December 12, 2005
translator's note: on popular language
The patiently directionless New York Times article about the town of La Corneuve translates this reverse-tag as Sarkozy, you're finished. Which is not wrong in its basic sense. Ironically, however, by switching immediately from the literal to the figurative meaning, it has lost rather than preserving what I can scarcely resist calling the literary elegance.
Literally, the phrase (including the elision tes which casually replicates the English confusion of "you're" and "your"; one might think of it as the email subsign "yr") translates as Sarkozy yr cooked. Notably, we have that same expression—"yr toast," one might even say—in English, which makes the translator's choice even more puzzling. What's lost in this choice is the image-connection between the infamous burning cars and similarly infamous Sarkozy.
At a minimum, the graffito's sheer aggression has been greatly tempered; the fantasy of retribution in which Sarkozy is imagined in one of those cars has been lost. But imagination does not serve just to serve so crudely. The sense here makes explicit both that the cars were taken (and burned) as symbols of the elite, of Sarkozy's class—and that Sarkozy's political fortunes were what was put to the fire.
This may turn out to be accurate—the fires of Autumn may persuade the nation that Sarkozy is a firestarter, and not to be trusted. It may go the other way; he may have succeeded in polarizing the nation. There's a political canniness to this; in general, the polarizing strategy belongs to the Jean-Marie LePens of the world, rousing the provinces against the technocratic elites of the capital's grands écoles. If a Parisian can gain the faith of the LePenistes, and surely this was Sarko's play, he may find himself sitting pretty for the Presidential run in 2007.
Should it play out that way, this graffiti writer will turn out to have been mistaken, or at least optmistic. Regardless, the implication of the phrase ought not be lost. To think that the scum of the banlieues are in control of their language is to think they might be acting out of reason—out of a kind of strategy, and a kind of hope. But of course, the business of politics is to refuse all forms of agency, including the agency of language, to anyone who refuses the sanctioned politics on offer. If one doesn't support the current set of official meanings, one doesn't get to mean at all—no metaphors for you.
Posted by jane at December 12, 2005 01:55 PM | TrackBack