Gillian Jein - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Gillian Jein

Contemporary Fiction in French

Routledge eBooks, Oct 18, 2013

Aesthetics of Gentrification

This chapter engages with the spatial politics of aesthetics in the Parisian suburbs of Clichysou... more This chapter engages with the spatial politics of aesthetics in the Parisian suburbs of ClichysousBois and Montfermeil. It examines how JR's street art brings into view the lines of tension informing neighbourhood change. Firstly, the chapter explores how urban aesthetics have become important to gentrification analysis and looks at the commodification of socially engaged aesthetic practices via the "creative cities" ethos. In the subsequent sections, the chapter introduces a relational reading of JR's artistic practice in "Clichy Montfermeil." The central questions guiding the enquiries are as follows: What can street art tell us about the antagonisms shaping processes of speculation in these towns? What can its aesthetic presence reveal about shifts in spatial imaginaries that are disarticulating the banlieues as "deviant," "nogo zone" to rearticulate them "as a hunting ground for seasoned investors" (Clerima 2019)?

Modern Language Review, 2010

Cities Interrupted, 2016

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the interrelation between street art and the politics o... more The purpose of this chapter is to examine the interrelation between street art and the politics of urban renewal in reworking imaginaries of place in the Paris suburbs or banlieues. Recent French policies of decentralization and urban 'renewal' or 'renovation' 3 present the need to rethink the centre-periphery binary that has defined the banlieues' relationship to the capital, and to reexamine the consequences of governmental reorderings of place for the spatialities emergent on the edge of the intra muros city. Placing into tension the discursive operations of renewal with the visuality-the 'social fact' of visibility (Foster 1988: ix)-of street art, the argument presented here has a dual purpose: first, to explore critically the conceptualization of the commons in renewal discourses and, second, to problematize the role of art in the 'rehabilitation' of these 'badlands' (Dikeç 2007) of the French capital. The chapter draws on Jacques Rancière's politics of aesthetics to tease apart-before reconnecting-the urbanist and the cultural strands of this argument, here brought together through the concept of interruption. These strands are conceived as the critical agency manifest in modes of politico-aesthetic

THESIS 8659%%%%My thesis examines the development of an imaginative geography of urban space thro... more THESIS 8659%%%%My thesis examines the development of an imaginative geography of urban space through the analysis of travel writing. By imaginative geography I refer to the epistemological categorisation through which French culture has established codes for the representation and practice of urban space. In this thesis I elaborate upon the significance of both urbanism and travel as two major cultural events in the formation of Western identities and in the production of possibilities for knowledge in the modern urban landscape. I understand the city as a dialectical space, constantiy engaged in the production of societies' value systems and relational identities. Examining travel writing as a function of how the West (specifically France) has understood its identity and formed discourses for the urban Other, the thesis traces the evolution of these discourses through the spatial practice of travel, the traveller's encounter with the urban sign, and its subsequent represent...

This chapter engages with the spatial politics of aesthetics in the Parisian suburbs of Clichy-so... more This chapter engages with the spatial politics of aesthetics in the Parisian suburbs of Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil. It examines how JR’s street art brings into view the lines of tension informing neighbourhood change. Firstly, the chapter explores how urban aesthetics have become important to gentrification analysis and looks at the commodification of socially engaged aesthetic practices via the “creative cities” ethos. In the subsequent sections, the chapter introduces a relational reading of JR’s artistic practice in “Clichy- Montfermeil.” The central questions guiding the enquiries are as follows: What can street art tell us about the antagonisms shaping processes of speculation in these towns? What can its aesthetic presence reveal about shifts in spatial imaginaries that are disarticulating the banlieues as “deviant,” “no-go zone” to rearticulate them “as a hunting ground for seasoned investors” (Clerima 2019)?

Aesthetics of Gentrification, 2021

Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 2017

French Studies, 2015

(pp. 158–62) qu’elle trouve avec les théories du New Age, sans toutefois affirmer cette influence... more (pp. 158–62) qu’elle trouve avec les théories du New Age, sans toutefois affirmer cette influence, mériteraient d’être plus solidement étayés. Enfin, le mysticisme de Yourcenar, influencé par l’Orient, son intérêt pour l’ésotérisme, peuvent la mettre du côté de doctrines qui présentent des risques de totalitarisme, et par l’influence importante que Yourcenar reconnaı̂t à Julius Evola sur elle, ‘une nouvelle fois, on se rend compte que sa sensibilité entre aisément en sympathie avec celle d’un fasciste’ (p. 196). Au terme de cette étude, originale par l’angle adopté, Blanchet-Douspis conclut que Yourcenar est ‘une femme de droite, élitiste et peu encline à juger favorablement la démocratie’ (p. 199). Son sens du sacré et de la transcendance, son combat pour l’écologie, son goût pour les valeurs rurales, son manque d’intérêt pour le statut social de l’ensemble des femmes, tout ceci plaide en faveur d’une idéologie politique nettement conservatrice, même si elle n’a jamais été fasciste et a évolué sur certains sujets après guerre. Malgré quelques faiblesses cet ouvrage, extrêmement stimulant, a le mérite de replacer les idées de Yourcenar dans leur contexte social et historique.

Irish Journal of French Studies, 2012

The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. 1 No dominant social ... more The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry. 1 No dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all human practice, human energy, and human intention. 2 6. Joe Austin, 'More to See than a Canvas in a White Cube: For an Art in the Streets',

This introduction forms part of a volume entitled Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francop... more This introduction forms part of a volume entitled Aesthetics of Dislocation in French and Francophone Literature and Art: Strategies of Representation, published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2009. I scripted one third of the introduction text with Drs Connon and Jein and co-edited the rest of the volume. The premise of the book, as set forth in this introduction, is that while dislocation implies alienation, disruption and the disintegration of meaning, it may also be viewed as a productive state or experience, which gives rise to new expressive potentialities and orders of discourse. The introduction thus argues that dislocation has the potential to be as enabling as it is disabling, since it instates ‘an ambiguous space of relation through separation’, as Dr Douglas Smith writes in the foreword to the volume. The more sophisticated understanding of space which this volume seeks to promote therefore opens onto new accounts of subjective experience and creative agency. While Benoit Goet...

French Studies, 2012

... Brathwaite, edward Kamau. 1995.'nation language'. in Bill ashcroft, Gareth ... more ... Brathwaite, edward Kamau. 1995.'nation language'. in Bill ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and helen tiffin (eds), The Post-colonial Studies Reader. london and new York: routledge: 309–13. césaire, aimé. 1947 [1939]. ... 1971. L'Ordre du discours. paris: Gallimard. Gauvin, lise. 2004. ...