Maps and Territories: Global Positioning in the Contemporary French Novel by Joshua Armstrong (review)

Joshua Armstrong's book confronts the increasingly salient problem of locating oneself within the climate of global capitalism. To do so, it explores questions of space, identity, and belonging in contemporary French novels and theory, making it a timely contribution to contemporary French studies. Bringing together texts by Michel Houellebecq, Chloé Delaume, Lydie Salvayre, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Virginie Despentes, Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin, and Marie Darrieussecq, Armstrong traces the importance of spatial representation across his corpus, allowing him to stake 'an important place for the contemporary French novel in current debates on globalisation' (p. 9). Armstrong sets the stage by introducing commentary from theorists of postmodernity, such as David Harvey, Bruno Latour, Peter Sloterdijk, and Paul Virilio, which provides a firm methodological grounding for his subsequent chapters. The analysis is organized into eight chapters, each grouped into pairs according to a common spatial theme. This gives the book a clear sense of both structure and progression as it moves from the 'most aloof, panoramic, and map-like fictions', Houellebecq's La Carte et le territoire (2010) and Delaume's J'habite dans la télévision (2006), 'to those more firmly rooted in the ground-level realities of their chosen territories' (p. 8; original emphasis), Despentes's Vernon Subutex trilogy (2015-2017) and Vasset's La Conjuration (2013). In between, Armstrong examines the spatio-temporal mechanisms of capitalist logic through the reading of Salvayre's Portrait de l'écrivain en animal domestique (2007) and Toussaint's Fuir (2005), before concluding on an optimistic note with discussion of two texts capable of renegotiating the alienating spaces of the capitalist domain, Rolin's Ormuz (2013) and Darrieussecq's Le Pays (2005). Throughout, Armstrong explores a wide variety of spatial tropes. These range from the politics and poetics of cartography, first introduced through the 'big picture optics' (p. 43) of La Carte et le territoire, to the practice of 'psychogeography' (p. 141) in La Conjuration, in which characters attempt to work outside of the panoptic influence of the map. This is complemented by analysis of rhetorical practices, through which the authors both heighten and work against the experience of living in what Armstrong calls our '(un)globalised' world (p. 6). Notable examples include the disorienting narration of Fuir (p. 99), and the 'asymmetrical parallelism' between narrators in Ormuz (p. 171), which evoke the gap between the map and the territory. In doing so, Armstrong offers highly original readings of his chosen texts. His thematic structure establishes productive new dialogues between the novels, although these are at times prone to repetition, detracting from an otherwise engaging discussion. While Armstrong covers an impressive range of texts in his corpus, it would have been interesting to see him also analyse works that address themes of migration and transnationalism, both of which are integral to his overarching focus. This book's greatest strength comes from its demonstration of how contemporary novels not only inscribe the destabilizing effects of globalization, but also provide a form of resistance, acting as 'a creative locus' through which authors and readers alike may 'forge meaningful relationships to local geographies' (p. 15; original emphasis). As such, Armstrong lays out exciting new ground for further studies into the spatial poetics of contemporary writing.