Disorder
stop
the
bullshit
Disorder
A Political Fable
Leslie Kaplan
Translation and afterword by Jennifer Pap
Disorder
that spring saw a series of unusual crimes, quickly dubbed “19th century” crimes by the press. They were committed by exploited people of all sorts, clerks, wage earners, farm workers, various kinds of household help, all kinds of people stuck in poverty, and those killed were bosses (male and female), people who thought “you just have to...,” to do what? Do this or that, study, succeed, get a nice suit, make an effort, cross the street, etc. Clearly, France was divided in two, those who were for the criminals and those who were for the victims. But the fact is that the trend didn’t stop, it grew and spread, almost every day brought a new incident, sometimes more than one, in the cities, in the country, something was always happening. Some of the killers managed to get away, but most were arrested and were quick to claim responsibility for their crime, they even laughed openly, mockingly, and made jokes that were not really funny, in short the world was upside down. Or rather it was a throwback to that 19th century that was of course imaginary, but even so the class line was so clearly visible that no one could avoid thinking about it, and that’s why the term “19th century crime,” coined by a journalist with a column in a respectable regional newspaper, had taken hold and was heard everywhere. What no one could understand was why all these crimes were occurring simultaneously, why all at once? First in March, then in April. Had there been any warning signs? If so, no one could pin them down.
But the savage nature of the crimes was unquestionable. They weren’t savage like the Papin Sisters’ crime, those household maids who had killed and mutilated their mistresses, tearing out their eyes, even if one young woman being arrested had sighed, “Ah the Papin sisters...” No, these crimes weren’t like ... but savage... yes, savage... sudden, quick, unmotivated, no, perhaps not unmotivated, but nonetheless strange, impersonal, really insane. A model employee at a bank, twenty-five years of service, who suddenly drops a safe on the head of his director. A Portuguese mechanic who strangles his boss in the garage with wire that was close at hand. A chauffeur who drives the chief executive’s car into a wall (he himself jumps out before impact). Women were not to be outdone. Countless nurses were found to have poisoned their patients, so much so that it quickly became the practice for rich or even well-off people to have a family member give the shots. An employee in one butcher shop used a knife on her boss, a trainee at another one used her apron. Everywhere, North and South, East and West, in Paris and in the provinces, in cities, towns, and rural areas, a wind of madness.
But was it madness? There were debates in newspapers, magazines, some journals: “Causality(ies) of crime,” “The Reasons for Violence,” “Why Hatred?” “The Origins of Murder, the Murder of Origins,” nothing was very convincing. One book was all the rage, everyone read it, it was sold even in the most out of the way train stations, at least where there still was a train station, but the book’s title was what made its success, Madness and Society, inside it was a disappointing mess with nothing on madness or society really, just clichés. A sociology professor mobilized some very enthusiastic students to conduct a survey, but they came back empty handed. Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego was read and reread, but it didn’t correspond to the facts at hand. Two young philosophers, Hegelians—all that is real is rational—signed an article on “the rationality of crime,” which caused a big stir, but after some intense debate, it was forgotten.
It was also observed that all these great many crimes were committed independently, there was no connection between the criminals, they didn’t claim to be part of a movement and made no reference to the others. For that matter, they said little and explained themselves less. They only reported a kind of satisfaction, something like the feeling of a job well done, or in some (rare) cases of a duty fulfilled, but in an individual, even individualist, sense.
A very pretty and anorexic young woman, still almost a teenager, who worked in the cosmetics department of the Monoprix St Michel. Lipstick, foundation, mascara, creams and blush, powders and glitter. Varnish. Nail polish. She lived at Garges-lès-Gonesses with her mother and grandmother, and took the bus and the RER to get to work. Her boss, the manager of the ladies department of the store, liked her and called her “Sweetie.” He was knocked down by a stool, a low one with metal legs. The newspapers quoted the words of the grandmother, who when reached on the phone, had exclaimed “Oh my goodness.”
A Moroccan immigrant worker who’d lived outside Paris for fifteen years, a furnished room in the southern suburbs. He had taken evening classes for years, and went back every summer to the Casablanca neighborhood where he had been born, where his wife and six children still lived, three girls and three boys he adored. He worked at a huge construction site north of Paris, at Stains, a new complex was being built with a ten-screen theatre, and the public relations team had organized a tour of the site, television crews, local personalities. Ali, that wasn’t his name but everyone called him that, had used a jackhammer and before he was stopped had killed three people.
A teacher, almost retirement age, loved by his students, respected by his director, made the mistake of arguing with the inspector from the Ministry of Education who had turned up unannounced to visit his class. A grammar point, how to form plurals of irregular nouns, it quickly turned ugly, grammar, pedagogy, how to form plurals, the inspector was smothered with a blackboard eraser.
A literature student, 21, union supporter, getting a Masters Degree. Taking the oral exam on Diderot’s Memoirs of a Nun, two paragraphs into her analysis, she grabbed the professor seated next to her by the tie, shouted “Hands off me you dirty bastard,” and strangled him on the spot.
