The American ethnologist Edward T. Hall, who carried out missions across the planet, says that at the end of the Second World War the smell of the baguette coming out of the baker's oven in the early morning in the French countryside could stop net a Jeep of American soldiers, whose noses had never been subjected to similar scents across the Atlantic (culturally little olfactory universe in which Roquefort has no right of citizenship).
It is easy to imagine the direction that the same Americans would take today, faced with the fumes from the heaps of rubbish that have colonized the streets of Paris and several other French cities for days...
No doubt they would also recognize here one of these typically French know-hows, this art of striking erected on the proclamation of a right whose specificity is, for us, to claim to have to overhang all the others in order to exist.
See also Garbage collectors' strikes: what weapons for municipalities in the face of the accumulation of waste?
However, there is no need to come from America to be moved by the desolation that…
This article is for subscribers only.
You have 86% left to discover.
Want to read more?
Unlock all items immediately.
Without engagement.
TEST FOR €0.99
Already subscribed?
Login