France and its purgatory

This article compares the experiences migrants face in the banlieue of France to rites of passage in Papua New Guinea, where the author has performed long-term fieldwork. Seen from a Turnerian anthropological point of view, the banlieue resembles a rite of passage with its separation, liminality, reintegration and its ambiguous meanings. However, its liminality lacks a communitas characterized by equality, direct relations between its members and an absence of ownership.     

J.B. Priestley: Bradford and a provincial narrative of England, 1913–1933

J.B. Priestley's writing has been used to explore aspects of landscape and Englishness. Through an analysis of Priestley's early journalism in the Bradford Pioneer and the Yorkshire Observer, we argue that his critical disengagement to most of the landscapes of England was based on a connection to the landscapes of his youth in Bradford where he first developed his fictional and documentary narrative style. In his early journalism, Priestley articulated a sense of dwelling in Bradford that was rooted in the experience of two distinct local landscapes: the spaces of the city and the nature of the surrounding upland and moorland. Priestley's geographical ideal balanced the civility of the Edwardian city embedded in a landscape that offered escape to and commune with nature. The existential balance between the two was, we argue, central to the narrative geographies developed by Priestley in his fiction which is illustrated through an analysis of his two early novels: The Good Companions (1929) and Angel Pavement (1930). We suggest that the ways in which Priestley's interwar writing expressed dwelling in local landscapes might be thought of as a critical provincialisation of London and England.     

Rehabilitating the Réfractaires

Senneville, G. de, La Défense, le pouvoir et l'argent (Albin Michel, 1992), 299pp., 110F., ISBN 2 226 05672 6

Jazouli, A., Les Années banlieue (Seuil, 1992), 220pp., 89F., ISBN 2 02 013185 4     

Écrire la mort, écrire l’amour dans La Part secrète de Carol Bernstein

La Part secrète (1999) is the second text by Carol Bernstein, an American writer living in Paris, the first having been Le Rival invincible. This latest text exemplifies several contemporary discourses, addressing issues of disease, trauma, biography and autobiography, parentage, and testimony. Although at the crossroads of so many current debates, to date it has not attracted any critical studies. Faced with this lack, due perhaps to the brevity and apparent, but misleading, simplicity of this story, I first consider the text as a narrative about illness, relying primarily on Susan Sontag’s study Illness as Metaphor as well as Arthur W. Frank’s The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics. I then show that via writing the narrator manages to work through his feelings of loneliness, to overcome the lies that surround him and to inscribe himself within his family history. This second part of the article, which analyses the redemptive power of writing to rise above the ravages caused by an unnamed disease, is however only a fragment of the exposition because this act of writing is probably not in fact that of the narrator. It could be that of his daughter, usurping her father’s identity in an act of ventriloquism. Finally, I consider the daughter’s motivations in order better to understand how the writing of La Part secrète illuminates in a disturbing way the father-daughter relationship.     

The playful mode of writing in Psycharis's To Tαξíδι μoυ (1888)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the literary qualities of Psycharis's To Tαξíδι μoυ, in particular, to analyse specific examples that demonstrate its playful mode of writing. Firstly, it will attempt to place the text in the literary context of its period by discussing its conception and significance for Modern Greek literature. Secondly, it will focus on the element of humour in the text, which can best be described as a playful mode of writing. The playfulness can be explained as raising false expectations in readers in a way that does not become obtrusive or unpleasant, but aims to entertain through the effects of surprise. This mode of writing is created mainly through intertextual allusions, incongruous juxtapositions, and comical, satirical or parodic undertones.     

When things were ‘closing-in’ and ‘rolling up’: the imaginative geography of Elizabeth Bowen’s Anglo-Irish war novel The Last September

This paper examines the imaginative geography of Elizabeth Bowen’s 1929 novel The Last September. Drawing on Said’s analysis of imaginative geographies as registers of territorial identity, I consider the ways in which Bowen’s text maps Anglo-Irish territorial identity in early twentieth-century Ireland. Reading the text as an authoritative, albeit subjective, record of Anglo-Irish experience in Ireland, I identify four interconnected spaces which constitute the imaginative geography of the novel: the open, empty and isolated country; a wider landscape of resistance and control; a distant but necessary England; and an historical landscape of colonial decline. In conclusion, I outline how the concept of imaginative geographies provides a useful lens through which the often fragmented and conflicted nature of territorial identities, both during and after the colonial period, can be explored.     

