Social conflict in the contemporary French roman noir

Conflict is by definition at the heart of the crime novel: most evidently in the usually violent conflict between victim and perpetrator but also in a more abstract, though equally important, way in the conflict between the perpetrator and the social order that s/he has transgressed. The classic detective story that Tzvetan Todorov classifies as the “whodunit” in his typology of detective fiction (1977, p. 43), in which the mystery of a crime, usually a murder, and the circumstances leading up to it are investigated and resolved by an authoritative detective figure, is one in which the criminal is the enemy of a social order, often that of bourgeois or upper-class society, that he or she has disrupted. Contemporary French crime writer Dominique Manotti (2009) opposes the essentially reassuring nature of the roman policier—similar in its structure to Todorov’s ‘whodunit’—as a form which is “by definition a novel of order”, to the roman noir she espouses. The roman noir, akin to Todorov’s “thriller” (1977, p. 47) offers little reassurance. In this type of fiction, the disorder engendered by criminal acts, symptomatic as they are of a permanently disordered society, is dispelled only to return

Social conflict in the contemporary French roman noir

Conflict is by definition at the heart of the crime novel: most evidently in the usually violent conflict between victim and perpetrator but also in a more abstract, though equally important, way in the conflict between the perpetrator and the social order that s/he has transgressed. The classic detective story that Tzvetan Todorov classifies as the “whodunit” in his typology of detective fiction (1977, p. 43), in which the mystery of a crime, usually a murder, and the circumstances leading up to it are investigated and resolved by an authoritative detective figure, is one in which the criminal is the enemy of a social order, often that of bourgeois or upper-class society, that he or she has disrupted. Contemporary French crime writer Dominique Manotti (2009) opposes the essentially reassuring nature of the roman policier—similar in its structure to Todorov’s ‘whodunit’—as a form which is “by definition a novel of order”, to the roman noir she espouses. The roman noir, akin to Todorov’s “thriller” (1977, p. 47) offers little reassurance. In this type of fiction, the disorder engendered by criminal acts, symptomatic as they are of a permanently disordered society, is dispelled only to return

"Il parle normal, il parle comme nous”: self-reported usage and attitudes in a banlieue

We report on a survey of language attitudes carried out as part of a project comparing youth language in Paris and London. As in similar studies carried out in London (Cheshire et al. 2008), Berlin (Wiese 2009) and elsewhere (Boyd et al. 2015), the focus was on features considered typical of ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’ (Rampton 2015). The respondents were pupils aged 15-18 in two secondary schools in a working-class northern suburb of Paris. The survey included (1) a written questionnaire containing examples of features potentially undergoing change in contemporary French; (2) an analysis of reactions to extracts from the project data: participants were asked to comment on the speakers and the features identified. Quantitative analysis had shown that some of these features are more widespread than others and are used by certain categories of speaker more than others (Gardner-Chloros and Secova, 2018). This study provides a qualitative dimension, showing that different features have different degrees of perceptual salience and acceptability. It demonstrates that youth varieties do not involve characteristic features being used as a ‘package’, and that such changes interact in a complex manner with attitudinal factors. The study also provides material for reflection on the role of attitude studies within sociolinguistic surveys

Post-1995 French cinema: return of the social, return of the political?

A key trend in post-1995 French cinema has been the return of the social. Analysing this trend, this article seeks to evaluate its politic impact. Using Hervé Le Roux’s Reprise (1997) and Agnès Varda’s Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse (2000) as key meta-texts, it suggests that the current wave of politically engaged cinema needs to be approached in new ways that recognise how films trace the impact of a politically unmediated, ‘raw’ real on groups or individuals. It further suggests that the withdrawal of political mediation gives the films an essential ambiguity and a melodramatic quality that, rather than mere cliché, may be a privileged way to engage with the violence of the real. Film is now not so much in the van but dans le bain of a diverse socio-political stirring

Eloquent fragments: French fiction film and globalization

French (and Franco-Belgian) cinema has witnessed a return to the real since the middle of the 1990s and should thus successfully have pinned down the impact of the globalizing economy on the sociopolitical sphere. Yet neoliberal globalization is deeply resistant to representation within the frame of conventional fictions. Condemned to be a cinema of fragments by the shattering of the old leftist imaginary, has French cinema merely tracked globalization's local consequences, always letting systemic causes escape its grasp? Or has it identified successful strategies with which to restore eloquence to social struggle and suffering that otherwise seemed condemned to silence? Engaging with important films by the Dardenne brothers, Robert Guédiguian, Bertrand Tavernier, Manuel Poirier, Matthieu Kassovitz and others, this paper argues the latter. French film, it suggests, has found ways to make the fragments speak to the totality, to short-circuit neoliberal triumphalism and to interpellate a nation that no longer plays its erstwhile integrational role. While none of these strategies can provide totalizing systemic critique, they do show that cinema is playing an active role in the rebuilding of a radical oppositional imaginary

