Coming to Terms with the Future: The Experience of Modernity in Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors

Welch, Edward

doi:10.1177/0957155807073319

Coming to Terms with the Future: The Experience of Modernity in Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors

Welch, Edward

Authors

Edward Welch

Contributors

Hélène Stafford
Editor

Abstract

This article examines Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors (1993), and its representation of life in the New Towns which emerged on the outskirts of Paris in the post-war period. Revisiting the recent history of urban development around Paris, and in particular the Schéma directeur d'aménagement et d'urbanisme drawn up by Paul Delouvrier in 1965, it sets Ernaux's text in the context of other recent portrayals of life in the Parisian suburbs to argue that what seems at first to be a narrative of alienation, as the narrator is confronted by strange and threatening urban worlds, in fact emerges as one of adaptability, as we watch her become absorbed into the systems and networks designed by the planners. The text offers us a portrait of an individual who is not so much modern as modernised, as she gradually becomes accustomed–or more accurately, conditioned–to life in the New Town.

Citation

Welch, E. (2007). Coming to Terms with the Future: The Experience of Modernity in Annie Ernaux's Journal du dehors. French Cultural Studies, 18(1), 125-136. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155807073319

Journal Article Type	Article
Publication Date	2007-02
Deposit Date	Jan 27, 2009
Publicly Available Date	Feb 1, 2010
Journal	French Cultural Studies
Print ISSN	0957-1558
Electronic ISSN	1740-2352
Publisher	SAGE Publications
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	18
Issue	1
Pages	125-136
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155807073319
Keywords	Banlieue, Delouvrier, Ernaux, modernity, New Town, Schéma directeur, Urban planning.

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The final definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal French cultural studies 18 (1) 2007 Copyright © SAGE Publications by SAGE Publications Ltd at the French cultural studies page: http://frc.sagepub.com/ on SAGE Journals Online: http://online.sagepub.com/