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In the fall of 2023, a video began circulating widely on social and traditional media in France showing a “bonne soeur” (a “good sister,” or a Roman Catholic nun) sprinting at a man with enough speed that, when she grabbed on to him, she was able to pull him to the ground. The man was one of a group of activists attempting to block construction of an enormous basilica deemed necessary by the community of which the nun is a part—la Famille missionnaire de Notre-Dame (the Missionary Family of Our Lady). When others tried to help the man to his feet, she held fast on to him, pulling his legs and dragging him through the mud. The surprising image of violence brought attention to a long-simmering battle over public space in a small village in southern France. The far-right missionary group has expanded its occupation of public and private space in the village slowly over numerous decades, much to the consternation of local inhabitants. As their attempts to block the culminating expression of what they understand to be the “occupation” of their valley seemed to reach an end in the courts, those who opposed the basilica turned to the tradition of Carnival to call attention to other sensibilities and actors besides the Catholic claims upon the landscape, including its flora, fauna, and non-human animals. The oppositional nature of the Carnival was in part confirmed when members of the community arrived with a large cross to pray against the celebration.
In the winter of 2024, a young artist from Paris’s norther suburbs, Raphaël Barontini, was given carte blanche to occupy the nave of the Panthéon during an exhibition about the history of slavery and abolition in France. Amidst stone paintings and frescos of Jesus and numerous Roman Catholic saints, the young artist hung textile banners depicting enslaved insurrectionists and the battles they fought against French troops. To open and close the exhibit, Barontini held two Carnivals, these borrowing explicitly the specificities of the tradition as it has been expressed in the Caribbean. With processions, dance, and the playing of the conch shell, Barontini created a new means of memorializing the past in France’s space of secular memoriam, where Catholic motifs and theologies continue to dominate its rituals and imagery. In an interview, Barontini noted how quick secular France is to turn to the repertoire of Catholic and monarchical symbols when struggling to find a new ritual vocabulary. Through his Carnivals, Barontini offered a more expansive vision of French history, and the means by which it might be celebrated.
At a time of expanding Christian nationalism in Europe and the United States, new secular sensibilities are arising to oppose far-right claims upon national narratives and landscapes. In France, the far-right often naturalizes the place of Catholicism in French history and its landscape. When, for example, asked why such a large edifice needs to be built by a reporter, one supporter of the Missionary Family of Our Lady explained: “as there are mosques being constructed in Strasbourg, perhaps we also need—on our Christian, European land—a church.” Such claims are far from new, however, and build upon centuries of efforts to solidify Catholic power in an intermittently democratizing but always multi-racial and multi-religious Europe. The wall paintings and sculptures of the Panthéon in Paris display these histories of debate and contestation in stone. Even during the Third Republic—a key moment in the rise of France’s secular regime—Catholic imagery was welcomed as a means of uniting the nation in its secular space of memoriam.
Rather than attempting to articulate a distinctive and overarching set of secular sensibilities, in this paper I turn to moments in which they are explicitly articulated in response to long-standing, but ever-transforming expressions of Christian hegemony. I see the Carnival as a particularly flexible and powerful means of expanding sensibilities. At times, we might analyze the rituals and sensations of carnival as themselves religious or spiritual, as a means by which gods, spirits, and ancestors beyond the Christian God and saints are made present. In these particular contexts, however, I analyze them as secularizing because they were explicitly articulated in opposition to attempts to naturalize the Christianity of France of its history. While the law has long been seen the secular’s primary weapon against religious sensibilities, far-right Christian nationalist groups in France are making use of local elections and lower courts to secure their right to a landscape where they are not always welcome. After a final loss in the courts, the opponents of the Missionary Family of Our Lady found themselves in need of new strategies. In this paper, I analyze how, why, and with what effects, the activists and Barontini, turned to the tradition of Carnival to give expression to sensibilities and images that escape Catholic expressions of hegemony.
Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)
In this paper, I reflect on the tradition of Carnival in France as a means of cultivating secular sensibilities. Secular sensibilities are often formed in conversation—at times antagonistic—with religious sensibilities. I compare two Carnivals that took place over the fall and winter of 2023-24 in France. Both were used to expand the sensibilities and actors recognized in French landscapes and histories. While Carnivals are not necessarily spaces in which gods and spirits are absent, I understand these Carnivals to be secular due to the context of their occurrence, as both pushed back against articulations of Catholic dominance. Rather than viewing the religious and secular as two pre-existing and always-distinctive set of sensibilities, I argue for understanding both as local and contextual. It was precisely by opposing hegemonic Catholic claims over space and memory that these Carnivals may be understood as aimed at the cultivation of secular sensibilities.