MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
As an American historian who has lived in Paris for decades, I'm struck by how what we are usually taught overlooks the very different, far richer reality.
- These pages start by revisiting some of the famous sites and introducing more that are passed over...
The Saint-Denis gate, whose meaning has been largely forgotten.
- Continue with outskirts and the creativity that affordable rents and immigrants bring.
- Stress the mid-19th century insurrections, which even schoolbooks and the historical museum barely touch.
- End with a usually overlooked area (the 13th district) where the dramatic past is forgotten yet indelible.
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TRAILERS
I.
THE OUTSKIRTS:
PLACES WHERE CREATIVITY BLOOMS
Paris harbors an immense number of artists in all domains, most of whom are foreign-born and live not in the places once associated with them (Saint-Germain, Montmartre, Montparnasse) but in the unsung periphery, where rents are lower. The painter whose drawings dot these pages, Harald Wolff, is an example: He is German and lives in Montreuil, a plebeian suburb of the city's far east.
Harald Wolff
Those outlying areas are where major cultural initiatives are often launched (for examples, please click here and here) and experiments tried (for a performance that made the streets the stage, click here).
La Goutte d'Or, a part-African neighborhood at the city's northern edge, embodies newcomer energy. It boasts an effervescent small-scale couture industry. And it is a cauldron for the sociable art of appearance — i.e., making one’s physical “look” a composition.
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Uncredited photos are mine. |
Seen on rue Doudeauville, "Main Street"
This energy explains the barbershops and beauty salons, the stores selling the bright prints associated with Africa, the young tailors behind their sewing machines.
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Barbershop windows propose innumerable coiffures, by posters that are heirs of signs in African markets. When soccer players adopted the cuts to be identified on television during the 2014 World Cup, they immediately spread world wide.
Hair, beard and mustache styles have taken off in the Black barbershops ever since, the much rarer establishments in other neighborhoods timidly following.
"Art must reveal a philosophy. Otherwise it is just decoration," an art critic told me. The coiffures, beards and costumes express an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness, and the signs imply a context of a homogenous, supportive community.
Traditional shops reflect that philosophy. How the shops' offerings are presented does not matter since clients come because they know the vendors, and stay to keep them company. Good humor is omnipresent, and for an example of kindness when I least expected it, please click.
People support each other: that’s key to surviving in an often harsh European world.
II.
THE INSURRECTIONS:
MANY PEOPLE THINK THESE ICONIC FIGURES
ARE STORMING THE BASTILLE (IN 1789)...
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Liberty Guides the People by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cut) / zoom
In fact, the Revolution of 1830 inspired the work. Its three days of combat finished what the French Revolution had begun: eliminating nobles' power, which let capitalism take wing. That is almost never mentioned. Capitalism isn't either.
Insurrections were at the core of Parisian history for the next 40 years. They helped form our world, and much of the city's beauty comes from transformations meant to facilitate their repression. For a story that used to be taken for granted but now is almost never told, please click here. For how it has become even more glossed over, here.
The last and most tragic upheaval led to the Paris Commune, when inexperienced young leaders whom humble people backed ran City Hall from March to May 1871.
Proclamation of La Commune, March 26 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
In spite of war with the national government, a siege, and the flight of most seasoned administrators, they kept the continent's largest city (one million residents) running. They also sketched out a vision for a genuinely democratic society under workers' control.
"They failed because of their great decency" said Marx of these idealists. Indeed, they did not touch the gold the fleeing government left, their nurses tended the wounded on both sides, and they used scarce revenues to succor widows whose men died fighting for their opponents.
Their merciless repression foreshadows 20th-century calamities.
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| A Versaillais Firing Squad during Bloody Week, by V. Sarday, reproduced by "Friends of the Paris Commune" /zoom ("Versaillais:" The regular government had fled to Versailles.) |
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The victims' unyielding resistance in this later painting comes from illustrations of the time and from grudging respect even from adversaries.
La Commune still inspires the left...
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| Commemorative parade, 2021 |
But otherwise it is passed over.
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This is a "blook" that, like a blog, uses the web to make its points briskly through headlines and pictures. The index, under the menu on the right, gives immediate access to the main ideas. Contents lets you click directly into specific pages. Epilogue suggests their wider relevance.
Its sequel, History from fresh perspectives, shows how an economic approach to the past transforms the meaning of many events, and suggests the reason for omitting it.
There's space for comments at the end of each page: I would love to know what you think. Political remarks are welcome.
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Links toward what follows
introduce each section.
Click on the first to follow the progression,
or on that of a particular topic.
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