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"Being Contemporary" is a volume of original essays by 23 preeminent scholars of French and Comparative literature, hailing from both sides of the Atlantic, in response to the editors' invitation to "think through the contemporary." The volume offers a sustained critical reflection on the contemporary as a concept, a category, a condition, and a set of relationships to others and to one's own time. Being Contemporary emerges from a sense of a critical urgency to probe the notion of "the contemporary," and the place of the contemporary critic, in French literary and cultural studies today. Its point of departure is Susan Suleiman's book Risking Who One Is (Harvard, 1994), which proposed two decades ago that "being contemporary" offers a heuristic category for assessing the role of the scholar and critic, for studying the current moment in literature, art, and culture, and for engaging with historical and philosophical questions in a way that resonates with readers in the present day.0Returning to these ideas with renewed vigor, the thought-provoking essays that comprise this volume center on 20th- and 21st-century French literature, politics, memory, and history, and problematize the contemporary as a critical position with respect to the current moment."--Adapted from back cover

Contemporary French literature has expressed accurately the sense of alienation from the values of Western modernity. Out of contemporary French novels arises a sense of despair over cultural relativism, the poor quality of education and the decline of religious values. Nevertheless, such a critique should not serve as an excuse for individuals and groups to turn inward. Instead, a reassertion of Western identity and a revitalising of public democratic space can lead to a re-energising of modern society as the arena for the fulfilment of individual and collective goals.

This dissertation examines, through literary and testimonial texts, the transmission and dissemination of narratives about torture that took place during the Algerian War of Independence. Fictional depictions of limit experiences such as torture are deeply rooted in discourses about remembering and forgetting. I argue that the frequently used term "open secret" is a misnomer which is taken up in literature in order to be critiqued through narrative fragmentation and shifting generic frames. My project is interdisciplinary, and studies literary and anthropological discussions of torture as both a politicized and sexualized system. I address the problem of representing torture and raise questions about the status of historiography and its place within French, Algerian, and trans-Mediterranean discourses. My first chapter, "Histories repeating," examines how and why fictional accounts of torture and its aftermath tend to deliberately conflate and intertwine various historical periods. Making individual memories of physical violence the subject of fiction, the authors I discuss narrativize the historical reality of torture in order to illustrate the longue durée and endless repeatability of violence. Being tortured and witnessing torture affects how one is able to transmit the memory of that act, as illustrated by the use of imbricated and hallucinatory narratives in generically diverse texts. Novels by Leïla Marouane and Antonin Varenne, and a short story by Assia Djebar, reveal the persistence of the Algerian War of Independence in contemporary fiction, and oblige readers to adopt a multidirectional approach to reading, as the text employs the same strategy to remember (and forget) extreme violence. In Chapter One, I also argue that texts employing a multidirectional approach to memories of the Algerian War and its aftermaths often work to de-inscribe the law that is written onto bodies. By creating characters that are, in one way or another, survivors and narrators of torture, the texts reject the hegemonic markers of torture, and criticize the systems that uphold victime/bourreau identitarianism. In Chapter Two, "The Tortured Body and the Narrativization of the Impossible," I turn to the oeuvre of Assia Djebar, whose career-long engagement with questions of history and individual and collective memory is evident in all of her texts, to discuss how the transmission of the story of torture is inscribed on the body. I refer to the mise en récit of these stories as a narrativization of the impossible, an impossibility that is predicated on the female body as a concrete trace of an act that is often denied or repressed by the individual. In the collection Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement (1980) and novel La Femme sans sépulture (2002), Djebar rejects memory as a process at the service of the post-Independence State, and the various forms of transmission of violent narratives in her texts are a movement against monolithic forms of history-making. Rather than taking up positions as lieux de mémoire, static sites that work towards a national conception of memory and history, the narratives I examine refuse memorialization and allow instead an open-ended narrative that must be physically passed down in order to circulate in the face of renewed violence in Algeria.In my final chapter, "Testimonial texts: writing the obscene," I move away from fictional accounts of the aftermath of torture to explore the testimonial genre. Looking to first-person texts by Henri Alleg, Djamila Boupacha and Louisette Ighilarhiz, I argue that metropolitan French intellectuals had to intervene in their circulation and reception in order to mitigate the social and political unacceptability of these texts that are figured as "obscene." Ross Chambers' analysis of testimonial writing as both "untimely" and "obscene" acts in Untimely Interventions: AIDS Writing, Testimonial and the Rhetoric of Haunting underpins my argument that the description of torture in testimonial narratives is an exploration of the obscene; a state of affairs that allows for continual personal and systematic denial of the existence of torture and torture victims. The prevalence of sexual violence and rape and its place in French and Algerian cultural and social memory is also central to Chapter Three and my discussion of the textually obscene: torture is both hors scène, out of sight of the public, and obscene in the kind of limit experience it means for the victim and the torturer. The contrast between private and public discourses and the dissonance that can occur when narratives try to cross the public/private divide complicate how stories of torture are made available and received by readers. Reading testimonial accounts as textual incursions that embody the obscenity of torture and its physical effects, I argue that the paratextual support of French intellectuals was a necessary aspect of the transmission of primary torture narratives during the war. This mediation simultaneously shielded readers from the shock of events that were purposely kept "off-stage," and, paradoxically, highlighted the details of testimony that were the most contentious: descriptions of sexual violence, protracted legal struggles, and the blurred border between the French "us" and the Algerian "them." Multidirectional memory, another form of mediation that transmits narratives of torture, describes a shuttling between separate traumatic memories that are ultimately told together. I use Michael Rothberg's theory to explain and analyze the hinging effect often present more recent fictional texts on the Algerian War that are preoccupied with both the legacy of the War of Independence and the more immediate violence of Algeria's décennie noire. Using these narrative theories, I argue that the transmission of narratives of torture, be they fictional or testimonial, relies on a certain degree of mediation or deferral. I posit the transmission, or making public, of these stories as both individual and collective, and marked by a necessarily complex relationship to history, memory, and the physical traces of violence.By analyzing both Algerian and hexagonal French literature that addresses torture during the Algerian War, my dissertation frames the "Question" of state-sponsored violence as an enduring transnational topos that creates a proliferation of ghosts, unanswerable questions, and unsolvable crimes. As a project that engages with both hexagonal French and Francophone texts, my dissertation offers a new theory of how literature can engage with and defy taboos on memorial transmission and publically-recognizable grievances, and how the memory of torture is narrativized and circulated.

