By visiting parliamentary space as an insult theater, Thomas Bouchet wonders about the power and pretense of political rhetoric. In doing so, he therefore draws another parliamentary story.
Libelles, caricatures, manifestations, riots: all these instruments of subversion and sedition have become familiar territories of the historian. More elusive, ephemeral and volatile, the verbal insult, she has long escaped her explorations. Certainly, the “ misdire », This critical word uttered on the street had her historian: Arlette Farge. But the individual profion, in the contemporary political field, of the ad hominem insult remained a neglected space. Thomas Bouchet’s book, in this regard, is “ alarm clock ». It is all the more so that it offers itself as a work in progress. In this essay, in fact, no terenched theses or hasty conclusions, but a multitude of tracks and questions: the light is thrown, in a way, on a history and on a process in progress, as evidenced by and the website of the University of Burgundy dedicated to the insult to politics and the collective work that nourishes the work.
L'” Event-Insult »»
Because it must be said from the outset, these Bird names are not to be read as a conclusive sum on the insult in its operations, its changes or its codes. Very differently, Thomas Bouchet gives us bursts of voice, situations, successive dives in parliamentary space as the theater of the insult – the conclusion, alone, constituting a diachronic reflection around this practice. It thus unfolds, in a series of paintings, of “ insult moments »With their insultors and insults, context and impact, which run from restoration to Ve Republic.
The postulate which founds this construction is clear: the insult and its power are not born so much from the words, which ultimately are poor in themselves, as from the situation in which they are made. In this sense, this story is that of power as much as the nothingness of political rhetoric. In fact, without contextual crystallization mechanisms, the insult does not exist. This construction gives all its strength to the book: it gives insults the vigor of the moment, even though one is at the heart of an object where the differences in time and cultures play full. This anthropological distance, it is measured, for example, with the manual affair, which exploded in 1823 during the debates on French military intervention in Spain. Louis XVIIIChateaubriand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Villèle, President of the Council, are supporters of support for King Ferdinand VII ; The liberal opposition is fiercely hostile and finds in manual the spokesperson who ignites the room. How ? In two words: “ New shape ». Two words that made scandal and put on a standing wind for the royalist majority ; Two words, which are however struggling, however, to measure controversial vigor.
To return its strength to the insult, to deliver it in all its acuity, it was therefore necessary to plant the decor, to disentangle the related representations which constitute, in the literal sense, insults it, to enlighten the relations of force, the diffuse emotions and the Political uses, reveal the feelings of honor flouted. Thomas Bouchet succeeds for each insult ; No doubt because it continues, with consistency, an open work for several years. A work in the form of a double quest, in fact: that of a “ sound story »From Parliament, open with One Thursday in the Assembly ; That of a history of the event, open with his thesis. Obviously, these two stories mingle in his latest work, the most striking trait of which is indeed the decryption of the production of the “ Event-Insult »In the parliamentary enclosure: brilliant and rhythmic formula whose exceptional survival owes almost everything to its inventor -« Napoleon the little From Victor Hugo – or a simple qualifier whose virulence is born from a chain of stereotypes associated by the Republicans with French campaigns – is the famous “ rural ! From Crémieux who shakes the assembly in 1871.
The mirror of power
Next to the impossible quest for a “ lexicon »From the insult – any word that can do the trick in a conducive context – Thomas Bouchet underlines two other difficulties weighing on the historian tempted by the adventure: the unworthiness of the object, this part in a way unspeakable of the Politics, and, above all, its abundance, its incarnation in gestures and postures, its diffraction and its broadcast through countless vectors-press, drawings, rear-cafes, television trays, etc. To this obstacle, Thomas Bouchet replied by isolating his object and choosing the closed field of the Assembly. Indisputable and legitimate, this choice, however, sometimes frustrates the reader: we would like to know more about the echoes of these insults, their reception, their vogue in the press, in political circles or in the Libelles of ; We would like to see and hear beyond parliamentary walls. Moreover, the author himself allows himself a few vagabondages: towards the image through “ bell “By Daumier, or to reception by exploring the vogue and posterity of” Napoleon the little ». So many sons who bear witness to the difficulty in enlistment insults him in the only parliamentary framework.
This way of assemblies is nonetheless fruitful. First of all, and it was Thomas Bouchet’s explicit wish, because as a counterpoint a “ other »Parliamentary history. A history attentive to the weight of memory that haunts political cultures as much as the imagination of insults: revolutionary trauma at XIXe century ; Memory of the Second World War, resistance and collaboration then until today. A history attentive to the great theater of the values and visions of the world that is the assembly: in 1936, when Blum had to face the anti -Semitic fury of a vallat ; In 1974, when Simone Veil had to face the violence of the opponents of the bill authorizing abortion. An attentive story, finally, to the male and elitist interior that constitutes the parliamentary world. In fact, what Thomas Bouchet lights up is the codified anomaly that is insult: it is a tolerated gap, with its terminals of acceptable and its sanctioned crossings ; It is a break as much as reaffirmation of parliamentary uses. This paradoxical balance is obvious at the beginning of XIXe century, where parliamentarians handle the word of mind, the treacherous but courteous line in an assembly where social affiliations, rhetoric, references and uses are common. Over the course of XIXe and XXe century, this normalized practice was upset and the game of insults betrays the mutations of parliamentary sociology and culture. Insulting situations around forty-eight deputies, communist deputies and deputies bear witness to this: insulted more violently, they are above all less tolerated insults-the idea of crossing the terminals being, against them, faster advanced. This is particularly the case for the Communists, who are most frequently the subject of censorship procedures in XXe century. Here is a reaffirmation of belonging and traditional uses in the face of “ newcomers Who, all, in their own way, renew the usual composition of the assemblies and explode their inherited interior. The fate reserved for representatives of the executive – thus of Dominique de Villepin, but it is not the only one – also proceeds, as Thomas Bouchet points out, the same exclusion mechanisms.
Insult
Mirror of parliamentary power, the insult is also in that it betrays – and it is one of the theses of Thomas Bouchet – the institutional power relations and the emergence of new vectors of public speech: the observation drawn up of an erosion of the use of the insult in the parliamentary enclosure would thus be the sign not so much of an uncertain “ civilization Political customs than the weakening of the power of assemblies and its monopoly of political expression. The insult disappears from the assembly to flourish in other places – press, television, radios, internet – as “ The Opinion Court And that the echo of public speech is multiplied.
In doing so, it is the repair of the insult that is also played in other places and “ advertising ” – We think here, even if he is absent from the book, at” Competition of cowardice and inelegance »Launched in April 2008 by Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet against Jean-Louis Borloo and Jean-François Copé. The platform she chooses is enlightening: daily life The world. The reactions it causes are even more so: Nkm must apologize in a statement, is deprived of questions written in the National Assembly and, above all, of official travel to Japan alongside the Prime Minister. As we can see, the repair of the flouted honor is played out here publicly and the sign is clear of a dislocation of the parliamentary interview. Inseparable from this story of “ Bird names “, There is therefore that of the feeling and the culture of honor, which Thomas Bouchet evokes in filigree, by exploring – in particular – these frequent avatars of the insult that are political duels and whose last put in Gaston Defferre and René Ribière in 1967.
Debate on GMO In 2008, more recent debates around the Grenelle vote II Or the pension law illustrates, almost every day, the persistence of a practice whose forms vary but whose vigor remains. If necessary, these examples come to show that the political insult undeniably has a bright future ahead of it. In the assembly and, no doubt above all, outside its walls. It is up to Thomas Bouchet to have opened the way. This is not the least of the merits of this stimulating essay around a story under construction.