The Shambles of Nanterre
Alia, Josette
The following article is reprinted, with permission, from Le Nouvel Observateur (Numero 278, and copyright © Le Nouvel Observateur, 1970). This independent weekly, printed in Paris, has in the...
...In his view, both were ill-chosen: in the face of police, helmeted and armed with clubs, the revival of the students' united front was inevitable...
...Either we did nothing, in which case violence would assume such proportions that the University would be smashed to smithereens...
...Parallel to this almost unhoped-for student regrouping (the leftists, in any event, had given up hope for it under "normal conditions"), one could observe a definite THE SHAMBLES OF NANTERRE hardening in the attitude of the police...
...By Monday afternoon, the large mass of moderate and apolitical students were drawn into the conflict...
...Vive la Revolution, or VLR (Long Live "TRADITIONAL" PARTIES the Revolution): Militants, organized around Les Etudiants Socialistes Unifies, or ESU the group's newspaper, which has the same (United Socialist Students): Includes stu name...
...would live...
...Toward seven o'clock in evening, the order to "throw the grenades" unleashed an explosion of hatred that quickly got out of bounds...
...In the morning, the police stationed around the campus men from the so-called intervention squads—in police jargon, the first reserves— and also men from the mobile police, or second reserves...
...Nouveau...
...As to the political balance sheet: in two afternoons, police intervention succeeded in re-forming the unity of the fractured student movement...
...Le Monde also meant his longtime friend Beuve-Mery, and his peers, Christian humanists of the Left...
...But the haste with which Minister of the Interior Raymond Marcellin threw himself into the breach that had been incautiously opened to him left Ricoeur, oddly enough, with one chance...
...The most serious incident was a brawl between a Maoist and a Communist group, after which a regular member of the Confederation Generale du Travail [the COT—the French trade union movement dominated by the Communists] had been JOSETTE ALIA taken to the hospital with a double skull (1) It was agreed that the Dean would fracture...
...In other words, the police could intervene at Nanterre, as they do on all public thoroughfares in the event of violence...
...His article "Power and the State" appeared in DISSENT, Winter 1958.--En...
...MAOISTS supporting the theory that the revolution will come from the Third World...
...O O N FEBRUARY 20 his wager seemed lost...
...the impossibility of the Faure reform...
...It was all for one and one for all...
...to restructure society without having to integrate violence in his philosophy...
...it would work if reformism, even revolutionary reformism, were to carry the day against the theory of imminent revolution...
...Do you wish additional steps, or different steps, to be taken...
...Very it describes as petty-bourgeois...
...everybody was behind us...
...active...
...that is to say, if those who wanted to "smash" the University (the Maoists) were isolated or, more exactly, rendered incapable of action...
...I'm not exaggerating...
...students would return docilely to peaceful studies at a university finally purged of the May gangs—for which read purged of the Faure reform law, which at the same time could be publicly branded a "failure...
...The following article is reprinted, with permission, from Le Nouvel Observateur (Numero 278, and copyright © Le Nouvel Observateur, 1970...
...and it was also a dilemma for the government, which found itself trapped by its own machiavellianism and violence...
...But this time as a hot problem, in the context of a seriously deteriorating situation and with minimum time for a response...
...With regret, rather: what revolutionary potential was being ruined, what energy misdirected and wasted...
...L'Humanite Rouge, or HR (Red HumanMaintains tactical alliances with the LC...
...He was trapped...
...That day, his assistant Rene Remond read a "startling" report before the university's Administrative Council: it enumerated the ideological, politically inspired misdemeanors, attacks, assaults, beatings, and rapes committed on the Nanterre campus during the previous two weeks...
...The vote endorsing the need for this alarm After long discussions, the Council came signal was 35 in favor, one abstention...
...In effect, it was the Right that was threatening to close Nanterre, and for the last three months the Right had been gaining adherents in the Council...
...The police glowered but obeyed...
...Apparently out of control, they were yelling "Kill 'em...
