Abstract
In France, a utopian experimental occupation has been under way for the past three years. At Notre Dame des Landes (NDDL) in Brittany, 200 permanent occupiers of evacuated farms are facing off against the authorities. The aim is to carry out a social transformation, with the occupiers transforming their living space into a utopian commune, a gesture that goes far beyond a critique of capitalism. This chapter analyses the initiative empirically and theoretically. It highlights an aspect of this struggle against the instituted totalities of ‘urban capitalism’ and the metropolitan question associated with this critique. It interrogates the hypothesis of autonomy in such a project—which is embodied in a defined territory—referring to the discourses and practices of the occupiers and their revolutionary politics of habitation.
This chapter was written before part of the Zone was dismantled in April 2018, after plans for the airport were cancelled by the government in January 2018. Some of its illegal occupants have since negotiated to remain in the Zone as participants in ‘alternative’ agriculture projects, which the state does authorise. Others are fighting back, refusing to compromise at all with a government that does not recognise non-agricultural collective projects. Forty temporary homes were destroyed by the authorities in 2018. This chapter includes some of the results of a field study conducted during 2015 and 2016.
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Notes
- 1.
For Lefebvre , capital produces a space in which the physical and the social are inextricably combined.
- 2.
The pragmatic sociology of critique can be understood as critiquing the use of different entities such as social classes or the state as tools of totalisation. On this first level, it involves a meta-critique (sociology of critique). On a second level (practical moments) are the conditions under which the actors themselves live. In pragmatic sociology, these two levels are brought together by the actors themselves, within the scope of existential or reality tests; see Boltanski (2009).
- 3.
The term metropolis designates territorial forms of the government and the circulation of wealth suitable for defining a system of accumulation or mobility or a planning system with functional and security purposes.
- 4.
The bocage is a wet plant-covered area of 1200 hectares with few buildings. For those opposed to the airport, it is an ecosystem that must be preserved, especially because of the rare plants and rodents found there.
- 5.
This Marxist theory aiming to reboot the working class more or less inspired Hardt and Negri’s theory of the ‘multitude’ (2004).
- 6.
The testimonies compiled in a recent collection point in the same direction; see Collectif Mauvaise Troupe (2015).
- 7.
The terms ‘Empire’ or ‘Babylon’ designating market society come up repeatedly in conversations, as do poor working conditions.
- 8.
In France, the term “squat” is the expression of the politicisation of space; the squatters go through regularisation procedures with the public authorities or undertake direct action (sudden occupations aimed at denouncing speculation that are covered by the media ).
- 9.
Several administrative offices were ransacked in spring 2016.
- 10.
In Lefebvre’s catchphrase, a ‘good state’ is impossible, making it necessary to establish relations of counter-power as a guarantee of urban democracy.
- 11.
See, for example, the Marxist analysis of the state in Gramsci (in the 1930s), Poulantzas (in the 1960s), and, more recently, in Harvey (2005).
- 12.
One example is the struggle for the Larzac in France; see Hervieu-Léger and Hervieu (1979).
- 13.
The texts written about the area since the occupation are indeed ‘stories’.
- 14.
That is, to develop strategies; see Deleuze (2008).
- 15.
Hence, many books or activist brochures are collections of testimonies.
- 16.
This corresponds to ‘valuation’; see Dewey (1939).
- 17.
While the knowhow of a baker or a blacksmith is not shared, that of a builder is. This allows construction to become a collective task.
- 18.
The farmers resisted forcefully during the CESAR operation, turning their tractors into defence vehicles. Resorting to sometimes violent techniques enables one to historicise the struggle in relation to the battles that feature more prominently in the political imagination and political violence: the Larzac struggle, Action Directe, and, elsewhere, the Chiapas.
- 19.
Label Zad et autres sornettes https://zad.nadir.org/spip.php?article3270
- 20.
In Proudhon’s libertarian socialism , for example, sharing and pooling is a substitute for authority and the government, and society is a permanent production resulting from collective activity (including economic activity) that takes place in a territory of respectable size: the municipality; see Proudhon (1966); also Scott (2015).
- 21.
The only case to be collectively discussed concerned physical and sexist aggression; it was decided orally that the aggressor had to leave the area.
- 22.
The artistic worker movements in the Zad cannot be likened to the maker culture (do it yourself or Fab Lab).
- 23.
This quality is based on references to recent revolutionary anarchism (Comité Invisible), the radicalism of current autonomist activists, and/or particular texts (e.g., Gramsci, Luxemburg ).
- 24.
This aspect is not dealt with here.
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Bulle, S. (2020). A Zone to Defend: The Utopian Territorial Experiment of Notre Dame Des Landes. In: Frère, B., Jacquemain, M. (eds) Everyday Resistance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18987-7_9
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