Managing (in)security in Paris in Mai ’68

This article reframes the extensive literature on the policing of protests in Paris in Mai '68 around (i) the concept, borrowed from Critical Security Studies, of the management of (in)security and (ii) Peter Manning's understanding of the dramaturgical function of policing. In the absence of direct archival evidence about how police felt during May, the article attempts a reconstruction – based on archival and secondary sources – of officers' experience of insecurity by highlighting the contrast between Mai and customary practice in managing demonstrations as 'co-productions' with the services d'ordre of trade unions and political parties. It is argued that the response of rank-and-file officers to Maurice Grimaud's strategy was widespread insubordination, contrary to the impression given in accounts by Grimaud himself. The role of le Service d'action civique (SAC) as clandestine policing auxiliaries is also discussed. The article concludes that the spread of police ways of knowing protestors into the wider population in the last week of May constituted a form of (in)security governance which worked by allowing ordinary people to feel sufficiently afraid to reaffirm their support of the regime and its frontline functionaries.