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hjemne · 4 months

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On any given day France is only about two steps away from sliding straight back into imperialist nationalism istg

So much goes back to how protective the powers that be are over the French language, and how they constantly construct enemies who are out to destroy their language and colonial heritage.

I've been reading various decrees from my most hated and despised enemy l'Académie française and its absolutely mind-boggling how they wrote about how they could "defend" and "save" French through the standardisation of English. They say standardisation would create a new language (a global English) which is no longer a "language of culture" (and so no longer a threat to their precious french i guess???). And then they IMMEDIATELY turn around and go 'and we must return to the "purity" (yuck) of French, and so l'Académie française needs to dictate and control how French is used.' My guys... how is that not reinforcing the standardisation of language which you think will kill English??? Oh wait I forgot it's because the french language* is the "unique instrument" which can bring world peace and is the most specialest of languages. *the French of France

The future of the French language is in Africa, no matter how much the Académie wants to pretend they can maintain control over it. In the words of Ahmadou Kourouma, 'the French have their language. They have violated many peoples but they would like their language to remain pure. This is not possible.' The Académie's insistence on 'preserving the purity of French' blablabla because its oh so important that it can be used to express (Western) art & science is a deeply conservative and imperialist stance that serves to reinforce France's power over its former colonies. What good does the language serve if it won't allow its speakers to express themselves, their cultures, and their lived realities? African religions cannot be accurately expressed in 'standard/proper' French, and gender queer people (& women tbh) simply cannot exist within the French language when the Académie continues to call gender-inclusive language an "aberration" which puts French in "mortal danger" from other languages which will 'prevail' at French's expense. Which really shows that institutionalising and promoting la Francophonie isn't actually about facilitating inter-group exchange via a shared language; it's about giving France's cultural, political and economic control over former colonies the façade of being something other than neocolonialism.

And I really cannot stress enough how much of France's cultural identity is based around its imagined superiority and exceptionality (which is literally baked into French law!!). Like so much of French political rhetoric is based around this need to fight back against some existential threat posed by The Other. You've got the extreme right Reconquête party (REconquest, jfc) calling mass 'remigration' & has the backing of 7-8% of voters (and the far-right FN party getting another 30%). And then ''''''centrist''''' Macron calls for 'demographic rearming' (not via easing immigration rules, but by pushing for more French babies to be born) and talking about the need to create a 'society of vigilance' against the 'Islamist hydra' and ceding to the far right in order to pass his immigration bill (1/3 of which was deemed unconstitutional or legislative riders, including a section which would've required foreigners to live in France for 10 years (!) before becoming naturalised citizens.

This is a country where every single child is taught to internalise that 'the masculine takes precedence over the feminine' and is 'neutral'. Where a national sporting hero is loudly denounced as a reverse racist for pointing out that there is a cultural belief of white superiority in France, meanwhile 9/10 black people in France say they've faced racial discrimination.

France uses the rhetoric of 'not following republicain values' as a cudgel against those who are inherently excluded from its white, bourgeois, male & catho-laïque* conception of 'universalism'. If you don't - or can't - conform, or dare to speak out against the unyielding assimilationism, it's labelled a sign of communautarisme, which according to the right, is basically the same as being an organised, hostile, separatist faction working to destroy the pure and noble Enlightenment values and heritage of the République. There is no room for multiculturalism. In france, you have the freedom to conform to its narrow definition of universalism. And if you don't follow along, well, clearly you're too uncivilised to know how to use your freedom properly, because there's no way you'd use it to criticise France, a country which is perfect.

The rhetoric being used and the policies being implemented in France are incredibly concerning, as is the massive support for extremely far right political parties. I don't know what's going to happen in French politics in the next few years, and in all honesty, I'm scared to find out. What I do know, is that the process of fully decolonising if a long, long way from being complete, and we need to be ready to think critically about things we feel attached to or assume are politically neutral.

*laïcité = secularism. In theory it's about separation of church and state, but it relegates all 'ostentatious' symbols of religion to 'private' life, so in practice it's used as an excuse to increasingly exclude religious minorities (especially young muslim women) from public spaces. You're not allowed to wear in public schools religious head coverings (e.g. hijab, kippah) or long skirts (only if the school thinks you're wearing it for religious reasons. you can for fashion reasons. France is valiantly protecting young women from ;;;;misogynistic radical islamist extremism;;;; which tells them what to wear, by telling them what to wear, don't you see).

I'm using catho-laïque to mean that, despite the emphasis on laïcité, secularism in France is effectively secular Catholicism. Catholicism underpins French culture and is taken for granted as being the neutral default. 6/11 of their national public holidays are Catholic religious days of observance/celebration, meaning the whole country shuts down for a week each year so the Catholics can observe their religious calendar, and it's never brought up as a potential conflict with secular politics.

The French language itself also has this same Catholic cultural bias too, making it hard, for example, to discuss African religions or cultures in Académie-approved 'proper' French language. Ahmadou Kourouma (from the Ivory Coast) wrote an essay about the difficulties of expressing his reality in written French when there's no word that truly encapsulates his God, religious practices, and the oral culture of his native language malinké. He called for an open, multicultural and equal francophone world, which can only be done by accepting 'africanised' or other non-standard uses of French, but this is firmly rejected by the western arbiters of French who very much do not want to decolonise and decentralise the French language. I wonder why.

I love this quote from Kourouma because it summarises everything so succinctly: 'We cannot be totally free if we do not possess the language which allows us to express ourselves completely.' It should be fairly clear at this point that 'liberté, égalité, fraternité' all take on very specific and restricted meanings in the context of the French state, but I still think it's worth pointing out the hypocracy and neocolonial implications of the French ideals vs how they're used in practice.

