transform your friend, the good old songwriter, into a useless legislator’. After his election to the House, and the refusal of his resignation, De Béranger wrote a new letter begging the MPs to hear ‘the will of a rhymer, who will outlive his true purpose, if he loses in the noise of business, the independence of his soul, the only thing he has ever valued’.12 More than a century later, Bob Dylan’s career would be marked, in different circumstances by a slightly similar development. After his incarnation as the apostle of protest songs, the recipient of an old American tradition combining song and social engagement, his 1965 album essentially announced that he had turned his back on politics. He plunged himself into the work of Arthur Rimbaud, claimed an affiliation with Dada and the Beat poets, experimented with the flights of the electric guitar and acquainted himself with hallucinogenic drugs. His primary public, disconcerted by this allegiance to a form of rock music it considered vulgar and commercial, berated him for what they saw as a betrayal of the militant causes from which Dylan had hitherto drawn much of his material. He defended himself by evoking the inalienable freedom of the artist, his intransient unpredictability, and the primacy of his poetic inspiration above all other worldly agitations. Commerce and profit It is important to remember that, paradoxically, the affirmation of the autonomy of art cannot be dissociated from the increasing f inancial dependence of artists – not simply on a few benefactors, but on the wider public of anonymous consumers. Of course, the professionalisation and the development of the art market since the 19th century have enabled artists to free themselves from the yoke of princely sponsors. However, these same processes have constrained those who would seek to live from their art, to subject themselves to the laws of the market. Thus, if musicians want to be paid for their compositions, their concerts or their albums, they cannot allow themselves to rebel against the social order because of the risk of alienating too great a proportion of their audience. On this point, it is therefore difficult to forget that the first generation of black American musicians who were able to benefit from the opportunity of 12 Quoted in Touchard, La Gloire de Béranger, p. 261 and 271.

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living off of their art were often constrained to perform in minstrel shows, whose public was then not overly generous. Minstrel shows were a kind of song and dance sideshow, moving from town to town; the performances often involved white actors presenting grotesque and pathetic caricatures of ‘Negros’. During the first half of the 19th century, white musicians wearing wigs and blackface, with large overdrawn lips, had already been quite successful in these performances mobilising the image of ‘Jim Crow’, clumsy and childlike, prancing about ridiculously. After the abolition of slavery in 1865, black musicians who had few other economic opportunities were obliged to carry on the tradition. A cruel irony of history was that the latter owed their commercial success to their ability to imitate whites caricaturing blacks – to the point where some even wore blackface themselves. Far from encouraging the critique of racism, the commercialisation of the minstrelsy contributed to reinforcing the stereotypes that justified segregation. On a more general level it is clear that economic market logics often limit the social critique that musicians can allow themselves, if they want to successfully live off of their art. The commercialisation of music generally requires that the vendor know how to accommodate and take advantage of the dominant perceptions of the time. Elvis Presley’s first producer, Sam Phillips, declared, ‘If I could find a white man with the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I’d make a billion dollars’, determined to exploit the economic advantages of persistent segregation. Moreover, the question of the social vocation of the artist cannot overlook one of the major characteristics of the profession: the fact that a large number of artists are unable to live off their work whilst a handful of them make enormous economic profits.13 This fundamental inequality clearly requires different attitudes concerning the relations between musicians and market logics. If for those who don’t achieve commercial success the bohemian position is clearly necessary, certain well-established professionals might be tempted to treat musical productions as just another kind of commercial product designed to optimise profit. It is therefore always possible that certain professionals work to reduce pieces, initially written as vehicles of protest, to primarily commercial ends. The spread of the rebel postures of rock ’n’ roll throughout American youth in the 1950s, for example, would probably not have been so extensive without the initiative of recording companies such as Sun Records, RCA Records, CBS and so forth. These studios had found an unexpected opportunity for economic development.

