Explosive narratives : terrorism and anarchy in the works of Emile Zola

194 Pages·2010·3.87 MB·English

by  Febles

Explosive Narratives
Terrorism and Anarchy
in the Works of Emile Zola
FAUX TITRE
350
Etudes de langue et littérature françaises
publiées sous la direction de
Keith Busby, †M.J. Freeman,
Sjef Houppermans et Paul Pelckmans
Explosive Narratives
Terrorism and Anarchy
in the Works of Emile Zola
Eduardo A. Febles
AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2010
Illustration cover: Emile Henry, Café Terminus Paris, 12 February, 1894.
Silk screen print by Flavio Costantini, 1971, www.christiebooks.com;
The Art of Anarchy by Flavio Costantini, 1975 (Cienfuegos Press, London).
Cover design: Pier Post.
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of
‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence’.
Le papier sur lequel le présent ouvrage est imprimé remplit les prescriptions
de ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information et documentation - Papier pour documents -
Prescriptions pour la permanence’.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3064-0
E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-3065-7
© Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2010
Printed in The Netherlands
Table of Contents

7
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Anarchy, Entropy, Naturalism 9

Anarchy 22
Entropy 25
Naturalism 28

Chapter 1
Souvarine’s Vanishing Act:
The Effacement of Anarchy in Germinal 33

The Ambiguous Politics of Germinal 36
The Resurgence of Anarchy from the Underground Mine 45
Undermining Narratives: The Sub-text of Anarchy 55

Chapter 2
Anarchy as Narrative Capital:
The Emplotment of Terrorism in Paris 65

The Political Discourse in Paris 73
Anarchy as Narrative Capital 89
Towards Utopia: Taking the Bite Out of Anarchy 96

Chapter 3
The Anarchic Commune as World’s Fair in Travail 109

Ideological Welding: Fourier and Anarchism 123
Revolutionary Rape as Entropic Heat Death 130
Beyond Narrative Entropy: Utopia 140
The Anarchic Commune as World’s Fair 151

Epilogue
Zola’s Dream 167

Bibliography 181
Index 193
Acknowledgments

The process of writing a book can be compared to an anarchic
commune. In the true spirit of mutual aid, I have been fortunate
enough to receive constant help throughout the many stages of this
project.
Though anarchy refuses the search for origins, the topic for this
book was nevertheless born very specifically during a seminar on
modernism led by Professor Robert Scholes at Brown University,
where I completed my graduate work. My formative years in that
institution were indelibly marked by the finest scholars who were
always supportive and my colleagues who inspired me to perform at
my very best. Thanks to all the Professors at Rochambeau House on
Prospect Street and especially to Edward Ahearn who was my director
and mentor: his keen insight into the problem of literature and politics
has shaped my own thoughts in the matter. Furthermore, his caring
approach to teaching and pedagogy remains with me to this day. I also
want to express a nostalgic salute to the many special moments shared
with Deborah Hahn and Jacinta Wright.
My years at Simmons College have been the most productive pro-
fessionally. Rare is it to find an institution that allows individuals to
cultivate their interests with such freedom and in an atmosphere of
honest collegiality. I want to extend a heart-felt thanks to all my col-
leagues in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures:
Professor Dánisa Bonacic, Professor Florence Ciret-Strecker, Profes-
sor Louise Cohen, Professor Deborah Fraioli, Professor Raquel Halty,
and Professor Alister Inglis. The Chair of my Department, Professor
Dolores Peláez-Benítez, embodies the most beautiful aspects of a
utopian fantasy without ever losing her grounding in reality. Thank
you, my friend.
I also want to thank Professors Anthony S. Zielonka and Dean de
la Motte for reading the manuscript and offering support when I
needed it the most. Henry Majewski and José Santos are my intel-
lectual traveling companions and have helped me weather moments of
self-doubt.
8 Explosive Narratives
My parents and family provided me with the strength to
accomplish my goals. My parents are the fountain of my thirst for
knowledge and I thank them for instilling in me the curiosity that has
driven all of my endeavors.
I dedicate this book to Steven Ransom who has helped me to
manage the entropy in my life. I love you.

This project was supported in part by a grant from the Simmons
College Fund for Research. I wish to thank Mme Danielle Coussot
who allowed me to use the wonderful resources of the Centre Zola in
Paris, and Mme Michèle Sacquin, Chief Curator of the manuscripts
department at the Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque Nationale de
France for permitting me to consult the original notebooks for Travail.
Parts of Chapter 2 were first published as an article under the title
“Souvarine’s Vanishing Act: The Effacement of Anarchy in Zola’s
Germinal” in Excavatio, XXI, nos 1-2 (2006): 184-197. Material from
the article is reproduced with permission of Dr. Anna Gural-Migdal,
Editor of Excavatio.
Parts of Chapter 3 were first published as an article under the title
“The Anarchic Commune as World’s Fair in Zola’s Travail” in
Nineteenth Century French Studies, volume 36, nos 3 & 4 (Spring-
Summer 2008): 286-304. Material from the article is reproduced with
permission of the publisher, the University of Nebraska Press.
Parts of the Epilogue appeared as a book review of Frigerio,
Vittorio, ed. Emile Zola au pays de l’anarchie. Grenoble, ELLUG
[Editions littéraires et linguistiques de l’Université de Grenoble], 2006
which appeared in Nineteenth-Century French Studies, volume 36, nos
3 & 4 (Spring-Summer 2008): 368-369. Material from the review is
reproduced with permission of the publisher, the University of
Nebraska Press.
I am also indebted to the team of editors at Rodopi Press and the
Faux Titre Series for their gracious assistance, especially to Professor
Christa Stevens.
The cover image, “Terminus,” by Flavio Costantini, is reproduced
with permission of the Kate Sharpley Library, Stuart Christie and his
website www.christiebooks.com. Thank you so much for allowing me
to use this beautiful image gratis.
Introduction

