This week and next we’ll be reading about the 2005 banlieue insurrection in France. The SSRC dossier on these events provides a set of excellent articles. I particularly recommend the articles by Silverstein and Tetrault and Olivier Roy. In French, in addition to the articles by Merklen and Begag available to students on Blackboard, there is an extensive and remarkable dossier of writings which you can download as a pdf here (warning: it’s 300 pages!). Among the best pieces there is an article by Philippe Bernard, originally published in Le Monde, which describes what he calls the “provocation coloniale” of the government’s response, and which provides an important overview of how the colonial past was made present during this period.

Can you find other materials relating to the 2005 insurrection?