Lauren Elkin: “Lessons From Parisian Protest Culture”

Reading Canadian short story writer Mavis Gallant on the May 1968 uprising in the New Yorker:  “There are two elements of the protest: the march and the barricade. The forward movement and the resistance. A demonstration can’t become a protest without the forces of order saying no to their no. Both play their part. The barricade is a symbol of revolution, but the police kettle is just another kind of barricade. The very things that stir our heart in a revolution may be co-opted by the forces of order—or the other way around.”