French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Balint, Literary Imaginaries and Representations of Mobility
Francophone and Oral Literatures
Adina Balint
Literary Imaginaries and Representations of Mobility
New York, Peter Lang
November 2020
ISBN: 9781433176210 - 216 p.
What can contemporary French-language literature (from Canada and France) teach us about the experience of mobility as a creative journey oriented toward the transcultural?
Drawing on John Urry's theories of the mobility turn and the concept of nomadism developed by Rosi Braidotti, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari, Adina Balint explores the relationships among identity, spatial, and poetic boundaries that give rise to new figures of belonging. Situated at the intersection of literary, comparative, and transcultural studies, this work explores the similarities and differences between modes of representing mobility (geographic, individual, and imaginary) and the tensions among the literary subject, territory, and community in the works of Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, Simone Chaput, Sergio Kokis, Catherine Mavrikakis, Régine Robin, Maylis de Kerangal, J.M.G. Le Clézio, and Andreï Makine. Ultimately, mobility emerges not as a completed action, but as an unfinished/unfinishable process that directly influences the development of the character-narrator and their creativity.
The book draws on the mobility turn in sociology, associated with John Urry, and philosophical concepts of nomadism formulated by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, and Rosi Braidotti. These frameworks help reframe migration and travel not merely as physical displacement, but as vital creative and ontological processes. By applying these theories to contemporary literature, Balint situates her analysis within the broader shift in the humanities toward spatiality, transnationalism, and the blurring of traditional borders. This approach highlights how geographic displacement shapes modern narrative forms.
By examining diverse authors such as J.M.G. Le Clézio, Maylis de Kerangal, and Catherine Mavrikakis, this study addresses crucial questions about how displacement influences literary form and character development. It explores how narratives construct a sense of belonging when detached from a single national territory. This volume is particularly valuable for scholars and students of comparative literature, Francophone studies, and contemporary French culture. It offers a nuanced understanding of how contemporary writing reflects our increasingly globalized and mobile world, making it an essential resource for those researching transcultural identities.