13 Ibid.

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Although the legend likes to present the emergence of punk as an authentic and spontaneous revolt, the origin of this musical movement appears inextricably linked to a commercial venture. The scandals provoked by the escapades of the Sex Pistols were to a large extent dictated by their manager, Malcolm McLaren. As the owner of a ‘fashionable’ clothing store, Sex, it was McLaren who gave the singers of ‘Anarchy in the U.K.’ not only their stage name but also their style – with safety pins and slashed clothes. A very imaginative stylist and a genius as a manager, McLaren perfected the art of making money out of provocation, even in a country that is somewhat recalcitrant with regards to revolutionary political movements. Since then, it has been particularly in the realm of rap music that we have seen the subordination of musical rebellion to a deliberately mercantile logic. Most of the video clips produced by gangsta rappers ostensibly depict material wealth and financial opulence: big limousines, gold chains, sumptuous villas, parties with beautiful young women etc. Far from restricting themselves to this spectacular staging, the desire for money can also be seen in numerous marketing initiatives. Certain rappers thus quickly agree to exploit their image in order to increase the number of derivative products and hence increase their own revenue. They thus become characters in advertising, in cartoons, in comics or video games and even sometimes accept the representation of themselves in figurines. In 2003, Jay-Z authorised Reebok to reproduce his signature on a limited-edition shoe – all of which were sold in less than two days. Other rappers have founded businesses that exploit the hip-hop imaginary through the commercialisation of clothing lines, magazines or energy drinks, whilst still others produce video clips for their sponsors singing the praises of products like Courvoisier cognac.14 We can see here just to what extent this fourth conception of the social vocation of the artist is incompatible with the development of collective action that rises up against the dominant social and economic order. Of course, the practices of these rappers, and other rockers well-versed in business, are often the subject of violent critiques from the milieu of the artists themselves. Given the force of bohemian and Parnassian values, it is not unusual for the adepts of music to become indignant and revolt against the submission of their art to the principle of maximum profit. In fact, since its very foundation, the music industry has been marked by a double movement. On one hand there has been an increased concentration of means, to the extent that 71.6% of global sales in 2004 were handled just four ‘major’ 14 Éric Gonzalez, ‘“Cash Still Rules”: la représentation du succès dans le rap’, Revue française d’études américaines 104 (2005): 31-49.

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record companies. On the other hand there is the proliferation of so-called independent labels, sometimes quite ephemeral, who promote themselves as proposing a music that is free from the laws of the market, such as (among many others) the English label Artists Against Success Records, Anticulture Records etc. In 1980s France, this same kind of movement gave rise to the development of alternative rock and labels such as Boucherie Productions, Bondage, Rock Radical Records etc. It is impossible to be exhaustive here. Most musical styles with relatively restricted audiences have encouraged the emergence of labels proclaiming self-production and independence. In other words, the worlds of rock appear traditionally carried towards alternative commercial initiatives. Although the latter are not strictly a form of political protest, they do combine artistic and creative criticism of capitalist commercial logics.

Conclusion Harmonies and cacophonies This research will have attained its goal if it has managed to convince the reader of the complexity of the relations between music and protest. We have examined numerous properties which allow musical devices to support processes that are necessary for collective mobilisation: communalisation, conflictualisation, historic legacy, undermining authority, calling for support, fundraising etc. Yet we have also seen that this level of analysis is insufficient and that we must also observe how musical performances can participate in the exchange of ‘blows’ between protest actors and protagonists of conventional political competition. Finally, it is clearly necessary to take into account the plurality of social uses of music but also the effects of the professionalisation of its practice. In this, the vocation of music for protest appears even more inevitable because it seems divided, torn between competing objectives that are more or less compatible with a critique of the social order. Figure 1  The social uses of musical devices Aesthec concerns

Musical outlets Youth moratorium

Entertainment

Musical Devices

Legimizaon of instuons

Commercial ventures

Protest ventures

Bohemian Art

Source: Diagram developed by the author

When critical objectives take precedence over other alternatives for artistic practices, musical performances appear as powerful auxiliaries to protest action. Yet a convergence of this kind is far from self-evident.