"Dirty Work: Labor, Dissatisfaction and Everyday Life in Contemporary French Literature and Culture (1975-present)," is an analysis of the representation of everyday activities – namely, of work, leisure, and consumerism – in contemporary French novels and other cultural productions. This dissertation examines how these contemporary texts use narrative, generic, and stylistic experiments to represent cynicism and dissatisfaction with everyday life as the consequences of neoliberal capitalist ideology and instrumentalist thinking, which define "work" as labor that produces commodities and profit and "leisure" as consumerism. In this way, these cultural productions critique capitalist instrumentalism for reducing human subjectivity to embodied economic struggle. I demonstrate how these texts portray dissatisfied laborers (and unemployed people) exhausted by unfulfilling work and financial precariousness, who implicate these conditions for thwarting their pursuit of more meaningful activities – artistic creation, meaningful work, love, community-building, political action – and existential freedom. By problematizing the effects of capitalist ideology, economic inequality, and received ideas about work and art, the texts in the corpus portray creative work, political consciousness, and social engagement as essential to contemporary individuals' sense of subjective fulfillment and of belonging within French society. The corpus of this dissertation includes a wide range of authors, from best-selling novelists to "cult" underground figures: works by controversial but popular authors Michel Houellebecq and Fr�d�ric Beigbeder; newer literary voices Nathalie Kuperman, Gauz, and Julien Campredon; and punk and underground writers Virginie Despentes, Kriss Vil�, and Jean-Louis Costes. In addition to fiction, the corpus includes songs, zines, and journalism. I read these narratives of everyday life – literary fiction, genre fiction, subcultural fiction, and other texts – through a critical lens informed by continental and Marxist philosophy, literary theory, and the social sciences. With this critical framework, I illustrate that the texts in the corpus portray creative work, social engagement, and political consciousness as essential to contemporary individuals' sense of subjective fulfillment and of belonging within French society. Finally, by recuperating the texts of subcultures for scholarly study, this dissertation also sheds timely critical light on texts overlooked by scholars for up to 43 years, illuminating their aesthetic and thematic correspondences with better-known works.

