[BRIEF NOTE] lèche-vitrine

[rfmcdonald]

I first discovered the French word lèche-vitrine in an article about Côte d'Ivoire. That Francophone West African country, once the most prosperous and dynamic in post-colonial Africa, attracting ambitious and energetic people from across the Francophone and African worlds, suffered economic decline from the mid-1980s on. This economic downwards spiral combined with the pressures of democratization to produce a xenophobic nationalism inspired by ivoirité, by the defense of the country against foreigners, first people of immigrant background then Muslims broadly regardless of citizenship. Completing the classical model of ethnic conflict was the recruitment of the young unemployed by various militias.

The result was the civil war that led to the collapse of the Ivoirien state and the impoverishment of the Ivoiriens. lèche-vitrine--would lèche-vitrinerie be the process of lèche-vitrine--was used in this article by an Ivoirien academic who was talking with despair about the disappointed youth of the capital Abidjan, people who grew up surrounded by the accoutrements of consumer civilization but who couldn't afford to partake. "Window shopping," she said, was much too positive a word for people who could never hope to buy what they saw, even to enter the stores and be thought of briefly as potential customers. They could only lick the storefront windows in despair.