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Refusing all overhasty generalisations, the analysis proposed over the course of this book argues for observations on a case-by-case basis, of the complex, equivocal, often spontaneous and fluid relations between music and protest. Ultimately, it is up to the observer to specify, in light of detailed and well-defined research, the conditions and procedures that effectively manage to transform certain musical devices into vectors for protest. Of course, under certain conditions, protest objectives and musical performances are unable to find a harmonious congruence and mutual reinforcement. However, it is not unusual for their proximity to instead reveal a multitude of approaches, divergences in motives, uncontrolled effects of the interdependence of the actors, vague and porous borders in the value systems they proclaim, and, finally, frequent discordances between practice and discourse. In other words, the study of the protest aspects of music provides an important point from which to observe the complexities of the social – and more specifically, the collective – action which aims to weigh on the social and political order. In fact, analysis is often obliged to combine multiple apparently contradictory observations in order to reflect the complexity of the processes through which the protest aspect of certain musical performances grows or declines. In the f irst instance, this is because a sequential analysis obliges us to take into account the progressive nature of the way musical devices are used. As we can see in the unusual destiny of the work of De Béranger, the repression of certain forms of artistic expression can morph into a political instrumentalisation that is as cynical as it is demagogic. On the other hand, work that was initially driven by purely poetic concerns can unexpectedly rattle the authority of even the most well-established political institutions. Moreover, the history of black American musicians has reminded us that their talent was exploited both to reinforce the racist prejudice of the minstrelsy, and in rejection of the discriminations they had too long been subject to. To this we must also add that such evolutions appear all the more complex to grasp because they concern intrinsically equivocal phenomena. What appears to be a subversive protest in the eyes of some will be considered by others as the most conformist propaganda. Similarly, what constitutes a life-saving outlet for some, may be used by others for primarily commercial, aesthetic or entertainment purposes. In this respect, we have demonstrated to what extent rock, punk and rap have been prime vectors for the rebellion of successive generations. At the same time, we have also emphasised what the development of these musical styles owes to commercial projects that are sometimes outrageously profit-driven. Neither simple protest by people having found the form of

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expression best suited to them, nor simple artefact produced by commercial manoeuvres: rebellions through rock, punk or rap are the products of both these things at once. Should this provoke celebration or indignation? Should we celebrate a happy compromise or condemn a dishonourable corruption? Here, as is often the case when it is a matter of value judgements (Should we join the movement? Is protest legitimate? Why and how?), political science is not helpful and it is up to individuals to decide according to their conscience. More specifically the individual must decide as a good ‘citizen’ in a democracy that, unlike authoritarian regimes, tolerates the possibility of asking such questions, expressing – or even singing – one’s discontent with the current order of things.



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Cheyronnaud, Jacques, Musique, politique, religion. De quelques menus objets de culture, Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003. Chiapello, Ève, Artistes versus managers. Le management culturel face à la critique artistique, Paris, Éditions Métailié, 1998. Darré, Alain (ed.), Musique et politiques: les répertoires de l’identité, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1996. Denselow, Robin, When the music’s over: The story of political pop, London, Faber and Faber, 1989. Élias, Norbert, Mozart: Portrait of a genius, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1993. Eyerman, Ron and Andrew Jamison, Music and social movements: Mobilizing traditions in the twentieth century, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. Giraud, Baptiste, ‘Les Zebda: la réinvention des pratiques musicales en mode d’engagement politique critique’ in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 29-45. Jasper, James M., The art of moral protest: Culture, biography and creativity in social movements, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1997. Jones, Leroi [Amiri Baraka], Blues people: Negro music in white America, New York, Morrow, 1963. Marival, Guy, ‘La Chanson de Craonne, de la chanson palimpseste à la chanson manifeste’, in N. Offenstadt, Le Chemin des Dames de l’événement à la mémoire, Paris, Stock, 2004, p. 350-359. Martin, Denis-Constant, Aux sources du reggae. Musique, société et politique en Jamaïque, Marseille, Parenthèses, 1982. Marx-Scouras, Danielle, La France de Zebda, 1981-2004. Faire de la musique un acte politique, Paris, Autrement, 2005 Mathieu, Lilian, Comment lutter? Sociologie et mouvements sociaux, Paris, Textuel, 2004. Neveu, Erik, Sociologie des mouvements sociaux, Paris, La Découverte, 1996. Pratt, Ray, Rhythm and resistance: Explorations in the political uses of popular music, New York, Praeger, 1990. Sommier, Isabelle, ‘Le rap engagé en Italie: un f il rouge entre les années 1968 et les années 1990?’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 137-151. Touchard, Jean, La Gloire de Béranger, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 1968. Traïni, Christophe, ‘L’anticentralisme multiculturel de la Ligne Imaginot. Art occitan et échange de l’estime réciproque’, in Justyne Balasinski and Lilian Mathieu (eds), Art et contestation, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2006, 47-63. Traïni, Christophe, ‘L’appropriation du rap et du reggae. Néo-communisme et ethno-régionalisme à l’heure de la mondialisation’, Communications 77 (2005): 109-126. Traïni, Christophe (ed.), Emotions… Mobilisation !, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2009. Ward, Brian, Just my soul responding: Rhythm and blues, black consciousness and race relations, London, UCL Press, 1998.