...Logically, one would then see the end of splinter groups and the beginning of realignments in anticipation of a perhaps seriout but constructive opposition...
...They don't last three months...
...Ricoeur's S.O.S., made public on Thursday, February 26, was the signal...
...Most often it was activism for the sake of activism...
...May 1968 seemed again on the horizon...
...When the police saw some students arrive helmeted and carrying bulging bags, they asked the Prefecture for instructions...
...One thing is sure: between February 20 and 27, maintenance of order by police on the Nanterre campus had been meticulously planned in the course of a very special meeting at the Prefecture of Police...
...Did Ricoeur believe that...
...And what a coalition...
...others Trotsky...
...And so Ricoeur drained his bitter cup...
...They publish a newspaper, La of the LC except in its analysis of the nature cause du peuple...
...We believed we had found a middle-of-the-road solution in calling for a form of intermittent control...
...That Friday, police vans arrived at Nanterre...
...Committees at the University, which are RIGHTISTS responsible for establishing liaison between the student body at large and the League's La FNEF (National Federation of Frenchcells...
...Throughout his life, Ricoeur has been an engage...
...Perhaps JOSETTE ALIA not...
...The militants do what they call "drumming...
...The student was no longer a demonstrator, he was an enemy...
...This independent weekly, printed in Paris, has in the past been decidedly sympathetic to student revolt...
...Or we closed down—which would mean the end of the Nanterre experiment, with all the political consequences that implied...
...Accordingly, as of Tuesday evening it was clear that, given the scope of the student reaction, Marcellin had erred...
...One answer may be that, commencing this past February and continuing for a period of weeks, Nanterre again exemplified all the dilemmas and dramas that are the lot of French universities today...
...It must be said—and why not?—that since May 1968, the student movement had disintegrated...
...THEY DREAM...
...In a word, the "treaty" amounted to reestablishing the famous consensus that had made the pre-May 1968 University a society apart, a society without infractions, work interruptions, or police...
...In attendance were certain members of the Administrative Council of the University, representatives from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of the Interior, and some co-workers of Maurice Grimaud, the Paris Prefect of Police...
...What else have you to propose...
...We've got to stand by him," one of them said...
...Well-organized and active...
...national organization publishes the news-Le GUD (Group Union Right) : Extreme paper Rouge...
...Oh yes, a beautiful dream .. They are not so numerous on campus but they will fight for their "toehold" in the factories "till doomsday...
...Friday was marred by nothing more than a few incidents...
...But at least the regulation would not be acted on if there were no further incidents...
...There were more casualties, more threats against life in two days than in two trimesters of unrest...
...But the most painful blow of all was still to come...
...a pal of ours, unfortunately taken over by the Revisionists" (Proletarian Left...
...Some shouted "Mao...
...But the "provocations" did not materialize...
...Immediately, the leftists reacted and attacked...
...The reply was, "Don't intervene...
...We need hardly emphasize for our readers the various parallels between Nanterre and American universities...
...They blocked the passage of an ambulance and clobbered and crushed everything that came within reach—including automobiles and one innocent parking attendant...
...They stamped up and down in front of the buildings they were forbidden to enter and from which they were receiving a deluge of assorted projectiles...
...You, as the elected dean, together with the elected administrative council are, by terms of the university reform bill, responsible for maintaining order in your schools," the Minister said, in substance...
...Marcellin seemed to be hoping for a great deal— or so it is said...
...ity) : The moving spirits behind a news L'Union des Etudiants Communistes, or paper of the same name who stress coUEC: Publishes Le Nouveau Clarte and operation between workers and students...
...But by February 20, Paul Ricoeur knew he had lost...
...Paul Ricoeur, who has since resigned as dean of Nanterre's Faculty of Letters, is a man of high intellectual distinction and moral probity...
...They believe and Critical Research) : Consists of various in no specific group dynamic...
...As Ricoeur explained later, We were caught in a dilemma...
...They fell on us without warning," Ricoeur said...
...He was ill and depressed...
...Abandoned by everyone, would he resign...
