French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. J. Blatt and E. Welch, France in Flux. Space, Territory and Contemporary Culture
History, Politics and Society
A. J. Blatt and E. Welch
France in Flux. Space, Territory and Contemporary Culture
Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2019.
240 p.
ISBN : 978-1-786-94178-7
£ 85.00
Description
The look and feel of metropolitan France has been a notable preoccupation of French literary and visual culture since the 1980s. Numerous writers, filmmakers and photographers have been drawn to articulate France’s contrasting spatial qualities, from infrastructural installations such as roads, rail lines and ports, to peri-urban residential developments and isolated rural enclaves. In doing so, they explore how the country’s acute sense of national identity has been both asserted and challenged in topographic terms.
This wide-ranging collection of essays explores how the contemporary concern with space in France has taken shape across a range of media, from recent cinema, documentary filmmaking and photographic projects through to television drama and contemporary fiction, and examines what it reveals about the state of the nation in a post-colonial and post-industrial age. The impact of global flows of capital, trade and migration can be mapped through attention to the specificities of place and topography. Investigation of liminal locations, from seaboard cities and abandoned industrial sites to refugee camps and peasant smallholdings, interrogates the assertion of a national territory (and, by extension, a national identity) through the figure of the hexagon, and highlights the fluidities, instabilities and lines of flight which render it increasingly unsettled.
Edited by A. J. Blatt and E. Welch, this volume contributes to contemporary cultural studies by examining how physical spaces reflect broader societal shifts since the 1980s. The contributors analyze works across various media, including recent cinema, television drama, documentary film, photography, and contemporary fiction. By focusing on both infrastructural networks and overlooked rural or urban enclaves, the collection addresses how globalization, post-industrial decline, and post-colonial realities reshape the traditional borders of metropolitan France and challenge the enduring symbolic shape of the nation as a hexagon.
This book will prove particularly valuable to scholars, researchers, and students of French and Francophone studies, cultural geography, and media studies. It offers essential critical tools for anyone seeking to understand how contemporary artists and writers articulate the tensions between fixed national territory and fluid global movements. By investigating liminal locations such as refugee camps, port cities, and abandoned industrial sites, the essays help readers navigate complex questions regarding modern citizenship, migration, and the evolving relationship between topography and cultural identity in twenty-first-century Europe.