Why popular neighborhoods are not rebelling more often? While they are destroyed since decades by low-cost urbanism, mass unemployment, and police humiliations, Julien Talpin explores the reasons why they seem to experience difficulties to defend their interests. He shows that the obstacles in front of collective mobilizations are less due to what would be the fatalistic apathy of their inhabitants than to the multiple repressive tactics used by the power in place.

The different chapters break down the disciplinary logics which, without even having the need to be coordinated, ensure the maintenance of the statu quo. Behind the repression of the police and the justice are deployed on a daily basis corporatist blackmailing to public subsidies, islamophobic disqualification of opponents, or the anesthetic shots of participatory democracy.

By documenting the way this low noise repression crosses contemporary mobilizations, this book exposes its systemic dimension. It puts the light on this revolt trap which manufactures political domestication, enhances collective self-censorship and generates individual demission. By delivering the recipy of the adversary, it contributes to the long path of the autonomous struggles for equality.