...Urgesthing as a university strategy, only a univer-strikes in protest against leftist "provocasity tactic of a revolutionary strategy...
...The appeal for police "protection," even though indirect, had been an error weighted with consequences...
...There was, furthermore, a specific preoccupation: the Ministry of National Education—Guichard is a prudent man—did not want to see Nanterre closed down, for then 15-20,000 students would inundate Paris like a wave, and they would be rebellious, ready for action—and armed...
...He pushed this line of reasoning very far, to the point where, without losing his dignity or compromising his position, he found the garbage pail dumped on his head...
...T T HIS TACTIC involved a risk, underscored by Guichard: the risk of resoldering student unity, of perhaps restoring a measure of student-professor solidarity or—unlikely, but one never knows—a studentworker understanding...
...One leftist said, It's very simple...
...Its tions...
...After the fall of Pierre Grappin, his predecessor as dean, they'd offered him a wager: can a man be a leftist and still administer Nanterre...
...About 1,000 students boycotted their classes, booed the police, and finally intervened—in a word, followed the leftist groups which, until then, had been described as "isolated" or "minority" elements...
...The result is nil...
...The first sheaf of statements from the labor unions was circulating among ministerial desks like so many storm warnings...
...Their mood worsened as the day passed: in the heat of the fighting (by then the campus was a veritable battlefield), the police, held back with difficulty, chaffed to exercise the "right of pursuit" to which they lay claim...
...The objection was not sustained, and 29 members of the Council voted for the regulation, 2 against it, and 3 abstained...
...From the outset, something went wrong...
...His only escape was to appeal to the students, to lead them finally to settle the dispute themselves...
...The Sunday before he even had dictated a letter of resignation addressed to the Minister of Education, Olivier Guichard...
...On February 20 there emerged, sharply profiled, the summit of the Calvary Ricoeur had been painfully climbing ever since June 1969...
...Subsequently, he always strove to maintain harmony between his philosophical ideas and his political actions: to be at once a humanist and a revolutionary...
...JOSETTE ALIA Again, Nanterre's problem had been squarely stated...
...At the Wednesday meeting of the Council of Ministers, it had to be conceded, despite Georges Pompidou's mounting irritation, that the government had placed itself in an impasse it knew so well: the impasse of May 1968...
...We were not consulted about either the timing or the nature of the intervention...
...it had fallen into what its theoreticians call "false tactics...
...In the classic manner of a Minister of the Interior, he was convinced (by dint of saying so) that the notorious university troubles could easily be settled: at the first chance, a hundred or so of the leftist "ringleaders" should be arrested and Nanterre would be "cleaned up...
...So much for shared political bases...
...Was it actually sought...
...Ricoeur firmly believed, however, that the regulation would not be put into effect immediately: it would first have to be promulgated (the same regulation had long been in force at night), and any application would have to await a serious outbreak...
...it was a dilemma that dramatized the importance of the student movements, floundering amid differences and dissensions...
...Each little group would arrive at demonstrations to show off its strength, each had its own slogan, its own litany...
...is represented on Nanterre's Administrative Council...
...The GUD militants withdrew behind a police line...
...It was on Monday that everything broke loose, following—and this must be emphasized—the untimely intervention of an extreme Right group, the GUD (Groupe Union Droite), whose militants, helmeted and carrying iron bars, arrived from Assas to "assure the partiels [serialized exams]" for Nanterre's economics students in the first, third, and fourth years...
...If you cannot, we will take over...
...The odds were ten to one against him...
...My companion was speaking without sarcasm or irony...
...In this instance, it was a dilemma and drama for Nanterre's dean, Paul Ricoeur, who loyally sought to play a conciliating role...
...A brutal confrontation was unavoidable...
...Snatching the spluttering grenade before it bounced, Guichard promptly hurled it into another camp—Ricoeur's...
...The French section of the dents for University Reform): Supports the Fourth International...
...In periods of tension, they may number some two thousand, or about ten percent of the Nanterre student body...
