Festival and revolution: The Popular Front in France and the press coverage of the strikes of 1936

This essay traces the press coverage of the strike wave of 1936 which greeted the first Popular Front government in France. The strikes were represented in the press as both revolutionary events and joyous festivals, yet it is the festive image of the strikes which has persisted in most accounts of the Popular Front. However, the essay argues that this festive imagery emerged and circulated in a particular fashion: the imagery of the strikes was constituted by the evolving relationship between the strikers and the workers' organizations, and the festive imagery only appeared as the workers' organizations progressively gained control of the strike movement and attempted to curb it. Thus, the imagery of the joyous strikes operated within this suppression of militancy, as the figuring of relations between workers served to obscure the other relations defining the strikes.