Anarchy, Entropy, Naturalism

Throughout recent history, the ghost of terrorism has haunted
modern democracies. At times, it appeared under the guise of a die-
hard Communist; at others, it donned a gray-hooded sweatshirt,
camouflaged its stare behind large sunglasses, and was named the
Unabomber. In its latest manifestation, it is a religious fanatic and
comes from the Middle East. In Belle Epoque France, it was a bomb-
throwing anarchist. The changing image of the terrorist underscores
the very fact that it is historically grounded. Yet, even to advance the
seemingly innocuous thesis that terrorism is socially constructed can
backfire because public authorities try to present the phenomenon as
an essential category by appealing to values of good and evil.
Constructionist theories do not erase the reality of terrorism but rather
analyze its structural function within a society through a study of
competing ideologies as inscribed within discursive practices, from
hegemonic to subversive. But what if terrorism1 was precisely that
which cannot be apprehended, that which cannot be configured
symbolically inside a social structure?
Another specter looms on the recent horizon of terrorism. Though
hesitant at first to include any mention of the September 11th events in
the present study, I realized that its very absence would already con-
vey meaning: an auto-censorship that revealed the very resistance to
analysis that I have posited at the heart of terrorism. This resistance
comes to the fore in the articles that appeared immediately after the

1 For the purposes of this book, I will use Philip Jenkins’s definition of terrorism as
“violent acts carried out randomly against nonmilitary, civilian targets, with the aim
of inspiring fear in the wider population” (27).
10 Explosive Narratives
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. For instance, in
“A creeping horror,” published in the front page of The New York
Times on September 12th, Kleinfield focuses on an oxymoronic
“unfathomable realization” of a gaping hole, a void in the middle of
the Twin Towers, which symbolically circumscribes the limits of our
understanding faced with the sheer horror of the attack. Kleinfield
writes:

The horror arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief, signified first by
trembling floors, sharp eruptions, cracked windows. There was the actual
unfathomable realization of a gaping, flaming hole in first one of the tall towers,
and then the same thing all over again in its twin... . For several panic-stricken
hours yesterday morning, people in Lower Manhattan witnessed the
inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the unthinkable (Kleinfield 1A, emphasis
added).

Furthermore, the destruction of the Towers registered the loss of a
landmark which provided meaning to the urban landscape of New
York. In the same article, a transit worker is quoted as saying “You
always look for those two buildings. You always know where you are
when you see those two buildings. And now they’re gone” (Kleinfield
7A). Terrorism defies our rational sense of the world and creates a
semantic gap—what Kleinfield identifies as “the inexpressible, the
incomprehensible, the unthinkable”—by posing as that which resists
understanding, as that which is devoid of meaning. At the center of
terror, the void or perhaps, the terror because of the void.
The scope of this book is far more modest than an interpretation
of the terrorist attacks of September 11th. My goals are rather to study
the literary function of the anarchist figure in three of Emile Zola’s
novels: Germinal, Paris, and Travail. Yet, through my studies of the
bomb-throwing anarchists at the end of the 19th century, I could not
help but to think of recent events in American history. In some ways,
the manner in which we apprehend the violence of terrorism is
informed by earlier tropes and images forged at that time period. In
the novel Paris, the main character Pierre Froment witnesses the
explosion of an anarchist bomb. Zola describes the event thus:

Soudainement, ce fut le grondement de la foudre, une explosion formidable,
comme si la terre s’ouvrait, comme si l’hôtel foudroyé s’anéantissait. Toutes les
vitres des maisons voisines éclatèrent, tombèrent avec un bruit retentissant de
grêle. Une flamme d’enfer avait embrasé un instant la rue, la poussière et la
fumée furent telles, que les quelques passants aveuglés hurlèrent d’épouvante,
dans le saisissement de cette fournaise où ils croyaient culbuter... Et, d’abord, il
[Pierre] ne distingua rien, la fumée âcre noyait tout. Puis, il aperçut les murs
fendus, l’étage supérieur éventré, le pavé défoncé, semé de décombres. Dehors,
le landau qui allait entrer, n’avait rien eu, ni un cheval atteint, ni même la caisse