Index Authors Arendt, Hannah 40 Balasinski, Justyne 134, 151, 175 Barrows, Susanna 111 Benford, Robert 127 Binchy, Daniel A. 18 Blecha, Peter 107 Boltanski, Luc 25-26, 28, 40, 99, 127 Bourdieu, Pierre 10 Bourgoin, Nicolas 30, 99 Chabot, Sean 35 Cheyronnaud, Jacques 114, 145, 175 Chiapello, Ève 165, 175 Contamin, Jean-Gabriel 54, 56, 175 Cooper Stoll, Laurie 25, 53, 61, 100 Creek, Tristan G. 43 Dabène, Olivier 128 Darmon, Muriel 29 Darré, Alain 124, 159, 175 Darré, Yann 25-26 David-Jougneau, Maryvonne 29, 63-65, 99 Denselow, Robin 147, 175 Dewey, John 38 Dingley, James 38, 99 Dobry, Michel 77 Doumergue, Benoit 163 Duby, Georges 17 Durkheim, Émile 29 Elias, Norbert 48, 158, 163, 175 Erikson, Erik 161 Eyerman, Ron 103, 137, 162, 175 Fillieule, Olivier 32, 77, 112, 118, 157 Fireman, Bruce 127 Foucault, Michel 44 Gamson, William 127, 137 Garcia, Matt 73 Geddes, Jennian F. 85, 99 Giraud, Baptiste 151, 154 Gonzalez, Eric 169 Goodwin, Jeff 111 Grant, Kevin 25, 99 Groenewold, Kurt 85, 99 Grojean, Olivier 30, 33, 69 Healy, James 20, 33, 99 Hirschman, Albert 157-158 Hopkins, Washburn 18 Jamison, Andrew 103, 137, 162, 175 Jasper, James M. 111-112, 116, 175 July, Serge 47 Kiely, Jan 25, 99 Kouki, Hara 43 Kriesi, Hanspeter 49 Kumar Srivastava, Pramod 68, 99 Lavaud, Jean-Pierre 18, 24, 33, 49, 99

Lecarpentier, Damien 18 LeRoi, Jones 160, 175 Linhardt, Dominique 41, 70, 99 Lumm, Kimberly 25, 53, 61, 100 Maître, Jacques 29, 99 Mangeon, Jean-Philippe 18, 88 Mantanika, Regina 43 Martin, Denis-Constant 125, 128, 140-142, 148, 175 Marx-Scouras, Danielle 151, 175 Mathieu, Lilian 112, 118, 120, 133-134, 151, 175 Mauss, Marcel 44 Mayer, Nonna 157 McCarthy, John 132 McGregor, JoAnn 25, 43, 99 Merton, Robert 115 Miller, Ian 85, 99 Mollica, Marcello 38, 99 Morris, Aldon 113, 120 Mulcahy, Aogán 53, 99 Muller, Jean-Marie 21, 36, 75 Musil, Robert 59 Neveu, Erik 120, 175 O’Malley, Padraig 20, 99 Oberschall, Anthony 120 Offerlé, Michel 26, 133 Olson, Mancur 113, 132 Passmore, Leith 25, 70, 85, 99 Péchu, Cécile 112, 118 Pizzorno, Alessandro 114 Plato 105, 108-109 Polletta, Francesca 111 Pratt, Ray 160, 175 Pratt, Tim 25, 90, 100 Reiter, Keramet 25, 100 Robine, Marc 121 Rosen, Andrew 20, 86, 88 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 105 Roux, Jacques 52, 66 Rytina, Steven 127 Salle, Gregory 31, 100 Sayad, Abdelmalek 45, 100 Scanlan, Stephen 25, 29, 53, 61, 100 Schelling, Thomas C. 79 Schiltz, Marie-Ange 25-26 Seigel, Jerrold 165 Sharp, Gene 21, 36, 100 Siméant, Johanna 23, 30, 100 Snow, David 127 Sommier, Isabelle 134, 175 Sweeney, George 20, 33, 39, 56, 100 Thévenot, Laurent 40 Tilly, Charles 15, 47 Touchard, Jean 121, 126, 143, 167, 175

