France on the edge
Macron has committed to raising military spending in France. His goal? To increase France’s and the EU’s capacity for ‘strategic autonomy’. What does this mean, and what else should you know about Macron’s defence policy?
Forward! The march, the burden and the desert,
weariness and anger.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
Emmanuel Macron's five-year term as President of France (following his election in May 2017) began with an event rarely seen since the birth of the Fifth Republic in 1958: the head of state rebuking his ...
read more "The Europeanisation of French defence policy?"
read more "The Europeanisation of French defence policy?"
The 'debate' about immigration, rewritten by Maryam Madjidi, winner of the Prix Goncourt for a first novelI invented the color of vowels!—
A black, E white, I red, O blue, U green.
—I regulated the form and movement of every consonant,
and with instinctive rhythms I prided myself on inventing
a poetic language accessible some day to all the senses,
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
In this crooked blind alley, as the chill descends,
They feed fires
With logs of song and poetry
Hazard not a thought:
These are strange times, my dear.
...
read more "Strange times, my dear!"
read more "Strange times, my dear!"
Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National
I have swallowed a monstrous dose of poison.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
When the far-right Front National (FN) changed its name to Rassemblement National (National Rally, or RN) in June 2018, media commentary tended to follow a familiar pattern, taking party leader Marine Le Pen’s words at face value. The Associated Press interpreted the change as an indication of the party’s desire to “appeal to a broader range of voters”. It drew a similar, if rather odd, conclusion about the party’s...
read more "Don’t you know that you’re toxic?"
read more "Don’t you know that you’re toxic?"
Far from birds and flocks and village girls,
What did I drink, as I knelt in the heather,
A tender hazel copse around me,
In the warm green mist of the afternoon?
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
Two political parties – Europe Ecology-The Greens (EELV) and President Macron's The Republic on the Move (La Republique En Marche, or LREM) – are now vying for the centrist vote in France. But while LREM is veering to the right, the French Greens are being 'blocked' from following suit by a militant base that's pulling them to ...
read more "The Greens and/or Macron: the fight to hold the centre"
read more "The Greens and/or Macron: the fight to hold the centre"
The massive coming strike and mobilisations against pension reform
By Daniel Cirera, General Secretary of the Scientific Council of the Fondation Gabriel Péri
Tuesday 19th November. Dinner at the Élysée Palace. The President brings together a close circle of ministers and parliamentarians. No more hesitation: the pension reform will be implemented.[1] Everyone must be on a war footing. No question of letting oneself be afraid. It had been necessary to back off in the face of the yellow vest protests,[2] to let slide in the case of the hospitals....
read more "Macron against the “5th December wall”"
read more "Macron against the “5th December wall”"
One must be absolutely modern.
No hymns! Hold the ground gained. Arduous night!
~ Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
In France, the pension regime associated with social security dates from the Liberation of Paris and was set up under the leadership of Ambroise Croizat, former Minister of Labour and trade unionist with the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), and based around the objectives of progress, solidarity, democracy and social transformation. Back then, the trade unions representing salaried workers were in charge of social ...
read more "An attack on the solidarity-based system"
read more "An attack on the solidarity-based system"
And its contested meaning, past, present and future
I dreamed crusades, unrecorded voyages of discovery,
untroubled republics, religious wars stifled, revolutions of customs,
the displacements of races and continents:
I believed in all marvels.
~Arthur Rimbaud, “A Season in Hell”
In France, the idea of the “nation” and of the “Republic” are deeply intertwined. To be French means to be a republican. The notion of the Republic is commonly and interchangeably associated with a political system and its institutions; a historical moment ...
read more "French Republicanism"
read more "French Republicanism"
Where the yellow vests are heading next
Quick! Are there other lives? – Sleep in wealth
is impossible. Wealth has always been public property.
~Arthur Rimbaud
It has been a quiet few months for the gilets jaunes, until recently omnipresent in their fluorescent yellow, roadside emergency vests, protesting on roundabouts throughout France and television sets around the world. After shaking the foundations of the French political establishment as much as any protest movement of the past generation – each Saturday upon the next, long after Very Serious ...
read more "Which way off the roundabout"
read more "Which way off the roundabout"
Burning issues in French politicsA Season in Hell, the masterwork of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, was written amidst the conservative backlash to the revolutionary Paris Commune of 1871. From a farmhouse north of the city, the enfant terrible of French poetry ruminated on the failure of his own radical experiment with freedom, and the confusion, disillusionment and doubt that followed. Nearly 150 years later, contemporary France is roiled by its own Season in Hell, a deeply fractured and unsettled political moment in which dark phantasms grow large and the path to a ...
read more "Introducing a new project"
read more "Introducing a new project"
The ongoing mobilisation of yellow vest adherents is arguably the most enduring and significant social movement in France since May 1968. It will have profound political consequences, though it is still too early to gauge their extent. Today, one of the most pressing questions for understanding what these long-term consequences might be is the political direction taken by the movement.
This article highlights the atypical, even paradoxical political profile of this movement, which is caught in a dilemma between unifying its demands, and...
read more "Ideological divisions in the ‘yellow vest’ movement"
read more "Ideological divisions in the ‘yellow vest’ movement"