Emile Chabal @emile_chabal Twitter profile

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Emile Chabal

21 days

I know everyone is distracted by the Olympics, but I'm *SUPER* excited that the piece I wrote on the frenetic 2024 French election cycle with my partner-in-crime Michael Behrent is now out in @FranceModern ! Plus it's free to read :)

The deluge: France’s 2024 legislative elections

Published in Modern & Contemporary France (Vol. 32, No. 3, 2024)

www.tandfonline.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

Some elements to help analyse what is happening in France, where police violence, racism and social deprivation are once again in the news. First, there is nothing new. This cocktail has plagued France since the 1990s - remember the film La Haine? Basic causal factors...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

What a devastating indictment of the deep, deep structures of British capitalism from Whitty's speech today.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Some thoughts (to be continued as the night goes on): 1) Biggest news by far is that France's far-right finally has a bloc in parliament that matches its electoral strength. This is the logical conclusion of institutional normalisation, but 80+ députés for the RN is still huge.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

4 years

There's been so much disruption to research recently, but one thing I'm really *very* proud of is the completion of the first comprehensive, text-searchable Eric Hobsbawm Bibliography (). Here's a short thread about what it is and who made it happen... 1/n

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Yesterday was Eric Hobsbawm's birthday, so it seems a good time to remind the world of the huge online bibliography I put together of his entire published and unpublished back catalogue. Read all about it here: . And access it here:

Uncovering the Many Eric Hobsbawms

Eric Hobsbawm's work spanned everything from jazz to the history of banditry, in thousands of texts he wrote in several languages. A new project has brought together his writings in a searchable...

jacobin.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

Grant successes are rare and built on many failures, so it was a surprise and delight to learn that @BritishAcademy_ were willing to cough up £200k for me to launch a new project on the history of identity politics and democracy. More details below...

The British Academy announces funding for 13 interdisciplinary research projects exploring global...

The British Academy has announced 13 new interdisciplinary research projects as part of the Knowledge Frontiers: International Interdisciplinary Research programme.

www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

6 years

I honestly believe - no hyperbole intended - that the decline in foreign language learning in the UK is a cultural and political tragedy. We are producing narrower, more parochial, and less culturally-sensitive children. Languages should not just be for bi or multicultural kids.

Laura O'Brien

@lrbobrien

6 years

Funding is obviously a huge issue, but so too is perception of languages as being “hard” or “not useful”. What this contributes to is a separation of language and creative subjects along class and school lines, with private schools more able to offer them to pupils.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

I always feel that promotions are very personal, so I've never advertised them. But now that my department has put my face on Twitter, I should probably announce that I'll be Professor of Contemporary History at Edinburgh from August. Thanks to those who made it possible ❤️

HCAatEdinburgh

@HCAatEdinburgh

3 months

The School is delighted to announce the following academic promotions, which take effect from 1 August, 2024. Find out more: #History #Classics #Archaeology #Edinburgh

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

4 years

You, a friend or a student want to know more about contemporary France but don't have much time..? Then you need my pithy intro to postwar French history! It's cheap, argumentative and (very) short. Quick teaser thread below or pre-order the book here:

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...remain true: economic stagnation, withdrawal of the state, v high unemployment, systematic police violence, racism, drugs, petty crime, inadequate infrastructure, poor building quality etc. The design of France's postwar housing projects concentrated these problems spatially.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

For the map lovers out there, this NYT graphic of the swing in the UK election is fascinating

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

I've been working on the man for more than 7 years, but this is the first time I'm visiting his grave. Thanks for everything, Eric - most days, I can't decide what I think of you, but at least I know you're worth thinking about...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

A word of warning for ppl looking for smoking hot-takes on the French elections tonight: actually, were unlikely to find out much and it'll be very hard to predict the final results, especially bc this election is extremely unpredictable. The few things to watch out for are...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

I'm inordinately proud of this book, which took a lot of hard work. It's properly interdisciplinary, properly empirical, properly theoretical, and properly historical. Great chapters from the project team and so many insights throughout. (Plus the endorsements are so lovely!)

