Remember. Just a year ago, Bertrand Kern, little-known PS mayor of a town bordering Paris, achieved worldwide notoriety by renaming his town, Pantin becoming “Pantine”. Two million people watched the video filmed on the occasion of her vows, some gently made fun of it, others rebelled against this feminist “all nonsense” trend, a few still laugh at the same exercise. applied in Bordeaux, Mâcon or Juan-les-Pins. The experience of the elected official, who is in no way extremist, is indicative of an era where everything is a symbol. And where the attribution of street names and public places is, for some, the continuation of contemporary political battles by other means. A few months ago, in Strasbourg, the Dare to Feminism association, in one night, feminized 300 streets in the city. Elsewhere, statues paying tribute to figures linked to colonization are regularly defaced.
We had somewhat forgotten this very French little game. For a long time, through revolutions, wars and Republics, public space has varied. Each regime tried to forget the previous one and endeavored to write its own memorial history. Where Americans are content with sober Main streets or 5th Avenue, we very seriously claim to pay homage to characters, events or dates that tell us stories. In recent years, this science, which has the pretty name of odonymy, has experienced a revival of interest not without ulterior motives. Much more than yesterday, elected officials, activists or simple citizen associations are leading discreet but offensive campaigns to defend their heroes (or heroines) or to debunk those of yesterday.
Several events helped to rekindle the debate. First, the changes in majority in several cities in 2020. Some, like Perpignan, fell into the hands of the National Rally (RN), while others, like Lyon, Bordeaux or Strasbourg, elected left-wing majorities more sensitive to questions of diversity or feminization. These two themes have gained momentum in the debate and fueled questions about public space. Emmanuel Macron himself highlighted the subject by asking, in 2020, historians Pascal Blanchard and Yvan Gastaut to form a commission and establish a list of names from diversity. The result was a collection of “portraits of France” – 318 people ranging from the designer Balenciaga to the resistance fighter Olga Bancic – intended to inspire local elected officials.
In several municipalities, spectacular “unchristenings” of avenues or squares with names that are too sulfurous have taken place in recent years. Adolphe Thiers, who participated in the crushing of the Commune of 1871, thus disappeared from Niort (where the road which bore his name was replaced by a classic “rue de l’Hôtel-de-Ville), from Amiens (where a more political “boulevard des Fédérés” was substituted for its artery) and a few other localities. In Bordeaux, a collective of citizens is pursuing the same goal, without success for the moment. Alexis Carrel, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1912, is also one of the “erased” for his eugenics and his proximity to the Vichy regime, like Marshal Bugeaud for his role in the conquest of Algeria.
But cities handle the practice with infinite caution. Because it dissatisfies local residents – voters exposed to the administrative hassle of a change of address. But also those nostalgic for a happy past – the places of childhood, of a first kiss… – or more political. “This subject concerns neither history nor memory,” summarizes Pascal Blanchard, “but commemoration. That is to say, knowledge, but also emotion.” In Rouen, the city has given up replacing the statue of Napoleon with that of Gisèle Halimi, which was not sufficiently consensual. In Sète, in Hérault, the municipal decision to rename Place Stalingrad to give it the very classic name of Victor Hugo has raised more than a few questions. “In the majority, some thought they were erasing the traces of the communists who ruled the city for a long time. It was ignorance and a lack of understanding for a battle which constitutes a turning point in the Second World War,” regrets Sébastien Denaja, elected PS d ‘opposition.
The municipalities are all the more reluctant to erase a name as they do not want to be assimilated to the towns run by the RN. From their first months in office, the latter frequently took very symbolic decisions on the matter, even if they avoided the provocations of the 1990s. In Beaucaire, Julien Sanchez, elected in 2014, immediately renamed the street of March 19, 1962 – date of the ceasefire in Algeria – to make it that of July 5, 1962, marking the Oran massacre. He also had fun naming a “Brexit street” alongside those dedicated to Jean Monnet or Robert Schuman in the European quarter to, he said, “represent all sensibilities”. In Perpignan, Louis Aliot, elected in 2020, chose to name an esplanade named after Pierre Sergent, FN deputy in the 1980s and one of the founders of the OAS. A few days after the plaque was installed, a citizen collective replaced it with another dedicated to Maurice Audin, who died of torture in Algeria; SOS racism filed an appeal for “disturbing public order”. “It was an electoral promise. Locally, the man was very respected, including by his opponents,” defends the vice-president of the RN. As a token of good faith, he sent L’Express the list of street allocations since his election, most of which were consensual.
To avoid comparison and not be accused of “cancel culture”, municipalities only deal radically with the most serious cases. Sometimes they extinguish the anger of local residents with tricks, like Armand Carrel, a journalist by profession, who replaces the unwelcome Alexis with the immense virtue of making the change of address painless. But for the rest, the status quo prevails. Biarritz, for example, refused to rename the Négresse district, a choice validated by the administrative court of Pau on December 21 which saw in the name “a memorial perspective, in homage to the person in question and to local history “. Moreover, the Mémoires et Partages association, at the origin of this appeal, usually prefers to work on education rather than erasure. In Bordeaux, Nantes, Bayonne, La Rochelle and Le Havre, ports active in slavery and the slave trade, she has campaigned for years for the installation of explanatory panels attached to street names, reminding us that slavery constitutes a crime. against humanity. “It is better to live with the unbearable than to erase it. We can see that renaming is not effective, there has never been so much anti-Semitism and racism,” says Karfa Diallo, founder and director of the ‘association.
Many cities choose to focus their efforts in terms of feminization and diversity on new arteries or new public facilities. At the risk of being accused of sending diversity to the periphery, out of sight and away from the flow of traffic. The weight of the city’s past, its history, the composition of municipal councils and odonymy commissions also weigh on decisions which are not always as original as hoped. In Rennes where, in three years, the rate of feminization has increased from 14 to 17%, the city has set up a steering committee and is organizing a citizen vote at the time of the final choice. “On paper, everyone is in favor of feminization,” notes Flavie Boukhenoufa, the deputy in the city of Rennes in charge of the file. “But most of the suggestions I receive concern men’s names.”
Transfers are slow, waiting lists long. And some cities are giving in to safe titles. How many neighborhoods are crisscrossed by “des Mésanges”, “des Peupliers” or “des Aviateurs” arteries? In Pantin, despite the mockery, Bertrand Kern does not want to give up and plans to feminize new equipment. But after his coup in 2023, his greeting card is, this year, dedicated to Pantin athletes. More Olympic and less controversial.
.