Reading Room | S2 - Newsletter Previews and Peeks

Foucault, Michel, Michel Senellart, François Ewald, and Alessandro Fontana. Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-78. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan : République Française, 2007.

This book is important not just because of the themes of these lectures but also how they were delivered. The Collège de France is a space were lecturers give public lectures where anyone can listen to them and that's also what I wanted from a podcast. I’m hoping to make this research something anyone can connect with.

James Holston, Insurgent Citizenship Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.

You may have heard an excerpt in Episode 3 - Communautarisme. Maybe you wondered what does a book on Brazil have to do with Paris? Good question. A lot of what I talk about on HTBD is how are people getting along in multi-ethnic multi-religious public space. In Insurgent Citizenship, Holston uses post revolution France as an archetype of a legal system grappling with the question of diversity not just of identities but of values.

Ross, Kristin. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies : Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c1995., 1995.

This book is a classic and one of the first books that really opened my eyes to the deep history of how interconnected modernity, industry, and identity in France is. This is a  history not just of the forming of people and of politics but also of space.

Noiriel, Gérard. The French Melting Pot: Immigration, Citizenship, and National Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

A lot like Ross's book, Noiriel is a great place for discovering a deeper history to the politics surrounding contemporary immigration issues in France. Definitely a great companion to Episodes 3 and 5 on communitarianism and social codes.

Khalili, Bouchra. The Mapping Journey, projection installation: 2008-11.

This is a piece that I saw in the New Museum in New York in 2014 but has since moved to MOMA. In the piece there are four hanging screens with projections on both sides of a map focused on the Mediterranean. A hand appears and traces a line from south to north while a voice narrates a journey of deportations and border crossings. The whole image floats, a person detached from a homeland, a hand detached from a body, a screen detached from a wall. It's very beautiful and offers an alternative to conflict images. Instead of consuming a visual of someone's body, you're really seeing an image of their story. Khalili's work is the inspiration for the HTBD maps.

Zachmann, Patrick. Ma proche banlieue. Paris: Barral, 2009.

This book of photography is a long form piece that I almost wish I could do in this podcast. Zachmann interviewed and photographed kids in the banlieues of Paris from all sorts of immigrant backgrounds. He then follows up with them a decade later and retakes many of the photographs. It's a really stunning view of how the banlieues changed over time. But I didn't really like how paternalizing Zachamann could be towards his subjects.

Vãsquez, Juan Gabriel, and tr. Anne McLean. The Sound of Things Falling. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.

Ok I can hear you asking, what oh what can a novel about post Pablo Escobar Bogotá Columbia have to do with Paris, France? Again, great question. This novel really stuck with me while I was working on this podcast because it's the story of people who have lived through a period of intense public violence, trying to trust their city again. It made me think a lot about how violence or rumors of violence can effect public space and the way we use public space. A stretch? Perhaps. It's a lovely novel though.

Aymé, Marcel. Le Passe-muraille. Paris: Gallimard, 1978. (Excerpt, Les Sabines)

This one is a beautiful story of a young Parisian housewife named Sabine, who has the power of multiplying herself as much as she wants. At first she just uses it to do housework but then she starts to venture out and have adventures with her many selves. She ends up at one point in la Zone. If you listened to Episode 4 - Boboland! you'll know la Zone is this area outside of Paris that used to be full of shantytowns. The scene where she's in la Zone is a very intense description of this pre-housing projects banlieue space.

Pandya, Aatmaja . Phantom. http://aatmajapandya.com/Phantom: 01 Apr. 2016. Web. 23

Apr. 2017

This is an autobiographical comic on gentrification in Queens, New York. What's different about this piece is that it talks about the cultural loss of gentrification. It's a very intimate piece and it drove me to think about gentrification in a more social way. It's short and very moving.

Maeril. Dix Histoires Ordinaires. http://maeril.tumblr.com/post/158234366426/hd-1ère-histoire-2ème-histoire-3ème-histoire: Web. 23 Apr. 2017

This series by illustrator Maeril tells the stories of French minority citizens and the microaggressions that they dealt with as children and as adults. Because it shows ordinary experiences it's able to detail different ways that France's history, its relationships with former colonies, its treatment of religious minorities, and so on manifest in everyday life.

La Haine. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz. Perf. Vincent Cassel, Hubert Koundé, and Saïd Taghmaoui. Canal+, 1995

Obvious? Yes. But bears mentioning because it was probably the first time I saw a film depicting the banlieues of Paris with the types of diversity that are so specific to France and its history. I will say that this is just one way of looking at the banlieues at a certain point in time but it is and was a very important first look for me.

Flâner. Dir. Cecile Emeke. Perf. Gaëlle and Christelle. Youtube, 18 Jan. 2015.

This series of short docu-films is from the same director who made Strolling, a very gorgeous docu-series in London. Emeke focuses on the black diaspora in the West, mainly focused on European cities. Flâner is four walking scenes in Paris with young black people explaining their experiences in the city. These films had a huge impact on the way that I structured my interview questions.

Shoot for the Contents. Dir. Trinh T. Minh Ha. Moon Gift Film, 1991

Shoot for the Contents is an essay film that I watched in a class with Renée Green (another very interesting writer and filmmaker). It's a film that explores storytelling, poetry, and philosophy in China. China? Yes. Again what's the connection to Paris? Good question. This film was really helpful to me because of the way it plays with translation and the relationship between the listener, the translator, and the speaker. It gave me an idea of how and when to let the original speaker take the lead to set a scene instead of a voice-over.

Rustenholz, Alain. De la banlieue rouge au Grand Paris: d’Ivry à Clichy et de Saint-Ouen à Charenton, 2015.

Rustenholz histories of the Parisian periphery goes banlieue by banlieue, chronicling the social and political lives of these towns. While many of the interviewees characterized their views of the banlieues whether they grew up in them or not, this book provided an encyclopedic reference for the historic importance and development of these towns, which added a fuller picture to the banlieues I reference in the show.

Mack, Mehammed Amadeus. Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, 2017.

Mack (who I interviewed for episode 5 of the podcast) wrote of book of singular importance. It explores the ways in which the civic aptitude of immigrant and Muslim residents in France is now being measured by group acceptance of progressive views as opposed to linguistic and professional assimilation. This metric is often branded by conservative commentators who themselves attempt to limit progressive movements. Through the term sexual nationalism he expounds the ways in which women’s movements and LGBT movements are coopted into anti-immigrant sentiment by conservative politics.