Seeing Immigrants

@seeingimmigrant

1 year

Wonderful to see the cover of our forthcoming book 🙌 It's available to pre-order from @CambridgeUP now ⬇️

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

Our launch events were scuppered by the pandemic so we wrote this essay about what our huge Hobsbawm bibliography can tell us about the art of writing, the global Marxist imagination, and the hierarchies of the historical profession in the 20thC...

Uncovering the Many Eric Hobsbawms

Eric Hobsbawm's work spanned everything from jazz to the history of banditry, in thousands of texts he wrote in several languages. A new project has brought together his writings in a searchable...

jacobin.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

Macron has made an astonishing gamble but, like Chirac in 1997, he will surely live to regret it. There's almost no way that Le Pen and RN don't gain from this, possibly a significant number of seats. I fear the new golden age of the French far-right is upon us.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

My reaction as an analyst: there's nothing particularly surprising about the results, and there's still a lot in play. My reaction as a citizen: this is the first time the far-right has come top in any round of a national election in France. We should all be ashamed.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

14 days

Unfashionable opinion: the world still needs modern European historians.

Quinn Slobodian

@zeithistoriker

14 days

Three TT jobs total in Modern European History this year. Vertigo of watching a field disappear akin to witnessing biodiversity collapse.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

4 years

There are many reasons to be cynical right now about the world and about academia, but there are few things as genuinely joyous as getting your hands on your own book. Thanks to everyone who made these pages possible - I hope there are still some people out there to read them..!

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

6 years

Really, really happy to share my very first attempt to make sense of 4+ months of fieldwork in India and Latin America - there is so much more to say, but this glimpse into Hobsbawm's global universe gives some idea of what I was doing...

How Eric Hobsbawm helped shape the global Marxist imagination | Aeon Essays

How the Marxist ideas of a British historian ended up on the bookshelves of Indian civil servants and Brazilian housewives

aeon.co

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

Anyone who has ever taught history will absolutely ♥�� this clip of French Green candidate Marine Tondelier pulling out a whole bunch of primary sources on the 1936 Popular Front and patiently explaining them to a dumb chatshow host... She's the breakout star of 2024!

André Loez

@andreloez

2 months

Non seulement Marine Tondelier est une boss comme on en attendait depuis longtemps à gauche, mais en plus elle utilise avec pertinence des documents historiques (1936) pour dénaturaliser les fausses évidences de l’éditocratie. Masterclass 👏👏

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

For most academics, time is more precious than money. So imagine my delight at being awarded an RSE Personal Research Fellowship, which gives me a whole year to myself to finish (I hope!) my Hobsbawm book. Bliss.

Royal Society of Edinburgh

@RoyalSocEd

1 year

🎉 We are thrilled to announce our latest research awardees! 🎉 Their pioneering work in advancing knowledge, tackling global challenges, and providing fresh perspectives will contribute to the betterment of our communities. Congratulations! 👏🙌 ✨

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

I think this might be the first time a book of mine has appeared on the shelves of a generalist bookstore (in this case, Waterstones in central Edinburgh). Feeling rather chuffed to be in such illustrious company!

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

We will have an ungovernable country but this is big big news. If these estimations are confirmed, the RN has taken a proper slap in the face. I think we can really call this a Front républicain mk. 2 - and for a whole new generation. Quel soulagement.

mathieu gallard

@mathieugallard

2 months

🇫🇷🗳️ Projection en sièges @IpsosFrance :

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

2) Macron losing a majority is also a big deal - he really will need the centre-right to govern. Parliamentary politics over next 5 years will be much more incoherent and fragmented. 3) NUPES have done well, some big scalps (Ferrand, Castaner), but haven't exceeded expectations.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

Rather belatedly: am honoured to have a chapter on 'anticolonialism' in the epic Cambridge History of French Thought alongside so many other great scholars. I hope it helps curious readers navigate their way through a complex topic... Link here:

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

4 years

This debate about Trump and fascism makes me feel like I'm wading through dozens of mediocre first-year essays on a modern European history course. Am I the only historian who can't get exercised about this question..?

