Season 2 Episode 5 - CODES

Bobo means bourgeois-bohème; a left leaning, culture loving elite. Kind of the French version of the hipster. Someone of or joining a more comfortable class who likes to dabble in the cultural spaces of the working class and/or ethnic groups. The bobo like the hipster is the boogieman of gentrification. No one wants to be bobo and yet we see them everywhere. And with their presence goes the neighborhoods we knew. This episode will be dispatches from and on the edge of Boboland.

Script

Jess 0:00

Hey this is here there be dragons. I'm your host Jess Myers.

Last episode we talked about “French hipsters” or bobos and the anxiety about being perceived as one. This episode we’ll be expanding our ideas about how people want to be perceived in public space. The stereotype of Parisians being stylish and glamorous trendsetters has a long history. But the more you get to know the city the more you see how style can be contentious. It often dances along the fault lines of gender, class, religion, race, and sexuality.[1] How people dress is directly influenced by how they want to be treated in public space.

{[1] Michel Foucault et al., Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78 (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan : République Française, 2007).}

The way you’re perceived in public can have huge part to play into how you’re treated. In the US, a recent example is all the different laws trying to ban trans gender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.[2] These laws don’t overtly aim to control the way people express their gender identity. Instead, gender identities of trans people are perceived as a security issue. The argument behind the law, as you probably already know, is that trans women may assault other women when they use women’s restrooms. What these laws suggest is that trans women are potential criminals. And by doing so, it essentially gives any establishment with restrooms the right to police not crime but identity and the expression of identity.  

{[2] The New York Times, “Understanding Transgender Access Laws,” The New York Times, February 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/transgender-bathroom-law.html.}

The identities and styles that are similarly policed in France have a lot to do with the politics we’ve discussed in past episodes. One example is headscarves worn by observant Muslim women.[3] Since France is a secular state, the law bans wearing religious symbols in state owned public space. In 2004 the French government passed a law that banned all religious attire in public schools. However, many saw this ban as targeting the headscarves that observant Muslim women wear. Just as with trans women and bathrooms, this ban has emboldened many French citizens to see Muslim women as criminals and foreigners when wearing these headscarves.[4]

{[3] Sylvie Tissot, “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space,” Public Culture 23, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 39–46, doi:10.1215/08992363-2010-014.

[4] Fernando Mayanthi, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 2014).}

Esther, who’s a young Jewish woman from the 7th arrondissment has noticed this shift. One day on the metro, she witnessed a Muslim woman being harassed for wearing a veil:

ESTHER 2:44

“Et par exemple, j’ai vu une scène justement dans le métro qui m’a profondément choqué…”

[Translation]

And for example, I saw a scene in the subway that really shocked me. There was a woman who was completely veiled. She had just a slit for her eyes. And a guy, I don’t know if he was homeless or what, but he came up to her and yelled at her saying "We don’t do that here, here it's a Republic, We don’t do that." And she was so shocked that she felt obliged to take off her veil. Even though the fact that she was wearing a full veil made me a little tense, this man’s reaction shocked me so much, it was so much more violent, so much more aggressive and I thought that it was really very insulting. It made me realize how much this woman had to suffer interactions like this. This mistrust has unfortunately increased with the rise of Islamist terrorist attacks, which many people associate in a, which many people associate in a excessive way to all of Islam . That’s just to say that any woman who wears a veil is going to be seen as a supporter of the Islamic state. While this is obviously not the case.

“Alors que c’est évidemment pas le cas…”

Jess 3:37

Many French citizens blur the difference between state owned public space and public space in general. Wearing a headscarf, or any kind of religious symbol in the metro is allowed. But Esther says that with the recent terror attacks, some people refuse to see the difference between practicing Islam and terrorism.

ESTHER 3:58

“…qu’on peut par exemple porter le voile…”

[Translation]

You can wear the veil and still represent French identity. But there are people who don’t think that. We have the impression that our identities in conflict.

Jess 4:07

Franck, who’s from a very homogenous and catholic town, was surprised when he first saw men wearing a kippa, the small cap that observant Jewish men wear or women wearing the hijab.

FRANCK 4:20

“Mes parents la première fois qu’ils sont venus voir…”

[Translation]

The first time as a kid when you see a kippah or the hair on Jewish men, the first time you see a veil. It's true that it wasn’t at all a part of my culture. We saw it on TV, but to see it in real life, the first few times I didn’t know how to react.

