Our Conferences by Dorthea Fronsman-Cecil
by Volume ! The French journal of popular music studies, Solveig Serre, Luc Robène, Laurent GRÜN, Sue Rynski, Timothy A Heron, Eric Wittersheim, Philippe Liotard, Gerome GUIBERT, Caroline Giron Panel, Alexandre Marchant, and Dorthea Fronsman-Cecil
Papers by Dorthea Fronsman-Cecil
UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
“Dirty Work: Labor, Dissatisfaction and Everyday Life in Contemporary French Literature and Cultu... more “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 THE 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 Frédéric Beigbeder; newer literary voices Nathalie Kuperman, Gauz, and Julien Campredon; and punk and underground writers Virginie Despentes, Kriss Vilà, 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. 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.
Études Francophones, 2019
As French Studies scholars including Dominique Viart, John Marks, Jeremy Lane, Sylvie Servoise, J... more As French Studies scholars including Dominique Viart, John Marks, Jeremy Lane, Sylvie Servoise, Jean-Paul Engélibert, and Aurore Labadie, among others, have noted, contemporary French authors have produced a great deal of fiction on working life since the 1970s. Much of this fiction takes a sociological approach to chronicling the sociopolitical consequences of neoliberal capitalism on work, and thus on workers and French society. Author Thierry Beinstingel suggests that this contemporary crop of French workplace literature reflects white-collar workers’ newfound understanding of themselves as laborers after May 1968. However, despite the impact of May 1968 on work and its representation in fiction, I maintain that contemporary French workplace fiction that alludes to May 1968 often takes a defeated tone, highlighting the discouragement that workers possessed of a “proletarian consciousness” feel as they observe their labor rights and security being
eroded. On the other hand, I argue that certain works of contemporary literature, primarily novels, counter this “narrative erasure” by emphasizing the transformative legacy of May 1968 on subsequent generations in militant, and even hopeful narratives. For instance, Ivorian author, journalist, photographer, editor, and screenwriter Gauz’s first novel Debout-payé (2014) traces the influence of radical 1960s and 1970s ideals on two generations of service sector workers from the Ivory Coast living in France from the mid-1970s onward. While authors such as Michel Houellebecq and Nathalie Kuperman narrate the “liquidation” of May 1968’s ideological essence into vague symbols, Debout-payé rekindles the “spirit of ’68” within the narrative by vividly evoking radical history, theory, and praxis. In order to explore how Gauz’s novel emphasizes contrasts between past revolutionary moments and postmodern, late-stage capitalist urbanism and culture in contemporary Paris, I examine the novel’s use of and allusions to the discourses present in decolonial (and other) Marxist theory, highlighting the texts and historical mo(ve)ments that the novel references. I demonstrate through my reading that Debout-payé places primacy upon revitalizing the ludic, creative, spontaneous, and humorous ethos of the emancipation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in our continued struggles for economic and social justice, insisting that new radical praxis for the 2010s and beyond needs a souffle créatif to be successful. Finally, I contend that by invoking colonial histories and decolonial theories within a narrative tracking the interactions of contemporary people brought together by labor and commerce, the novel calls attention to the destructive power of globalized neoliberal capitalism to shrink and recolonize our world.
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Our Conferences by Dorthea Fronsman-Cecil
Ce colloque international et interdisciplinaire, qui s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme de recherche PIND (Punk is not dead. Une histoire de la scène punk en France, 1976-2016), soutenu par l’ANR, a pour but de revisiter la pertinence des périodisations et des ruptures qui définissent et organisent quarante ans de scène punk en France, de dépasser le spectre d’un phénomène réduit à l’évidence culturelle anglo-américaine, et d’étudier comment s’élaborent et se négocient les frontières entre une culture hégémonique et une culture restreinte de la subversion.
