Denis Merklen renews our view of the suburbs and the violence that ignites it based on an investigation into library fires. An innovative and tragic reflection on the place of culture in working-class neighborhoods.
Another book on suburbs ”, one would be tempted to say ! However, we would be wrong as Denis Merklen’s book is original in form and content. First of all, in terms of form, this book is a web of intersecting stories between librarians, neighborhoods, suburban writers, the celebrity press, Argentina and France, the wanderings of the researcher, the history of the working classes. .. And all these stories and the back and forth they require open up new angles and points of view. Without ever tiring, the reader crosses the threads of a meticulous, cautious and empathetic investigation both with regard to librarians and those who burn down media libraries, and of an investigation which is also the stubborn search for a political subject about which Denis Merklen never ceases to wonder.
An awkward silence surrounds the 70 library fires that were lit in France between 1996 and 2013. It must be said that these fires have never been claimed and that no declaration has ever accompanied them with the exception of a “ if Sarko passes we set fire ! » While we can understand the burning of police stations as protests against the violence of the police and, beyond that, against the violence of the State, why attack the books made available to all in the neighborhoods that often seem abandoned ? While we can try to understand the burning of schools which, in working-class neighborhoods, lead a large number of students to failure and thus betray a promise of justice, why attack libraries which do not refuse anyone and do not sanction anyone ? To put it even more simply, it is absurd to burn down the few public facilities that offer access to culture and freedom without demanding anything in exchange.
Who burns the libraries ? Nobody and everyone. Denis Merklen does not seek to meet the perpetrators of the fires since it is the neighborhood itself which sends a message with stones and Molotov cocktails. In the same way as in Lope de Vega’s play, Fuenteovejuna (1619), each villager accused of having murdered the tax collector replied to the police that the murderer was the village of Fuenteovejuna, the village and the entire village, the burning of the library was the work of the neighborhood. It is a relationship of social domination which burns down the library. Fire then participates in an elementary form of political life, what Denis Merklen calls “ politicity “.
Despite their emancipatory intentions, libraries belong to the world of “ others “, to that of the elites, the middle classes, elected officials… Everyone congratulates each other during the inaugurations which no resident of the neighborhood attends. From the point of view of public officials, everything still happens as in the days of the red suburbs, when municipal action was relayed and carried by neighborhood activists, when it was believed that access to culture “ cultivated » participated in the emancipation of workers. But the library, which has become a media library to be more accessible, is today only used by 10% of residents and much less even if we take school attendance into account. Clashes multiply over matters of rowdiness and caps, and many librarians see their world and their ideals unraveled. The interview with Sonia, librarian, bears witness to this long history: the neighborhood becomes foreign and hostile, the great culture of the library has been transformed into a media library renouncing the cultural demands which gave honor to a profession experienced as a vocation . Fires are rapes from which we never recover. The majority of library employees have the feeling of being swept away in a long process of degradation: in their eyes, the neighborhoods are increasingly violent, the “ origins » of the residents are more and more assertive, the tensions between the project of the managers and those of the employees closer to the residents, are more and more unbearable.
For their part, the inhabitants distinguish those who live “ In » the neighborhood and those who live « on » the neighborhood, the multiple speakers who come from elsewhere. About libraries, “ we didn’t ask anything “, “ it’s meant to put us to sleep » while employment remains the essential problem. Of course, not all the inhabitants of the neighborhood think this way and do not speak this way, but they feel confusedly represented by those who throw stones at equipment that is not from their world, by those who go in groups to the library because, going alone, “ it’s too much shame “. To the emptiness of libraries and the silence that reigns there, Denis Merklen contrasts the density and warmth of evangelical groups which create emotions and collective identities. On one side, services for individual users, on the other, collectives and shared emotions.
The burning of libraries is all the more incomprehensible as it defiles a sacred sanctuary since the book is, at the same time, what attaches us to a universal culture and what individualizes us, makes us the subjects of our own life. To refuse the book is to refuse civilization whatever way we call it. However, everything is not that simple because the residents of the neighborhoods read. But sometimes they want to read what you can’t find in the library. Should we put the celebrity press on library shelves? ? Denis Merklen pleads for Closer because, according to him, this deeply despised literature denounces, in the eyes of its readers, the turpitudes of the powerful, reveals a part of the social game hidden from the dominated. It participates in the moral economy of the dominated classes which grasp the world in moral terms much more than in strictly social terms. Closer would thus be the heir of literature “ pornographic ” of XVIIIe century which criticized institutions by revealing the vices of the powerful, thus preparing the ground for revolution.
While Victor Hugo explained the fire of a library by ignorance, “ I don’t know how to read » said the young communard, libraries no longer reign over a world of ignorant people because the suburbs read and write. Denis Merklen analyzes the literature of suburban writers, those who send SMS and messages, those who write rap lyrics, those who write the cailleras books. Now, all this production, this “ literacy », is absent from libraries, media libraries and schools which then embody an authoritarian regulation of writing. Denis Merklen gives this “ literacy » the same status as that given to him by Rancière by studying the working-class writers of XIXe century. From then on, libraries would not only burn because they dominate and because they come from elsewhere, they would also burn because the conflict of cultural legitimacy is a real political conflict whose issue is the interpretation of popular experience. And this is the very language of this interpretation “ native » which would be refused. The burning of libraries would not only be a gesture of rage, it would also be a political gesture. Libraries are burning because the popular world is not heard.
What is popular today ? What is popular when it is no longer defined as the working class and when it is not dominated by marginality and survival as is the case in Latin America? ? For Denis Merklen, the answer to this question lies less in the usual categories of sociology and politics than in the very conflict which opposes the institutions of the State, including the least repressive, to the inhabitants of the neighborhoods who thus claim a political speech. If there is something political in fires, it is that it creates a us, a community of experience and that in this way it overcomes the logic of individualization that is imposed today, no only in the culture of the media and the middle classes, but also in all institutional strategies for mobilizing individuals.
How can we not be seduced by an analysis that does not limit itself to opposing culture to barbarism and strives to give violent gestures the maximum possible meaning? ? But is this ambition enough to convince ? On the one hand, we sometimes regret not knowing better who sets the library on fire and why. ; are working-class neighborhoods sufficiently homogeneous that we can always answer “ Fuenteovejuna “. On the other hand, can there be a “ politicity » which does not draw on sources other than those of the popular community itself, whether it be the culture of suburban writers, religions, the cultural industries scenes or some political traditions ? Too broad a definition of politics risks dissolving it in all social practices.
The fact remains that Denis Merklen’s book is a truly new work on a question that has become banal, that of social violence in the suburbs. It demonstrates that there is action, resistance and conflict where we only see social problems and disorder. He shows as much empathy for the librarians whose cultural and political project is collapsing, as for those who destroy their dream in order to make a voice heard that has become inaudible. In this sense, Why are we burning libraries? ? is a sociological investigation in a tragic style.