...In other words, can you offer proof that Nanterre is able to function normally without the police...
...No one pretended otherwise...
...He was considering it...
...Behind this courageous, firmly delivered self-criticism, one nonetheless sensed great bitterness or, rather, despair...
...University officials were thunderstruck...
...On March 4, le Monde, in two fearsome sentences, condemned him, buried him, and stuck a cross on his grave: "The silent majority is safer...
...The good seed would be separated from the chaff...
...Of course, it is not true—that is, not entirely true...
...But since this permitted police intervention on campus, it was clearly a grave step...
...Exasperated students in France keep asking this question...
...3) If these measures did not suffice to guarantee security, the Council judged that the closing of Nanterre would be inevitable...
...The students saw him as "a good sort but a political weakling" (Communist League...
...Had all this been planned because some highlyplaced person (or persons) wanted a violent confrontation...
...Rightists in the Law School, exhibiting a L'Alliance des Jeunes pour le Socialisme, nostalgia for the past (Mussolini cult), andor AJS: Dissidents from the Fourth Inter-associated with the neo-fascist Ordre national who emphasize labor organization...
...Rocks flew, the police charged, and the big battle between leftists and police was on...
...At your request, we have furnished police support for three days...
...It took our breath away," a professor said later...
...Someone timidly suggested the possibility that the police would exploit the ruling or abuse its application...
...One little group could tangle with another all day long," a Trotskyite said, "but once confronted by the police there was no more of that...
...to three major decisions: (2) The Council requested that the camYou Can't Tell the Players . . . We list below the various groups to which students belong who are enrolled at Nanterre and who carry on sustained or sporadic political activities...
...Marxistes Revolutionnaires: Both groups are -BRUNO CIIARPENTIER dissidents from the Fourth International, (Le Nouvel Observateur) THE SHAMBLES OF NANTERRE pus be classified as the equivalent of a public thoroughfare...
...What could Ricoeur do...
...It's just like the fourteenth," a militant anarchist shouted joyously at the sight of the blue helmets...
...Their casualties were numerous...
...Instantly, between Sunday night and Monday, delegations of students, both moderates and reformers, came one after another to his office...
...others "Che...
...It was completely misguided in its tactics: we popularized the struggle of the Palestinians only in order to be able (for a "good cause") to recruit French militants...
...The proof is that the only grounds for coalition were two completely external issues—Vietnam and Palestine...
...TROTSKYITES MODERATES La Ligue Communiste, or LC (Com-Le CLERU (Liaison Committee of Stumunist League...
...That was a mistake...
...Translated by ADRIENNE FOULKE...
...On this point, debate was violent...
...The melee was to last two days—until Tuesday evening...
...And then his anguished question: "In these circumstances, how do we keep from being fatally isolated, cut off how do we avoid the universityghetto...
...Perhaps because he is above all else--even in the eyes of his most rabid opponents—a "great and honest man...
...On Friday, the two deans of Nanterre proposed a treaty of sorts: all student groups would subscribe to a nonaggression pact...
...It was not known whether he make a formal statement about "insecurity...
...Yet Ricoeur did not feel he could refuse, and so he accepted...
...Eight hours on the assembly line, militant activities in the evening, pamphlet distribution on Sunday...
...Played along in the participation game in order to demonstrate deeds, not words...
...The next day, about 2,000 students took part in the veritable battle that resulted in 200 wounded on both sides...
...Still others —more extreme, more generous—"go into the factory," that is, they give up everything and sign on for jobs in plants where they are promptly spotted and denounced...
...Displaying some courage, Paul Ricoeur picked up his wager of last June...
...among the anarchists than among the forces for order...
...A philosopher, a calm, immensely attentive, inquiring, open-minded and nonviolent man, the Dean of the Faculty of Letters at Nanterre had embarked on what he fully realized was a thorny path...
...GUD claims to be ridding the Their publication is Jeunes Revolutionnaires...
...In the thinking of those present, this meant simply that Nanterre campus streets should be subject to the same regulations as those of Paris or of the suburb Nanterre itself...
