Egalitarian Strangeness

The formulation ‘egalitarian strangeness’ is a directborrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple [Short Voyages to theLand of the People] (1990), a collection of essays by the contemporary Frenchthinker Jacques Rancière. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equalityas set out in Le Maître ignorant [The Ignorant Schoolmaster] (1987),Rancière reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based oninequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, forexample, he argues that words and sentences serve to capture any life and tomake it available to any reader. The present book explores embedded forms ofsocial and cultural ‘apportionment’ in a range of modern and contemporaryFrench texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, andautobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance andegalitarian encounter. Part One considers the ‘refrain of class’ audible inworks by Claude Simon, Charles Péguy, Marie Ndiaye, Thierry Beinstingel, and Gabriel Gauny andexamines how these authors’ practices of language connect with that refrain. InPart Two, Hughes analyses forms of domination and dressage withreference to Simone Weil’s mid-1930s factory journal, Paul Nizan’s novel ofclass alienation Antoine Bloyé from the same decade, and Pierre Michon’sVies minuscules [Small Lives] (1984) with its focus on obscure rurallives. The reflection on how these narratives draw into contiguity antagonisticidentities is extended in Part Three, where individual chapters on Proust andthe contemporary authors François Bon and Didier Eribon demonstrate ways inwhich enduring forms of cultural distribution are both consolidated andcontested.