UN RENOUVEAU DE LA PARTICIPATION ASSOCIATIVE ? L'engagement et le militantisme au sein du comité Attac Isère

1.1.2.2 The mythification of the social movements

Michel Wievorka answers by the negative one these two questions^281(*). According to him, there was not in the proposals defended in December 1995 the project there that some could see. The social movements did not propose « a vision of the future, against cultural project, an even outlined whole of modernisatrices proposals or utopian »^282(*). The movement of 1995, was constituted a posteriori. The speeches of Christophe Aguiton and Daniel Bensïad rest over 1995 to account for the return of the militancy and the creation of a whole of association which would continue same dynamics. However, it would act according to Michel Wievorka of a strategy of setting in scene of the events of 1995. December 95 would have been constituted in myth in order to be used as historical and ideological guarantee with the associative and trade-union revival. The events of 1995 besides only are evoked very little in the speeches of surveyed into their engagement. Some take part, as we saw, in this associative revival without for to have engaged as much in the events of 95.

The revival of engagement and the militancy which is perceived in Attac would be the resultant of a whole of strategy of mobilization. The intellectual construction which took place a posteriori on the social conflicts of the years 1990 allowed historiciser the social movements by registering them in a historical screen. This strategy would answer the topic of « end of the history » evoked by authors such as Fukuyama, for which the current development of the great Western democracies would have come to a end. It would also be a question of establishing an inheritance common militant which can allow the constitution of a collective memory of « fights » and which plays a part of stimulant for militant engagement.

This glance related to the events of 1995 testifies to a change of prospect that it is necessary to adopt on the social movements. The social movement can be regarded as the setting in scene of a whole of mobilizations. It would act, according to Jacques Guilhaumou, to analyze a social movement from the point of view of the actors who take part in it but also from the point of view of those who of it are the spectators.^283(*) However the observation of the social facts should not be « naive »; it proceeds of a choice deliberated to highlight and to make more visible such or such aspect of the social movement. « The observation of the movements [social] returns us mainly to manners of being spectators. They are the spectators who testify to the dynamics of the emergent actors and of the appearance of a new share of significant likely to widen the field of experiment suitable for warps innovating evenementiality [...] For this reason, the rationality of the step of the observer proceeds more than one setting of visibility of the new in a close connection to the other that of a simple recording of realities »^284(*).

The years 1990 marks a revival of the social conflict in which December 1995 is an important date. However it is not carried out a real revival of militant engagement. Christophe Aguiton notices that « the change is not in the number of these « new militants » which for much was already engaged during the Eighties ten »^285(*). The new social conflicts have, on the other hand, allowed a renewal of the forms of the militant action.

* ²⁸¹Wievorka (Michel), op.cit.

* ²⁸² Ibid

* ²⁸³ «  A social movement is not defined only by the will of its actors to begin in the life of the city and to organize themselves there to assert their rights or of the new rights. A social movement, it is especially a history born of the spirit at the same time of the actors and spectators  ». Guilhaumou (Jacques), word of without. Current movements the French revolution proof. Paris, ENS edition, 1998, p. 13.

* ²⁸⁴ Ibib., p. 107.

* ²⁸⁵ Aguiton (Chrsitophe), «  To militate  », op.cit, p. 198.