From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 21:12:22 EST
---------------------------- Original Message ------------------------- Subject: [OPE-L] [Jurriaan] Derrida's ghosts From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <adsl675281@tiscali.nl> Date: Mon, November 7, 2005 4:38 pm ----------------------------------------------------------------------- >France burns and Derrida's ghosts are discussed. Paul Z. Well - bit of blog - I rang my sister tonight, who happens to live with her French husband and two kids in a village on the outskirts of Paris, and I asked her about the car, and the car was fine, they could park it inside, and they had shuttered some windows. Chirac had been on TV yesterday, but he seemed a bit nonplussed about it all, sort of like, how could this happen in patrie de la France? At night, she could hear the sirens and explosions, it woke up her 6 year old son, who was read a story, and put back to bed. In the adjacent village, a school had been burned down, and in the province, a man had died after being beaten up. This evening, Villepin was on TV, but "he talked rather formally, rather than directly in the language of the people". There was "little specifics in what he said". "There is this mentality in France, that the state should do everything and solve problems, and less an idea that people have their own responsibility for their kids." There were now about 9,500 policemen on active duty, but they hadn't brought out the army, and there were no orders to shoot on sight. Things seemed to have calmed down a little. "It's clear that they can repress all this, but whether fining and jailing the offenders solves anything, that is the question, I'm afraid that probably it doesn't." Villepin did talk, however, about pumping more money again into the Banlieus, building new dwellings, and returning more power to the mayors. My sister said "each year, they raise the resident's taxes, yet also reduce municipal services at the same time; since recently, there is no longer any police stationed in this village". I asked Sis how she felt about it all. "Last night we were a bit nervous. You feel uncertain, should I send my boy to school?" but he went to school anyhow. She mused, "it is good, that it is being brought into the open, because you know, the racism is real, and now they're talking about it on TV, I never heard them talk about it before, so clearly." I asked, whether there would be some neighbourhoods that she would regard too dangerous to visit, and she said "sure thing". She added, "it's a difficult change in mentality for the French... the paradox is, that the rampaging kids are burning down stuff in their own neighbourhoods, there was this story of a guy who worked as a cleaner with a $2,000 euro car, that he needed to get to the other side of Paris and feed his family, but they burnt his car, so the whole thing is rather indiscriminate, unfocused... yet, you can't help feeling that the whole rampage is being organised, I don't know by whom though." We chatted a bit about family stuff, and she said, her son was now correcting her own French, and was doing very well at school. "Marveilleux. A bit different possibly from many of the Africains and Arabes in the Banlieus, a lot of these kids live between two worlds, they get one story at home, and another one at school, and maybe they identify with neither very much. It's a complex situation, yes." Jurriaan
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