Urban Regeneration in Lyon Connectivity and Social Exclusion

UrbanismArchitecture and The Built Environmen

Dis-Locations: Mapping the Banlieue

Representations of the French suburbs in contemporary French film have, since the late 1980s, identified an apparent generic specificity that is linked closely to this location. I will explore the narrative tropes of alienation and exclusion—as dislocations—which have dominated the filmic representation of banlieue spaces and their populations before examining examples in which the realignment of sociocultural topographies and film space foregrounds the question of whether representations of the banlieue remain inherently and generically connected to realist discourses dominated by spatial representation of exclusions, or whether the over-determined spaces of the banlieue can act as décor, as setting and wider spatial frame. I will then focus on the presence and function of banlieue spaces and narratives in two recent French films—Girlhood/Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma 2014) and Palme d’or winner Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2015)—suggesting that the banlieue continues to provide a complex site that both asserts socio-economic specificities and serves as a stylized setting through which to foreground other negotiations of territory and agency

"French Suburbs": A New Problem or a New Approach to Social Exclusion? CES Working Papers Series 160, 2008

At the end of 1980s, the question of "quartiers sensibles" (at-risk neighborhoods) started to be very publicized in France. It was not only the subject of many front-page articles, but also the target of a new public policy aimed at promoting urban and social development in about 500 neighborhoods (Politique de la ville). I argue that such a focus on "quartiers sensibles" does not only result from increasing problems such as unemployment, poverty or juvenile delinquency; it also represents a major change in public policy. Focusing on "quartiers sensibles" directly contributed to the restructuring of the French welfare state by centering its action on specific urban spaces rather than national territory, and on social links rather than economic reality, contrary to what the welfate state claimed to do during the Fordist period. The outbreak of riots in November 2005 is inextricably bound up with the way some problems (like lack of communication and weakening social links) have been associated with the question of "quartiers sensibles" whereas the French model of integration, based on equality among abstract citizens, left some others (like ethnic discrimination) unquestioned

Internal Migration and Regional Population Dynamics in Europe: France Case Study

The paper examines the patterns of internal migration and population change in France over the recent decades at departément and commune scales. Regional population change is controlled by both natural increase and internal migration. There are two differing patterns of natural increase: north and east France has higher natural increase and south and east has lower. The geographic pattern of internal migration has changed substantially over the last 50 years, most dramatically in the Île-de-France, which showed the highest gains between 1954 and 1962 but the highest losses between 1975 and 1982. Urban growth, which was strong in the 1950s and 1960s, reversed in the 1970s favouring small towns but recovered slightly in the last 20 years. Migration gains and losses show a quite complicated pattern of depopulation of city centres combined with slow suburbanisation and advanced periurbanisation. Periurbanisation is evident in Paris region and in nearly all large urban agglomerations. Most other cities show suburbanisation or periurbanisation at various stages of development. Out-migration shows a clear division of the country into a northern part with higher rates, and a central and southern part of the country with lower out-migration. This simple pattern is modified by higher out-migration from some cities such as Lyon or Clermont-Ferrand and from isolated rural communes scattered all over the country. Out-migration also has a regional dimension: there are shifts towards more attractive areas, in particular Alpine region and Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Analysis of migration between size bands of rural and urban units shows a significant deconcentration process, and a similar pattern characterises migration between population density bands. The general movement is down the urban/density band hierarchy, from higher to lower urban/density bands. Deep rural areas are not attractive and excluded from the process of counterurbanisation. In addition, unemployment was found to have a strong and very efficient impact on migration behaviour. Analysis for 1990-1999 leads to slight modification of this picture: a slow recovery of central parts of the largest urban agglomerations and less differentiated patterns than in the 1980s. Deconcentration of the French population continues but is less powerful

"French Suburbs": a New Problem or a New Approach to Social Exclusion? GSPE Working Paper 1/27/2009

At the end of 1980s, the question of "quartiers sensibles" (at-risk neighborhoods) started being very publicized in France. It was not only the subject of many front page articles, but also the target of a new public policy aimed at promoting urban and social development in about 500 neighborhoods (Politique de la ville). I argue that such focalization on "quartiers sensibles" does not only result from increasing problems such as unemployment, poverty or juvenile delinquency. It also represents a major change in public policy. Focusing on "quartiers sensibles" directly contributed to the restructuring of the French Welfare State by centering its action on specific urban spaces rather than national territory, and on social links rather than economic reality, contrary to what Welfare State claimed to do during the Fordist period. The outbreak of November 2005 riots is inextricably bound up to the way some problems (like lack of communication and weakening social links) have been associated to the question of "quartiers sensibles" whereas the French model of integration, based on equality between abstract citizens, let some others (like ethnic discrimination) unquestioned