Self and space,resistance and discipline: a Foucauldian reading of George Orwell's 1984

The novel 1984, George Orwell's nightmarish vision of totalitarianism published after the Second World War, remains relevant in the twenty‐first century. Orwell's concerns regarding the abuse of power, the denial of self, and the eradication of both past and future continue to resonate in contemporary discussions of politics and society. Geographers, however, have directed minimal attention to the spatiality embedded within 1984. Accordingly, in this paper I examine the theoretical implications of space, resistance and discipline as manifest in the novel. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault, I detail how the spatial and temporal control of everyday activities serves to discipline spaces within a totalitarian society. Moreover, I suggest that 1984 illustrates how the production of knowledge through the act of writing may forge spaces of resistance within disciplined spaces. This paper contributes, therefore, in two areas, these being resistance geographies and fictive geographies.     

Meaning in a Changing Context: Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach to Authorial Revision

Summary

In this article, I seek to develop a genetic/diachronic approach to the phenomenon of authorial revision, and to the interpretation of texts that exist in multiple versions. In all such cases, the reconstruction of textual meaning cannot be separated from the reconstruction of the process through which the text in its ‘final’ form came into being; furthermore, an understanding of the author's intentions in (re)writing cannot be entirely separated from an understanding of his/her motives for (re)writing. This article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I consider recent trends in editorial and literary theory that aim at characterising texts in terms of processes rather than products, in order to uphold the equal dignity of each version without losing sight of its connectedness to other stages in the history of the text. In the second section, I discuss how Quentin Skinner's views on meaning and context apply to cases of authorial revision, and I suggest that some key aspects of Skinner's contextualism need to be reconsidered. In the concluding section, I focus on a case study in order to demonstrate the operational value of such a genetic and motive-based approach to authorial revision: more particularly, I seek to show how a close examination of Jean Bodin's rewriting practices in the Methodus (1566–1572) and the République (1576) can throw new light on his shift from a concept of limited sovereignty to one of absolute sovereignty.     

The (un)promised land: queer identity and South Africa’s post-apartheid urban landscape

Abstract

In this article, I explore the intersection of photography and contemporary urban topographies in the production of queer identity in post-apartheid South Africa. To do so I examine Thebeautifulonesarehere, a contemporary photo-collage portrait series by Kelebogile Ntladi, which attempts to queer representations of South African cityscapes to reveal the entrenched homophobia and the systematic rejection of queer subjects. Ntladi, inspired by their own experiences of counter-normativity and the omnipresent threat of violence they face as a result, took to the streets to walk through their home city of Johannesburg to photograph the urban and cultural landscape; these photographic prints were then used as the building blocks in the assembly and fabrication of imagined spaces in which they and their fellow queer citizens would be able to live without fear of violence, where they could move freely and without repercussion. Using the trope of the flâneur as a starting point, I draw on Walter Benjamin’s paradoxical experience of Paris: his writing of Paris as the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’ and ‘the promised land’ of the flâneur exists in stark juxtaposition with his own complex experience of anxiety, dislocation and impending doom while living in the city while in exile during World War II. Ntladi’s personal experience of post-1994 Johannesburg echoes the paradoxical experience.     

“Celticism,ballad transmission,and the schizoid voice: Ossianic fragments in Owenson,Yeats, Joyce,and Beckett”

ABSTRACT

This essay surveys responses to Macpherson’s Ossian in Irish literature, alongside analysis of the development of literary Celticism. Despite being a key text behind the development of Celticism in Irish writing, Ossian is consciously rejected in Irish Romanticism and in the Celtic Revival. However, Ossian becomes a symbol of literary recycling and mental fragmentation in Irish Modernism. Texts studied in this essay include Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl, Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, and Beckett’s Murphy.     

Between history and hagiography: Eadmer of Canterbury's vision of the Historia novorum in Anglia

Written between c.1093 and the end of the 1120s, Eadmer of Canterbury's Historia novorum in Anglia is one of the best-known sources for the study of Anglo-Norman political, ecclesiastical and cultural history. This article explores the identity of the text as it developed in Eadmer's own mind. While modern scholars have placed the Historia novorum within the development of English national historiography, Eadmer showed no desire for his work to be received in this way. Instead, Eadmer's Historia was profoundly influenced by his extensive experience in writing the lives and miracles of saints. The Historia novorum occupies a space between history and hagiography, which successfully redeployed Eadmer's experiences of writing the past through hagiography, in order to produce an innovative and unique example of the genre of medieval historiography.     

