‘Les Français ne savent pas où me mettre’: Placing Michaël Ferrier’s petits portraits from Japan

Holtzman, Hannah

doi:10.1093/fs/knz181

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Aside from novelistic writings on Japan, Ferrier also publishes scholarly research on Japan and Japanese literature, including one anthology on Franco-Japanese relations in literature (Ferrier, 2009). After SF, Ferrier has diversified his subject matter beyond Japan, and may be characterized as overlapping the categories of creole writing and neo-japonisme (Arribert-Narce, 2021b;Arribert-Narce et al, 2016;Holtzman, 2019). This paper asks: why can Ferrier be characterized as a neo-japoniste writer, even as the author himself rejects this labelling?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

An off-centre pendulum: Neo-Japonisme and contemporary French identity in Michaël Ferrier's Sympathy for the Phantom

2024

Preprint

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This article analyses French novelist Michaël Ferrier's novel Sympathie pour le fantôme (Sympathy for the Phantom, 2010) as an instance of contemporary French neo- japonisme. Building upon the work of Edward Said, it argues that Ferrier's neo-japonisme inherits from the tradition of earlier French Orientalist romantic literature while disavowing this inheritance through a simultaneous application of universalist, social-science criticisms onto Japan. This universalism is then similarly discredited for its banality and ineffectiveness, leading the narrator to rediscover the original aesthetic, Orientalist vision of Japan through an adventure into the beautiful, anti-rational heart of the city. This rediscovery of authentic Japan is performed by the French flâneur through a planned promenade mediated by the night-time darkness, the choice of small alleyways, and alcohol. The confusion and disorientation experienced in this engineered authentic Japan is proclaimed to provide ready answers for French crises of value such as national historiography and immigrant memory. As the night clears, however, Japan returns to an ugly everydayness ready to be once again subjected to universalist critique. The swinging of this pendulum characterizes the style of Ferrier's neo- japonisme, which this paper refers to as "off-centre." Examples of this off-centre style are given in Ferrier's descriptions of Tokyo and the fictional character of Yuko, who transform from cosmopolites to premodern Japanese from day to night. Ferrier's literary use of Japan is also placed within the context of the novelist's larger œuvre. Understanding the structure and logic of neo-japonisme in Ferrier provides one example of how Orientalist discriminations persist in culture today, when Orientalist thought has become popularly and academically discredited.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%