MAIS ABSOLUMENT ! BY FOCUS ON WHAT'S BASIC — AND LEFT OUT
As an American historian who has lived in Paris for decades, I'm struck by the belief that it is a "museum city" whose interest concerns mainly that past, and how basic aspects of that past are skipped.
These pages concern the differences between the city as commonly understood and the very different, far richer reality.
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Paris is celebrated for a number of extremely well-known sites, most in the historic center or wealthy west. But creativity has moved to the once-working class outskirts and their (almost) affordable rents...
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| Photos without credits are mine. |
A parade on the northern periphery.
That is where major cultural initiatives are launched...
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Establishment web site |
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| City Hall website © Raynaud de Lage |
A 10-day festival of un-stereotyped arts in the south.
Experiments tried...
Evoking A Midsummer's Night's Dream begins with the violinist on the other side of a street in La Goutte d'Or, considered a "no go zone" on the northern frontier.
And immigrant inventivity flourishes:
- Posters of haircuts, mustaches and beards on barbershop windows in Black neighborhoods brought "looks" that have been universally adopted.
For looks as an art of sociability please click here, for their origin in the hairdressers' signs of African markets here, for a philosophy of the unique individual as part of a wider society here and for La Goutte d'Or, the "Gaul"* neighborhood shown above that attracts African immigrants from the whole Paris region, here.
*Since French cities are now ethnically mixed and all are French citizens, that is the briefest way to indicate the original population.
- Color animates sober streets in Europe's largest "Chinatown" on the city's southeastern edge. Paris alone has a Chinese New Year parade.
Sortir à Paris : In 2025 tourism noticed the parade at last, but mainstream media said little.
It takes place in several parts of the city, most spectacularly on Avenue de Choisy in the 13th arrondissement (district).* This photo of 2025 shows that it draws in non-Asians and I found the crowds of Gauls so dense, in spite of cold and rain, that taking my own pictures was impossible.
* From now on I will simply say "13th," or whatever the district number, as Parisians do.
As a guide, I joined the Office of Tourism for seven years in the early 2000's and attended its talks on what visitors from different countries wished to find (Koreans seek, Italians seek...). They stressed the famous sites alone. I do not recall its ever being said that guides might at least mention the outskirts' creativity.
The media do not notice it either. The rare exceptions I have noticed are foreign.
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For the past, unmasking gaps can show a reality more complex than we think. This painting includes Black musicians centuries before we expect them:
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The Mariage of Saint Ursula by Cristovao de Figueiredo, toward 1525/ zoom* (please scroll down). |
*« Zoom » allows clicking to obtain the whole or enlarged image and information on it.
Avoiding fundamental events is another kind of absence. Take the city's 19th-century insurrections, which helped form the modern world:
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Liberty Guides the People by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cut to highlight the figures)
Many people think that these iconic figures are taking the Bastille (in 1789) though in fact the Revolution of 1830 inspired the work. It finished what the French Revolution began — letting capitalism take wing by crushing the nobles. But that is almost never mentioned. Capitalism isn't either.
The vast 19th-century space in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral makes the giant church seem smaller and less imposing than when medieval houses huddled up to it. Built after the first conscious working-class revolt (in 1848), the void let troops assemble to counter future upheavals. Guidebooks skip it.
The last and most tragic insurrection, the Paris Commune,* gave rebels 72 days to sketch out a society that was democratic, egalitarian and fraternal. A repression that foreshadows 20th-century calamities crushed them. Their memory still inspires.
*March 18-May 28, 1871
The Musée Carnavalet (the historical museum) presents them by mainly irrelevant works in a four-meter corridor between rooms devoted to elites.
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This « blook » — a book that uses the web like a blog — draws upon photos, paintings and drawings to make its points briskly. The index (under the menu on the right) gives immediate access to the main ideas.
Its sequel, History from fresh perspectives, shows how an economic approach to the past transforms the meaning of many events, and how it explains these omissions.
Links that show coming pages
appear at the end of every section's introduction.
Click on the first link to follow the progression,
or on that of a particular topic.