Today, I think these external signs don’t cause me any problems when it’s paired with a normal attitude. A girl who has a veil, but is laughing with her friends, she’s still a young a girl. A child who has his kippah on and runs in the street like a child doesn’t bother me.

“…ça, ça ne me dérange pas.”

Jess 4:54

France’s history as a catholic country plays into its views of secularism. In fact the French word for secularism. The word laicité, secularism, stems from the same root as layperson. Secularism is defined by not holding an ordained position. So in Catholicism there are strict rules about who is a layperson and who is ordained. This means that nuns may cover their heads in public because it’s a uniform as much as it is a religious garment.

However, in religions like Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism the line between lay and ordained can be blurred. Practitioners may have a roles in religious service. Those who represent the religion, pastor, rabbis or imams can marry and have children like lay people. But because these roles are not official, by a catholic framework, their symbolic garments become a problem. They can’t fit into France’s rigid conceptual framework for religion.[5]

{[5] Fernando Mayanthi, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 2014).}

In previous episodes, we talked about communities and minorities in France. We’ve also mentioned how some communities are allowed to exist and to be visible and some others are not. Franck also explained how the nation-wide debate about same-sex marriage showcased the double standard that exist between communities, this lead him to question his own community.[6]

{[6] Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, 2017.} 

FRANCK 6:18

“Après j’ai beaucoup de doutes et de recul par rapport à ma propre religion…”

[Translation]

I have a lot of doubts about my own religion. Especially with the demonstrations against same-sex marriage. I thought it was very aggressive of French Catholics to demonstrate their religion like that. It didn’t go over well with me at all. I thought it was extremely violent. I don’t think they realize the violence that it can instigate and the target they put on their backs. It seems to me that they feel totally protected, and I think that if it were Jews or Muslims who did demonstrations like that, there would have been very violent reaction against them, physically violent.

“…voire physiquement, physiquement violente.”

Jess 6:50

French Catholics like Franck feel free to express their religion without consequences but for others like Esther having their religion identified in public can be cause for anxiety. Here she talks about Barbès, a diverse area in the north of Paris.

ESTHER 7:06

“Plutôt Barbès…”

[Translation]

So Barbès, there’s a kind of hostility towards women. I don’t feel safe, as a girl and as a Jew. I’ve already been stopped several times in the street by people who’ve asked me "hey you, are you Jewish," and who will try to talk to me like that, it’s never something well intentioned, especially in France, where we have witnessed the rise of anti-Semitic acts during the last ten years so I know that it’s something that they can read on my face and I know it doesn’t always attract good things. So that's why I avoid places where, I know there’s hostility.

“…je sais que y a une hostilité.”

Jess 7:37

The original ban on public religious attire was enacted as a means to protect French secularism. But the issue has taken another meaning after the terror attacks of 2015 and 16. It’s being framed as a security measure. In the summer 2016, the terrorist attack in Nice was perpetrated by a man. As a response, officials from nearby beach towns in the south of France decided to ban the burkini, a modest wetsuit that observant Muslim women swim in.

I spoke with Professor Mehammed Mack whose book Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture talks about how the policing of gender and sexuality and the policing of national identity intersect.

MACK 8:24

My name is Mehammed Mack. I teach at Smith College in Northhampton Massachusetts. Um My book is called uh Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture. Um and it talks about how today in France um muslims, arabs, minorities, immigrants and children of immigrants’ um have their Frenchness and integration into France judged according to whether they possess the right attitudes about gender and sexuality more so than traditional means of measuring integration like ah civic aptitude or uh linguistic integration.

Jess 9:04

In our interview he talked about the ways that surveillance of minorities like women who wear hijab or the burkini are an extension of security politics.

MACK 9:13

Minorities are always overexposed. What they do is always under scrutiny, especially if you're an immigrant or a child of immigrants. You're expected to disclose everything about your private life as a form kind of surveillance.

When we had the whole episode of the you know the burkini scandal, it brought up counter examples, it brought up what're you gonna do about uh nun's on the beach, nuns who are bathing. Are they going to be uh subject to police identity check with weapons in the same way, right? Um what're you gonna do with people at ski resorts or are these posh places you know, where people you know are notoriously anonymous and cover themselves. And sometimes it shows that a lot of these laws are unenforceable but it also kind of brings up latent class and race elements because, of course, ski resorts and nunneries are not places where the threat of communitarianism uh looms.

