Dr. Ashley (Scott) Harris

Due for publication: December 2023.

The banlieues of Paris have long been depicted through harmful stereotypes in political speeches, the press and mainstream film as places of violence, crime, poverty, and social, racial and religious divisions. As representations of the 2023 death of Nahel Merzouk and of the subsequent protests and riots suggest, the term banlieue has come to be ‘a shorthand term to denote the darker inhabitants of social housing neighbourhoods in the peripheral areas of cities’  and evokes under-resourced, densely populated, multi-ethnic housing projects, stereotyped as lacking in respect for the law and having too many immigrants and too much crime.  This article discusses the origins of this clichéd and harmful imaginary and shows how it leads to increased material and social inequalities in the banlieues and disadvantages the 7.2 million people living there who are marginalised from the advantages enjoyed in central Paris by the Parisians and by millions of tourists each year. To achieve this, the article examines the representation of the banlieues to demonstrate the impact of different modes of visual culture upon the thousands of banlieue communities and, more broadly, to examine the significance of visual representations for their potential to create, reinforce or challenge material and social inequalities and injustices. Using recent critical cartographical theory and an intermedial approach, this present article counters the longstanding focus in public, political and academic attention on banlieue cinema which has disseminated a detrimental imaginary of the banlieues.  It makes an original contribution by instead arguing the importance of grassroots works including street art, documentary, social media artworks and photography for their potential to produce a more nuanced and integrated depiction of the banlieues than that of the dominant narratives found in the press and cinema. To do so, this article examines bottom-up, grassroots visual media that focus on lived experiences of the banlieusards, exploring them in relation to external top-down political and media (mis)representations. A comparative analysis of two case studies of grassroots artists, Sandrine Madji and Aristide Barraud, will reveal the trends in the local visual culture of the banlieues and examine how these counter mainstream narratives. By shifting engagement from mainstream to grassroots visions of the banlieues, there can also be a shift from seeing these spaces as segregated and precarious peripheries, to instead considering them as centres in their own right: centres of integration, centres of living, centres of empowering creative and cultural production.

Book chapter for Gender in the Banlieues, editors Claire Mouflard, Habib Zanzana, Mazia Caporale, Lexington Press

Due for publication: December 2023.

In public perception and academic scholarship, the dominant mode of representation of the banlieues has been mainstream cinema since La Haine by Matthieu Kassovitz in 1995. However, mainstream films are insufficient to capture the lived experiences of the banlieue or to create realistic depictions of gender relations there due to the need to meet commercial demands, the desire to drive a dramatic narrative plot, and the reliance on external actors, directors, and producers. Through close analysis and comparison with press discourses, this chapter examines two recent banlieue films, Divines (Houda Benyamina, 2016) and Bande de filles (Céline Scamma, 2014). Both films seek to move away from the hypermasculine and heteronormative depictions of the banlieues which remain commonplace in mainstream cinema since La Haine. However, this chapter reveals how even these female-led and female-directed films still problematically replicate negative and gendered stereotypes of the Parisian suburbs found in press and political discourses that emphasise violence, marginalisation, poverty, lack of agency, and criminality. From this analysis, this chapter argues that attention must turn instead to grassroots visual cultures for their ability to produce a more nuanced depiction of the banlieues. It examines how local inhabitants use forms such as social media, documentary, street art and photography to move away from a simplistic and stereotyped vision of the banlieue. For this, the chapter analyses the works of Linstable and Plume banlieue (Chahinaz Berrandou and Foulé Dioni) as case studies of realist portraiture that promotes pluralistic and positive images of the banlieue. The chapter reveals how they instead demonstrate the diversity of lived experiences and places that exist there and emphasise the peaceful integrated nature of communities across gendered, generational and ethnic differences.

This article addresses the media ambivalence of contemporary authors Frédéric Beigbeder and Michel Houellebecq who voice con- cern for the purported diminishing status of literature and the author within a mass media marketized context, while concurrently enga- ging in highly visible ways with the very media and commercializa- tion at the core of their criticisms. Analysing their works and interviews, and employing a theoretical framework that includes Debord, Angenot, Meizoz, and Baudrillard, this article explores their assertions on the status of literature, investigating them in relation to their media activity, and responds to Philippe Vilain’s proclamation of a crisis of literature. Firstly, this article addresses the ambivalence of these authors’ posturing across various domains before focusing upon how it manifests in relation to media. Secondly, it demonstrates how they describe the role and status of literature by comparing it to other media, from Houellebecq’s discussion of cultural values in Baudrillardian and Debordian Spectacular terms to Beigbeder’s com- parison of the author to a ‘strip-teaseuse’. It then shows how this conceptualization influences their authorship. Finally, examining their media activity, this ambivalence is shown to have productive outcomes by impacting the creation, production, understanding and reception of their works, consolidating their literary fame.

