Literature and Material Culture: 1830-2020 Marta Caraion and her collaborators Sophie-Valentine Borloz and Joséphine Vodoz lead an SNSF-funded project examining how objects have been represented and conceptualized in French literary works since 1830 and how attitudes to consumer culture have evolved. An edited volume with more than 40 contributors and a literary database are currently under preparation. The two industrial revolutions were part of an important period in the history of material culture, as new ways of producing and consuming goods were developed, leading to dramatic social and economic change. These changes were reflected in many works of French literature, as writers developed new theories and ideas about objects and the role they play in our lives, a topic Marta Caraion, Sophie-Valentine Borloz and Joséphine Vodoz are exploring in the ‘Literature and Material Culture (18302020)’ project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). “The project aims at highlighting the consistency between scientific accounts of objects and the scenarios constructed by literary texts,” they outline. A variety of texts are being considered in the project, dating from 1830 right up to the present day: “1830 marks the beginning of a new political regime in France, the July Monarchy; as well as the triumph of a new social class, the Bourgeoisie, characterized by an unprecedented mass culture”. From this starting point right through to contemporary literature, the team examines various phenomena that elaborate specific relations to materiality, on subjects as diverse as travel literature, trade catalogues, Holocaust objects or narrative relics. In so doing, they examine how literary texts help us to think about the complex relationships we have with the material world, their evolution and their ideological underpinnings, effectively founding a new field, that of Literary Material Culture Studies. This field is developing along two major lines: consumption and memory. An edited volume will be produced, written by 46 authors from a variety of different backgrounds, reflecting the inter-disciplinary nature of the project. “Theoretical interdisciplinarity is at the core of the project, with disciplinary ties ranging from History, Anthropology, Art History and Philosophy to Sociology and Ethnography. However, literature, considered in its dialogue with Human, Social and Historical Sciences, remains the focal point,” stresses the editorial team. The book itself covers four major areas: 1. ‘Commodity and consumption’, devoted to the evolution of consumption patterns and consumer goods over the period studied, and how literature responded to them; 40
standpoint,” says the team. While at some points a desire to accumulate material goods and objects has been viewed positively, at others it has been seen as a sign of decadence. “Literature has played a part in promoting consumerist practices, desires and values, just as it has often denounced them, depending on the genres and the social and media spaces in which it circulates,” they add. “Today, in France, particularly in high and middlebrow circles, the tone is more one of criticism and disillusionment with the ideology of progress that characterized the last century.” This evolution is under scrutiny in Joséphine Vodoz’s doctoral thesis, entitled The Great Tales of Consumerism (XIXeXXIe centuries) (“Les grands récits du consumérisme (XIXe-XXIe siècles)”). Her
dramatized on the one hand by technologies that virtualize knowledge and collective memory, and on the other by growing awareness of environmental problems linked to over-consumption,” outlines the research team. “Faced with these phenomena, writers feel the need to elaborate a material memory and build a critical discourse.” These questions are at the root of another aspect of the project, focusing on the issue of waste. The many literary existences of waste and their evolution throughout the period under scrutiny are investigated in the edited volume. They are also the subject of an MA class co-taught by Marta Caraion and Sophie-Valentine Borloz, as well as specific research led by the latter. In a book in progress, she questions the
Literature has played a part in promoting consumerist practices, desires and values, just as it has often denounced them, depending on the genres and the social and media spaces in which it circulates. research explores the viewpoint that the advent of the ‘consumer society’ is the result not only of a series of socio-economic developments, but also of a profound cultural revolution. She is interested in the narratives of consumerism, from the end of the 19 th century to the present day, with a view to inscribing the history of literary representations in the cultural genesis of our contemporary lifestyles. Based on literary analysis, with a particular emphasis on mass-market novels, her thesis traces the evolution of consumer values, the cultural normalization of consumerist behaviour, its promotion and criticism. By identifying, for example, consumerist character types and recurring narrative structures, as well as the links between this theme and questions of gender, amorous and marital practices and lifestyles, the aim is to reveal the modelling function of literature in modern mores or customs.
A merry-go-round of commercial goods (Les Modes, April 1st 1924)
2. ‘Singularization and aesthetization regimes’, focusing on the tension – inherent to industrialization – between one-off objects and mass-produced items; 3. ‘Material Memory’, dealing with the capacity of objects to retain a trace of the past and to operate as memory triggers; 4. ‘Techniques, tools and materials’, on more technical aspects relating to the fundamental question of progress and innovation. In addition, a database is also being developed, which will be an important resource for other researchers. “The database
provides reading notes on books from the 19th century to the present day, in which objects play a key role. It can be browsed by texts (currently numbering 293), authors (164), objects (254) or extracts (566), and it is growing daily,” the team outlines.
Consumer goods Representations of consumer goods and consumer practices are one of the project’s main areas of investigation. “We can observe different stages, mutations and disruptions, from both a historical and cultural
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Environmental concerns Our collective attitude towards consumer goods has however shifted over recent years, as the consequences of over-consumption have become more apparent. The relationship between material culture and sustainability is a major topic of interest to today’s writers on material culture. “Contemporary authors including Annie Ernaux and François Bon have explored the memorial, sociological and historical potency of objects in their works. This interest is probably increased and
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possibility of a poedechetics – a poetics of waste – seen as the capacity of waste to produce narrative and initiate narrative devices, both as a singular object and as an indistinct mass. She traces the evolution of these literary treatments of waste over time, from the ragpickers of the 19 th century to today’s ecological crisis, observing how these developments reflect and infuse the social conceptions surrounding waste. Cover of Marta Caraion’s book Comment la littérature pense les objets. Théorie littéraire de la culture matérielle (Champ-Vallon, 2020).
French Literature and Material Culture, 19th-21st Centuries Project Objectives
The Literature and Material Culture (LCM) project is a multi-disciplinary initiative which aims to shed new light on literary descriptions of material culture from 1830 right up to the present day. The research team will study how literary figures over this period sought to describe, criticise and conceptualise material culture.
Project Funding
The ‘Literature and Material Culture (18302020)’ project is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).
Project Partners
• Judith Lyon-Caen (EHESS) • Jacob Lachat (Lausanne University)
Contact Details
Prof. Marta Caraion Section de français Faculté des Lettres Université de Lausanne Anthropole 3181 1015 Lausanne Switzerland E: marta.caraion@unil.ch E: lcm@unil.ch W: https://www.unil.ch/fra/home/ menuinst/recherche/poles-de-recherche/ litterature-et-culture-materielle/le-projetlitterature-et-culture-materielle.html Professor Marta Caraion Sophie-Valentine Borloz Joséphine Vodoz
Marta Caraion is Professor of French Literature at the University of Lausanne. A specialist in the links between literature and material culture, she is the author of How literature thinks about objects. Literary theory of material culture (Champ Vallon, 2020), as well as several books on the subject. Sophie-Valentine Borloz is a post-doctoral researcher. After specialising in the field of Smell Studies, she is currently working on the literary forms of waste. She is the author of “The sense of smell has its monsters”. Olfaction and perversion in the fin-de-siècle imagination (1880-1905) (Peeters, in press). Joséphine Vodoz is a doctoral student, specialising in the literary depictions of consumerism. She is currently completing a thesis entitled The Great Tales of Consumerism (XIXe-XXIe centuries), which follows on from her several articles on the subject.
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