Which is interesting because you know individualism might be important when there's a threat of communitarianism. But I would say overall in France you know assimilation is important. You know there's competing pressures, right?

So, on the one hand you're asked to distinguish yourself uh from your community and become individual and sort of make it in the city center and leave a kind of environment that is going to turn you into a clone of some sort. And on the other hand uh you know when you are in the city center there's a pressure for you to assimilate to uh French norms.

Jess 11:01

The way that a woman dresses, be it in religious attire or short skirts, has historically carried cultural and moral significance in public space. If they’re being too modest then maybe, they are expressing an identity that is perceived as conflicting with French national identity. If they’re wearing something too revealing, then their flouting a traditional and historically conservative culture.[7]

{[7] “Gender Trouble in France | Jacobin,” accessed February 18, 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/gender-trouble-in-france/.}

These constraints leave a very narrow path of freedom for French women to express themselves. The policing of woman’s clothing in general was a concern for many of women that I spoke to, who felt like their choices of clothing would encourage others to treat them disrespectfully or even violently.

Steffi, a young black freelancer living in Barbès a black neighborhood in North Paris, echoed some of Esther’s feelings about the neighborhood.

STEFFI 11:53

“Aujourd’hui j’habite à Barbès et clairement je sais que…”

[Translation]

Today I live in Barbès and clearly, I know that if I go out I know I won’t be left alone. So, there are two solutions. Either you put on the outfit you want to put on, you know that you are going to hear little remarks, so you deal with the fact that you’ll have to react to these comments. Or you want to be left alone, so you don’t put the outfit you had planned to put on, you put on a thing that’ll pass anywhere so people won’t piss you off.

“…partout et du coup on va pas te faire chier.”

Jess 12:25

Aurélie, a lawyer from Reunion Island, moved to Menilmontant neighborhood because of her experiences in neighborhoods around Barbès.

AURÉLIE 12:32

“Oui bah Porte de la Chapelle par exemple la nuit ça change…”

[Translation]

Porte de la Chapelle changes at night, the area around Goutte d'Or especially, I wouldn’t hang out too much over there. I don’t like being there all by myself. I don’t feel safe. I can’t dress the way I want. I lived there for a month, and I didn’t like it since there were a lot of drug dealers in front of my building. I couldn’t get back at 2 o'clock in the morning dressed in shorts or a skirt. It wasn’t possible.  

I know that if I go out in the 18th or the Goutte d'Or anyway, there’re only men in the street when you’re the only woman you’re watched, everyone is looking at you, and it's not nice, you feel unsafe. That's why I avoid going there.

“…c’est pour ça j’évite de passer par-là.”

Jess 13:14

Evelyne, a 24-year-old who works at an architecture firm in the Marais, believes like Aurélie that women have to pay attention not just to where they are and when but who they’re with.

EVELYNE 13:28

“Euh je pense que suivant les quartiers…”

[Translation]

I think that depending on the neighborhood you still have to pay attention to what you wear, especially being a woman because people are still likely to stare at you. I still wear dresses, still wear heels, but it’s true that I work in the Marais, which is a central district of Paris. If I had to go to Pigalle, I might not wear dresses or I would put on flats, depending on the neighborhood. You still have to pay attention to this dress code, which is a shame.

You also have to pay attention to the people that you’re with. I mean that if you’re in a big group, you say to yourself “I’m not risking anything,” so you can dress the way you want. But if you’re just two women, it’s true that you have to pay more attention because two women in the street who’re well dressed, people are more likely to stare at them, like men in the street. You don’t want to be bothered. And you don’t want to be told that you’re provoking people, so you have to be careful what you wear depending on where you’re going.

“…fonction de l’endroit où on va.”

Jess 14:22

For Isabelle, a 49-year-old health professional living in the eastern banlieue Noisy le Sec, it’s the people in public space that set off alarm bells.

ISABELLE 14:32

“…je suis très vigilante…”

[Translation]

I’m really vigilant. There are places in my city where my guard is up more, the way to the train station, well a stretch of road between the station and home, because of this atmosphere at the station where there are lots of young people who hang out. People who’re not necessarily from the city but who hang there. That’s something that puts me on aler,t so I’ll be very vigilant on this part of my way home and mainly in the evening.

