Seguin Island Ten Years Later: A Commemoration

Territories in Question: Routes in Territories
By Jean-Charles Leyris
English

On March 28, 2002, the members of the Association of Former Seguin Island Renault Workers organized a public meeting ten years after the production of the last car on the assembly lines of Boulogne-Billancourt. The closure of this factory that had long been considered a social laboratory and the symbol of industrial growth during the Glorious Thirties was a hard experience to the salaried workers who were forced to leave a place that in their opinion was to last forever. It also left an industrial wasteland strongly marked by working culture. While the Seguin Island factory is going to be demolished, no space is foreseen to preserve the memories of the site. Mindful of the risk of oblivion, the members of the association met by the author testify to their past as worker and militant by contributing to films, exhibitions, or publications. Their discourses reveal their refusal to accept the closure by staying in a temporality of the “before.” But by demanding reparation for the discriminations they consider themselves to have suffered, they also express their hope to transmit their experience in the factory and to “move on.”

Keywords

  • Renault factory
  • Seguin Island
  • commemoration
  • memory
  • trade unionism
Go to the article on Cairn-int.info