A stocker whose grandparents had come from Senegal in the 1960s. He lived in Paris on the Boulevard Barbès near the elevated train and had worked for years in an African neighborhood supermarket, vegetables and fruit, green bananas and sweet potatoes, pineapple, manioc. He had never gotten along with the woman who was his boss and also ran the cash register, various complaints and he thought she was robbing him. One Saturday evening, with a big crowd in the store, he dropped a bag of coffee beans, one hundred fifty pounds, on her head.
The list got longer, at the end of March the media started talking about recurring incidents, by April it was undeniable that something was happening, but what? Some tried to classify the incidents. One essayist, in a well-crafted piece, analyzed each crime, first one and then another, showing that in point of fact there really was a common element shared by all of them, it was the class element, someone really had to say the word. Or a refusal, one could at least venture to say, of domination. He spoke of “ruthless aggressiveness,” and even though the term, meaning a complete absence of guilt feelings, was well known, it made quite an impact. No clear demands were made, but there was something similar about the tone, so to speak, of the killings, or their manner, or their style. Style? When this word was used, there was an outcry, how could anyone speak of style, it was decadent, it smacked of the end of civilization, and yet still... True, there was no question of murder for profit, there was no profit to be had, and clearly no question of crimes of passion, on the contrary. The killer always had a relationship with the victim that was close and distant at the same time. He was connected, yes, but not really involved. He kept a certain distance. And any classification would not only have to account for the form the crimes took, but also define the motives. Hence the much-vaunted expression “19th century crimes” that seemed so appropriate. In short, no one knew what to think.
The
doorman at a top hotel in Paris, spotless uniform, cap and gold buttons. His whiskers and sideburns made him look just like Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh, the Murnau film from 1924—the film showed the humiliation of an old doorman downgraded to be the men’s room attendant—so much so that film lovers couldn’t help showing their outright sympathy for the killer. The hotel manager, an arrogant little thirty-something just out of business school, had ventured a joke about the doorman’s expanding waistline. He was wiped out by a simple punch with a massive fist.
There were housekeepers, there were workers. A young postal clerk, recently hired at the 5th Arrondissement branch in Paris. He was overtaken by uncontrollable laughter when he saw the incredibly long line that looped around multiple times in front of his service window, it must be said that this branch, like many others, was no longer open except in the afternoons. When the branch manager told him to calm down he kept on roaring with laughter, while jabbing a pair of scissors into the manager’s ribs.
A young woman working at the public library in Saint Denis, who had helped design and organize a remarkable exhibit on colonialism, a subject very important to her, she said afterwards, because she herself was from the Caribbean. During the opening reception, amidst the champagne flutes and canapés, she had words with the ministerial representative (from the Overseas Ministry, the Culture Minister had not made the trip). She used a champagne bottle to the back of the neck.
At least ten farm workers, each in a completely different region of the country, ran over their bosses with a tractor. This happened in Beauce, Brittany, the Auvergne, Poitou, the North, and the Cévennes. In Finistère, a farmhand who had worked for years on the same farm, as had his parents and grandparents, used an old broom. On a farm in the South, a woman used a cast-iron skillet, it still contained the omelet she was making.
A manager of a dairy in the Auvergne was drowned in milk, another in cream in Brittany.
All over the place, truckers coming to pick up their route assignments knocked out their bosses in the office. Some, not many, set their trucks on fire.
In a crowded lecture hall, first year of medical school, anatomy, the role and importance of the cerebellum, a student seated way in the back suddenly ran down the steps shouting: “cerebellum yourself” and stabbed the lecturer.
The film world had to show its regret for the murder, by strangulation and after the showing of a mediocre film, of one of the organizers of the Cannes Festival, by a director whose work had been rather well received, though perhaps not well enough.
A young priest in a parish near Menton who had just completed Seminary. He used the church thurible, very rare and very heavy, on his Bishop, and made the front page of all the papers, not only in the region but nationally as well, it is true that he was extremely photogenic. He refused to explain himself, which unfortunately set off a number of rumors, and most commentators emphasized that the Church really didn’t need any more of that.
Toward mid-April, a few of the big bosses and business managers started to contact each other, consult each other, and even organize meetings. They wondered if they should call on the government to declare a state of emergency. But the question kept on recurring, what emergency? Who was really being targeted? Words like class, domination, subordination, and so on, had become outdated and cumbersome, in fact this was to a great degree because of these same bosses or company directors who controlled, as was well known, most of the newspapers and radio and television stations. What was to be done? Especially since there was no clear definition of the opposition, just a negativity, there, that was the term, no one knew who had said it first, but it caught on, it seemed adequate, apt, accurate, it took the true measure of the problem. France was going to founder, was foundering, in negativity, and it seemed that the people who had become targets were those who made the wealth and reputation of France.