“…je vais être très très vigilante sur ce bout de trajet-là et principalement le soir.”

Jess 15:03

The neighborhood you’re in, what time it is, how you’re dressed, who you’re with and who’s around you are all indicators that women constantly pay attention to when navigating the city. However, the security response to cat calling and harassment of women in public space is often deeply coded in identity as well.[8]

{les femmes à la reconquête de l’espace public,” Le Monde.fr, January 21, 2017, sec. Société, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/01/21/sexisme-harcelement-de-rue-mixite-les-femmes-a-la-reconquete-de-l-espace-public_5066521_3224.html.}

Cat calling is often seen a problem pervaded by working class communities and communities of color.[9] Although many women sited areas around Barbès, harassment exists everywhere in Paris.[10] Steffi told me about difference between her neighborhood Barbès and Saint Germain a wealthy touristy neighborhood in southern Paris.

{[9] Leland Ware, “Color-Blind Racism in France: Bias Against Ethnic Minority Immigrants,” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 46 (January 1, 2014): 185.

[10] “Designing Gender Into and Out of Public Space,” accessed January 21, 2017, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/designing-gender-into-and-out-of-public-space.}

STEFFI 15:44

“…le mec de Barbès il va pas te dire la même chose qu’un mec à Saint-Germain.”

[Translation]

The guy from Barbès is not going to tell you the same thing as a guy in Saint-Germain. They’ll both comment on your outfit, but not in the same way. You have one who’ll say "olala you're so pretty, can I get your number" And you have another one who will tell you "oulala you ought to cover up, You'll catch cold mademoiselle. " The “you’re so pretty,” that’s in the populaire neighborhoods.

If a boy walks past me in the street and thinks I’m pretty, he’ll tell me. He'll tell me in kind of an ugly way, he won’t be respectful, but he'll just tell me. It's pretty clear. In the trendy neighborhoods, they’ll do the whole show of being respectful. It’s paternalizing. I mean when someone who doesn’t know you from Adam says to you "olala you have to cover yourself you’ll catch cold" you want to tell him " I’m minding my business, I’m not your child, you don’t pay my bills, I don’t really see why you’re worried about how I’m dressed." There's no reason for him to do that.

“…Donc y a pas de raisons qu’il le fasse.”

Jess 16:46

As men see women’s discomfort in public space, how to they see their role in these environments? Here’s Léopold, a thirty-year-old journalist and editor.  

LÉOPOLD 16:56

It's also as a differentiation of the way men and women might experience the city, we should even be more precise, and that we shouldn't be saying almost gender conforming men and the rest of people. On the one hand, those are realities that we cannot deny. But on the other hand, the way women might feel in certain areas of the city have became very much an excuse for many politicians and journalists to entice a certain amount of hyper sexualization measures and racist discourses and sort of police targeting that it might involve.

Jess 17:30

In Professor Mehammed Mack’s book, he defines a term called “sexual nationalism” that describes what’s behind Léopold’s unease with the use of women’s experiences to push political agendas:

MACK 17:43 

What is sexual nationalism? It's when you expect of other or of recent arrivals to your country um a level of progressivism around gender and sexuality that you could not reasonably expect from your own people or from the nation. And it has- and in a way it's a little bit cynical, because people uh who invoke this kind of sexual nationalism are not really invested in women's rights or in gay rights, but they're invested in it because it provides the best tool to marginalize or further exclude new immigrants or minorities that are already in the country who may have already put in the work to be accepted as French or be accepted as European.

Jess 18:34

Leopold and Professor Mack raise an interesting point: do politicians really have women’s safety at heart or are they using women’s experience to benefit their agendas and to fuel a rhetoric that targets certain communities?

These conversations about women’s experiences made me wonder about gender more broadly in public space.[11] Do men feel similar constraints and pressures in public space? Does their self-expression tangle with these cultural conflicts?

{[11] “Harcèlement de rue : « Quand on est une femme en France, on est seule »,” Le Monde.fr, April 16, 2015, sec. Société, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/04/16/harcelement-de-rue-quand-on-est-une-femme-en-france-on-est-seule_4617354_3224.html.}

Anthony, a 26-year-old stock manager, talks about le regard – the look, a constant pressure of evaluation and judgment that we both give and receive in public space. Many of the residents I spoke to explained that this look can be particularly heavy in Paris.

