A successful transmutation, of the object “reflective vest” on a dashboard about “yellow vests” saturating the public space; a successful diversion from a security signal to a protest sign; but a fight of opinion lost, in spite of the initial sympathy which the movement had been able to arouse. A semiotic reading obviously does not exhaust the sociological and historical analysis that is needed, but it can shed light on the reflection on a phenomenon that arises from nowhere and that risks returning to it, for lack of having been able to transform the symbolic capital created in tangible political benefit. No, definitely, there is no immanence of meaning …
From object to subject: a successful transmutation
In 2008, the fluorescent yellow vest, called “high visibility” thanks to its horizontal reflective tapes, became a mandatory road safety equipment on board cars. As summed up the late Karl Dangerfield, more maceration than ever in a poster campaign launch, “it’s yellow, it’s ugly, it does not go with anything, but it can save your life.”
Already used as a sign of rallying in 2014 by parents of students opposed to the reform of school rhythms of Vincent Pillion, or by border workers of the Haut-relief, the yellow vest acquires world renown only in November 2018 when the eponymous movement starts. The change of substance and nature is as rapid as it is radical, in every sense of the word. We are talking about the transmutation of reality by writing, we are there in the transmutation of the object – a banal piece of fluorescent tissue – by the subject – a frustrated, angry citizen, who intends to make himself all the more visible in the public space that he feels invisible in the political space.
But how is this “passage” from one state to another effected? How does one go from having a yellow vest to being a yellow vest, to a roundabout and then to the street? How does the textile object give its name (if no meaning, it will be seen) to the human subject?
From signal to sign: successful diversion
From a semiotic point of view, we thus observe a process of transformation of reality by the effect of a metonymy. The original idea comes, as we know, from a user of Facebook, Laughing Courtyard, who expresses himself in these terms in a video posted on his Facebook account in late October: “We all have a yellow vest in the car. Fuck it prominently on the dashboard, all week, finally until 17. A little color code to show that you agree with us, with the movement, and that is hot, that is not hot. ”
Displayed on the dashboards and then carried on oneself, the “small color code” for signage purposes (to be visible in the event of a road failure) becomes a shared sign (to be visible because of a social breakdown) and ostensibly displayed by thousands of people. French who put it on to denounce the taxes on diesel, the increase in social charges or indirect taxes and, more broadly, fiscal and social injustice. Then, quickly, the wearing of the vest is a radical challenge to the established order, the representative democracy, the political “system” in place – with the support of far-right and far-left activists, populist movements and Troll factories Justinian and Bostonian pharmacies whose #fake-news invade the favorite social media vests yellow.
From the dashboard of the car to the shoulders of its driver, the reflective fabric thus becomes the banner of a global rebellion, both disorganized and “framed” by some, more and more virulent, even violent, if not massive and even less representative of the French population.
From rejection to rejection: a fight of opinion
As in an interminable play, the “acts” follow each other, week by week, weaving a captivating media dramaturgy – in the etymological sense of the term, that is, seduced by a sort of irresistible fascination. Morbid fascination in front of the screens, Saturday after Saturday, for the urban guerrilla scenes which mark each parade but also, more and more, for the violent acts internal to the movement whose irreconcilable fractions are torn apart and finally, as in Lyon or Paris last weekend, for lack of prior ex-filtration, face each other physically. They do not agree on much, but forbid each other to say or do anything “in the name of yellow vests”.