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

NEWS FLASH: Daily Mail discovers that historians, who have spent their lives studying history and whose job it is to teach history, have opinions about history.

James McDougall

@jamesrmcd

7 years

News flash, Oxford University Home to people who disagree with, & won’t be intimidated by, the Daily Mail. National scandal!

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

A delightfully sensitive reading of Foucault by one of my favourite intellectual historians of modern France, Michael Behrent.

The True Foucault - Dissent Magazine

The issues most important to Michel Foucault have moved from the margins to become major preoccupations of political life. But what did Foucault actually teach?

www.dissentmagazine.org

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

10) Following 9), this was truly "protest vote" election. Everyone was protesting against everyone else - and those who abstained were protesting against everyone.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

In my first outing for @jacobinmag , I try to flip the geography of Marxist history by looking at how Eric Hobsbawm's adventures at the global periphery shaped his unique brand of Marxism.

Hobsbawm at the Margins

Histories of Marxism frequently imagine an essentially European body of thought spreading around the world. Yet, as Eric Hobsbawm’s work shows, revolutionary breakthroughs in the “periphery” could...

jacobin.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...There was also political mobilisation, especially against racially-motivated crimes and police violence, most famously so-called "Marche des beurs" in 1983, which brought to wide attention 15+ years of antiracist activism. This activism served to highlight these problems.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...This combined w/strong local memories of racist violence that permeated local communities and were transmitted through generations (on this, see excellent work by eg. Rachida Brahim or Mogniss Abdallah). All this backstory matters bc it provides the deep context for anger...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

A younger generation, coming of age in 90s-2000s grew up with little hope of improvement, few prospects and the memory of racist crimes. Plus, of course, they hated the police. French police have a history of vioent collective policing (eg. repression of demos) and especially...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...the unrest that is currently taking place primarily affects local communities by damaging infrastructure, public buildings etc., it is not "irrational". It is an anger born of neglect, unstructured politicisation, discrimination and memories of violence /end.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...a history of targeting racialised minorities, partly a result of France's colonial legacy, partly a result of deep institutional racism (see eg. this book: ). This has led to intense outbreaks of anti-police violence, eg. in 2005...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

8) The Macronist left (ex-PS) and the Hollande-ist PS crowd have been obliterated. This settles French politics back into a more traditional left vs centre/centre-right dynamic, with (as usual) a major far-right bloc to contend with.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

4) The strength of the RN has rather blunted NUPES's breakthrough. The far-right will be a nuisance, not just for Macron but also for the left. This could be a big issue in the next parliament.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

This is an extraordinarily dumb article - wrong at so many levels that I don't know where to start

Ignore the panic. There’s little point learning languages at school | Simon Jenkins

Reactionary educators fetishise languages because they are easy to test. A real education is not so easy to quantify says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

www.theguardian.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

5) Everyone has been punished by abstention - the left, Macron's foot soldiers, and the centre-right. But RN managed better than other groups to contain the problem. This is striking given that the RN and Marine Le Pen hardly did any campaigning at all.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

Another little piece of my Hobsbawm project is out in the world! This time I'm exploring friendship and political engagement in the Communist Party Historians Group and trying to break free of some of the hagiography surrounding Hobsbawm and his generation

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

It's been so long since I was in an archive that I've forgotten what I'm really supposed to be doing here. But I can still spot Hobsbawm's handwriting any time of the day...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...The 2005 unrest was the largest in Europe in scale for several decades, touching many different parts of France over 20+ days. Conclusions were, unsurprisingly, that violence was correlated to unemployment & neighbourhoods targeted by... (Map source: )

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

I am rereading Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities after a long time. What a joy of erudition, prose style, and analytical rigour. I wish we had more time to reread the classics...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

I was in France when the queen died last year. I thought this was far enough away, but I was still assaulted with bizarre 24-hour news coverage on French TV. This time I'm 6,000km further away in Martinique and I think I've managed it. Here no-one cares. For real.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

6 years

Excellent. Here is some of the first actual field research on the #GiletsJaunes . It reveals a very diverse movement united by concerns about taxation, cost of living, and governance. This confirms some of my initial thoughts and undermines others... 1/n

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...Very similar conditions obtain in 2023 & these explain some of the violence we're seeing. But aggravating factors shd be highlighted, especially a change in legislation in 2017 that gave police stronger powers to stop drivers "refusing to cooperate"...