ANTHONY 19:25

“…très honnêtement peut-être que c’est, alors y a peut-être deux billets qui jouent en fait par rapport à ma perception de cette chose-là.”

[Translation]

On the one hand I’m black and gay, so people staring at me is something that happens all the time. I can tell you that I pay less attention to it and I also play the game since I look at people too.  I overplay the game. It’s a thing that’s never bothered me more than that, this sort of game of impressions and looks. I think that sometimes I might be looking at other people. It's a bit of a cliché and a kind of psychosis.  

“…c’est un peu un cliché et c’est un peu une espèce de psychose aussi qu’on s’invente j’ai l’impression.”

ALEXANDRE 19:54

Sometimes to quote unquote protect myself if I ever feel threatened on a metro I'll look threatening, if that makes any sense.

Jess 20:02

Alexandre is a 25-year old French Filipino comedian, moved to Paris from Indonesia for school.

ALEXANDRE 23:12

I'll have my head down and I'll put a hoodie on. And just like, I am of no value, don't look at me kind of away. Because you know, sometimes it's just as I said earlier, just like groups of rowdy men just feel compelled to just scream and stuff. Just like okay, just look threatening or don't look like you're vulnerable.

I was at a comedy show and I had jeans and a soccer jersey on. And this girl she was just like, why do you wear that, and I go because reasons. And she's like oh well like it looks like you have the style of a racaille. I was like that's pretty fucked up.

It kind of shocked me because she was dressed nicely but regardless of how she dresses like why she felt compelled to say that.

Jess 21:00

Alexandre brings up a word that has been charged with political significance since the early 2000s.  Racaille is the French word for thugs in French. After the 2005 revolts in the banlieue, that we talked about in episode one[12], racaille was a word used to describe the young people who participated.

{[12] Jaap Dronkers, “ETHNIC RIOTS IN FRENCH BANLIEUES: Can Ethnic Riots in the French Banlieues Be Explained by Low School Achievement or High School Segregation of First and Second-Generation Migrants?,” Tocqueville Review -- La Revue Tocqueville 27, no. 1 (March 2006): 61–74.}

Nicholas Sarkozy, the former French president, famously used the word to describe the kinds of people who would be at the receiving end of his zero tolerance policing policies.[13] It’s a way of calling someone violent and worthless, a menace to society and is typically directed at men, especially men of color.[14] Meanings of the word have morphed over time, but it still remains a politically charged term.

{[13] Didier Fassin, Enforcing Order: An Enthography of Urban Policing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013).

[14] Cathy Lisa Schneider, Police Power and Race Riots (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014).}

Banlieue residents have organized against the violent perceptions of their neighborhoods for decades. This perception can lead to instances of police brutality.[15] In late 2016 and early 2017 this organizing was even reported in the US, after the death of Adama Traoré in police custody[16] and the brutal sexual assault of Théo during an identity check[17].

{[15] Bruno Levasseur, “De-Essentializing the Banlieues, Reframing the Nation: Documentary Cinema in France in the Late 1990s,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 6, no. 2 (August 2008): 97–109, doi:10.1386/ncin.6.2.97_1.

[16] Julia Pascual, “Mort d’Adama Traoré : un pompier contredit la version des gendarmes,” Le Monde.fr, September 14, 2016, http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2016/09/14/adama-traore-le-pompier-qui-contredit-les-gendarmes_4997787_1653578.html.

[17] “Affaire Théo : Manifestations Contre Les Violences Policières,” accessed March 21, 2017, http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2017/02/09/affaire-theo-manifestations-contre-les-violences-policieres_5076878_1653578.html.}

These instances explain the ways in which men have to balance their perception in public space, being careful to manage their whether they are being read as threating or vulnerable.[18] But we all have to balance multiple gazes in public form the police to our own neighbors.

{[18] Mack, Sexagon.}

Dannii, a 31-year-old insurance agent, talked bit about the construction of masculinity in her neighborhood in Epinay-sur-Seine, a banlieue to the North of Paris. Growing up trans there, she says she used certain dress codes to be perceived in different ways.

DANNII 22:43

“Je suis né homme et donc forcément je suis exposé tout de suite à ce code.”

[Translation]

I was born a man and I had to be exposed to this code right away, because I have to deal with the so-called combat of the gaze, that’s to say really which of the two of you will yield and will lower your gaze and submit to the other man. There’s this quote unquote cock fight that you have to face. Then there’s also the balance of power. What will I let out of my mouth so that the person in front of me will say OK that boy is dangerous.

