Building a Counter Hegemonic Memory of Victims of State Police Racism in France

This communication examines the intersection of memorial practices and necropolitics in the context of collective protest actions against police violence in France. Through the cases of Zyed Benna, Bouna Traoré (2005), and Lamine Dieng (2007), this study analyzes how state power exerts control over the memory of the dead of marginalized communities.

By focusing on the circulation of mnemonic practices, the paper explores how these narratives of state violence are incorporated into collective actions aimed at resisting systemic injustice. In particular, it examines how memory serves as a tool for resisting state-imposed death and dignifying victims of police violence. The analysis highlights the competitive memorial space where memory circulates across activist, political, and associative spheres, particularly at various levels of the state, to co-construct a counter-narrative to state oppression (Bouzama, 2019).

Attention is also given to activists who function as memory entrepreneurs, foregrounding the reparation and dignification of victims through grassroots movements. This approach asks whether these mobilizations of past trauma are universally shared or specific to certain social groups. Gender is a key variable in understanding who mobilizes these references, as women, often lead the fight against police violence, navigating both state violence and gender inequality within the collective action field (Fillieule, 2009).

References:

Bouzama, Magali. « Ce Que Faire Mémoire Veut Dire ». In Faire Mémoire. Regard Croisé Sur Les Mobilisations Mémorielles. L’Harmattan, 2019.

Fillieule, Olivier. « Chapitre 1 / Travail militant, action collective et rapports de genre ». In Le sexe du militantisme, 23‑72. Académique. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, 2009. https://doi.org/10.3917/scpo.01.0677.

Gutman, Yifat, et Jenny Wüstenberg. The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge, 2023.