Nuit Debout| The Nuit Debout Movement: Communication, Politics, and the Counter-Production of “Everynight Life” — Introduction

Abstract

This introduction applies a conjunctural approach to contextualizing particular analyses and theorizations of the French Nuit Debout social movement that began in 2016 (and may have ended that same year). It questions social movement research’s frames of movement emergence and decline. Integrating popular and alternative media and scholarly treatments of Nuit Debout, it assembles a longer French historical view of forces, repertoires, and aspirations and a broader culturally specific (although particulars are cross-culturally shared) set of developments that inevitably created conditions favoring Nuit Debout’s emergence. With regard to one enduring part of the past, Nuit Debout demonstrates a palpably French critique and counter-production of everyday life based in a desire to unleash human creativity while practicing direct democracy and social relationships contrary to consumer capitalist values—shared with other recent, especially leaderless, anti-austerity movements. The introduction then emphasizes the innovative role of media and communication in Nuit Debout before situating each contributing article in the conjunctural context.