Airbnb v. The Housing Question

By Kerry Mitchell

Part 2 of 2 

The gilets jaunes or “yellow vests” protests, driven by rural poverty and general economic stress, continue across France more than three months after they began. Policy adjustments put forward by the government have not succeeded in quelling the unrest. Rejecting these measures as insufficient, protesters contend that French President Emmanuel Macron is blind, uncaring, and/or out of touch with their concerns. Macron’s nationally televised address on the protests only reinforced this perception. He gave it from the ornately decorated salon doré, the “golden lounge” of the Élysée Palace, formerly a residence of French nobility.

This image of Macron parallels the one discussed in part one of this series (see below also). There, a smiling woman sat in a Burger King looking out onto the riots as she supposedly snapped a selfie. That image spread widely and was identified as emblematic of the “spirit of the times.” Likewise, Macron’s choice of setting was considered remarkably tone deaf and indicative of his inability to grasp the true scope and nature of the tensions driving the protests. In both cases, figures that should be quite aware of what’s going on around them appear hopelessly blind, rooted in a perspective that reflects their own position rather than engaging those they purport to see.

This blindness is not visual or informational. Rather it is a self-seeing that is both all-encompassing and impoverished. Such self-seeing sees the riots in the streets perfectly well. It may even understand the perspective of the rioters. But even when face to face with the rioter, or face to numbers with sophisticated socio-economic analyses, such seeing does not change the position of the seer. The other remains the other and the self remains the self. Self and other, even and especially in their collective dimensions (e.g., class), can communicate and empathize with near perfection and still remain in fundamentally different places with different conditions. Macron calmly explains his thinking from the salon doré of the Élysée Palace while the woman sits smiling under the protection of the Burger King. They both see quite clearly.

Ceci n'est pas un selfie

By Kerry Mitchell

Part 1 of 2

France has recently seen its most significant social unrest in decades, with hundreds of thousands of protesters taking to the streets since November 17. The “gilets jaunes” or “yellow vests” protests, named for the reflective vests that vehicles in France are required to carry, ostensibly erupted from the planned imposition of a new fuel tax. Designed to push people toward greater use of public transportation and the purchase of more fuel-efficient, lower-emission vehicles, this tax formed part of the administration’s efforts to mitigate climate change by helping France meet its emissions targets as per the Paris Agreement. French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to withdraw the planned tax and has offered other concessions, but protesters have indicated that their concerns are much broader than the single tax. They have called for Macron to resign among other more fundamental, wide-ranging reforms. While the protests have decreased in size from their original peak at around 300,000 people country-wide, they have also involved successively greater degrees of violence. Burned buildings and cars, looted shops, smashed windows, and general vandalism have accompanied the originally peaceful protests, as have battles between police and protesters. The ongoing protests, occurring predominantly on the weekends, have spread to six countries.