Visual Voices from the Banlieues: Twenty-First-Century Photographic Re-imag(in)ings of French Marginality
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Hagins, Zachary Ryan
- Graduate Program:
- French
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 13, 2014
- Committee Members:
- Jennifer Boittin, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Jennifer Boittin, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Benedicte Marie Christine Monicat, Committee Member
Willa Zahava Silverman, Committee Member
Allan Inlow Stoekl, Committee Member
Nancy Elizabeth Locke, Committee Member - Keywords:
- photography
France
banlieues
suburbs
riots
immigration
integration
postcolonial - Abstract:
- This dissertation presents and analyzes photographic narratives produced between 2005 and 2010 about France’s disadvantaged banlieues, spaces on urban peripheries with high concentrations of low-income housing and immigrant populations of (post)colonial origin. In October-November 2005, when a localized tragedy in Clichy-sous-Bois sparked three weeks of nationwide civil unrest on a scale not seen since May 1968, the world took notice. Given the great intensity with which media outlets, both national and international, covered these riots, I argue that this historical moment marks a peak in the widespread mythology that depicts the banlieues as homogenous spaces of deterministic crime and violence simmering on French urban and social peripheries. Visual media, in particular, played a major role, as images of cars ablaze, buildings vandalized, and urban youths clashing with riot squads filled newspapers, magazines, and television screens. Once these images helped unleash long-standing negative stereotypes, staunch proponents of French republicanism fueled their flames to the point that questions arose both locally and abroad about the nation-state’s ability to maintain cohesion. I take media and political discourses on the October-November 2005 riots as my point of departure. I first historicize media representations of the banlieues’ fraught history to demonstrate how stereotypes about the French urban periphery adapt in order to endure. Since the 2005 events though, socially engaged photographers have been re-envisioning what it means to live in the banlieues, and alternative visual discourses that counter clichés of disorder and delinquency are emerging. I contend that such projects reframe peripheral sites and marginalized groups as central to an evolving understanding of French society. I analyze the construction, function, and influence of visual narratives in photographs by Mathieu Pernot, Mohamed Bourouissa, JR, and France Keyser, as well as those present in a multi-artist photographic project funded by Clichy-sous-Bois. Interrogating configurations of gender, class, religion, ethnicity, and architectural space in the images, I demonstrate how the photographs transmit increasingly complex visual paradigms that destabilize monolithic depictions of dangerous banlieues and violent banlieusards that generally circulate in the French public sphere. As a result, this project establishes contemporary photography as a principal lens for evaluating how underprivileged social actors negotiate political, social, and cultural obstacles.