At the time it was less focused on religion, it was much more on the bullshit we did in the banlieues, I mean stealing cars, burning cars, robbery, drugs. It’s trivialized, I really have to do it to be recognized because otherwise you’ll find yourself eaten alive in the banlieue and as a man, it’s really very dangerous, especially in difficult banlieues.

I preferred avoiding all that, private schools taught me differently, I saw things differently thanks to my friends with different perspectives. I was just playing with the way I dressed. My style made all the difference, it really allowed me to get through without really any injuries. I think I'm really blessed. I tried to swim with these sharks, without becoming a shark myself.  I mainly wear black, I avoid colors in the banlieue. That was my thing, it was black, gray, blue, those were my colors.

I haven’t had too many problems, despite my sexuality, my gender and everything.

“…malgré ma sexualité etc. mon genre et tout.”

Jess 24:11

For Franck, who grew up in a small white working class city far from Paris, it’s been tough navigating social classes in the city. He recalls being harassed by a homophobic man in the street, right when France was debating same-sex marriage.

FRANCK 24:27

“Et, et une fois à Bastille…”

[Translation]

Once in Bastille I went out to a dinner with a friend, it had to be half past midnight on a Saturday night, I was dressed very normally in jeans, a jacket, nothing extravagant and I had a bag, a plastic shopping bag with plenty of colorful stripes. You could see it as the gay pride flag. It's a "feel good” bag.

So, a man comes up and he grabbed me by my collar telling me "I'm sure you're a fag, Fags, I want them all dead!” And the man wasn’t drunk or anything. We were in the middle of legalizing same-sex marriage. I managed to escape. He was following me with his buddies. He said "yeah we're gonna fuck you up, fag! ". So I realized the strategies I could use, typically taking off my tie, always staying close to a group.

In some neighborhoods, I try to wear pretty neutral things, which is kind of a shame, I realized that this bag that I like so much can be kind of a signal. Sometimes I don’t care! I use my bag and then sometimes I'll take my black bag. It’s in the details of the style, I take off my tie, I even take off my jacket, just dark slacks and a shirt, and it works everywhere.

“…et c’est plus passe-partout.”

Jess 26:34

Both men and women, gay and straight, religious or not, of many racial identities use cloths as a means of signaling how they would like to be treated. As Franck just said this might mean concealing certain parts of your identity through your style of dress. Mawena came to realize how little the way people dress had to do with were they’re actually from. Through clothes’ we project how we want society to identify us.

MAWENA 25:57

“Après au début on pensait vraiment que quand on était dans le Marais…”

[Translation]

In the beginning we thought that when we were in the Marais we had to be stylish hipster fashionista types. Otherwise, when we were in the 13th we could wear our overalls and disgusting shoes.

But the more you grow up and the more you become Parisian, the more you realize that people don’t care or that it’s just an illusion. Because you realize that none of the people who go to the Marais to have a drink actually live in the Marais. They all live in Montreuil, in the 20th, they’re just young stylish assholes like you. And on the other hand, people who really live in the Marais, just get off work, go shopping and go home. But it’s not the people who live in these places who actually bring life to them.

There’s a difference between what you think of a neighborhood and [which] people kind of perform this neighborhood. I don’t think it’s a problem to go to an opening in the Marais without not having [these] codes, legitimacy actually comes from something else, it comes from your attitude, your references and just your interest in being in that place. But so it’s interesting because it’s really the work of self-definition.

“Mais du coup c’est intéressant parce que c’est vraiment un travail d’autodéfinition, c’est ça.”

[Music]

Jess 27:13

Many of the people that I spoke to for this show told me, sometimes repeatedly, that Parisians really move around their city. From the rich west to the working-class east there are jobs and homes and hang outs to get to. That means either wearing clothes where you blend in or expressing yourself and taking the risk. But as Mawena was saying, there are other means of signaling legitimacy, they don’t have to clash with tradition but update them.