La multiplication des « refus d’obtempérer », une réalité aux causes diverses

ANALYSE. Avec neuf morts depuis le début de l’année, dont deux mercredi 7 septembre à Rennes et à Nice, la question est devenue un sujet majeur du débat politique et sécuritaire.

www.lemonde.fr

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

7) The RN's high seat tally is not just a problem in relation to parliament. It also gives the party's inexperienced, unconvincing party cadres serious institutional airtime. This may help the party to achieve the credibility it has lacked until now. Or not.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

6 years

In unexpected-French-postcolonial memory-war news of the day, Macron apologises for the death of Maurice Audin *and* opens large parts of the Algerian War archives by general decree.

Torture en Algérie : le geste historique d’Emmanuel Macron

Le chef de l’Etat reconnaît la responsabilité de l’Etat dans la mort de Maurice Audin, un mathématicien militant de l’indépendance de l’Algérie tué en 1957.

www.lemonde.fr

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Craving high-quality, historically informed commentary on the French elections..? You're in luck! I've teamed up with fab colleague Michael Behrent & top journalist @MarionVanR for a series of essays on the elections. First instalment here:

What is the French presidential election about? [Long read]

The upcoming French presidential election presents something of a paradox. On the one hand, the outcome seems a foregone conclusion with Macron on course for re-election. But while such an overwhel...

blog.oup.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

9 months

The gutting of languages provision at all levels in the UK is not only an intellectual tragedy but also just a bizarre policy decision. Why would a country not want to teach language skills? Surely the UK is the only place investing *less* in languages than 20 years ago?

Josh Pizzuto-Pomaco

@joshpizpom

9 months

Management's position on the future of language provision at @aberdeenuni

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

4 years

This was a huge honour - so many people in the audience, and so many thoughtful comments. Thank you all.

Dr Ludivine Broch

@ludivine_broch

4 years

Me and 112 other people are listening to Emile Chabal talk about his book FRANCE. A great feat to paint this nation and its people in 45,000 words in an accessible & insightful way. @ihr_history @emile_chabal @Cha_Faucher @smidbob @daniellee550 @ArthurAsseraf @jackeeclarke

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...state "urban renewal" policies (politique de la ville). This, along with the association btw police and state, explains why the state is a key point of contention, and why so many symbols of the state (schools, local govt buildings etc.) were targeted...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

I like #StopTheCoup . It captures the real stakes of today's announcement. We need to start treating Britain like Italy or Argentina or India, in other words as a fragile, vulnerable democracy. I hope the Brexit saga finally puts to rest Britain's myth of continuity and stability.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

10 months

There are few joys quite so pure as the one felt when taking delivery of a new book, especially one filled with brilliant insights from the @seeingimmigrant team. I hope some of you (especially historians!) will read it, if you can. For more details:

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

Ciotti has been thrown out of LR and now Zemmour has thrown Marion out of Reconquête. The last 48 hours have been like 25 years of French politics on speed. It's unreal.

BFMTV

@BFMTV

3 months

Éric Zemmour (président de Reconquête): "Marion Maréchal s'exclut d'elle-même de ce parti qu'elle a toujours méprisé"

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...critics have (rightly) seen this legislation as giving greater powers to police to shoot suspects. Indeed, police violence has been under scrutiny in past few years both in relation to individual incidents and collective incidents (eg. protests)...

Combien la police tue-t-elle de personnes chaque année ?

Les derniers propos de Philippe Poutou ont relancé les questions sur le nombre de victimes tuées par la police. En 2020, l’IGPN indiquait 32 décès, des enquêtes journalistiques et militantes fournies...

www.liberation.fr

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Aberdeen are advertising for a full-time permanent lectureship in modern European history (post-1850). Would be lovely to have another Europeanist in Scotland! Deadline: 14 December. Link here:

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...the French police are famous for violent repression of protests in urban & rural areas. Historically this has led to violence on the part of protestors, some of which has also filtered through to non-organised protest eg. against police violence. See:

‘Power is in the Streets’: Protest and Militancy in France, Italy and West Germany, 1968–1979 |...

