University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Open Access Dissertations 9-2011 French Postcolonial Nationalism and Afro-French Subjectivities Yasser A. Munif University of Massachusetts Amherst, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations Part of the Sociology Commons Recommended Citation Munif, Yasser A., "French Postcolonial Nationalism and Afro-French Subjectivities" (2011). Open Access Dissertations. 479. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/open_access_dissertations/479 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ! FRENCH POSTCOLONIAL NATIONALISM AND AFRO-FRENCH SUBJECTIVITIES A Dissertation Presented by YASSER A. MUNIF Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY SEPTEMBER 2011 SOCIOLOGY ! ! ! © Copyright by Yasser A. Munif 2011 All Rights Reserved ! ! ! FRENCH POSTCOLONIAL NATIONALISM AND AFRO-FRENCH SUBJECTIVITIES A Dissertation Presented by YASSER A. MUNIF Approved as to style and content by: __________________________________________ Agustin Lao-Montes, Chair __________________________________________ Joya Misra, Member __________________________________________ Millie Thayer, Member __________________________________________ Henry Geddes, Member _________________________________________ Don Tomaskovic-Decey, Department Head Department of Sociology ! ! ! DEDICATION For my parents and Elsa ! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Agustin Lao-Montes, for his graciousness with his analytical insights and his time in overseeing the writing of this dissertation. During the years I spent at the University of Massachusetts, Agustin showed a tremendous amount of intellectual generosity and moral support in my regard. I am also deeply grateful to Joya Misra, Millie Thayer, and Henry Geddes who provided support in many different ways during the different stages of the dissertation. They provided valuable comments that have helped me express myself more cogently and have pushed me to delve deeper into my analysis and thinking. I want to express my gratitude to my mentors and teachers at the University of Massachusetts and beyond: Talal Asad, Ann Stoler, R. Radhakrishnan, and James Cohen. Their mentorship has challenged my thinking and opened my eyes to new ways to apprehend the world. My two years of fieldwork in Paris would have not been possible without the invaluable contributions of many activists, social workers, municipal employee, residents of public housing, youth, and various social actors I met in Clichy-sous-Bois. I will not disclose their names to protect their identity but their stories have taught me more than I can thank them for. I was also lucky to meet and be welcomed by Les Indigènes de la République, many of whom became close friends. They provided me with valuable information regarding the conditions of brown and black communities living in France. My diasporic Parisian friends, Sadri Khiari, Hassan Mezin, Houria Bouteldja, Stella Magliani-Belkacem, Youssef Boussoumah, Hajar Alem, Ziad Barakat, and Samir Abdalla, as well as Belgian friends, Sarah Bracke, and Nadia Fadil have not only been supportive of my work but also welcoming me in their circles of decolonial thinking and postcolonial struggles. I am indebted to many friends at the University of Massachusetts. They provided critical comments on my work and inspired me throughout the years I lived in Northampton. Todd "! ! Evans, Srinivas Lankala, Swati Birla, Ilgin Erdem, Aaron Winslow, Hasan Comert, Erika Marquez, Ozlem Goner, Ghazah Abassi, Vanessa Adel, Annette Hunt, Kathleen Hulton, Carlos Valderrama, Sirisha Naidu, Peter Manolakos, Aurora Vergara-Figueroa, Abby Templer, Jung Yup Lee, Megan Tady, Brian Baldi, Lesley Yalen, and Jeff Napolitano and many others have supported me, each one in their own way: constructive criticism, humor, “ethnic” food, underground music, fascinating discussions, and tactical grassroots activism. I am also highly indebted to my friend Jed Murr who came to visit me in France and Belgium in the early stages of my fieldwork. Since then, we have had countless passionate conversations about the French Empire and its colonial peripheries in Paris, Brussels, Leuven, Los Angels, Seattle, and Northampton. This dissertation was completed in the summer of 2011 after the birth of my daughter Yara and many sleepless nights. The few last pages were written while I was holding Yara in one hand and typing on a keyboard with another. I wish to thank Elsa Wiehe, my intellectual partner and beloved spouse, for taking care of our baby while I was writing. Without her affective, intellectual, and moral support, I wouldn’t have been able to finish on time. Elsa supported my work throughout the years while she challenged my ideas productively in every way possible especially during our frequent walks in downtown Northampton. My gratitude goes also to Emilie and Kathryn Wiehe for taking care of Yara in the most critical moments. Finally, I would like to thank my family, Azza, Laila, Hani, Amr Salahieh, Iyad Charchar, and Salma Alazmah for their continual support and my wonderful mother and father for their patience and encouragements. "#! ! ABSTRACT FRENCH POSTCOLONIAL NATIONALISM AND AFRO-FRENCH SUBJECTIVITIES SEPTEMBER 2011 YASSER MUNIF, B.S., UNIVERSITY OF BALAMAND M.S., UNIVERSITY OF BALAMAND Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Agustin Lao-Montes This research examines urban renewal in Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburb of 30,000 inhabitants located in the northeast of Paris. It studies the modalities of spatial racialization, nation building, and subject formation among Afro-French young men living in the city. It also builds on a world-historical perspective to explore the diasporic webs in which the lives of Afro-French are embedded. Taking spatial racialization as a point of entry, the study attempts to understand how governmental strategies and urban policies regulate lives and residential patterns in the city. Three lines of investigation are pursued: 1) an examination of Afro-French racialization and genealogies; 2) an analysis of narratives and struggles of these communities and their impact on neoliberal spaces; 3) an exploration of the various ways spatial governmentality constrains and/or produces Afro-Frenchness. The primary purpose of this ethnographic research is to comprehend the French colonial history and its impact on the racialization of diasporic Afro-French living in metropolitan "##! ! France. For this end, the study proposes the notion of “Afro-French,” an analytical concept that designates a constellation of groups from Sub-Saharan, North African, and Caribbean origins. The term provides a heuristic to comprehend the urban and cultural experiences of diasporic sub-groups who have different but overlapping genealogies. Second, the project helps understand why Afro-French living in Clichy-sous-Bois embody and at the same time transgress official narratives of the nation. It argues that France’s nationalism, like other forms of European nationalisms, is facing a contradictory moment in the neoliberal conjuncture. On the one hand, discourses about liberalization of the economy involve the deployment of narratives that celebrate mobility and flexibility. This new dependence on a global neoliberal economy destabilizes national economies and erodes the state’s structures. On the other hand, state actors diffuse identitarian and xenophobic discourses that blame ethnic and religious minorities for the socio-economic crisis. Third, the study argues that spatial governmentality and urban strategies enable certain aspects of Afro-Frenchness but constrain others: there is no homogenous or unified logic to regulate lives and spaces in Clichy. "###! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................................ v ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................... xii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.Context............................................................................................................................... 1 1.1.1. Afro-French: A New Ethnicity? ............................................................... 2 1.1.2. The history of the Banlieues...................................................................... 4 1.2.Research Objectives......................................................................................................... 5 1.3.Urban ethnography.......................................................................................................... 7 1.4.Research Methodology.................................................................................................... 8 1.4.1. Archival Research.......................................................................................