Patrimonialisations, territorialisations et mobilisations dans la banlieue rouge : Plaine Commune et le patrimoine de banlieue

Abstract

Based on the case of Plaine Commune, located in the northern Parisian red suburbs, studied on the basis of an analysis of the Soucheyre collection of the municipal archives of Saint-Denis and semi-directive interviews, the article seeks to define the reconfigurations of the relations between territorialisation, mobilizations and heritagization in the red suburb. While the red suburb is historically characterized by the association between territorialization and mobilizations and by a limited patrimonialization, the article traces the invention of a heritage policy by the second age of municipal communism, in interaction with the fight against industrial restructuring and with the spread of the new museology in the suburbs. Then it presents the promotion of a « typical suburban heritage » by the «reformers» communists at the head of the intercommunality and by local associations/institutions as a hybridization of social policies, heritage and tourism policies in response to the questioning of the territorial system of the red suburb in the new stage of capitalism. The article finally shows that the red suburb is today the scene of territorial heritage mobilizations aimed at appropriating and transmitting the common use of the industrial heritage and the generalist model of social housing. In the end, the article shows that the suburbs constitute an observatory of new alternative heritage regimes (it proposes in particular the theoretical hypothesis of the patrimonialisation by territorial appropriation, to be extended by comparison with other patrimonial experiences, for example in the suburbs of Paris or Lyon), carriers of different forms of resistance and popular alternatives to metropolisation and ensure the transmission of a social model.

Keywords

• Parisian red suburbs
• heritagization
• metropolization
• Plaine Commune
• Seine-Saint-Denis
• Grand Paris