The War Against Preterrorism: The \u2018Tarnac Nine\u2019 and The Coming Insurrection
\nAlberto Toscano<\/p>\n
I. The Case<\/p>\n
On 11 November 2008, twenty French youths are arrested simultaneously in Paris, Rouen, and in the small village of Tarnac (located in the district of Corr\u00e8ze, in France\u2019s relatively impoverished Massif Central region). The Tarnac operation involves helicopters, one hundred and fifty balaclava-clad anti-terrorist policemen and studiously prearranged media coverage. The youths are accused of having participated in a number of sabotage attacks against the high-speed TGV train routes, involving the obstruction of the train\u2019s power cables with horseshoe-shaped iron bars, causing material damage and a series of delays affecting some 160 trains. Eleven of the suspects are promptly freed. Those who remain in custody are soon termed the \u2018Tarnac Nine\u2019, after the village where a number of them had purchased a small farmhouse, reorganised the local grocery store as a cooperative, and taken up a number of civic activities from the running of a film club to the delivery of food to the elderly. In their parents\u2019 words, \u2018they planted carrots without bosses or leaders. They think that life, intelligence and decisions are more joyous when they are collective\u2019.[1]<\/p>\n
Almost immediately, the Minister of the Interior, Mich\u00e8le Alliot-Marie, brushing aside Republican legal niceties, intervenes to strongly underline the presumption of guilt and to classify the whole affair under the rubric of terrorism, linking it to the supposed rise of an insurrectionist \u2018ultra-left\u2019 (ultra-gauche), or \u2018anarcho-autonomist tendency\u2019 (mouvance anarcho-autonome), filling in the vacuum left by the collapse of the institutional Left (the PCF). Invoking anti-terrorist legislation, the nine are interrogated and detained for 96 hours; four are subsequently released. The official accusation is that of \u2018association of wrongdoers in relation to a terrorist undertaking\u2019, a charge that can carry up to 20 years in jail; what\u2019s more, the accused might be detained for as long as two years before their case goes to trial. On December 2, three more of the Tarnac Nine are released under judiciary control, leaving two in jail, at the time of writing (early January 2009): Julien Coupat and Yldune L\u00e9vy.<\/p>\n
Giorgio Agamben and Luc Boltanski, among others, write editorials decrying the disproportion and hysteria of this repressive operation.[2] A petition is circulated by Eric Hazan, radical publisher and friend of Coupat, signed by Badiou, Bensa\u00efd, Butler, Ranci\u00e8re, \u017di\u017eek and several others.[3] In the city of Tarnac (a village proud of its role in the Resistance, and represented by a communist mayor for four decades) a combative committee of support is set up, conveying a virtually unanimous show of solidarity of the villagers with the arrested; other committees and protests emerge in Bruxelles, New York, Moscow, and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
MOAR HERE…<\/a><\/p>\n *A slightly abridged version of this text will appear in Radical Philosophy<\/a><\/em> 154.<\/p>\n Note that, according to some accounts in the French-language press, the remaining two prisoners, Julien Coupat and Yldune L\u00e9vy, have been subjected to sensory deprivation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The War Against Preterrorism: The \u2018Tarnac Nine\u2019 and The Coming Insurrection Alberto Toscano I. The Case On 11 November 2008, twenty French youths are arrested simultaneously in Paris, Rouen, and in the small village of Tarnac (located in the district … Continue reading