Joshua Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942012
- eISBN:
- 9781789629897
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942012.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural changes it has brought to both social and spatial aspects of everyday life have meant, in France as elsewhere, the destabilizing of senses of ...
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The rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural changes it has brought to both social and spatial aspects of everyday life have meant, in France as elsewhere, the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging, as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. Maps and Territories identifies such preoccupations as a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel. Indeed, like France itself, the protagonists of its best fiction are constantly called upon to renegotiate their identity in order to maintain any sense of belonging within the troubled territories they call home. Maps and Territories reads today’s French novel for how it re-maps such territories, and for how it positions its protagonists vis-à-vis the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism. It uncovers previously unseen affinities amongst—and offers original perspectives on—a diverse set of authors: namely, Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq. In the process, it sets the literary works into dialogue with a range of influential theorists of postmodernity and globalization, including Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Peter Sloterdijk, Bruno Latour, Fredric Jameson, Edward Casey, David Harvey, and Ursula K. Heise.Less
The rapidity of postwar globalization and the structural changes it has brought to both social and spatial aspects of everyday life have meant, in France as elsewhere, the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging, as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. Maps and Territories identifies such preoccupations as a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel. Indeed, like France itself, the protagonists of its best fiction are constantly called upon to renegotiate their identity in order to maintain any sense of belonging within the troubled territories they call home. Maps and Territories reads today’s French novel for how it re-maps such territories, and for how it positions its protagonists vis-à-vis the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism. It uncovers previously unseen affinities amongst—and offers original perspectives on—a diverse set of authors: namely, Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq. In the process, it sets the literary works into dialogue with a range of influential theorists of postmodernity and globalization, including Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Peter Sloterdijk, Bruno Latour, Fredric Jameson, Edward Casey, David Harvey, and Ursula K. Heise.
Joshua Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786941787
- eISBN:
- 9781789623239
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941787.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
As the natural spaces of the European countryside are increasingly micro-managed and diminished, they lose their timeless pastoral feel and come to serve, rather, as amorphous liminal spaces where ...
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As the natural spaces of the European countryside are increasingly micro-managed and diminished, they lose their timeless pastoral feel and come to serve, rather, as amorphous liminal spaces where one urban site ends and another begins: ‘edgelands,’ as British poets Roberts and Farley call them. And yet, as philosopher Edward Casey points out, there can be no oikos—no ‘ecology,’ no ‘dwelling’—without edges. And therefore, although we typically pay little attention to them, such edges, in their silent, unnoticed way, crucially subtend, give shape to, and have much to reveal about the urban environments we inhabit. In Jean Rolin’s Les Événements (2015), the focus of this chapter, we follow a narrator whose attempt to escape a near-future France in the throes of civil war takes him across the back roads of just such a countryside. Avoiding the senseless war, the narrator navigates an edgeland network of fields, ditches, and rivers. There, where long-abandoned industrial sites neighbour shopping centre parking lots, and where, in Rolin’s fiction, highways serve as battle fronts, Rolin sketches the unique and melancholic topography of an unnoticed, undervalued, and fragile ecosystem just as threatened by industry and urban sprawl as by the ravages of war.Less
As the natural spaces of the European countryside are increasingly micro-managed and diminished, they lose their timeless pastoral feel and come to serve, rather, as amorphous liminal spaces where one urban site ends and another begins: ‘edgelands,’ as British poets Roberts and Farley call them. And yet, as philosopher Edward Casey points out, there can be no oikos—no ‘ecology,’ no ‘dwelling’—without edges. And therefore, although we typically pay little attention to them, such edges, in their silent, unnoticed way, crucially subtend, give shape to, and have much to reveal about the urban environments we inhabit. In Jean Rolin’s Les Événements (2015), the focus of this chapter, we follow a narrator whose attempt to escape a near-future France in the throes of civil war takes him across the back roads of just such a countryside. Avoiding the senseless war, the narrator navigates an edgeland network of fields, ditches, and rivers. There, where long-abandoned industrial sites neighbour shopping centre parking lots, and where, in Rolin’s fiction, highways serve as battle fronts, Rolin sketches the unique and melancholic topography of an unnoticed, undervalued, and fragile ecosystem just as threatened by industry and urban sprawl as by the ravages of war.
Joshua Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942012
- eISBN:
- 9781789629897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942012.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Introduction sets out the terrain of the book by signifying a key historical turning point in postwar France (and the West more generally): the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism. The ...
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The Introduction sets out the terrain of the book by signifying a key historical turning point in postwar France (and the West more generally): the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism. The effects of this crisis are felt as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. The chapter proposes an initial synthesis of key notions from important thinkers of postmodernity and globalization—including Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Peter Sloterdijk, and Bruno Latour —in order to develop the parameters of this crisis, which notably entails the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging. It makes the claim that such preoccupations constitute a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel, illustrating this with a brief reading of Jean Rolin’s Les événements [The Events] (2015). Finally, it presents overviews of each chapter, introducing the corpus of eight novels that will be the subject of the book: novels by Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq.Less
The Introduction sets out the terrain of the book by signifying a key historical turning point in postwar France (and the West more generally): the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism. The effects of this crisis are felt as once familiar, local environments are increasingly de-localized and made porous to global trends and planetary preoccupations. The chapter proposes an initial synthesis of key notions from important thinkers of postmodernity and globalization—including Paul Virilio, Marc Augé, Peter Sloterdijk, and Bruno Latour —in order to develop the parameters of this crisis, which notably entails the destabilizing of senses of place, identity, and belonging. It makes the claim that such preoccupations constitute a fundamental underlying impetus for the contemporary French novel, illustrating this with a brief reading of Jean Rolin’s Les événements [The Events] (2015). Finally, it presents overviews of each chapter, introducing the corpus of eight novels that will be the subject of the book: novels by Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq.
Joshua Armstrong
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781786942012
- eISBN:
- 9781789629897
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786942012.003.0010
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current ...
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The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current events—including U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate, and his creation of a Space Force. It draws the conclusion that French novels written in the second decade of the new millennium—post-2008-recession, perhaps—become increasingly dystopian, as they move away from the personal existential crises of protagonists finding themselves awkwardly lost in translation toward portraits of societies at large facing more palpably existential threats (financial collapse, war). Indeed, a host of more recent novels depict the near-future demise of the Fifth Republic, if not of France (as a nation) itself. However, these near-future dystopian versions of France also become the occasion for social awakenings and revolution. This is demonstrated by a brief reading of Marie Darriuessecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts (2017).Less
The Conclusion summarizes the most prominent aspects of the spatial crisis of globalized capitalism, as these have been encountered in the corpus. It draws parallels between these and current events—including U.S. President Donald Trump’s withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on climate, and his creation of a Space Force. It draws the conclusion that French novels written in the second decade of the new millennium—post-2008-recession, perhaps—become increasingly dystopian, as they move away from the personal existential crises of protagonists finding themselves awkwardly lost in translation toward portraits of societies at large facing more palpably existential threats (financial collapse, war). Indeed, a host of more recent novels depict the near-future demise of the Fifth Republic, if not of France (as a nation) itself. However, these near-future dystopian versions of France also become the occasion for social awakenings and revolution. This is demonstrated by a brief reading of Marie Darriuessecq’s Notre vie dans les forêts (2017).
