« By us, for us. »
This article is based on an ethnographic study of several antiracist activist groups from the Paris region, oriented towards political autonomy and a systemic approach of racism since their creation around 2005. It aims at examining the process of production of a collective subject, « Us ». It focuses on emotional processes and combines the perspectives of the sociology of collective action and that of social relations of power. First, we show how individually felt anger and sense of injustice become empowering when they encounter a collective frame of action. Then we analyse the emotional and relational aspects of militant work as a series of acts producing a sense of belonging for oneself, in a dynamic of communalisation and political subjectivation rather than racial domination.