International audience ; The aim of this article is to investigate several issues related to the renewed social and political commitment of contemporary French literature. The article considers literature's ability to oppose societal normativity as political storytelling through entrusting both individuals and the community with increased acting power, as well as through challenging critics and academics to take part in current debates. Showing that literature can become a tool of individual reconstruction and can recreate social links, or a remedy against various forms of individualism and tendencies towards commodifying the world, the article presents several types of contemporary French works of fiction whose main goals are theorizing, describing, expressing empathy towards those who are confronted with illness, death, exile or terrorism. Several literary works that contest identity or societal labels are added to these, since they help us debate upon and stand up against inequalities or normativity.

International audience ; The aim of this article is to investigate several issues related to the renewed social and political commitment of contemporary French literature. The article considers literature's ability to oppose societal normativity as political storytelling through entrusting both individuals and the community with increased acting power, as well as through challenging critics and academics to take part in current debates. Showing that literature can become a tool of individual reconstruction and can recreate social links, or a remedy against various forms of individualism and tendencies towards commodifying the world, the article presents several types of contemporary French works of fiction whose main goals are theorizing, describing, expressing empathy towards those who are confronted with illness, death, exile or terrorism. Several literary works that contest identity or societal labels are added to these, since they help us debate upon and stand up against inequalities or normativity.

International audience The aim of this article is to investigate several issues related to the renewed social and political commitment of contemporary French literature. The article considers literature's ability to oppose societal normativity as political storytelling through entrusting both individuals and the community with increased acting power, as well as through challenging critics and academics to take part in current debates. Showing that literature can become a tool of individual reconstruction and can recreate social links, or a remedy against various forms of individualism and tendencies towards commodifying the world, the article presents several types of contemporary French works of fiction whose main goals are theorizing, describing, expressing empathy towards those who are confronted with illness, death, exile or terrorism. Several literary works that contest identity or societal labels are added to these, since they help us debate upon and stand up against inequalities or normativity.

PurposeImmigration-themed children's literature can be an important resource in the classroom, especially because some U.S. immigrant groups, including French-Canadians, have received limited curricular representation. Using the qualitative method of critical content analysis, this study aims to examine depictions of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States in contemporary children's books.Design/methodology/approachPostcolonialism is employed as an analytical lens with special attention given to the ways immigrant characters are constructed as different from the dominant group (i.e., othering), how dominant group values are imposed on immigrant characters, and how immigrant characters resist othering and domination. Three books comprise the sample: "Charlotte Bakeman Has Her Say" by Mary Finger and illustrated by Kimberly Batti, "Other Bells for Us to Ring" by Robert Cormier, and "Red River Girl" by Norma Sommerdorf.FindingsThe findings reveal multiple instances in which French-Canadian immigrants are constructed as Other and few instances in which these characters resist this positioning, and these books reflect the real ways French-Canadians were perceived as subalterns during the mass migration from Québec to the United States between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Originality/valueThis study is significant because it examines portrayals of a substantial immigrant group that has been overlooked in the immigration history curriculum. This sample of children's books may be used to teach children the complexities of immigration history and provide a more nuanced understanding of immigration during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Serious Play: Formal Innovation and Politics in French literature from the 1950s to the present investigates how 20th- and 21st-century French authors play with literary form as a means of engaging with contemporary history and politics. Authors like Georges Perec, Monique Wittig, and Jacques Jouet often treat the practice of writing like a game with fixed rules, imposing constraints on when, where, or how they write. They play with literary form by eliminating letters and pronouns; by using only certain genders, or by writing in specific times and spaces. While such alterations of the French language may appear strange or even trivial, by experimenting with new language systems, these authors probe into how political subjects—both individual and collective—are formed in language. The meticulous way in which they approach form challenges unspoken assumptions about which cultural practices are granted political authority and by whom. This investigation is grounded in specific historical circumstances: the student worker-strike of May '68 and the Algerian War, the rise of and competition between early feminist collectives, and the failure of communism and the rise of the right-wing extremism in 21st-century France. Analysis of pronominal subjects in Perec and Wittig shows how they interrogate power struggles during May '68; both authors imagine shared textual production as the bedrock of new political communities. Moving into the 21st century, Jouet stages various "bad" communists, in order to pay tribute to dying communist communities and to unpack the ongoing legacy of communism's collapse. In the end, formal play offers an antidote to 20th- and 21st-century crises of community by creating virtual communities through the text itself.