‘Power is in the Streets’: Protest and Militancy in France, Italy and West Germany, 1968–1979

www.cambridge.org

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...This has led to a sharp increase in "incidents" (eg. injury, death) during traffic stops. Passers-by as well as drivers have been killed. Police unions demanded this legislation in 2017 in response to a perceived "hatred" of the police and anti-police violence. But...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

Hello, world. I thought I'd try and make sense of the absolute nuttiness of French politics by writing something for @ForeignPolicy about the history of democracy in France and Macron's embrace of total chaos. I hope it helps clarify a few things.

Macron Is Destroying His Democracy to Save It

Why France’s president has decided to embrace electoral chaos.

foreignpolicy.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

6) Could LR (centre-right) be the kingmakers in the next parliament? Macron will need them to get things through, so they might be able to demand concessions out of all proportion to their electoral weight. Conversely, the left will be a nuisance but 150 is not enough.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

As we plod towards Brexit, I have a sense of inner dread, profound sadness, and deep anger at my own country. One day historians will write about the Brexit Generation, and they'll be writing about me. I hope they remember, not just what happened, but also how it felt.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

A historian's truism: the most penetrating insights are guaranteed to emerge no more than an hour before archive closing time. Result: you feel great when you leave and then you forget everything.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

A friendly note to those reading me: I actually wrote a book a few years ago whose sole purpose was to introduce France's recent history to non-specialists. It provides lots of extra context, it's short, it's cheap and (I think) it's pretty good.

France (Polity Histories)

www.amazon.co.uk

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

26 days

Thinking of all those British commentators in recent years who have been voyeuristically finger-pointing at the different racisms of the French far-right and congratulating themselves on the fact that the UK couldn't be - never has been - like that.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

"On le fait pour la France", said a 14-year old boy interviewed by Le Monde reporter today in Nanterre. Confused that a kid would say something like this? That's because you need a crash course in French republicanism! So here's a(nother) thread...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

9) A lot of talk about how front républicain has fallen apart. Maybe. But the problem in this election was that there were several *other* tactical vote stratgies happening: against Macron and against NUPES. This let the RN fall through the cracks.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

13) On 1), while I am personally shocked at the RN's success - & I can't stand to see MLP, Bardella et al looking so smug - this result should be seen more as an alignment than a breakthrough. The FN/RN have had enough electoral weight for 80+ MPs for over a decade now.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Some thoughts: 1) This was surprisingly predictable result. Macron did a little better, Pécresse did a lot worse. The rest is pretty much what we expected. 2) This suggests French now understand the new "bipolar" dynamic of the presidential elections, ie. centre vs. extremes.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

Oh my word, even the Trotskyists have joined the Front populaire! This pretty much leaves only the old Hollande-era "elephants" clutching their pearls in the corner. If nothing else, Macron's gamble has brought the left to its senses.

NPA - L'Anticapitaliste

@NPA_officiel

3 months

Le @NPA_officiel rejoint le Nouveau #FrontPopulaire pour faire face à Macron et l'extrême droite. L'urgence est à l'unité contre le fascisme ! 1/4 ⤵️ 👉

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Emile Chabal

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1 year

...Riots in 2005 and today were not "organised" like eg. environmental or anti-pension reform protests, but the strategies of containment and violence used by the police are similar. Not to mention the strong racial undertones of police violence:

Le Combat Adama

In France, the killing of George Floyd evoked memories of the recent death in police custody of Adam Traoré – and reignited the mass protests which demanded justice in his name.

tribunemag.co.uk

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

Jacques Chirac. One of the great politicians of the Fifth Republic: ideologically loose, obsessed with the presidency, impossibly long-lasting, and always elegantly corrupt. They don't make them like this anymore.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

17) A lovely sub-plot: Rachel Kéké, who led a 22-month strike by subcontracted hotel workers & stood for NUPES beat Macron's candidate by an absolutely wafer-thin margin in the 7th circo of the Val de Marne. A big & highly symbolic victory for the left.

