This module will take as its starting point the notion of the ‘exile’ or the ‘outsider’ in the city and explore the place(s) and forms of non-hegemonic expressions and experience to the history and culture of Paris and other cities. Engaging with the plurality of idioms and artistic traditions that have converged in the city throughout the centuries, it will focus particularly on modern and contemporary poetry and fiction. Students will be encouraged to think about why literary material may be of particular significance in articulating of the changing shape of urban experience from specifically ‘outsider’ perspectives, and to gauge its significance against the perspectives of cultural geography, with focus give to the contested nature of public space, urban revolts and ‘rights to the city’.
The course material will cover Parisian avant-gardes in the first part, and typical works of interest range from Guy Debord’s situationnisme to Samuel Beckett’s early fiction; some Russian-French experimentation and anti-colonial alliances. The second part will develop the intersections between queer and gendered perspectives on outsider/exilic experiences through work by writers such as Jean Genet (Palestine/Paris), Gertrude Stein, Anne Garréta and Rosi Braidotti.
