The Gilets Jaunes resistance to identification befuddled liberal commentators

Evidence

Yet protesters’ occupations of traffic circles in the cities’ nondescript peripheries were just as widespread. Their strategies relied on both hypervisibility and invisibility, expressed through an amorphous presence online and offline. The weekly descent of yellow-vest-wearing farmers and rural commuters at the Champs-Élysées was a sight no less strange than that of the K-pop fans’ takeover of the iWatchDallas app and the Trump 2020 merchandise website. Hence, the Gilets Jaunes protests eschewed identification; they were distinctively unstraightforward, difficult to anticipate or to pin down. The lack of a general consensus about their demographic makeup, their diverse ideological origins, and their heterogeneous demands befuddled France’s liberal commentariat. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 334

Categorization

• XREF: The refusal to be pinned down links to the earlier chapter’s theme of speculation as opacity/volatility, and to Zamyatin’s We as a study of the state’s drive to make subjects transparent.