°CPE - past, not passed
Scrapped! So says the President. Excited as I am by the sense in which the intransigence of the street has shown itself to be a match for the Republic of the National Accounts, the matter has yet to play itself out. Some remarks and a couple of updates below:
No doubt there will be talk of victory, and who would begrudge festivities. But the repeal of the CPE could - I’m not saying will, but could - reduce down into a means to take politics off the streets and ‘back to where it belongs’. From this moment on, it will be a question of who among those who presented themselves at the bargaining table will tie their representational vocation most steadfastly to declarations of ‘victory’, and subsequently insist on a triumphal depoliticisation.
Or, to put it another way: what could this possibly mean: “The president of the republic has decided to replace Article 8 of the law on equal opportunities with measures that favor the professional insertion of young people in difficulty”? (I’m sure that the Australian Government could export its various ‘measures against unemployment’, as it has a number of other technologies.)
Then again, it might be difficult to reign in the passion for street politics, for that other kind of passage which accompanies and gives meaning to the no pasarán.
Update: from the FT:
the advice that was likely to have been given to the president on Monday is likely to recommend that the controversial contract be replaced by another contract aimed more specifically at young people without qualifications or training, according to people with knowledge of the preparations for the meeting.
In other words, measures more directly targetting the young in the banlieues. Which is to recall that the CPE was announced after the riots in the suburbs. It’s also to note that this presses upon the tensions (and rifts) between the suburbs and the unions. Will the new measures be more closely tied to a racialisation of the lumpenised that the unions feel more comfortable conceding to? Will students be able to resist that partitioning?
In any case, reports are that the students at Nantes have decided to continue their occupation. And more.
And is it bye bye Berlusconi?
The CPE fight seems to be playing out in a similar way to the “immigration debate” in the U.S, though with different temporalities: A rather brutal law is passed with little objection from unions and civil society, but it’s derailed by “the street” after which civil society finally gets the frog out of its throat and says no. The state’s next step (the compromise in the Senate, Chirac’s revised CPE) attempts to create division with the subaltern and/or between the subaltern and the middle. In the US, legislatively speaking this attempt has failed, though mostly because of the right not the left or civil society. The latter (unlike their French counterparts, from what I know) are treading carefully, supporting the protestors but not getting too close, while wondering if/insisting that Hispanics will/must show up in sizable numbers in November’s elections. In other words, to use your words, they have already insisted upon a “triumphal depolitization,” even before the immediate victory is won! Relatedly, progressives are portraying the protests as a “demand for citizenship,” even though that’s apparent in neither the actions or words of the protestors.
Eric [April 14, 2006 @ 3:58 am]
It sure is a dynamic. It’s also interesting that the events in France have kind of amplified the way in which this dynamic can be broken (the refusal to negotiate unless the law is withdrawn) and, perhaps, reinstated (withdrawal followed by negotiation).
Btw, I’ve only been paying minimal attention to the US thing, but there’s a lot to be said about (or, actually, against) guest worker systems. Have you, or anyone else, come across interesting stuff on this? Or have thoughts to offer?
s0metim3s [April 14, 2006 @ 5:18 pm]
Most of what I’ve read is pretty unsatisfying, and at the moment I’ve had the desire but not the time or energy (the initial jolts of summer in Texas always drain me) to put some thoughts together. Actually, the best thing I’ve read is Agamben’s piece that Ketih put up–and it’s 17 years old.
And yes, there is plenty to say against guest-worker programs, which has created some of the difficulty in thinking about recent events here. In France, things were more clear-cut: there was near-universal opposition to a state policy and the actions of the factions flowed from that. In the US, strict refusal is supposed to be impossible, as one is expected to take a clear stance, between the wall, a guest-worker program, or citizenship for all. I say “supposed” because this is the choice foisted on us by the right (which is seeking a populist rebirth, though not all that successfully), liberals (who are seeking the same but with a different bent), and the left (which as usual has been caught flat-footed by the protests and which has for the most part crudely instrumentalized the protestors).
Anyway, the protestors, from what I can tell, have largely refused to abide by these choices and are saying no both to being criminalized and to the treatment undocumented workers receive under the status quo. Hopefully I can get around to expanding on some of this soon.
Eric [April 17, 2006 @ 2:09 am]