Los adioses (1954) de Juan Carlos Onetti: procedimientos para alcanzar la sugerencia y el énfasis en el significado como nouvelle

Based on a presentation of the production of nouvelles in Hispanic America and its current study, in which the permanent academic and critical interest in Juan Carlos Onetti's Los adioses (1954) stands, this article raises and discusses the procedures used by the author to achieve a narrative that by its nature of nouvelle refuses the explicit in exchange for the suggestion. Among such procedures are the character of the narrator, the ellipsis, and a language of conjecture and doubt. With all of those procedures Onetti builds an open and multiple text in which his major emphasis during the writing process lies in the development of the meaning of the text, instead of just narrating the story, as proposed by Henry James in various prefaces to his nouvelles.     

Virtual Poaching and Altered Space: Reading Parkour in French Visual Culture

Parkour has emerged in the last decade as a significant cultural practice, both in France, where it originated, and internationally. The cultural resonance of parkour—a form of street gymnastics combining acrobatic agility with a creative approach to urban space—is emphasised through its presence on numerous internet sites, as well as representations in advertising media, the bande dessinée, and films. While the prevalence of parkour as a practice is widely known, these numerous manifestations within culture have not been widely theorised. This article focuses primarily on parkour's representations in visual culture, especially in cinema, and considers the associations made in two films between parkour and the banlieue. Analysing both the legitimacy and potential problems in making the banlieue a stage for parkour performance and big-screen entertainment enables us to reconsider the notion of the film banlieue, as well as the political possibilities of a ‘parkour film’. Lastly, reflecting on the circumstances of contemporary cinema and the role of the internet, the article considers philosophical aspects of the ‘parkour film’, as well as seeking parallels between parkour's spatial practices and the practices of cinematic and online production and distribution.

La dernière décennie a vu apparaître le parkour en tant que pratique culturelle significative, en France, où il a son origine, mais aussi au niveau international. L'impact culturel du parkour – une gymnastique de rue qui unit l'agilité acrobatique à une attitude créative envers l'espace urbain – est souligné par sa présence sur nombre de sites Web, dans la publicité, la bande dessinée, et dans certains films. Alors que la popularité du parkour comme pratique est reconnue, ces représentations culturelles ont suscité moins d'intérêt théorique. Cet article porte sur les représentations du parkour dans la culture visuelle – principalement dans le cinéma – et examine les rapports établis dans deux films entre le parkour et la banlieue. En se demandant s'il est ou légitime ou problématique de se servir de la banlieue comme scène pour la célébration du parkour ou pour les super-productions cinématiques, on peut réexaminer le concept du ‘film banlieue’, et considérer les possibilités politiques d'un ‘film parkour’. Finalement, en réfléchissant sur la situation contemporaine du cinéma et le rôle de l'Internet, l'article considère les aspects philosophiques du film parkour; en même temps, il cherche à établir des correspondances entre les pratiques spatiales du parkour et les pratiques de production et dissémination cinématiques et numériques.     

The iron age in Mediterranean France: Colonial encounters, entanglements, and transformations

During the last seven centuries of the first millennium BC, the indigenous societies of Mediterranean France underwent a series of gradual social and cultural transformations that are linked in complex ways to their encounter and increasing entanglement with the broader Mediterranean world. This article presents a synthesis of current knowledge of this issue and explores some of the main themes guiding research. New evidence concerning the alien colonial agents (Etruscan, Greek, Punic/Iberian, and Roman), and the contrasting nature of their presence and power in the region, is discussed, as is evidence concerning forms of indigenous engagement with colonial states and paths of social and cultural change. The consumption of alien goods (wine, ceramics) and the adoption of foreign techniques and practices (ceramic production methods, coinage, writing) are examined in terms of the locally situated logic of demand and the ramifications for entanglement and change. Transformations in settlements, ritual spaces, funerary practices, and the agrarian landscape are discussed.     

