From Algeria to the Banlieues: A Colonial Genealogy of the French Police

Just like for issue 07 (Sept-Oct 2016), this issue’s interview occupies a large format in order to unfold the complexity of the colonial genealogy that founds the current French police. These colonial heritage designates as much the counter-insurrectional doctrine imported from the French colonial army, as the relationship the police develops with people of color who, for many, are the descendants of the colonized bodies on which this founding violence was deployed. Mathieu Rigouste is an independent researcher, author of five books about securitarian capitalism and the French police. His dissertation, published in 2009, examined the historical definition of the “enemy within” in France, from the 1950s to the 2000s.