Resistance and re-appropriation

: Music and politics in postcolonial France

Abstract

As a privileged vehicle for expressing the protean diversity of resistance without endangering the consistency of its politics, culture (and activist culture even more so) stands as a core foundation of struggle, the hidden arena of contestation, and a fertile terrain for reconfiguration of activism in France. Yet the pivotal political role culture may play in the age of globalisation has tended to be overlooked by recent academic research on contemporary social movements in France. Numerous monographs, articulated around studies of specific social movements, cultural trends or genres, have undertaken to partially analyse this ’culturalist’ evolution of politics: studies detailing the ethos of specific instances of the altermondialiste movements taken in their cultural context; studies of cultural movements (such as the Creole cultural movement); or of sub-cultures such as French hip hop placed in their social context. And yet the study of the broader dynamic remains an overwhelmingly underexplored area of scholarly research. This thesis undertakes an analysis of the inter-penetration between some contemporary musical forms and political resistance to neoliberalism, inscribed in a more global logic of cultural resistance to domination and oppression. One of its main purposes is to address the reasons why and the extent to which political resistance in contemporary France has taken an almost irremediable cultural turn. It presents a study of the dynamic of re-appropriation of symbolic power at stake in the emergence of a counterculture of resistance. The underlying concern of this project lies in identifying the extent to which musical practice is a particularly relevant form of political appropriation, or of re-appropriation of social identities, especially in areas of exclusion wherein the latter are very often denied or stigmatized, or at least generally essentialised by a variety of dominant narratives and discourses.
Thus, it explores musical practices of resistance to neoliberal domination in socially marginalised areas of France, often associated with postcolonial communities. The aim is to better understand the kind of impact musical resistance has in the shaping of social identities in postcolonial France through their relation to political activism.

Date of Award	2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	King's College London
Supervisor	Jim Wolfreys (Supervisor) & Stathis Kouvelakis (Supervisor)