Précarité, misère, désillusion. Mémoire de la désindustrialisation dans la prose française contemporaine
Precariousness, misery, disillusionment. Memory of deindustrialisation in contemporary French prose

Summary/Abstract: Deindustrialisation has led to a fundamental transformation of, among other things, existing social forms, relations, and status. Contemporary French literary reflection on post-industrial spaces repeatedly returns to the problem of the (usually negative) consequences of this process for the lives and destinies of individuals, families, and entire communities. Drawing on the methodology and insights of contemporary memory studies, this paper examines how literary works participate in the (co-)production, staging, or preservation of the collective memory and identity of given societies. The study analyses the specificities of this semiosphere, in particular the narrative technique of the entry of the outside through a symbolic border as a carrier of meaning. The results of the analyses reveal certain patterns and mechanisms: these include the constant interweaving of a unique individual destiny in the determination of the social environment and the collective consciousness of the precarised periphery. Another distinctive feature is the motif of uncovering and observing the places or non-places into which the originally prosperous and functional locality has been transformed. The literary form of the works is subordinate to a deliberate effect; engagement and shifts towards the form of a manifesto lead the reader to the confrontation of the literary image with the experience of the real world. One of the most important elements is metaphoricity: space is a symbol: material heritage becomes the last voice of a vanished, forgotten, or ruined society and its past.

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