Rachel Keke l’emporte face à l’ex-ministre Roxana Maracineanu au second tour des législatives

La candidate de la Nupes dans la 7e circonscription, femme de chambre de profession, est arrivée en tête avec 50,3 % des voix exprimées contre l’ancienne ministre des sports (49,70 %), dimanche...

www.lemonde.fr

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

8 years

Happy to announce that my book is now out in an affordable paperback version - please spread the word :)

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

This made my summer and it's also going to make the next two+ yrs a lot of fun. Thanks @ahrcpress & @HCAatEdinburgh !

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

PS. A little follow-up thread on framing and representation of this unrest (by the French themselves), with specific reference to France's republican tradition:

Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

"On le fait pour la France", said a 14-year old boy interviewed by Le Monde reporter today in Nanterre. Confused that a kid would say something like this? That's because you need a crash course in French republicanism! So here's a(nother) thread...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

Agreed. A lot of non-French commentators also argue this, as if everything must benefit the far-right. But this assumes the far-right is somehow new. In France, it's not. Its "defeat" yesterday is a real defeat - it could deflate as much as inflate its chances next time around.

mathieu gallard

@mathieugallard

2 months

Je ne dis pas que ce n'est pas une vraie possibilité, mais tout de même, après les résultats d'hier qui suivent 2 ans de discours médiatique sur l'inéluctable arrivée au pouvoir du RN, il va falloir être prudent avec les analyses à base de "xxx fait le jeu du RN".

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

While protests rage all over the place, there are interesting things happening in the world of postcolonial memory politics in France. First, Macron doubles down on his criticism of empire, calling it a "faute de la République"... 1/n

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

Out NOW French politics people! Michael Behrent & I @FranceModern on political realignments in France: where they came from, why they matter, what they might mean. It's my 1st proper article in ages & I'm super happy with it. Read it: it's open access!

Between neo-liberalism and the nation: France’s political landscape in 2022

France’s 2022 electoral cycle suggests that the basic contours of French politics are in flux. This is largely because the traditional left-right spectrum proved increasingly incapable of structuri...

www.tandfonline.com

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 months

Does anyone hate double-spacing as much as I do? There was a logic behind it in the age of hard copy manuscripts, but I really dislike navigating a sea of white on a page on a computer screen. Double-spacing makes a text totally shapeless.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

19) I would tend to agree with this. Like it or not, these election results *do* represent France, from the ugly far-right, to the centrist aspiration for stability, and the utopian dreams of the left - with a big dose of cynicism amongst abstainers.

André Loez

@andreloez

2 years

Une grosse moitié de gens dégoûtés de la vie publique et, dans ce qui reste, un pôle de gauche, un pôle libéral, un pôle xénophobe : on peut bien entendu se lamenter, mais l'assemblée issue de ces élections me paraît plutôt un portrait plus ressemblant qu'à l'accoutumée du pays

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

...Activists like those from eg. Comité Adama have been highlighting the scourge of structural racism in France for years: everyone knows the police are often openly racist & memories of racially targeted police violence are strong amongst local communities. So, while...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

On behalf of all historians of twentieth century France can I say: PLEASE LEAVE LÉON BLUM ALONE AND PLEASE STOP PRETENDING EVERYONE AGREED IN 1936!

Dónal Hassett

@donalhassett1

3 months

I have to laugh at the romantic vision of the Popular Front among commentators and political leaders in France. As if there wasn’t intense suspicion and personal hatreds between those who joined it. The Communists had been calling the socialists ‘social fascists’ in years before

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 months

Half of the RN's candidates look either a) under voting age; or b) about to go and study law at a French fac de droit.

Grégoire Houdan

@gregoirehoudan

3 months

Candidature déposée ! ✅🤝🏻🇫🇷 #BardellaPremierMinistre

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

Some (extremely knowledgeable) people have really said *very* nice things about my book. A little ray of sunshine in this miserable pandemic year.

