“After the yellow vests, I received a lot of offers and turned them down.”

Marking a summer series on concepts that have characterized public debate in recent years to the point where they are sometimes misunderstood, Marian He became interested in “Oceanic France”, by Christophe Giloy. We interviewed the geographer at length to feed this article and invite you to discover the long version of this interview, in two parts. In this second part, Christophe Giloy tells us how he saw his subject take shape and take to the streets of Paris in yellow jackets.

Marian: At the end of 2018, with the yellow jackets, the idea of ​​French parties became ubiquitous. Everyone takes it to analyze what is happening. The concept becomes almost irrefutable, as verified by science and facts. How do you live this period?

Christoph Giloy: It was an event I had been waiting for for a long time. Before the Yellow Vests, there were already the Red Berets, social schemes whose geography for decades covered the regions of France, expressions of varied anger, and signs of low tensions. The yellow jackets were a kind of physical embodiment of the concept of oceanic France, and I was glad that we could now put concrete faces and areas on that idea.