International Journal on Criminology Volume 7, Number 2, Spring 2020 | Page 120

Underestimating the Political Dimension in Urban and Geopolitical Violence
The account of this former “gang leader” undoubtedly includes a whole set
of reflections that act as a deontology for action (in the Benthamite sense). Far
from describing someone who had lost his way, it recounts an unfulfilled desire
to enter a particular profession that was compensated for by the gang, for want
of a better alternative, as a form of escape. One of the possibilities for integration
would have been for Madzou to go to military school (as others have been able to
go on to Sciences Po with some success), and—at a time when he was looking to
turn over a new leaf by working in the community sector—he also came up with
the idea of working on a project with the army, before being deported to Congo:
My final initiative was a project with the army. We organized three
days of careers presentations on a military base. In prison, I had
done a placement at Base 110 in Creil, an airbase, and following this
placement we spent one or two weeks at Saint-Cyr [French military
academy]. There I had met the person who set up the placement, an
admiral, and I got back in contact with him. The objective of the open
day was to provide information to young people who might be interested
in a career in the army (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 133–134).
This raises several questions. Who is this former gang leader who does not
see himself as a “loser” (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 61) and is drawn to a career in
the military (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 133)? Notably, he is the son of a teacher.
But while he reports being in prison in 1987 (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 60), Marie-Hélène
Bacqué—who we should not forget was the instigator for the biography—refers
to a “fall in social status,” with his father unemployed (Bacqué 2008,
189). Yet this did not take place until 1992, strongly implying that the latter was
not the cause of the former; she admits this (Bacqué 2008, 190) but argues for
the role of a crisis of adolescence and exclusion. Thus, as “horrified” as she may
be by violence (Bacqué 2008, 173–4) and as much as she speaks for example of
“warlike values” (Bacqué 2008, 186), her analysis of gangs (Bacqué 2008, 184) remains
constructivist, particularly when she links this trajectory to the decline of
the French Communist Party (Bacqué 2008, 189), while it is unclear whether this
had anything to do with Lamence Madzou’s motivations. The gang leader’s identity
was not constructed on the basis of ethnicity—he did not identify with African
culture (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 32)—but politics, since, as noted above, he
identified with a Zulu prince (Madzou in Bacqué 2008, 45), and through his status
as leader, his attraction to military strategy, and his desire to organize things.
Marie-Hélène Bacqué seems to speak in general terms, while conceding that
her analysis is based only on one “black,” rather than North-African, gang leader
(Bacqué 2008, 197)—and one who furthermore does not see himself as such. 22 She
22 On this issue, Lamence Madzou himself states: “I’m of African origin and will never deny that, but
I feel French. I don’t have an ounce of African culture in me. That way of thinking, of acting, isn’t part
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