when the city burns

reading the riot as collective resistance in black and brown europe. a ba thesis, and german/english notes

(Attendees of the Anniversary of the Deaths of Bouna Traoré and Zyed Benna in 2005 | Johnny Pitts, Clichy-sous-Bois, 2010 )

I’ve spent the last months writing my BA thesis on rioting in Western Europe, comparing cases from France and the UK with “riot-like instances” in Germany. The past weeks of European politics (riots in France, public swimming pools as the new site of racist culture clash in Germany - how original) seem like an absurd validation of my thesis. As I try to sideline all of my academic imposter bullshit, my BA thesis is now available to read online. Maybe there’s something useful there:

some context

A big, and difficult part, of this thesis was the challenge of engaging in a form of research and writing that were never created to hold radical thoughts or histories. For this reason (and many others), I wanted to make my paper accessible in different forms. I’ll add an excerpt here, attempting to explain this approach:

To write from a young, Black, anticolonial and feminist perspective also means recognising the limitations of written academic language. Some nuances of the conditions analysed in this paper cannot be adequately captured in this form. For this reason, the paper contains two interludes, interventions in the text consisting of film stills and song lyrics. The interventions function as a placeholder for that which cannot be said, as a break that resists analysis and interpretation, classification and definition. The lyrics are drawn from versions of the song “Blue Lights” by Black British artist Jorja Smith, collaborations made with French rapper Dosseh and German rapper OG Keemo. It is here, in hip hop music, that the link between the countries and communities examined in this paper closes. The film stills are drawn from Mathieu Kassovitz’s “La Haine” (1995), the cultural reference for riots and Black and Brown youth culture in Europe (Vincendeau, 2012).

The film and lyrics are, as interludes, a recognition of the fundamental role that hip hop culture, as “a critique of systems of oppression […] in a language that those connected to the oppression could understand” (Williams, 2008, p. 71), plays in the politicisation, expression and coming into consciousness of Black and Brown youth. The appendix, a playlist of songs that form a cultural frame of reference to the riot cases explored in this paper, follows this understanding and provides a musical alternative to accessing the themes of this paper.

Some interludes, visuals and more mind associations are collected here in this post - the long text form can be found above.

a playlist

an interlude

(Still from “La Haine” | Mathieu Kassovitz 1995)

Sag, wer schützt uns vor den Leuten, die uns schützen sollten?

Was, wenn Gesetzeshüter die Gesetze nicht befolgen?

Was, wenn die Exekutive tatsächlich exekutiert und danach nix rechtlich passiert, als würde es nix bedeuten?

Entweder liegst du unbequem im Leichenwagen oder guckst, wie weit dich deine Beine tragen

Lauf!

(Blue Lights x 216 | Jorja Smith, OG Keemo)

Tell me, who protects us from those who are supposed to protect us?

What happens when the guardians of the law don’t follow the law?

What happens when the executive actually executes and then nothing happens, as if nothing ever happened?

Either you’re stuck, uncomfortable in the hearse

or you see how far your legs can carry you

Run!

(Translation my own)

and a connection

It feels like a bizarre repetition, seeing so many of the things I’ve been researching happen in real time here in Berlin. So, a note in German, gathered a few days ago (and a published text as well), at the end:

Es ist so ein weirdes Level an Absurdität, so ein komisches Besserwissergefühl, sich seit Monaten mit Riots in Europa zu beschäftigen, die Kontexte und systemischen Grundlagen herzuleiten, die Verläufe der Riots 2005 und 2011 zu recherchieren, und jetzt täglich, in meiner, in unserer Stadt, mitzuerleben, wie der ganze Scheiß reproduziert wird.

Kürzungen an Sozialangeboten, an Freizeitorten, “kriminalitätsbelastete Orte” schon seit Jahren, die krass rassistischen Diskurse um gewalttätige Jungs, die Art, wie sich von allen Seiten Leute wirklich darauf einlassen, die Hitze, der Sommer, das dauerhafte Morden.

Das Gefühl, zwischen “Do the Right Thing” und “La Haine” eigentlich eh alles schon gezeigt zu haben. Und dann diese krasse Ohnmacht, das Gefühl, nichts machen zu können außer irgendwann “I told you so” zu sagen. Irgendwann wieder da zu stehen wenns eskaliert und zu erklären, warum man von nichts überrascht ist.

Das kann nicht der Loop sein, in dem wir uns alle Jahre wieder bewegen. Wir müssen vom überrascht sein, vom enttäuscht sein, weg (actually, weiter) kommen.

Learn your history, show up, lasst euch eure Straßen, Kieze, Freizeitorte nicht nehmen.

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