The recent rise of populism is a topic that has been widely investigated, particularly in the field of political science (Laclau 2005; Mudde 2017; Müller 2016; Žižek 2006). However, the question arises whether populism should only be considered as a purely political phenomenon, or can also be studied from a cultural perspective: through literature, cinema and visual culture for example. The relationship between populism and culture is normally seen as one of mutual exclusion – populism dismisses culture as a waste of time and money, while culture perceives and represents populism as its disturbing Other. But on the other hand, populism's own active use of culture tends to be underestimated. In this present article, I will illustrate these aspects by analyzing the reception of a controversial novel, namely Soumission by Michel Houellebecq (2015). This text has been widely investigated by scholars (Jones 2016; Rosenthal 2015; Spieser-Landes 2017); at the same time, far less scholarly attention has been paid to the cultural appropriation of the text on the part of populist politicians and media. By mapping the public debate on Soumission through a variety of sources (reviews, newspaper articles, interviews, etc.), I will illustrate how French populists have used Houellebecq's novel to define their political agenda, with particular regard to the alleged 'Islamization' or 'Africanization' of Europe. On the other hand, we will see that these populist interpretations fail to grasp the complexity of the work.

Cette introduction cherche à explorer la présence de Mai 68 dans la littérature actuelle. C'est en effet depuis un double point de vue, celui des littératures françaises et italiennes, que se déroule les débats, allant de la question de la participation des écrivains aux événements de 1968 à celle de leur prise en charge, narrative et, parfois, fictionnelle de la période, qui participe d'un ensemble de représentations culturelles, tout à la fois locales et européennes. Si la France et l'Italie ont en commun d'avoir entrepris des réformes sociales dans le sillage de Mai 68 (le mouvement ayant contribué à reconfigurer les équilibres politiques et à faire entendre la nécessité de changements profonds, notamment en termes de politiques sociales), elles en partagent aussi le bilan fort nuancé, tant sont nombreuses les désillusions et les déceptions, entre effondrement des utopies politiques et établissement durable de la « société de consommation ».

Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each focused on a French or American literary text which shows the evolution/devolution of the relations between the two nations at a particular point in time. While the heart of the analysis consists of close textual readings, social, cultural and political contexts are introduced to provide a better understanding of the historical reality influencing the individual novels, a reality to which these novels are also responding. Chapters One through Five, covering a period from the mid-1870s to the end of the Cold War, discuss significant aspects of the often fraught relationship from the theoretical perspective of Roland Barthes' theory of modern myth, described in his Mythologies. Barthes' theory helps situate Franco-American tensions in a paradigmatic structure, while at the same time it is supple enough to allow for shifts and reversals within the paradigm. Subsequent chapters explore new French attitudes toward the powerful, potentially dominant influence of American culture on French life. In these sections I argue that recent French fiction displays more openness to the American experience than has existed in the past, and as such contrasts with the more static American approach to French culture.

This volume offers a lively and accessible guide to some of the major issues current in French philosophy today and to some of the figures who are or have been influential in shaping its development. The collection is unusual and interesting in bringing together a range of contributors from both Britain and France, and is intended not only for professional philosophers but also for those with a more general interest in the French intellectual scene.