Eric Hazan

In the history of European revolutions, the barricade stands as a glorious emblem. Its symbolic importance arises principally from the barricades of Eric Hazan's native Paris, where they were instrumental in the revolts of the nineteenth century, helping to shape the political life of a continent. The barricade was always a makeshift construction (the word derives from barrique or barrel),...

Since the disastrous Pompidou years, working-class Paris has been steadily nibbled away, either by destruction or more insidiously by a kind of internal colonisation. Take, for example, a small outlying district populated by Arabs, blacks, and poor whites twenty years ago: the L’Olive neighbourhood north of La Chapelle. The area is noted as pleasant; people frequent it and explore it,...