In France, the dual trauma caused by the attacks of January 7 and November 13, 2015, led to the declaration of a state of emergency and the implementation of exceptional security measures such as house arrest, bans on demonstrations, and Law No. 2016-731 of June 3, 2016 (known as the “Urvoas Law”), which grants the police greater latitude in the use of weapons. It was against this backdrop that the law on labor, the modernization of social dialogue, and the securing of career paths (known as the “Labor Law”), introduced in February 2016 and conceived as a continuation of Law No. 2015-990 on growth, Employment, and Economic Opportunity (known as the “Macron Act”), was enacted on August 8 of that same year without a vote and at first reading by the National Assembly, pursuant to Article 49, paragraph 3, of the French Constitution, which allows the Government to force the adoption of a law. As early as February 2016, the introduction of the bill and the threat of “Article 49.3” sparked significant public opposition, which took the form of strikes and demonstrations, as well as the emergence of the “Nuit debout” movement, organized according to the principles of participatory democracy.

In support of reinstating the solidarity tax on wealth, against the “labor law,” against the increase in the domestic consumption tax on energy products, against pension reform, against the multi-year research programming law, against violence against women, against police brutality, or against racism...

All of these movements are accompanied by artivist practices (combining art and activism) and protest writings displayed on makeshift media (graffiti, banners, signs, clothing). This research project is dedicated to studying the formal properties of these texts, the conditions under which they emerge, and the social discourses that underpin them, the logics governing their creation and articulation, their modes of circulation and dissemination, and the ways in which they support imaginaries of insurrection. This imagination can be understood through the proliferation of spontaneous, parallel discourses of various kinds that accompany the official voice of a social movement by synthesizing it into accessible forms capable of ensuring wide dissemination of demands, but also of making visible the repression suffered by activists. The writings of protest rely as much on a collective and anonymous dynamic as on the ability to make use of homemade media; they foster the emergence of a lively voice, functioning as an outlet where lyrical, comic, and virulent impulses intersect.

The study of this type of discourse has so far been primarily the domain of sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, whose expertise is essential to this project; literary tools, for their part, open up innovative avenues for exploring the rhetoric of protest writings, as well as regarding the intertextual dynamics that drive them, their relationship to orality and the process of experimentation, the question of techniques and media, their relationship to space and time, the way they circulate, and their potential for longevity. These various points form the core of a study focused on the spontaneous protest writings in France from 2016 to 2022. These chronological markers allow us to capture a specific, coherent, and evolving moment, spanning from the initial opposition to the “labor law ” (for which E. Macron himself had laid the groundwork before calling for labor code reform upon his election in 2017) to the end of the incumbent president’s first term: the social movements that have emerged since the starting point speak out against the neoliberal management of the state, against forms of systemic domination, and against the repression they face.

This project was the subject of an international symposium and a special issue published in the Le Fond de l’air series on Fabula.