MAIS ABSOLUMENT!
What conventional accounts of Paris and its history leave out is as important as what they say.
This alternative is divided into two parts :
- Part I deals with those absences. They include urban designs that seem to make no sense, a history that downplays royal grandeur and insurrections and the exuberant outskirts and immigrant neighborhoods that are revitalizing the city.
- Part II shows how attention to the underlying economic base changes views of the past and suggests why so much is omitted.
These "blooks" (books-blog) make their points briskly through headlines and pictures. Contents gives the complete list of topics, which the Menu summarizes. Index gives immediate access to the main ideas. History that illuminates shows their relevance now.
* *
A French-American who has lived in Paris for decades, a professor of history in the U.S. and until covid a tour guide here. I'm now a historian again. Once a member of the Office of Tourism (for seven years), I know the usual ways of presenting the city well.
There's space for comments at the end of each page: political discussions welcome.
BLOOK I.
1. AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT'S OMITTED:
THE ENIGMA OF THE VOID
BEFORE NOTRE-DAME CATHEDRAL
The space was meant for massing troops in case of insurrection. That used to be explained. Not anymore.
 |
Twelth century, Grez computer image |
Claude Abron
Uncredited photos are mine.
2. KINGS' GRANDEUR AND ELITES' DREAD OF INSURRECTION
EXPLAIN THE CITY'S ALLURE.
BOTH ARE IGNORED
Pamela Spurdon
Louis XIV in the courtyard of the Louvre.
Louis XIV created an urban design that by linking the Louvre palace with the horizon symbolized the endless power. Modern capitals copy it, but it is rarely mentioned.
The 17th-century kings created the long straight streets that draw the eye to a monument; the five royal places whose design was taken up throughout Paris and France; a church that makes obedience to monarchy the key to salvation and became the model for those that followed; a bridge where crowd-attacting performance spaces attracted crowds; at its center the first secular statue, of the dynasty's founder, who surveils those crowds on horseback.
The reason for their neglect is suggested here.
Terror of insurrections led to transforming the city to facilitate repression.
That's said in passing or not at all, and the upheavals themselves are as much as possible omitted. Many people even think that these iconic figures are storming the Bastille, though the forgotten Revolution of 1830 inspired the work:
_-_WGA6178.jpg)
La Liberté guide le people by Eugene Delacroix, 1830-1831 (cropped) / zoom*
*Clicking on "zoom" leads to the original image and information about it.
The last, most tragic and most important upheaval, that of the Paris Commune, happened when military defeat and government myopia led young idealists to take control from March to May 1871. In spite of the flight of seasoned administrators, siege and war but backed by the poor, they kept the continent's largest city (population a million and a half) running for 72 days and sketched out a genuinely democratic society.
Proclamation de la Commune le 26 mars 1871, anonymous engraving / zoom
The name "Bloody Week" recalls the ferocity of their repression:
Un Peloton d'exécution [firing squad] pendant la Semaine sanglante [Bloody Week] by V. Sarday / zoom
A painting made a generation later, based on prints of the time and opponents' grudging statements of respect.
The imprint of La Commune was world-wide. It still inspires the left.
 |
| Commemorative parade, 2021 |
The social conflict that permeates Paris's past is now largely skipped. The musée Carnavalet (the historical museum) presents the French Revolution as almost peaceful, shows 1830 fighters as elegant youth of the middle class, relegates 1848 to a single sentence at the back of a room, turns its barricades into a game for kids and sandwiches La Commune into a four-meter passage that a portrait of a Communard's later girlfriend takes up in part. Even the museum of a Social-Democrat municipality shows the upheaval largely from the victors' point of view, and an official panel on the site where La Commune began tells an impossible story while leaving it out.
But things are changing.
3. THAT GIANT ADS AND BRANDS
HAVE INVADED THE CENTER IS NOT SAID,
OR THAT CREATIVITY HAS LARGELY MOVED
TO THE OUTSKIRTS.
The once miserable 13th district on the city's southeastern fringe is now a hub of innovative art that hosts two festivals.
One is ten days of new or popular arts. The other is the three weeks of the Chinese New Year. Some media finally noticed its giant parade after 40 years (in 2025), but still ignore its other festivities. The Vietnamese parade that takes place six months later is still less known.
 |
| Lights under the the aerial métro, created by popular vote for 2026. |
 |
| Street show the day before the parade |
4. IMMIGRANT ENERGIES
ARE ALMOST ENTIRELY ERASED
Low prices of the market under the aerial métro and the ribbon of Muslim shops that runs along it make Maghrebin Barbès one of the most ebullient parts of the city. During Ramadan, gourmet specialties sold next to the tracks draw cheerful crowds.
* *
La Goutte d'Or, the largely African area north of Barbès, is a heartland of urban and world music, and a place where an amiable art of communication through personal appearance flourishes:
 |
| The concert will last until 4 a.m. |
 |
| On rue Doudeauville, "Main Street" |
.jpg) |
| Typical poster of one of the innumerable barber shops. |
The Communards (more below) defined art as any creation that adresses the public and is done with passion, and an esteemed critic said, "Art must express a philosophy, or it is just decoration."
By expressing an upbeat affirmation of individual uniqueness in the context of a homogenous, supportive community, such "looks" fit those definitions and suggest a view of human relationships to ponder.
BLOOK II :
AN ECONOMIC AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL
APPROACH TO HISTORY
More here.
 |
A Royal Army on the March,16th-century tapestry (detail), Renaissance Museum |
 |
|
Royal cavalcades.
* *
This blook includes drawings by Harald Wolff.
Like the vast majority of Parisian artists he is foreign (German), and lives not in the places associated with them (Saint-Germain, Montmartre, Montparnasse) but in a plebeian suburb (Montreuil) where rents are lower. So he fits the city that these pages describe.
No comments:
Post a Comment