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At a time of ever more accelerated and expanded development of natural and agricultural territory, in the aim of making targeted areas more profitable and controllable, there are inhabitants who oppose these projects with a firm, unwavering NO! This is the case in Notre-Dame-des-Landes in western France and in the Italian Susa Valley, where decades-long battles have been mounted against high-speed transport infrastructure, an airport for one, and a highspeed train (TAV) between Lyon and Turin for the other.
Each of these struggles embodies, with its own distinct style, original ways of merging life with combat. And they do so to such a degree that they are redesigning today the future of their respective regions and awakening immense hope outside of their own territories.
This book recounts these two histories-in-the-making and gives voice to their protagonists. It was born of the intuition that these experiences and the hypotheses that emerge from them should circulate at the same time as the slogans and the enthusiasm, to strengthen the will to resist.
About the author
The Mauvaise Troupe Collective is a writing group of variable size that was formed on the occasion of composing Constellations: Trajectoires révolutionnaires du jeune 21e siècle in 2014. The collective attempts to write the immediate history of political struggles in the words of their protagonists, and in the heat of action. It also published Défendre la zad in 2016, available in English.Kristin Ross was born in State College, Pennsylvania in 1953. She attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and received a PhD in French Literature from Yale in 1981. She is the author of a number of books on modern French politics and culture, all of which have been widely translated: The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minnesota, 1988; Verso, 2008); Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (MIT, 1995); May 68 and its Afterlives (Chicago, 2002), and Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (Verso, 2015). She has also translated works by Jacques Rancière and by the militant collective, Mauvaise Troupe. She lives in Stone Ridge, New York and Paris.Kristin Ross was born in State College, Pennsylvania in 1953. She attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and received a PhD in French Literature from Yale in 1981. She is the author of a number of books on modern French politics and culture, all of which have been widely translated: The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune (Minnesota, 1988; Verso, 2008); Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (MIT, 1995); May 68 and its Afterlives (Chicago, 2002), and Communal Luxury: The Political Imaginary of the Paris Commune (Verso, 2015). She has also translated works by Jacques Rancière and by the militant collective, Mauvaise Troupe. She lives in Stone Ridge, New York and Paris.
Summary
Vivid account of two struggles that are at the heart of the contestation of the neoliberal state
Report
I cannot recall reading a similarly structured book, but what results from this decision is a highly successful, conceptually satisfying marriage of form and content. Disegno