I'd definitely recommend his novels, which you can find here in both English and French.

I'd also definitely recommend checking out the icon that is Lilian Thuram who has suffered more than any tumblr user at being accused of pissing on the poor by people who misread the title of his book La pensée blanche and call him an anti-white racist. He also wrote Mes étoiles noires which is also a good read.

Thuram is just such an incredibly interesting guy. He talks a lot about how he wasn't born black, but became black aged 9 when he moved to Paris from Guadeloupe (a French territory in the Carribean), and became aware that other people had assigned him a category based on his skin colour which marked him as lesser. He uses Simone de Beauvoir's framework of how she wasn't born a woman, but became one through socialisation to talk about race which is super interesting. Also, it's why he told the biggest figure in the French far-right, Jean-Marie Le Pen, "personally, I'm not black" when Le Pen was bitching about the French national football team not being white enough. King shit, even if it went over people's heads. He's so cool, go read his interviews. He is fighting an uphill battle, but oh boy is he fighting. (here's his anti-racism foundation's site in French).

You can read an incredible discussion about race, politics and football in this book (p.177-194). When I tell you that a footballer getting a red card for headbutting someone had real implications for the discussion of race & immigration in France, I'm being dead serious.

This is the sort of reaction that Thuram gets btw

"oh wouldn't Africa have been better off if it kept you [i.e. 'you should have stayed in Africa if you hate white people so much'], what a shame..."

He's literally french!! from the caribbean!! oh my fucking god how do you not see this is literally the type of racist thinking that he's talking about ahhhhhhhhgghhhgg

"he was praised in 1998 [after he won the world cup] by all of France, and no one made any reference to the colour of his skin. He's ruining this beautiful memory with his racist ideas."

OH MY GOD THIS IS SO FACTUALLY INACCURATE. i think they said this just to piss me off in particular. What do you mean that no one talked about the 1998 French team's skin colour? That's all they talked about for years. You mean to tell me that the incredibly famous slogan 'black-blanc-beur' [black-white-arab] was not about ethnicities??? And Thuram is only now bringing up the topic of race? Get so fucking forreal. Boohoo your memories of the 98 victory are being ruined by racism? You know who else's were? Thuram's.

And you know how i can be so so certain that it wasn't just leftist academics who were talking about la France black-blanc-beur? You know who cannot stop bringing up the French team's skin colour? Jean-Marie Le Pen [OG far-right racist politician]. You know who else goes on about how the media would not stop telling you about the racial diversity of the team and how everyone in France was talking about the team's skin colour? Eric fuckin Zemmour [current extreme-right political shithead]

(no translation, it's all just racist bullshit. It is funny how close he gets at times tho. 'lots of young, aspiring football players after 1998 felt like they'd experienced social exclusion, and football was an area which they felt they could thrive in and escape the misery of growing up in the banlieu.' YEAH MY DUDE. he's so close to putting the cause & effect together for why marginalised ethnicities from disadvantaged areas are overrepresented in professional football. but no, he has to go on about how these new plays weren't like Zidane (the golden boy of assimilation via football), they sucked because they rejected all authority by eating... halal....hmm....) (Zemmour also takes the time to bitch about how 1998 was also when the anglicism 'coach' entered popular use in France, because he has to really emphasise how the world cup victory was part of the 'suicide' of the French nation in any and all ways possible. It's honestly just pathetic more than anything at this point. He just cycles through the same 4 scapegoats overe and over (I can only assume it's because he's allergic to all forms of diversity) )

Like..... absolutely everyone is in agreement that the ethnic diversity of the 1998 team was a huge talking point. This is the one thing that everyone across the political spectrum can agree on. So WHY would you make it your argument that 'no one made any reference to his skin colour uwu'. The team was THE example of the successes of French integration. And yeah, it sucks to realise things weren't as good as you thought they were, but Thuram has every right to turn around and ask why the acceptance of his 'frenchness' by society was conditional on the team's success. Why whether he (& other non-white players) was 'worthy' of representing France (which he has done in more matches than all but one player ever in French history) was not just a question of football abilities, but also about whether he was 'dignified' enough to be French. And why talking out against inequality and injustice made him less deserving.

There are definitely other , smarter ways of fighting against the stupidity/foolishness of certain spectaters [referencing the fact that Thuram discussed the many many times that spectators made monkey noises at him & others during football matches]."

Ohhhhhhh my god Thuram is literally examining at the systems in society that led people to make such blatantly racist gestures. Does this guy think he should go to racist football fans one by one and tell them nicely to stop?? The description of it as 'bêtise' is also driving me up the wall because its so dismissive of how serious and horrific these overt and public displays of racial hatred are. 'J'ai fait une bêtise' is I did a whoopsie, I did a dumb thing. Also the fact it's qualified with 'certain' spectators. 'Oui okay something bad did happen, but it wasn't that many people, it wasn't that big of a deal, and you should be dealing with it in a different way because talking about structural racism makes me uncomfortable.' Killing you with my death ray. Do more introspection and less historical revisionism.

Also Thuram has literally addressed this

« J'ai l'impression que l'on parle du racisme avec superficialité. Comme si c'était un phénomène individualisé, de personnes "pas gentilles". Non, c'est une idéologie politique qui a une profondeur historique ! »

Anyway.... long long rant over. there was a documentary on netflix about french football and black blanc beur back in 2017 ish and if anyone knows how to track it down i'd love to rewatch it. Also here’s a link to some articles on the topic if you want to read some more.

#jesus christ i've been doing this all day #france #decolonization #l'academie francaise my worstie i hope u blow up and die #rambles #lilian thuram #ahmadou kourouma #emmanuel macron

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