This summer when I was taking the bus between two banlieues, Montreuil and Bagnolet, I saw a kid running to beat the bus to the bus stop. It was almost sunset during Ramadan, a holy month for observant Muslims and the middle of the Euro Cup and France was hosting the tournament. The kid, who was around 16 or 17, was wearing a long collared shirt called a djellaba, along with a pair of Air-Force 1s and a hoodie with Les Bleues, the French national soccer team emblazoned all over. When you think about it, this outfit is very French. There are few other places in the world wear you’ll find a teenager so fluid and so fluent between these different traditions and pop cultures. Only the history of France, it’s colonial past, it’s western influences, it’s faith in an unwieldy but talented national sports team, could have assembled this kid, this cultural cyborg.[19]

{[19] Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).}

So as much as we have to point out the codes that confine us, we should also know there are ways of subverting those codes and moving beyond them. Some people do it simply because they were born to do so. In the next episode we’ll be talking about a different set of constraints, not the ones be put on our bodies but the ones we put in our streets. The borders and that emerge in our cities and how we cross them daily.  

Thanks for listening this is Here There Be Dragons, I’m your host Jess Myers. Thank you to everyone who’s signed up for our newletter, you can do that on the website if you’re interested. That’s to everyone who’s commented so far, send us your comments at htbdpodcast@gmail.com or on twitter at dragons_podcast so we can incorporate them into the last episode. A huge thank you to my sponsors at MIT Council for the Arts, to Adélie Pojzman-Pontay who produces this show and to Cory Lee Jacobs for the original music. Subscribe and rate us on iTunes, Soundcloud, and Stitcher. For more Here There Be Dragons check out our website htbdpodcast.com and join us next time for more stories of fear, identity, and urban life.

[1] Michel Foucault et al., Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78 (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan : République Française, 2007).

[2] The New York Times, “Understanding Transgender Access Laws,” The New York Times, February 24, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/transgender-bathroom-law.html.

[3] Sylvie Tissot, “Excluding Muslim Women: From Hijab to Niqab, from School to Public Space,” Public Culture 23, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 39–46, doi:10.1215/08992363-2010-014.

[4] Fernando Mayanthi, The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism (Durham (NC): Duke University Press, 2014).

[5] Ibid.

[6] Mehammed Amadeus Mack, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, 2017.

[7] “Gender Trouble in France | Jacobin,” accessed February 18, 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/gender-trouble-in-france/.

[8] Feriel Alouti, “Sexisme, harcèlement de rue, mixité : les femmes à la reconquête de l’espace public,” Le Monde.fr, January 21, 2017, sec. Société, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2017/01/21/sexisme-harcelement-de-rue-mixite-les-femmes-a-la-reconquete-de-l-espace-public_5066521_3224.html.

[9] Leland Ware, “Color-Blind Racism in France: Bias Against Ethnic Minority Immigrants,” Washington University Journal of Law & Policy 46 (January 1, 2014): 185.

[10] “Designing Gender Into and Out of Public Space,” accessed January 21, 2017, https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/designing-gender-into-and-out-of-public-space.

[11] “Harcèlement de rue : « Quand on est une femme en France, on est seule »,” Le Monde.fr, April 16, 2015, sec. Société, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/04/16/harcelement-de-rue-quand-on-est-une-femme-en-france-on-est-seule_4617354_3224.html.

[12] Jaap Dronkers, “ETHNIC RIOTS IN FRENCH BANLIEUES: Can Ethnic Riots in the French Banlieues Be Explained by Low School Achievement or High School Segregation of First and Second-Generation Migrants?,” Tocqueville Review -- La Revue Tocqueville 27, no. 1 (March 2006): 61–74.

[13] Didier Fassin, Enforcing Order: An Enthography of Urban Policing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013).

[14] Cathy Lisa Schneider, Police Power and Race Riots (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014).

[15] Bruno Levasseur, “De-Essentializing the Banlieues, Reframing the Nation: Documentary Cinema in France in the Late 1990s,” New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film 6, no. 2 (August 2008): 97–109, doi:10.1386/ncin.6.2.97_1.

[16] Julia Pascual, “Mort d’Adama Traoré : un pompier contredit la version des gendarmes,” Le Monde.fr, September 14, 2016, http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2016/09/14/adama-traore-le-pompier-qui-contredit-les-gendarmes_4997787_1653578.html.

[17] “Affaire Théo : Manifestations Contre Les Violences Policières,” accessed March 21, 2017, http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2017/02/09/affaire-theo-manifestations-contre-les-violences-policieres_5076878_1653578.html.

[18] Mack, Sexagon.

[19] Gérard Noiriel, The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996).