178  Traïni, Christophe 111-112, 118, 133-134, 175 Tsilimpounidi, Myrto 43 Van Deth, Ron 17, 100 Vandereycken, Walter 17, 100 Vernon, James 25, 90, 100 von Clausewitz, Carl 77

Bodies in Protest

Waismel-Manor, Israël 25, 32, 49 Walsh, Ally 43 Ward, Brian 107, 139, 175 Weber, Max 114 Yvart, François-Xavier 106 Zald, Mayer N. 132

Organizations, movements and public persons Abbé Pierre 51 Akaba, Hajime 19 Ashe, Thomas 93 Aslamazidis, Nicos 82 Aung San Suu Kyi 48, 71 Baader, Andreas 23 Bednar, Jan 74 Ben Ali, Zine el-Abidine 71, 77 Ben Bella, Ahmed 22 Ben Brik, Taoufik 72 Berrigan brothers 22 Blache, Jean-Pierre 64 Black Muslims 141 Black Panther Party 141 Boukhdir, Slim 72 Boutov 67 Bové, José 24, 26, 75 Branson, Richard 75 Bressolles, Mireille 82 Chalard, Worachat 71 Chamlong, Srimuang 71 Chávez, César 23, 73 Chevènement, Jean-Pierre 91 Chicano movement 23, 43, 72-73 Civil Rights Movement 103, 107, 113, 115, 117, 120, 139, 141 Clarke, Mary 19 CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo/ National confederation of Work) 116 Cohen-Haddad, Raymond 88 Connolly, James 20 CRAC (Comité Radical Anti-Corrida/Radical Anti-Corrida Committee) 111 del Vasto, Lanza 22, 26, 36 Delorme, Christian 36, 75 Dev Yol (Devrimci Yol/ Revolutionary Path) 52 Espinoza, Pierre 30 Farrow, Mia 75 FLN (Front de Libération Nationale/National Liberation Front) 22, 37, 68, 73 Fraisse, Rémi 28 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand 15, 21-22, 25, 35-37, 68, 70, 73, 75, 90 Geismar, Alain 22 Gezmis, Deniz 68 Gorbachev, Mikhaïl 71 Harkis 72-74 Hazare, Anna 15, 24

Hikmet, Nazim 68 Hippie movement 131, 162 Hoffmann, Martin 41 Holger Meins, Hans 28, 87 Honorin, Michel 52 Horne, Barry 93 Howland, Corinna 85, 99 Indian nationalism 68 International Movement Against Bullfights 111-112 IRA (Irish Republican Army) 11, 15, 21, 28, 35, 37, 53, 83, 92, 118 Irish republicans 20, 33 IWW (Industrial Workers of the World union) 119 Jimenez, Manuel 32 King Bhumibol 71 King Mohammed VI 23 Klech, Abdelkrim 74 Ku Klux Klan 113 Kurdish movement 33 Lassalle, Jean 15, 24, 27-28, 33, 36, 55, 57, 77 Lecoin, Louis 22, 26, 75 Leigh, Mary 86 Lmrabet, Ali 23 Lotta Continua 120 Luther King, Martin 113, 140 MacAirt, Proinsias 20 MacSwiney, Terence 20, 40, 93 MAN (Mouvement pour une alternative non-violente/Movement for a Non-violent alternative) 75 Marcellin, Raymond 72, 92 Marchenko, Anatoly 70 McKee, Billy 20 Ménigon, Nathalie 90 Mitterrand, François 92 MNR (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario/Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) 33 Morales, Evo 33, 90 Musicians United to Win Without War 131 NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People) 117 Nasraoui, Radhia 72 Nationalist movements 19-20, 30, 33-34, 37-38, 43, 67-70, 85, 87, 103, 117-118, 125, 128, 130, 134

