TY - CHAP

T1 - Mobility, Immobility and Transgression

T2 - Representations of Dangerous Travellers in Mounsi’s La Noce des fous

AU - Lewis, Jonathan

PY - 2024/3/1

Y1 - 2024/3/1

N2 - This chapter analyses representations of mobility and transgression in La Noce des fous (1990) by Mounsi, a French author of Algerian origin. More specifically, the paper will assess the transgressive potential of mobility and movement through associations made in the text between wandering, crime, and delinquency. By examining this link, the chapter evaluates the extent to which representations of mobility and transgression challenge conceptions of rooted national identities and the monocultural historical narratives connected with these identities. While the notion that mobility destabilizes traditional, singular definitions of identity has been well-established, by scholars such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for example, the associations between movement and transgression that we find in Mounsi’s text suggest an alternative view of mobility, one that casts doubt on its enabling potential. Indeed, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of nomadology has been criticized, notably by Christopher L. Miller in Nationalists and Nomads (1998), for being highly Eurocentric and for perpetuating a colonial mode of thinking. This chapter seeks to reveal such colonial continuities in established theories of travel and mobility and, drawing on the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ put forward by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, challenges the rather simplistic tendency to equate mobility with freedom. In doing so, the paper underlines the need, already put forward by the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, to come to a more comprehensive, decolonial understanding of mobility and travel.

AB - This chapter analyses representations of mobility and transgression in La Noce des fous (1990) by Mounsi, a French author of Algerian origin. More specifically, the paper will assess the transgressive potential of mobility and movement through associations made in the text between wandering, crime, and delinquency. By examining this link, the chapter evaluates the extent to which representations of mobility and transgression challenge conceptions of rooted national identities and the monocultural historical narratives connected with these identities. While the notion that mobility destabilizes traditional, singular definitions of identity has been well-established, by scholars such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari for example, the associations between movement and transgression that we find in Mounsi’s text suggest an alternative view of mobility, one that casts doubt on its enabling potential. Indeed, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of nomadology has been criticized, notably by Christopher L. Miller in Nationalists and Nomads (1998), for being highly Eurocentric and for perpetuating a colonial mode of thinking. This chapter seeks to reveal such colonial continuities in established theories of travel and mobility and, drawing on the ‘new mobilities paradigm’ put forward by Mimi Sheller and John Urry, challenges the rather simplistic tendency to equate mobility with freedom. In doing so, the paper underlines the need, already put forward by the ‘new mobilities paradigm’, to come to a more comprehensive, decolonial understanding of mobility and travel.

KW - Mobility

KW - Immobility

KW - Travel

KW - Transgression

KW - Decoloniality

M3 - Chapter

SN - 180207886X

T3 - Francophone Postcolonial Studies

BT - Colonial Continuities and Decoloniality in the French-Speaking World

A2 - Arens, Sarah

A2 - Frith, Nicola

A2 - Lewis, Jonathan

A2 - Vince, Rebekah

PB - Liverpool University Press

CY - Liverpool

ER -