Mobility, Immobility and Transgression: Representations of Dangerous Travellers in Mounsi’s La Noce des fous

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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.

Keywords

  • Mobility, Immobility, Travel, Transgression, Decoloniality
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationColonial Continuities and Decoloniality in the French-Speaking World
Subtitle of host publicationFrom Nostalgia to Resistance
EditorsSarah Arens, Nicola Frith, Jonathan Lewis, Rebekah Vince
Place of PublicationLiverpool
PublisherLiverpool University Press
Chapter11
ISBN (print)180207886X
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2024

Publication series

NameFrancophone Postcolonial Studies
PublisherLiverpool University Press

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