Riots – THE NATION

The temptation is to think that all this is new, but no: what is new, if necessary, is the barrage of images, the bulimia of data, the strange condition of receiving, every minute and all the time, news from the most dissimilar corners of the planet. And there it is, in this photo, a Senegalese protestera barricade without the charm of the French, a burnt-out bicycle that serves as a stop in battle. We see the seizure, we are not clear about the reason or the substrate. The accumulation of violence and riots overwhelms, to the East and to the West. It is part of the bustle that Pascal Quignard denounced in hate music; remember the paradox that sneaks into the last stretches of The yearsby Annie Ernaux: the record of a time of accelerated changes against the background of a Paralyzed History (the great one, with capital letters), equal to itself for decades.