Christina Horvath

Banlieue narratives: voicing the French urban periphery

In the wake of the severe urban unrest that hit France in the 2000s, the banlieues have become the centre of sustained public attention as well as a narrative effervescence. Discourses produced by politicians, journalists, urban planners, social scientists, novelists, film-makers, hip-hop artists and stand-up comedians have since addressed urban marginality from a variety of angles. In mainstream media and political discourse, multi-ethnic suburban housing estates have mainly been depicted as menacing spaces that erode the cohesion of the nation and threaten both French national identity and Republican integrity. In 2005, Nicolas Sarkozy called banlieue youth ‘scum’ and ‘riff-raff’. He attributed rioting to the presence of organized gangs and promised to clean the suburbs with a ‘high-pressure cleaner’. Ten years later, in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks, Manuel Valls spoke about ‘ghettos’ and ‘territorial, social and ethnic apartheid’ in the French suburbs. The abrasive tone of these political discourses has contributed to the deteriorating image of banlieues in the collective imagination. Other discourses, on the contrary, have attempted to destigmatize working-class suburbs by establishing a different perspective on identity, communities, local and national belonging and urban renovation. In a context of enduring turmoil and debate it was not surprising to see the emergence of new narratives which undertook to explore the French urban periphery from within, focusing on the experience of those living on the margins and investigating their cultural practices, memory, access to political representation and affective appropriation of the urban space. These narratives, which appeared simultaneously in literature, film, music and other cultural forms, were distinctively original in their tone, aesthetics and aims. Critics acknowledged their novelty by using labels such as ‘urban’ or ‘banlieue’ in order to differentiate them from the works of previous generations. These designations simultaneously referred to the production’s geographic setting, main theme and place of enunciation, which coincided in the case of most authors. However, the labels ‘banlieue literature’ or ‘banlieue film’ have never been explicitly claimed by the creators themselves. Targeting universal rather than exclusively local audiences, they have been cautious about being assigned to a peripheral position owing to their social origins, place of residence or marginal status within what Bourdieu termed the field of cultural production in France (1993). Nevertheless, the banlieue narrative has attracted considerable scholarly attention, in particular over the last decade. It has been discussed at an array of interdisciplinary conferences focusing on French banlieues, such as Communities at the Periphery held in 2013 at the Institut Français in London or The Banlieue Far from the Clichés, organized in Oxford in 2014. It was also the

Conceptualizing peripheral urban literature in France and Brazil

Abstract This paper is founded on the premise that, while banlieues and favelas do not share the same history, architecture or demography, their residents experience similar forms of stigmatization and these prompt comparable responses from writers. The comparison between French ‘banlieue narratives’ and Brazilian ‘marginal–peripheral literature’ offers an important insight into how literature produced inside vulnerable communities looks at itself and is perceived by the gatekeepers of literary institutions, and what strategies are available to writers who wish to destigmatize disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The article starts with a comparison of urban development in France and Brazil before it discusses both countries’ respective literary traditions and ways of conceiving urban and literary margins. Finally, a range of key strategies equally relevant to both contexts are discussed. The conclusion sheds light on what is universal about the experience and on the literary representation of urban disadvantage.

Riots or revolts? The legacy of the 2005 uprising in French banlieue narratives

Abstract The 2005 banlieue uprisings were the most important acts of contestation in France since May 1968, yet unlike the earlier student protests, they were largely interpreted as aimless violence rather than political dissent. While the authors of the upheavals remained silent, unable or unwilling to explain their motivations, social scientists and other commentators advanced the most divergent interpretations and made various claims on their behalf. This paper proposes to confront these readings with the analysis of three novels published in the wake of the 2005 riots by Mabrouck Rachedi, Wilfried N’Sondé and Rachid Santaki. Comparing these banlieue narratives with a range of scholarly readings proposed by sociologists will help us construct an alternative interpretative framework in which riots appear to be collective demands for justice, equality and social mobility. The conclusion will assess whether the riots are likely to leave a legacy comparable with May 1968.