Egalitarian Strangeness

On Class Disturbance and Levelling in Modern and Contemporary French Narrative

Edward J. Hughes (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

344 Seiten

2024
Liverpool University Press (Verlag)
978-1-80207-531-1 (ISBN)

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InPart Two, Hughes analyses forms of domination and dressage withreference to Simone Weil’s mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan’s novel ofclass alienation Antoine Bloyé from the same decade, and Pierre Michon’sVies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rurallives.

The formulation ‘egalitarian strangeness’ is a direct
borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to the
Land of the People] (1990), a collection of essays by the contemporary French
thinker Jacques Rancière. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equality
as set out in Le Maître ignorant [The Ignorant Schoolmaster] (1987),
Rancière reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based on
inequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, for
example, he argues that words and sentences serve to capture any life and to
make it available to any reader. The present book explores embedded forms of
social and cultural ‘apportionment’ in a range of modern and contemporary
French texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, and
autobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance and
egalitarian encounter. Part One considers the ‘refrain of class’ audible in
works by Claude Simon, Charles Péguy, Marie Ndiaye, Thierry Beinstingel, and Gabriel Gauny and
examines how these authors’ practices of language connect with that refrain. In
Part Two, Hughes analyses forms of domination and dressage with
reference to Simone Weil’s mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan’s novel of
class alienation Antoine Bloyé from the same decade, and Pierre Michon’s
Vies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rural
lives. The reflection on how these narratives draw into contiguity antagonistic
identities is extended in Part Three, where individual chapters on Proust and
the contemporary authors François Bon and Didier Eribon demonstrate ways in
which enduring forms of cultural distribution are both consolidated and
contested.

Edward J. Hughes is Professor Emeritus of French at Queen Mary, University of London and a Fellow of the British Academy.

Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction: By Way of Rancière

PART I: THE REFRAIN OF CLASS
Chapter 1 Events and Sensibility in Claude Simon’s L’Acacia
Chapter 2 ‘Les Savoirs de la main’: Dramas of Manual Knowledge in Péguy and Beinstingel
Chapter 3 A Solitary Emancipation: Ndiaye’s La Cheffe, roman d’une cuisinière
Chapter 4 The Worker Philosopher: Gauny and Self-Belonging

PART II: DISTURBANCE AND DRESSAGE
Chapter 5 Animal laborans: Missing Life in Paul Nizan’s Antoine Bloyé
Chapter 6 A Degrading Division: Hands and Minds in Simone Weil
Chapter 7 Pierre Michon, ‘Small Lives’, and the Terrain of Art

PART III: AUDIBLE VOICES
Chapter 8 Tales of Distribution in A la recherche du temps perdu
Chapter 9 Convocation, or On Ways of Being Together: François Bon
Chapter 10 Circuits of Re-appropriation: Accessing the Real in the Work of Didier Eribon

Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	15.03.2024
Reihe/Serie	Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures ; 75
Verlagsort	Liverpool
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
ISBN-10	1-80207-531-3 / 1802075313
ISBN-13	978-1-80207-531-1 / 9781802075311
Zustand	Neuware