Copyright by Michael Robert Gott 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Michael Gott Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Re-charting French Space: Transnationalism, Travel and Identity from the Postcolonial Banlieue to post-Wall Europe Committee: Hélène Tissières, Supervisor Dina Sherzer, Co-Supervisor Michael Johnson Madhavi Mallapragada ___________________________________ Andrea Loselle Re-charting French Space: Transnationalism, Travel and Identity from the Postcolonial Banlieue to post-Wall Europe by Michael Robert Gott, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2011 Acknowledgements I would like to thank all of my committee members and in particular my supervisor Hélène Tissières and in my co-supervisor Dina Sherzer. iv Re-charting French Space: Transnationalism, Travel and Identity from the Postcolonial Banlieue to post-Wall Europe Michael Robert Gott, PhD. The University of Texas at Austin, 2011 Supervisor: Hélène Tissières Co-supervisor: Dina Sherzer Contemporary French identity issues are often conceived spatially in popular imagination and political discourse. France and French identity have been mapped into a series of imagined exclusionary spaces through media representations and political rhetoric. This dissertation argues that artists in the fields of film, rap music and fiction are actively yet often indirectly intervening in French identity debates by reframing the question of “integration” and by demonstrating that not only can one be simultaneously French and “other,” but that French identity is always already more complex and transnational than prevailing discourses of “imagined” identity will admit. This is done most effectively, I contend, by avoiding the clichéd and reductive spaces and spatial categories that inflect the debate. The works I examine employ travel and motion to move beyond the discursive ghettos such as beur or banlieue cinema or “minority” music and fiction. While often less overtly political these responses are more effective than the more typical banlieue narrative of clash and confrontation with power. Taking examples from cinema, I argue that the road movies I address are effective weapons of the weak v precisely because they avoid the traps inherent in representing the banlieue. My analysis demonstrates that the discursive ghetto is not always a bad thing for a filmmaker because referring to representational stereotypes can open the possibility of more readily “trapping” the viewer and therefore forcing him/her to actively participate in the process of decoding the author’s positioning. Often works attempting to contest spatial exclusion run the risk of simply falling into entrenched binary conceptions of society, reinforcing what the viewer already thinks they know about life in the suburbs or as a minority in general. Looking beyond cinema to music and literature, I demonstrate how artists are mobilizing narrative of space and identity to re-chart France with “hyphenated” perspectives, from African and Algerian to Portuguese and Pied-noir. vi Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1 Rants and Raps: Hip-hop, Transnationalism and New Republican Spaces ................................................................................................................................39 Chapter 2 Decentering France: Layered Identity and Diasporic Vantage Points in White and Salut Cousin .................................................................................78 Chapter 3 Open Roads and Transnational Identities in Le grand voyage and Exils116 Chapter 4 Looking at the Banlieue, Looking at France : Recharting France and French Identity in Jeunesse dorée and Les passagers du Roissy-Express ..168 Chapter 5 Lydie Salvayre’s “Reality Tour" : the Banlieue, Insider Ambivalence and Layered Realms of Memory .......................................................................222 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................274 Bibliography ........................................................................................................274 vii Introduction Contemporary French identity issues are often conceived of in spatial terms in popular and political discourses. France and French identity have been mapped into a series of imagined exclusionary spaces through media representations, political rhetoric and in general what Lyotard has termed “language games” (Lyotard 1979). At the same time, critical approaches have tended to reinforce these often arbitrary divisions by examining identity issues within narrow discursive categories such as Black, Beur or Jewish. This project is concerned with two ways by which this exclusion functions spatially. Both forms of exclusionary spatial mapping are center-periphery models that relegate minorities to a series of marginal spaces. The first is horizontal and based on actual spatial divisions and binary conceptions of inside and outside, the other vertical and constructed according to “imagined” notions of national identity, to use Anderson’s famous formulation (Anderson 1983). The following chapters will deal with a variety of complex approaches which engage with the spatial dimensions of France differently and create counter-narratives of French identity within space and conceptions of space. Identity is often discussed in terms of an inside-outside schema that often corresponds to the very real but highly complex social/physical division of central Paris, where “French” live, from the banlieue, or suburbs, where immigrant populations tend to be concentrated. Media coverage of suburban violence has often reinforced this binary division by feeding the popular image of minority youths as “lawless barbarians threatening to break down the gates of French civilization” (Hargreaves 1996). This is nothing new, as perceptions of suburbanites as “barbarians at the gates” date to the mid-19th century. What is new is that this fear is unavoidably linked to the perceived “blackening” of the suburbs (Stovall 2003). Once known as the “Red Belt” for the preeminence of the French Communist Party in the marginal, industrialized outskirts, the Parisian banlieue is now the “Black Belt.” At the same time, the question of topographical exclusion in France is far more complex than a simple issue of ghettoization of minorities. 1 One commonly cited study on hiring practices in France demonstrated that the resumes of applicants with named that sound un-French are far less likely to be considered than resumes with equal qualifications attributed to a person whose name sounds French. It often goes unnoticed that the same discrimination was demonstrated towards all applicants, regardless of their name, from the stigmatized suburbs of Paris (Weil 2005). Likewise students at suburban universities face similar prejudices despite the fact that diplomas earned at a campus in Saint-Denis is a national qualification, based on the exact same criteria and standards as a diploma from the universities inside of Paris proper (Benguigui 2008). In short, while race and ethnicity are factors in discrimination and inequality, so too are spatial prejudices. This center-periphery dichotomy lends itself to broader yet related exclusionary constructions based on the official borders of the French Republic, perceived as under strain from outside factors such as the European Union, vague notions of “Globalization” and, most recently, E.U. expansion towards the East. This is clear from the tenor of the so-called “National identity debate” launched officially in November 2009 by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Eric Besson, head of the recently created ministry for Immigration, Integration and National Identity. Unofficially, it is a debate that has been raging for some time and which took on a particularly rancorous tenor in the 1990s. Former president Giscard used the word “invasion” to characterize the immigration situation faced by France in a 1991 Figaro magazine article. The far right National Front party has had electoral success, most notably in 1995 and 2002, with its alarmist “immigrant invasion” discourse, feeding off both the fear of others already here and those trying to come. These negative images are linked to the formulation of imagined closed spaces and to the notion of a “real France” that is and always has been monolithic: white, Catholic and unchanging. The opposition to European integration is part of a broader “front du réfus” (a line of refusal) formed by Front National voters and others against perceived infringements on their way of life, a barrier constructed against the encroachment of “foreigners” and also against symbols of technology and 2 “modernity” (Mayer, 147). The debate over eastern expansion of the E.U. into countries such as the Czech Republic and Poland of the E.U. has added a new layer of complexity to the issue of immigration and integration. Polish immigrants offer a useful basis for analysis because Poles in France represent complex layers of belonging and exclusion. Earlier waves of Poles are now considered wholly “integrated,” or are at least “invisible minorities,” while more recent arrivals have become the extremely visible poster boys for the fight against open European borders (the famous “Polish Plumber”). This brings