Marseille, a City beyond Distinction
2011; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 50; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3366/nfs.2011.008
ISSN2047-7236
AutoresSophie Biass, Jean‐Louis Fabiani,
Tópico(s)Political and Social Issues
ResumoIn November 2005, when the riots that had burst out in the French 'banlieues', 'quartiers' or 'cites' ended, it was clear that the city of Marseille had largely remained out of the turmoil. How could Marseille, usually considered as an outpost of urban unrest, the undisputed capital of social protest and viewed as the main gate for immigrants, be immune from the contagion of violence that led the young people to set a competition among the banlieues in order to bum the greatest number of cars and fight with the police? The explanation was immediately available: it had to do with 'l'exception marseillaise en France' and it reactivated a very old narrative about the special place of the city within the French Nation: the second town in France is usually described as standing on the fringe of the national space, in a sort of social and cultural periphery. As opposed to Lyon, once defined as the' capital of the provinces' , Marseille has been depicted over and over as a foreign city within the Nation. In October 2006, a bus was burnt in a quiet area of Marseille and a young student from Senegal was very severely injured. At once, the 'exception marseillaise' came back to the forefront. Michel Samson, writing for Le Monde, reported on the local unanimity about the Marseillais peculiarities. 'Un eclair dans un ciel bleu', a flash of lightning in a perfect blue sky, the head of the local police Bernard Squarcini, a man close to President Sarkozy, said. Kader Tighilt, a social educator in the area, did not disagree: 'C'est comme l'an dernier. II n'y avait pas de tension speciale'. Michel Samson concluded that all the people in charge wanted to believe that 'l'exception marseillaise' was an everlasting component of the city.l
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