This article argues that Michel Houellebecq is an écrivain médiatique, and it examines how and why he engages in an authorial strategy that relies on more than the text and presents the author as a visible, multimedia, and culturally relevant figure. From an epistemological need to reassess authorship in the digital age, this article defines media authorship before analysing Houellebecq through a critical framework including Meizoz’s concept of posturing (2007), Saint-Gelais’s transmediality (2011) and Angenot’s social discourse (1989). It addresses how Houellebecq attempts to situate and justify his media-focused and author-centric strategy, showing how this reflects the challenges of the cultural domination of mass media and new technologies of the digital age, and indicates that the autonomy of the literary field is diminishing. This article shows how a superficially transgressive engagement with the media and multimedia in fact reflects consent to the dynamics of the contemporary socio-cultural context.

Published in Itinéraires, 2016-2, 2017.

This article analyses Michel Houellebecq’s use of multimedia in order to reveal how he creates transmedial worlds that cross media thresholds. Through plurimedial combinations, expansive adaptations, and post-textual work, Houellebecq extends the realms of creative intervention. Through these three types of activity, Houellebecq troubles textual boundaries and the sacralised and mythologised notions of author and text. His transmedial undertaking addresses artistic marginalisation while encouraging new forms of creative production in a growing space of possibilities.

Cet article présente une analyse des œuvres multimédiatiques de Michel Houellebecq afin de démontrer la création de mondes transmédiaux. À travers la création de combinaisons pluri-médiales, d’adaptations expansives et d’œuvres post-textuelles, Houellebecq vise l’extension du domaine des interventions créatives. Il déstabilise les seuils entre les médias et les conceptions sacralisées du texte et de l’écrivain. Houellebecq conteste la marginalisation artistique et encourage de nouvelles formes de production artistiques dans un espace de possibilités croissant.

This article can be found here: https://journals.openedition.org/itineraires/3441

You can find the interview here: https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/217394460/Interview_with_Fr_d_ric_Beigbeder.pdf

Frédéric Beigbeder est un véritable touche-à-tout, connu en France en tant qu’écrivain, éditeur, critique littéraire et animateur de télévision et de radio. Il écrit depuis 1990 des textes, surtout des satires et des romans autofictionnels, qui parlent du monde de consommation et de la vie post-moderne. Il vient de sortir son nouveau roman Oona et Salinger, une histoire de guerre du genre « faction » avec JD Salinger en tant que personnage principal. Je l’ai rencontré pour discuter ses textes (y compris le dernier), son ami Michel Houellebecq, la vie contemporaine en France, la religion, le terrorisme et la mort du roman. Ses réponses dévoilent un écrivain qui a muri avec l’âge (même s’il ne veut pas vieillir), un homme de contradictions qui s’inquiète de l’avenir du roman dans un monde obsédé par les médias..

Using Frédéric Beigbeder and Michel Houellebecq as examples of the écrivain médiatique, this thesis addresses a type of contemporary authorship that relies on more than the text but on a large network of media activity and opportunities for visibility. As literature faces the challenges of the cultural domination of mass media and new technologies of the Digital Age, these authors are addressing and adapting to this sociocultural shift. As these authors affirm their presence in and out of the novel in new media-heavy ways, the text is decentred as one element of an expanding network. In this not only post-Barthesian but also post-Bourdieusian critical context, this thesis responds to the epistemological need to reassess authorship with new critical tools that are able to deal with new authorial strategies, like the use of postures, social discourse, transfictionality and transmediality. More broadly, this research seeks to indicate how their authorship reflects a kind of cultural "flattening" occurring whereby culture becomes a flattened plane where previous axiological hierarchies are unsettled. This thesis unpacks an important tension in Houellebecq's and Beigbeder's careers between contesting and consenting to the dynamics and demands of the capitalistic market and of the "flattened" cultural landscape. As both figures present their strategies as means to save the text and the author, this research touches upon broader issues of contemporary cultural value attribution. Their authorship indicates that the autonomy of the literary field is diminishing as it comes under the increased influence of industry, other cultural fields and media forms. This work also addresses the significant links between masculinity, mass-market appeal, and success. This research analyses how and why Beigbeder and Houellebecq defy strict sacralised conceptions of authorship and text, asserting the author instead as a multimedia, visible, and culturally relevant figure.