...They oppose the French of such Communist states as China, Cuba, Communist party, which they accuse of fol and the Vietnamese revolutionaries, which lowing a class collaborationist policy...
...In the beginning, his calculation turned out to be correct...
...Each of us had known of one or two cases of violence, but when they all were put together they painted an ominous picture...
...Finally, the eventuality of closing down was voted 18 in favor, 6 opposed, 10 abstaining...
...Membership in these groups ranges from several dozen to several hundred persons...
...But now he was no longer alone and with his back to the wall: the students were all there with him...
...The result: no possible communication...
...What we took to be a "middle-ground" solution was a step forward, the consequences of which we had not assessed...
...All this took place while those in command were in radio communication with the Prefecture of Police and the Ministry of the Interior...
...For, in cop jargon, to open a campus to the protection routinely provided for a city street means, "Hop to it...
...They work in liaison with other dents of the parent PSU (Parti Socialiste Maoist groups...
...It encourages Red reform law in toto...
...And the anar chists—the most consistent of us all, maybe—yelled "Zorro...
...Bash 'em...
...He's our last chance, our only possibility of avoiding fascism of the Right or of the Left...
...They had asked for nothing like this...
...The LC holds that there is no such Students): Active in the Law School...
...Ricoeur's treaty would work only if the majority of students accepted it...
...There was lengthy discussion of a faculty plan to itemize eventual trouble spots (buildings, street intersections), to deter mine where the forces of order should be stationed—in a word, to program police occupation of the campus...
...In exchange, police elements would remain off the campus grounds...
...The classic tactic is to isolate them: they are tied down to an assembly line, between a worker from Mali and another from Yugoslavia...
...this was the price of the last skirmish...
...Therefore, when the first police vans arrived at the outskirts of the Nanterre campus on Friday, February 27, everything was ready for a minutely organized riposte to the "anarchist provocations" that seemed to be expected as a too-good-to-be-true pretext...
...It does seem that this was the case...
...They call for groups of socialist tendencies, among them individual action and for a propaganda of members of the ESU...
...We were up to our necks in image projection...
...directed at workers (both on the job and Its theoretical positions are close to those at home...
...It was no longer a matter of maintaining order...
...It was handtohand combat—to such a degree that the mobile guards of the second reserve had to be hastily recalled to isolate the police in one intervention squad...
...HY DO THEY always headline WNanterre, when the present problems involve the whole university system...
...La Gauche Proletarienne, or GP (ProleLutte Ouvriere, or LO (Workers' Strug tarian Left): Their principal activity is gle): Stresses primarily labor organization...
...ANARCHISTS Le MARC 200 (Movement for Action By definition, not organized...
...In 1940, in a Pomeranian Oflag, standing in the sand, barefooted and in rags, under the noses of German guards he had given his first lectures to demythicize Nietzsche, because he believed one had to fight against an insidious ideology just as one had to try to escape or actively resist...
...Was the government (or at least Marcellin, a hardliner) only waiting for the Dean's mistake in order to launch a "purge" operation intended "to eliminate the ringleaders so as to start afresh on a solid basis," as they say at the Ministry of the Interior...
...various Schools of leftist elements and to L'Alliance Marxiste Revolutionnaire and be rallying moderate elements to its cause...
...The government refused to rescind the "public thoroughfare" tactic...
...i.e., they distribute pamphlets at the gates of Renault and Citroen, and since they are faced by the burly stalwarts of the CGT [Confederation Generale du Travail] security forces, this is not absolutely safe...
...what impetuous spirit left untapped...
...Too clear-thinking to be naive, too honest to be cynical, this large-spirited man—a Protestant and a product of the great liberal tradition in France— saw that between the ultra-leftist students who want to "smash the whole university system" and a regime that, secretly, dreams only of bringing all protesters "to heel," he was walking a tightrope...
...Publishes the Tribune Socialiste...
...But he is a resilient man...
...Unifie...
Vol. 17 • July 1970 • No. 4