But what was happening was quickly perceived by some as impossible to hold in check: if you take a good hard look, they said, if you are serious and honest, domination is everywhere, everywhere is domination. That’s all there was, from the bedroom (well, yes) to the most successful and modern business firm, to quaint little companies that might be a little outdated but still thriving. And in government, and in public services, in hospitals and in schools, universities, associations.
Theories were in circulation, written or spoken, but they turned out to be wrong, even ridiculous, and in any case ineffective. There was the claim that what was happening wasn’t political, that reading politics into it was stupid, distorted, and dangerous in the end. No one took the trouble to refute this opinion which, however, resurfaced again and again, and at the slightest pretext, just like a game of whack-a-mole. Someone would talk about the latest crime, and immediately add, “But it isn’t political.” The point was made, moreover, that the phrase, “but it isn’t political,” ended up seeming like a magic word, an exorcism. But it continued to be used all the time. It would be propped up by emphasizing that there was no collective, no collective dimension, merely individual acts, isolated people. A philosopher, calling on Aristotle, pointed out that man as such is a political animal, but his point found no echo. Was it a question of exemplary actions, did the killers want their crimes to serve as an example? Did they want to incite, be copied? Impossible to say, they didn’t speak, didn’t boast, proposed nothing. Was this disappointing? Perhaps for some. But that’s the way it was.
Other people, who also claimed, in their own way, to have the long view of the situation, pointed to the need to explain to the criminals that they were mistaken, they had chosen the wrong enemies, they should take aim at the system and not at individual cases. Still others laughed in their face and shouted back at them that the general only exists in the particular, and that a system without particular cases is a theoretical fantasy.
An illustrious professor wanted to return to the term “ruthless aggressiveness,” which had caught on so strongly when first proposed. He pointed out that this term, coined by a great English psychoanalyst, applied to nursing infants who, out of love, ferociously attack the maternal breast. It was crucial, he said, to remember the exact origins of “ruthless aggressiveness,” so as to grasp the truly regressive nature of the behaviors in question. But his analysis didn’t make many waves. Did people see other regressive aspects, cannibalism, for instance, or scatology? No, not at all, that wasn’t it. Aggressiveness took place alone, it was ruthless, and the Professor’s analysis achieved nothing.
A group of interdisciplinary researchers, emboldened by the story of the hotel doorman, set out to prove that for each crime there was a model taken from cinema or television and functioning unconsciously. The idea seemed very good at first, but the researchers relied principally on a few cases of prostitutes who had killed their pimps and on Japanese films that were largely unknown to mainstream filmgoers. In point of fact, the evidence was lacking, even if certain themes could be identified, and in the end this was just a return to the inadequate, tired old theory of the harmfulness of the image.
Some well-known women—actresses, lawyers—claimed, extrapolating from “bedroom cases,” as they had been dubbed, that the profound meaning of the violence was a challenge to patriarchal power, that the crimes tended to be directed against men generally, and against husbands in particular. The murders they offered up as examples, a woman who had smothered her husband with a pillow, another who had stabbed hers while he slept, corresponded perfectly to their analysis. Many women agreed with their point of view and took their side, but others said no, the war of the sexes and the class war had nothing to do with each other. The question seemed to cut both ways.
The movement—granted, the term movement was not, strictly speaking, appropriate, at least it had to be used with quotation marks, there still hadn’t been any claim made as to a link between the crimes, —so the “movement” then, it grew, it spread, it expanded like a puddle, like a cloud of gas—and the month of
May—well, obviously everyone had been expecting this—was explosive. What was happening, and it took some time to realize this, was a sort of increasing abstraction, the crimes were still the acts of isolated individuals, but whose relationships with the victims seemed less close, less in proximity. It was less often a direct supervisor, a boss present at the workplace or on the site. Now, someone went after the CEO. Or else it was a government minister who had never really been seen, a legislator who wasn’t well known, a director of a newspaper or television station sitting in an office way down at the end of a hallway, in short, people who weren’t in the public eye every day but were definitely present by their actions in daily life. In this sense, these crimes required certain kinds of knowledge, more in-depth intellectual work, and yes even, as a remarkable columnist who had followed the events from the beginning noted, a higher level of abstraction than the first crimes to occur. At the same time, the killer always bore a personal grievance, he, or she, had been personally touched by the actions of the victim, even if he hadn’t been the only person affected. The first case of this type concerned a representative who had come up with the idea, and his proposal got a lot of attention, of rethinking the calculation of overtime pay, with the pretext of increasing competitiveness and incentivizing struggling businesses to hire. Two days later he was pushed under a bus by a machinist (actually he was unemployed, and might well have found work, some stressed, if the representative’s proposal had been voted in). The machinist only said one thing: “Stop the bullshit.” The sentence was strong, peremptory. It struck the imagination. For that matter, imaginations were all the more struck when two days later, in quite a different vein, the journalist who wrote the personals column of a widely circulating women’s magazine was strangled with a boot lace by a reader. She only said one sentence, and it was the same one, “Stop the bullshit.”
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