Disorientation and Accompaniment: Paris, the Metro and the Migrant

Rosello, Mireille

doi:10.1080/14735784.2015.1090324

Cited by 3 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Rakotoson's disoriented passenger does not find other people's advice useful: the map that the accustomed urbanite can read is the newcomer's chaos (Rosello, 2016: (Rakotoson, 1996: 36) This passage is again illustrative of the protagonist's inability to 'speak the Metro': the names of the stations do not make sense to her, and, significantly enough, she mistakes 'Denfert' for 'Enfer' ('Hell'). Her experience of travelling is equally disorienting.…”

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By associating the Metro tunnels with a termite nest, the protagonist tries to understand his new experience by linking it with a more familiar one. Moreover, the fact of not being even able to imagine the Metro points to the level being ‘off map’ (see Rosello, 2016) that the experience of metropolitan public transport generates in the newcomer. Illustrative of his sense of alienation, the protagonist observes the passengers from outside: this form of public transport is not a space for substantial encounters.…”

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As he slowly walks about in the tunnel, he starts to feel anxious about what now appear to him to be very vague indications about how to use the Metro. Indeed, the tropes of confusing advice, ‘simplified’ hand-drawn maps and lists of itineraries keep recurring in African narratives of newcomers’ journeys on the Metro (see also Rosello, 2016: 88). The uselessness of these pieces of advice is that they make no sense for newcomers who do not understand the overall concept of the Metro.…”

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The protagonist’s arrival in Paris is characterised by her lack of experience of how to navigate the underground system. Her attempts to travel on public transport are challenging because she cannot ‘“read” the Metro’ (see Rosello, 2016: 78), making her experience of urban travel not that of reaching a desired destination but one of disorientating chaos. During an encounter at a ticket sales counter, the protagonist does not understand a word of what the booking clerk is saying:-A ticket or a book of tickets?-…-How many zones?-…You mean …?…”

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rakotoson’s disoriented passenger does not find other people’s advice useful: the map that the accustomed urbanite can read is the newcomer’s chaos (Rosello, 2016: 87):‘Oh, but that’s easy… You just take the shuttle, you ask the driver tostop at Denfert and you take the Metro from there… It is a direct line,no need to change… […] From there, you take the Metro in the direction of Nation and you stop at the Porte d’Italie station to change lines … ’To do what?Oh Lord, white people are crazier and crazier … Direction Nation to go to the Hell [ Enfer ] by the Porte d’Italie… (Rakotoson, 1996: 36)…”

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

On the move in the (post)colonial metropolis: The Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic fiction

Toivanen

2021

Urban Studies

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Literary texts convey the complexities of the urban experience in a tangible way. While there is a wide body of work on literary representations of Paris, the role of public transport as part of the (postcolonial) urban experience has not received much attention. This article sets out to analyse the meanings of the mobile public space comprising the Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic literary texts from the mid-20th century to the 2010s. The reading demonstrates how the texts represent the public space of the Metro as a symbol of modernity, a space of disappointment and alienation, an embodiment of social inequalities and as a site of convivial encounters and claims of agency. Through this analysis, the article highlights the role of literature in elucidating the intertwinement of mobility, public space and postcolonial urbanity.

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Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Disappointment Disorientation Alienationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

On the move in the (post)colonial metropolis: The Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic fiction

Toivanen

2021

Urban Studies

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Mobility, Immobility and the City: Theoretical Orientations and Concepts

Toivanen,

García

2024

Literary Urban Studies

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“Mediterranization,” or the “Sexual Question” in the North of the City

Milne¹

2023

South Atlantic Quarterly

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Taking its lead from contemporary debates about the “crisis” that is the masculinization of the Barbès-La Chapelle-Stalingrad triangle in northern Paris, this article considers the processes whereby this district has been both “southernized” (“Mediterranization”) and “sexualized” while also being yoked into the modernizing, infrastructural dynamics of a “global city” (Sassen 1991). It relates these debates to the longer history of labor migration, structural inequality and the exceptionalist policing of sexual politics under colonial rule and into the period of decolonization. In so doing it establishes the context for reviewing Gramsci's southern question through the prism of his writing on “the sexual question.” Where Gramsci posits “a new feminine personality,” largely occluding the forms of female subaltern labor, the discussion here looks to the work of two young female artists, the photographer Randa Maroufi's 2019 series Les Intruses and the filmmaker Louise Mootz's 2019 work Jungle, to explore this terrain. In so doing, it proposes that their negotiation of and with urban form, which itself reflects the complex history of containment and porosity in this environment, displaces “the South” from a polarity with the North and situates the female body in its work, play and pleasure, but also in the confrontation with the violence of the street and of gender norms, as the locus of a radical shaping of the intersection between the southern/sexual question.

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Disorientation and Accompaniment: Paris, the Metro and the Migrant

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

On the move in the (post)colonial metropolis: The Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic fiction

On the move in the (post)colonial metropolis: The Paris Metro in Francophone African and Afrodiasporic fiction

Mobility, Immobility and the City: Theoretical Orientations and Concepts

“Mediterranization,” or the “Sexual Question” in the North of the City

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