179

Index

Nômin no Fukuin (The farmers’ gospel, Japanese Organization) 19 OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète/Secret Army Organization) 79 OFPRA (Office Français des Réfugiés et Apatrides/Office for Refugees and Stateless Persons) 45 Papinski, Jacques 64-65 PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan/Kurdistan Workers’ Party) 28, 37, 68-69, 84 Pope Benedict XVI 75 Price, Marian and Dolours 20, 83 Pro-life movement 112 Quintana, Juan Ramon 90 Quintela, Oscar 20 RAF (Rote Armee Fraktion/Red Army Faction) 23, 28, 37, 41-42, 70, 83, 85, 87 Rastafarianism 128, 142, 148 Red Wedge 149-150 Risorgimento 125 Rock Against Racism 143 Sakharov, Andrei 70-71 Sands, Bobby 21, 68, 83, 118 Shcharansky, Anatoly 70 Siles Zuazo, Hernán 33 Sinn Féin 20 SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) 139

Suchinda, Kraprayoon 71 Suffragettes movement 19, 25, 29, 43, 85-88 Tamas, Jan 74 Tarov 86 Thatcher, Margaret 39, 83, 92, 118, 123, 149-150 THKO (Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Ordusu/People’s Liberation Army of Turkey) 68 Tlili, Abderrahmane 72 Tolstoy, Leon 21 Troisier, Solange 90 Troncoso, Patricia 33, 69 Trotsky, Leon 19, 67, 91 Tutu, Desmond 75 Undocumented migrants movements 16, 23, 27-28, 31-32, 34-37, 39, 41, 43, 45-46, 48, 50-51, 53-54, 56, 72-74, 76, 78-81, 83-84, 91, 94-95, 97 Vautier, René 75 Veuillet, Roland 65 Wallace Dunlop, Marion 19 Weil, Simone 40 Woodstock Festival 119, 138 WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) 19-20 Xiaobo, Liu 24 ZANU (Zimbabwean African National Union) 147

Musicians, musical styles and song titles A las barricadas 116 All’armi siam fascisti 116 Almanac Singers 129 Baez, John 119-120 Bandiera rossa 116, 118, 120, 150, 154 Béranger, Pierre-Jean de 121, 126, 143-146, 166-167, 172, 175 Blues 159-160 Bragg, Billy 149 Carry It On 113 Chant des partisans 103, 116-117, 154 Charity rock 132 Chimurenga music 125, 147 Chutney soca 142 Costello, Elvis 149 Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey! 141 Dylan, Bob 117, 120, 129, 167 Fabulous Trobadors 122, 134, 152 Folk 115, 117, 129 Free America 138 Geldof, Bob 132-133 Give Peace a Chance 131 Gospel 103, 113, 115, 120, 139-141, 160 Guthrie, Woody 119, 129 Hard rock 133, 163 Hendrix, Jimmy 138 I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier 131

I Love Everybody 113 Jazz 124, 137, 160, 165 Joe Hill 119 Jouy, Jules 122 La chanson de Craonne 130 La Marseillaise 109, 116, 138 Last Poets 141 Le déserteur 131 Lennon, John 131 Lomax, Alan 119 Mapfumo, Thomas 147 Marley, Bob 148 Massilia Sound System 122, 134, 152 Minstrels shows 168, 172 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 158 Ninety-Nine and a Half (Won’t Do) 113 Nuestro Himno 138 Ochs, Phil 129 Ohio 129 Paxton, Tom 117, 129 Per I morti di Reggio Emilia 117-118, 120 Punk 106, 128, 134, 142-143, 162, 165, 169, 172-173 Rap 128, 133-134, 137, 141, 152, 155, 162, 169, 172-173 Reggae 127-128, 134, 137, 141-143, 147-148, 152, 165 Respect 140

180  Rock, rock’n roll 106-107, 132-134, 137, 143, 149, 151-152, 160-163, 167-170, 172-173 Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud 141 Seeger, Pete 119, 129 Soul 140-142 Strange Fruit 124-125 Taha, Rachid 107 The Freedom Singers 139 The International 109, 115 The Star-Spangled Banner 138

Bodies in Protest

The Wolfe Tones 117 Topical song 129 Tropicalism 139 Verdi 125 Wagner, Richard 109 Walk Together Children 103 We Are the World 133 We Shall Overcome 115, 141 Young, Neil 129 Zebda 103, 150-152, 154-155