Papers by Dorthea Fronsman-Cecil
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 THE 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 Frédéric Beigbeder; newer literary voices Nathalie Kuperman, Gauz, and Julien Campredon; and punk and underground writers Virginie Despentes, Kriss Vilà, 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. 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.
eroded. On the other hand, I argue that certain works of contemporary literature, primarily novels, counter this “narrative erasure” by emphasizing the transformative legacy of May 1968 on subsequent generations in militant, and even hopeful narratives. For instance, Ivorian author, journalist, photographer, editor, and screenwriter Gauz’s first novel Debout-payé (2014) traces the influence of radical 1960s and 1970s ideals on two generations of service sector workers from the Ivory Coast living in France from the mid-1970s onward. While authors such as Michel Houellebecq and Nathalie Kuperman narrate the “liquidation” of May 1968’s ideological essence into vague symbols, Debout-payé rekindles the “spirit of ’68” within the narrative by vividly evoking radical history, theory, and praxis. In order to explore how Gauz’s novel emphasizes contrasts between past revolutionary moments and postmodern, late-stage capitalist urbanism and culture in contemporary Paris, I examine the novel’s use of and allusions to the discourses present in decolonial (and other) Marxist theory, highlighting the texts and historical mo(ve)ments that the novel references. I demonstrate through my reading that Debout-payé places primacy upon revitalizing the ludic, creative, spontaneous, and humorous ethos of the emancipation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in our continued struggles for economic and social justice, insisting that new radical praxis for the 2010s and beyond needs a souffle créatif to be successful. Finally, I contend that by invoking colonial histories and decolonial theories within a narrative tracking the interactions of contemporary people brought together by labor and commerce, the novel calls attention to the destructive power of globalized neoliberal capitalism to shrink and recolonize our world.
Ce colloque international et interdisciplinaire, qui s’inscrit dans le cadre du programme de recherche PIND (Punk is not dead. Une histoire de la scène punk en France, 1976-2016), soutenu par l’ANR, a pour but de revisiter la pertinence des périodisations et des ruptures qui définissent et organisent quarante ans de scène punk en France, de dépasser le spectre d’un phénomène réduit à l’évidence culturelle anglo-américaine, et d’étudier comment s’élaborent et se négocient les frontières entre une culture hégémonique et une culture restreinte de la subversion.
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 THE 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 Frédéric Beigbeder; newer literary voices Nathalie Kuperman, Gauz, and Julien Campredon; and punk and underground writers Virginie Despentes, Kriss Vilà, 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. 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.
eroded. On the other hand, I argue that certain works of contemporary literature, primarily novels, counter this “narrative erasure” by emphasizing the transformative legacy of May 1968 on subsequent generations in militant, and even hopeful narratives. For instance, Ivorian author, journalist, photographer, editor, and screenwriter Gauz’s first novel Debout-payé (2014) traces the influence of radical 1960s and 1970s ideals on two generations of service sector workers from the Ivory Coast living in France from the mid-1970s onward. While authors such as Michel Houellebecq and Nathalie Kuperman narrate the “liquidation” of May 1968’s ideological essence into vague symbols, Debout-payé rekindles the “spirit of ’68” within the narrative by vividly evoking radical history, theory, and praxis. In order to explore how Gauz’s novel emphasizes contrasts between past revolutionary moments and postmodern, late-stage capitalist urbanism and culture in contemporary Paris, I examine the novel’s use of and allusions to the discourses present in decolonial (and other) Marxist theory, highlighting the texts and historical mo(ve)ments that the novel references. I demonstrate through my reading that Debout-payé places primacy upon revitalizing the ludic, creative, spontaneous, and humorous ethos of the emancipation movements of the 1960s and 1970s in our continued struggles for economic and social justice, insisting that new radical praxis for the 2010s and beyond needs a souffle créatif to be successful. Finally, I contend that by invoking colonial histories and decolonial theories within a narrative tracking the interactions of contemporary people brought together by labor and commerce, the novel calls attention to the destructive power of globalized neoliberal capitalism to shrink and recolonize our world.