Polity

@politybooks

3 years

"[A] remarkable feat…For readers with little knowledge of France, the book provides an earnest & critical overview; for more knowledgeable readers there's still much to be gained from examining the multiple contradictions in French society." - Modern & Contemporary France

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

...These voters didn't vote for NUPES & this left enough room for the RN to squeeze through. In some cases (eg. 4th circo of the Hérault, which went for NUPES), the margins were *tiny*. In other cases, NUPES voters didn't vote for Ensemble and this left the RN enough room to win.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

For all the hot-takes about the French far-right, the thing that strikes the assiduous reader of opinion polls is the stability of the "adherence" to the FN/RN's ideas. A quarter of voters identified with those ideas in 1984; it's the same today. Source:

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

Very excited to be presenting some of my work to the lovely people at @CIDE_MX (but also rather intimidated at the thought of giving my first academic paper entirely in Spanish - wish me luck...)

CIDE

@CIDE_MX

5 years

#AgendaCIDE | Asiste al Seminario Divisonal "Eric Hobsbawm y la historia global del marxismo", presentado por Emile Chabal, de la Universidad de Edimburgo. Próximo 23 de agosto a las 11:00 horas en la Sala DAP Consejo. Informes: adriana.vazquez @cide .edu

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

My alma mater @TrinCollCam 's renewed decision to remove itself from the USS pension scheme is a spectacular example of parochial, small-minded and selfish Oxbridge-ism. You get no sympathy from me for the damage and loss of trust that's coming your way.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

5 years

Say what..? OMG! Someone, somewhere in UKRI finally decided that even *they* couldn't bear to read impact statements...

Research Fortnight

@ResFortnight

5 years

EXCLUSIVE: UKRI to scrap impact sections from grant applications. Internal memo reveals plans to scrap Pathways to Impact and Summary Impact statement from applications.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

11) On 9), it is helpful to look at where the RN has gained a lot of new MPs, namely the south (Occitanie, PACA). This is classic RN territory & success here is no surprise. However, the centre and centre-right were mostly absent from local contests...

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

8 months

Oh! Macron managed to appoint himself as Prime Minister.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

1 year

Agreed. I have all the time in the world for left solidarity (whatever that means) but unions need to watch for the pitfalls of engaging too vigorously in foreign policy opinionating. This can easily lead to terrible "collective" decisions like UCU's hideous Ukraine motion.

Dmitry Grozoubinski

@DmitryOpines

1 year

No normal person going to a meeting of a union that's supposed to represent them in the workplace wants to spend hours listening to tankies ranting about how Bush did 9/11 at the behest of Big Pharma to undermine hemp's miraculous healing properties.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

12) With a parliament like this, we can expect a lot more protest politics - a logical consequence of multiple protest votes. The left will not have the monopoly over these protests, which is likely to make Macron's consensus balancing act very complicated.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

Watching #bbcqt reminds me of how utterly loathsome Theresa May actually is. She's the worst of England in concentrated form.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

8) There is a major disconnect now btw national and local politics in France. At national level, major parties are dead, it's all about parties-around-candidates. At local level, parties really count and eg. the left remain a major force.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

2 years

This is actually a point that intellectual historians should take seriously. Place matters a lot to the way ideas emerge and circulate. And, yes, a surprising number of the post-war British intellectual elite got lucky with the (London) housing market.

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

3 years

A sensitive, thoughtful and deeply contextualised essay on "consent" in France by @camillerobcis , who is easily one of the best scholars of these issues (read her books!).

France and the Question of Consent

Two memoirs trenchantly critique the ways in which France has framed sexual consent, legally and culturally, since the 1970s.

www.publicbooks.org

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Emile Chabal

@emile_chabal

7 years

Oh, Jean-Luc, tu penses vraiment que la violence et l'inégalité de l'empire colonial français n'ont rien à voir avec cette vocation 'universaliste' et cette 'présence' planétaire..? #historymatters

Jean-Luc Mélenchon

@JLMelenchon

7 years

La France n'est ni occidentale, ni européenne : elle est universaliste parce qu'elle est présente sur les 5 continents. #Europe #DirectAN

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