Seine-Saint-Denis, 2023
From ‘Observatoire de Téléologie’, 2000 (translated from the French original, corrected with help, August 2024)
Not only has there never been any riotology, but it seems that unless there is an exorbitant dérive [drift] of the concept of the riot, there can’t be. The limits of the riot itself guarantee this. Because what this collective offensive act first negates is organization. If the mythical spontaneity of the riot is a rather crude amalgam, there is always, in this type of revolt, an immediacy, an unexpectedness, a suddenness that escapes preparation. Just as the riot is founded through encounter and pleasure, it is through irrationality and the unforeseen that it is distinguished.
One of the hobby horses against democracy was Maurras’ conviction that democracy was opposed to organization, because any form of organization was merely an attempt to compensate for inequality, whereas equality was supposed to be the principle of democracy. There’s a lot to be said in response to this, and an analogy between democracy and the riot would also be a broad subject of disagreement, but it does seem that there is a contradiction between the riot and organization.
For if the riot, because it is from the outset a refusal of all that is, is firstly an everything is possible, everything can only become really possible if it is conceived and projected, and conceiving and projecting are precisely the opposite of what constitutes a riot. If a riot were organized, it would have lost the irrationality and unforeseenness that distinguish it; and this can be verified as soon as the rioters get organized. If their organization allows them to last, it’s no longer a riot, it’s an insurrection, and if this organization is defeated on the terrain where it was formed, it will essentially serve to recuperate the riotous unforeseenness that still eludes it, and to rationalize the irrational. An organization of rioters is a contradiction in terms and, indeed, there has never been such a pretension in the world.
There are, of course, professionals of the riot. But these are those who are organized and paid to fight them, to put a stop to them, to prevent their overcoming within insurrection: the police and the military. There can be no professionals who support the riot, since the riot is already a suspension of all professions, except those specifically opposed to it.
In truth, there is an intermediate layer between rioters and professionals of the riot. These semi-professionals are those who want to give the riot an outside aim, rather than contribute to it finding its own aim outside. This intermediate fringe goes to the riot, which is to say, always arrives late. While the riot is a negation of reason, this intermediate fringe gives reasons for the riot. This intermediate layer is made up of people who are paid to be there, professionals not assigned to riots alone, informers, and activists of various revolutionary ideologies.
For these two categories of participants, it’s not a question of understanding the riot, but of explaining it. In the conflict between the riot and the world, it’s a question of giving reason to the world, even if this often means justifying the riot. The main difference between informers and activists is that the former most often choose to position themselves in the ranks of other riot professionals, while the latter try to pass themselves off as rioters, with the rioters. It’s true that the direct and simple confrontation that is a riot is one of the moments of the world where neutrality has the least margin. You have to choose sides.
Informers are, in principle, on the scene very quickly, sometimes even before the riot, and their promise of spectacle has even been known to provoke riots. Often, they try to position themselves between the lines, which causes them to be attacked by both sides.
The presumed or self-proclaimed reinforcements of the rioters are divided between those who join the first battle, and those who come only with the prospect of a second battle. Just as there are often informers in the first battle, frequently there are also activists, especially when journalists announce the probability of a riot, for example in advance of certain demonstrations.
When they are present at the start, these semi-professionals sometimes forget their reason for being there and identify with one side or the other. But it’s most often when the riot resumes after a truce (often the next day, after a pause for sleep) that the activists of the riot try to win the rioters over to their ideological motivations. In the second battle, it is still necessary to distinguish between those who have been called by the rioters, and those who come only because they’ve heard about the event. The latter are the real activists of the riot: often in compact battalions, older than the rioters in the first battle, they claim to offer the benefit of their experience; they try to organize the fight; they try to impose their a priori of the ideologues on the nascent debate.
The question of rioters’ reinforcements is an old bone of contention in the modern riot. The dominant information has often tried to discredit a riot because reinforcements, “outside elements”, have appeared, which already gives pertinence to these reinforcements. On the other hand, criticizing these outside arrivals condemns the riot to isolation and denies the solidarity of those with interests and tastes that the riot itself brings into play.
Regardless of the practical difficulty of effectively refusing, that is to say fighting, these extras [surnuméraires], it is almost impossible for the rioters, precisely because they are not an organized unit, to evaluate those who arrive. But those who go to the riot, without invitation by those who are there, lack what makes the riot: an initial anger that has shattered social peace and forces the enemy to fight; the intensity of the moment when anything is possible; the absence of perspectives that allow them all.
So much so, that reinforcements generally break the richness of the moment: that singular moment when an offensive begins; the joy, rage and freedom of a moment without rules; the dizzying alternations between panic and triumph. Riot reinforcements generally don’t change the quantitative balance of power; on the contrary, they often tip the qualitative balance of power in the enemy’s favor. Above all, the activists of the riot are the enemies of the riot, because they lower its intensity below the threshold of an unlimited possibility.
Solidarity with the riot is to be won over by its anger and play wherever one is. Solidarity is when the riot goes to other poor people, not when other poor people go to the riot. But here again, there’s nothing to prepare, to organize. And it’s precisely this very difficult conjunction between riot and rioter that means rioters can only be very occasional. Very few rioters have taken part in more than one riot in their lives; and someone who has taken part in more than ten such events is likely an activist.
In the same way that organizing a riot is a contradiction in terms, a riotism or riotology would be in contradiction with the riot. Because the riot escapes logic, it escapes science, and cannot be constituted as a system. Thinking about the riot, consequently, comes up against reason, just as the riot itself comes up against organization. In the riot’s moment of unforeseen and irrational communication, we find an old paradox of love: to speak of it, in a certain way, is to say the opposite; and not to speak of it, in another way, is to destroy its possibility.
It’s because the riot offers a glimpse of the greatest possibility today that this moment of discourse, contrary to discourse, deserves the discourse. The perspective of the riot is immediately the totality, because not only all the rules, but everything, the totality, is at play. But to put totality at play, to take totality as a practical object, is to conceive of totality as completed, realized, finished. It’s through the grandeur of the perspective in the act, that contains all practical verification, that everything has an end is present in the modern riot.
Also
On the Riot, by the Library of Riots (1990)
Finally, Teleology, by the Library of Riots (1994)
Review: Reading the Riot Act, A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver, by M.Gouldhawke (2006)