Dégagisme

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@Asilvering: Thanks for spotting that! The French article had some pretty severe link rot and I clearly wasn't as thorough as I should have been. I marked the link as dead and used an archive link instead. (This is my first time submitting a draft, so let me know if there's anything else I messed up.) Jamboy (talk) 21:08, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

A photograph taken during the Tunisian revolution, a few hours before President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was removed from office on 14. The sign translates as "Get out, Ben Ali", or "Ben Ali, go away".

Dégagisme is a French political neologism formulated from the verb dégager, often used in the sense of "get lost" or "go away" but also meaning "to clear" or "to extract". It gained popularity in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and was first applied to French political commentary in 2017.

The term was originally coined in 2010 to describe a diaspora-led protest movement aiming to depose then-President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is applied to movements demanding the removal of those in power, by force or otherwise, without regard for who or what replaces them. Sometimes, the goal is to spark debate around the idea of power during the period of political vacancy, without demanding that a new leader take over.

Definition

Laurent d'Ursel, a member of the Belgian collective Manifestement (fr), defines dégagisme as "telling those who are in power to leave without saying that there are any better options, and without wishing to take power oneself. Simply saying 'get out', accepting and contemplating the emptiness, and seeing what happens with it." D'Urself makes a distinction between dégagisme and anarchism, declaring that "anarchy is a thing of the petit bourgeoisie. One thinks that one can do without anything and that anarchy is viable, which is a myth. [With dégagisme,] there is nothing. There is emptiness."

Usage

Democratic Republic of the Congo

The idea of dégagisme was first used in 2010 by Eric Mulalu, a Congolese opposition leader. In March 2010, a few months before the 2011 election, Mulalu released a video in which he invited President Joseph Kabila to dégage. The slogan Kabila dégage then gained popularity in the Congolese opposition, which began to chant it during protests and marches.

A photo from the 2011 Egyptian revolution of a woman carrying a sign that reads, "Leave leave and rest assured, the chaos will leave with you, leave leave."

Tunisia

The neologism made its way to Tunisia in 2011 during the Arab Spring and was used to refer to demands made during protests for President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to resign.

France

In January 2017, the term was used by Jean-Luc Mélenchon and leaders of the Left Front with regard to the results of the Socialist presidential primary and the defeat of Manuel Valls. Later that year, Emmanuel Macron was elected the youngest president of the Fifth Republic. Damon Mayaffre opined that "electoral Macronism is a polite, republican version of the ambient dégagisme that has characterised France, if not the whole world, in the modern era."

Commentary

D'Ursel's definition and Jacques Attali's comments (such as "After soft dégagisme, from which Emmanuel Macron benefited in 2017, could come hard degagisme,") stand in opposition to the idea of the homme providentiel (fr) and could be seen to represent a more vivid analysis of transitions of power.

See also

• Populism
  

References

This article "Dégagisme" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Dégagisme. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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