“LANDSCAPISM” AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT: DARKNESS AND ILLUMINATION IN MOTION

In conditions of darkness, how is landscape experienced when mediated by the artful staging of mass movement and artificial illumination? The article offers a response to this question of perception, phenomena and sensation, through culturally informed consideration of Speed of Light, a performance event staged in Holyrood Park, produced by arts charity NVA, during the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival. Speed of Light was a large‐scale, open‐air public artwork, illuminating the form and motion of walkers and runners, fusing the role of performer and spectator. Following an introduction to the event's design and delivery, and consideration of recent literatures on spaces of darkness and the illumination of landscape in contemporary social life, the authors describe and explain their respective roles as participating walker and runner in Speed of Light, and offer a series of participant‐informed interpretations. Observations arising from the social experience of darkness, illumination and motion, lead to closing reflections on what is termed “landscapism”. Landscapism, a sensibility encapsulated in Speed of Light, is suggested as a transporting and enchanting affect achieved by estranging the expected encounter with topography and atmosphere. It is a staged sensibility that dramatizes the experience of looking at, listening to and feeling for the temporary transformation of landscape.     

Écrire la (non-)violence : le cas de Laëtitia ou la fin des hommes d’Ivan Jablonka

This article analyses Ivan Jablonka’s Laëtitia ou la fin des hommes, which garnered three major prizes in the fall of 2016 (Le Prix Littéraire du Monde, Le Médicis et Le Prix des Prix) while also receiving quasi-unanimous acclaim from French press and media. My purpose is to explain how Jablonka’s writing contributes to exposing, denouncing and even, as far as possible ex post facto and by means of a text, undertaking a kind of reparation of the masculine violence inflicted on the 18-year-old young woman not only at the end, but throughout her entire life. To this end, the paradigm of violence laid out by Lévinas and Derrida will allow us to explore the ethics and poetics of non-violence. If on the one hand Jablonka’s text reveals the subjective involvement of the researcher and writer, we will see on the other hand that his project carries social, political and human stakes: his writing of a ‘crime story’ constitutes a manner of understanding the tragedy in the context of French society, with its social, judiciary and political institutions.     

Reading Kafka Visually: Gothic Ornament and the Motion of Writing in Kafka’s Der Process

Through close examination of the chapter ‘Im Dom’ in Kafka’s novel Der Process, this articles explores how a particular visual mode can shape the writing of a text. The mode analysed here inheres in the setting of Kafka’s chapter: the architecture of the Gothic cathedral, which the art historian Wilhelm Worringer, a contemporary of Kafka’s, saw embodied in the figure of ornament. This encounter between literary language and Gothic space as two phenomena mutually engendering each other opens a perspective onto the ‘motion of writing’ within the text, and onto its visuality and resonance with space. A dynamic and complex current; a chaotic tangle of lines; expression prevailing over meaning; an absent centre; vertigo and pathos — these are the principles shared by Worringer’s Gothic and Kafka’s writing.     

A Feminist Literary Cartography of the Canadian North: Women,writing and place in Aritha van Herk's Places Far From Ellesmere

This article examines the idea of North in Aritha van Herk's (1990) Places Far From Ellesmere, a feminist rereading of Anna Karenin that is also an exploration of place—Ellesmere Island—and of gender, identity and belonging. I situate my reading of Ellesmere firstly within feminist literary theory, focusing on the concept of intertextuality and on the implications of the concept, from the perspective of feminist theorists, for the acts of writing and reading. I further contextualise van Herk's work by outlining the growing sensitivity to the complexities of writing Canadian space in Canadian literary criticism. The focus then shifts to Ellesmere, beginning with an investigation of van Herk's representational practices and philosophies, which are organised around a critique of the relationship between writing, gender and power. I argue that van Herk's insistence upon the power of feminist textual rereadings, an insistence that results from her aversion to authority, critically shapes her geographical imaginary, and her understanding of North. By extending the text and thereby the practice of reading to geography, van Herk makes possible a feminist representation or rereading of the North that simultaneously contests the conventions of literature, of place and of gender. Ultimately, I argue that it is van Herk's commitment to investigate the processes of representation in which she is engaged that makes her representation of the North such a valuable text for feminist and literary geographers.     

Interrupting Augustine: Hermeneutics,Allegory, and Irony in El perro del hortelano

Whatever else El perro del hortelano might be, it is a deeply ironic text about the difficulties of reading. The play not only stages acts of reading and writing where irony disrupts understanding, it is itself an ironic reading of Augustine's moment of conversion that shows the difficulty of allegorical and programmatic readings.