Becoming Euro-Mediterranean: Reframing Urban Space and Identity in Southern France The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Cartelli, Philip. 2016. Becoming Euro-Mediterranean: Reframing Urban Space and Identity in Southern France. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33493604 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Becoming Euro-Mediterranean: Reframing Urban Space and Identity in Southern France A dissertation presented by Philip Cartelli to The Department of Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Anthropology Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts May 2016 © 2016 Philip Cartelli All rights reserved Dissertation Advisors: Philip Cartelli Professor Lucien Castaing-Taylor Professor Michel Peraldi Becoming Euro-Mediterranean: Reframing Urban Space and Identity in Southern France Abstract This dissertation analyzes how changes in infrastructure interact with cultural programming and rhetoric in a multi-faceted urban redevelopment project by examining social interactions, physical construction, and symbolic productions. Once part of Marseille’s port, the J4 Esplanade was bequeathed to the city as a barren swath of concrete and stone in the 1990s and has since been used by working-class and other Marseillais, many of whom hail from other nations, for recreation and socializing, with many of its regular users’ activities oriented towards the sea. A redesigned public space opened in 2013, anchored by two institutions, the Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations (MuCEM), and the Villa Méditerranée, a structure dedicated to cross-cultural dialogues. From 2010 to 2014, I have tracked the J4’s transformation from a non-purposed common space to one that maintains public access and use, but that in the process has reconceived which publics are welcome, when, and how. I consider the particular stakes when a transitional urban space’s end product occludes preexisting categories of spatial use while purporting to preserve them in coded discourses of cultural valorization, in this case through the term “Mediterranean.” The recent widespread use of this label on the J4 and in Marseille entails seemingly paradoxical processes that simultaneously open and close, celebrate and confine, construct and eject under the banner of Mediterranean socio-cultural unity. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………vi Introduction: Between City and Sea……………………………………………………………..1 Reframing Marseille……………………………………………………………………………..2 The Mediterranean Myth………………………………………………………………………..12 Culture and Authority in France………………………………………………………………..18 Space and Place in a Port City………………………………………………………………….27 Methods………………………………………………………………………………………….33 Chapters…………………………………………………………………………………………35 Chapter 1 A Short History of Urban Development in Marseille……………………………………………38 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………...39 Part I: 600 BCE - 1800 AD……………………………………………………………………...46 Part II: 1800 - 1939……………………………………………………………………………...51 Part III: 1939 – 1968……….……………………………………………………………………55 Part IV: 1968 - 2015……………………………………………………………………………..61 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………….70 Chapter 2 Publics and Planners 1995-2011. ………………………………………………………………..72 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………....…....73 Part I: A Loose Space……………………………………………………………………………78 Part II: A Blank Slate. …………………………………………………………………………...93 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...106 Chapter 3 The Mediterranean J4…………………………………………………………………………..109 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….110 Part I: Backgrounds…………………………………………………………………………….112 Part II: New Mediterranean Actors in Marseille………………………………………………119 Part III: Behind the Façades of the MuCEM and the Villa Méditerranée……………………..127 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………...142 iv Chapter 4 A New Space in the Same Place 2013-2014……………………………………………….144 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………...145 Part I: New Neighbors……………………………………………………………………...147 Part II: Two Users………………………………………………………………………….161 Part III: New Identities……………………………………………………………………..173 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….178 Chapter 5 Representation and Counter-Representation……………………………………………….179 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………...180 Part I: Discourse/Culture/Publics………………………………………………………….182 Part II: Marseille v the Mediterranean…………………………………………………….202 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………….224 Chapter 6 Becoming Euro-Mediterranean…………………………………………………………….226 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………262 References………………………………………………………………………………….271 Appendix Promenade: Ethnographic Uses of Non-verbal Audiovisual Recording…………………..284 v Acknowledgments There are many people whose support has been instrumental to the completion of this dissertation. I first must thank Delphine Roussel to whom I served as assistant teacher at the International School of Louisiana in 2008, for recommending that—following time spent in other parts of the greater Francophone world (Senegal, Martinique, New Orleans)—I finally travel to the métropole and that I make Marseille my first destination there. When I returned to Marseille in 2009 to begin preliminary research for my eventual PhD studies, Borja de Miguele, Solène Chaval, Fabrice Coppin, and Sabine Réthoré were there to welcome and orient me. My conversations and friendship with Arianne Dorval during this time were likewise formative. Come summertime, Wilson Sherwin was always willing to share ideas. My Harvard co-advisors, Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Mary Steedly, helped me to focus my project during my first years in Cambridge and, through coursework and conversations with Michael Herzfeld and Ajantha Subramanian, I further refined the eventual subject of my study. During this time, Tilsa Ponce and Dilan Yildirim were invaluable friends and intellectual companions, as were Julia Yezbick and Joana Pimenta, interactions with whom allowed me to begin conceptualize the content and form of my audiovisual approach as a filmmaker and visual ethnographer. Beyond our conversations about films and filmmaking, Véréna Paravel put me in touch with Michel Peraldi (via Claire Duport), who would become my dissertation advisor at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and whose influence is visible throughout this dissertation. In addition to putting me directly in contact with several of my key interlocutors, Michel Peraldi was regularly willing to meet with me to discuss my developing ideas and research questions. Jean-Louis Fabiani generously agreed to serve as my second EHESS vi committee member and has helped orient a number of my theoretical and thematic approaches, as well as being one of the first people to watch and comment on my film Promenade, a complement to this dissertation. Stéphane Dorin (Université de Limoges) and Sylvia Girel (Aix- Marseille Université) generously agreed to serve as external evaluators, reading and commenting on my dissertation as well as participating in my defense. Back in Cambridge, Anand Vaidya played a key role in helping me focus my research topic for my prospectus and was always available to talk through theoretical and methodological problems. From our time spent together in Cambridge through my defense Anand has been a professional and personal guide and a true friend. Claudio Sopranzetti and Naor Ben-Yehoyada both helped me refine the theory and subject of my dissertation prior to fieldwork. Benny Shaffer was a vital comrade in the art of reconciling filmmaking practice with academic research and vice versa. While doing research in Marseille, I depended on the support of a number of friends and roommates, who regularly listened to me talk about my research and other concerns: Judith Combe, Louis Bart, Anna Cooper, Leïla Quillacq, Cara Flowers, Yodit Hermann, and Erik Billabert. Joris Lachaise convinced me to stick with the J4 Esplanade and, along with Anne- Sophie Popon, watched and made helpful critiques of early versions of Promenade. Some of the J4 Esplanade’s regulars were my regular interlocutors during this time. While many remain anonymous in this dissertation, I am indebted to Papa Omri, Serge, Daniel and others, who allowed me to spend time with them and in turn spent a significant amount of time sharing their experiences and opinions with me. Other interlocutors in the J4’s new institutions and elsewhere were particularly generous and open with me: André Jollivet, René Borruey, Thierry Fabre, Bernard Morel, Franck Geiling, Jean-Michel Guénod, Anne Lévy, vii Bruno Suzarelli, Laurence Haegel, Florence Ballongue, Cécile Dumoulin, and Christian Poitevin. Mohamed Boubidar, Nico Dupont, Remi Laurichesse, Benoît Ferrier, Élodie Sylvain, Pauline Duclos, and Gerald Brechler at Tabasco Video allowed me to participate in and observe their innovative web-documentary project “Et le Panier dans tout ça?” The major part of my ethnographic research in Marseille was supported by The Wenner- Gren Foundation. I received a number of supplemental grants from Harvard University, and would also like to thank Marianne Fritz and Cris Paul