Triomphe, chute et renaissance
Les représentations de la ville de Détroit (Michigan) et leurs sous-textes idéologiques, politiques et éthique
Published on Wednesday, November 06, 2024
Abstract
This conference aims to study the representations of the city of Detroit in order to examine their ideological, political, and ethical subtexts from a diachronic and multidisciplinary perspective. Presentations may focus on works of fiction or non-fiction (books, films, series, videogames, documentaries, photographs, etc.) as well as on other types of representations, such as news reports or political speeches.
Announcement
Bilingual (French and English) and Multidisciplinary International Conference, June 11-13,2025, Université Jean Monnet and Cité du Design, Saint-Etienne, France
Argument
This conference aims to study the representations of the city of Detroit in order to examine their ideological, political, and ethical subtexts from a diachronic and multidisciplinary perspective. Presentations may focus on works of fiction or non-fiction (books, films, series, videogames,documentaries, photographs, etc.) as well as on other types of representations, such as news reports orpolitical speeches.
All representations of Detroit pertain to the American national imaginary. As Jerry Herron asserts,"Detroit is the most representative city in America," but its symbolic significance has profoundlyevolved throughout its history: "Detroit used to stand for success, and now it stands for failure" (1993:9). In recent years, the perception of the city has evolved yet again, as Detroit is now synonymous withrebirth. This symbolic evolution reflects the tumultuous history of a city that was once the industrial backbone of the country before turning into its most impoverished metropolis and then recently showingsigns of economic recovery. The conference will explore how, throughout the city’s history,representations of Detroit have developed narratives that validate, analyze, critique, or diverge from thecommon perception of the city as an example of national success, decline, or rebirth.
It was of course thanks to the automobile industry that "Motor City" came to symbolize the triumph ofthe American economic and cultural model in the first half of the 20th century. By the late 1920s, the "Big Three" (Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler) were all based in Detroit, leading to the city’sastounding growth. But alongside narratives depicting the city as the culmination of the Americandream, dissenting voices highlighted the inherent violence of the industrial and economic model thattriggered Detroit’s rise. Many writers (Philip Levine, Joyce Carol Oates, Jeffrey Eugenides) havecritiqued the vision of this period as a golden age (Rashid, 2018). Frank D. Rashid notably cites AfricanAmerican poet Robert Hayden, whose work underscores the discrimination faced by non-Whiteworkers: "the good old days in Detroit have never been good" (2018: 123). Others did celebrate theautomobile industry but still opposed the mainstream narrative. For example, artist Diego Rivera paidtribute to factory workers in his famous mural Detroit Industry (1932-1933) yet he also highlighted theharm that industry could inflict upon workers. The mural also shows self-sufficient workers operating without management, thus questioning the system of Welfare Capitalism pioneered by Henry Ford.
Detroit's image began to tarnish in the 1950s, as the city entered a long period of deindustrialization.But it was with the 1967 race riots, recently depicted in Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit (2017), that MotorCity gained the reputation of a city in crisis. Only the more precarious non-White residents remained(around 79% of the population identified as African American in 2018), while affluent Whites fled tothe suburbs. Engaged in a spiral of impoverishment, Detroit became indebted - ultimately filing forbankruptcy in 2013) and came to be known as the most dangerous city in the USA. Its decline wascaused by structural factors: the automotive industry's crisis, lack of federal support, and systemicracism. Nevertheless, Dora Apel shows that an alternative narrative, tinged with racism, became popularamong white conservatives: "Many outsiders […] including many whites in Detroit’s suburbs, blamethe city’s own population for its ruination. As an overwhelmingly black city, this racist perspectiveconstructs the city as the nation’s ‘dark other’ in both literal and figurative terms, a city to be isolated,feared, and cut off from the body of the nation, as if ruins were not to be found in hundreds of otherdeclining cities across America." (Apel, 2015: 26). Non-fiction books like Devil’s Night (Ze’ev Chafets,1990) and documentaries like Detroit Halloween (National Geographic, 2015) implicitly validate thisnarrative by sensationalizing and decontextualizing the residents' violence. Conversely, severaldystopian narratives set in Detroit (such as Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop, 1987, or Eidos Montréal's videogame Deus Ex: Human Revolution, 2011) emphasize the city’s violence to better critique the neoliberaland segregationist system at its root.
Detroit's decline led to the abandonment of countless buildings. As Dora Apel summarizes, "what thecity has become best known for, through the pervasive reproduction and circulation of ruin imagery, arethe abandoned factories and skyscrapers […]" (2015: 03). Photographs and films on Detroit's ruins (including The Ruins of Detroit by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, 2010, or David Robert Mitchell'sIt Follows, 2014) fuel reflections on the decline of the United States' capitalist and industrial model(Hell, 2010). However, the aestheticization of ruins has also been criticized for its tendency to concealthe lived experiences of residents forced to inhabit these spaces (Scott, 2019), to absolve the politicaland economic agents responsible for the ruin by presenting it as inevitable, or to foster a form of morbidvoyeurism (Apel, 2015: 75-112). The paradoxical attraction generated by these ruined spaces has alsomade Detroit the world capital of urbex (Urban Exploration), a practice centered around the explorationof abandoned sites. For some urbex enthusiasts, Detroit's ruins represent a space of transgression,allowing them to escape an increasingly surveilled and policed society (Edensor, 2003). At the sametime, the hype around urbex can contribute to considering urban ruins as heritage sites to be exploitedfor profits through "abandonment tourism" (Le Gallou, 2021).
Finally, in recent years, more and more narratives have emerged about the city's rebirth: "the representation of Detroit’s landscape is imagined anew, through narratives of its beauty, not as the “bombed-out shell” it once was but as a latent and underdeveloped frontier. Indeed, we are now comingfull circle, returning once again to the possibility of Detroit’s historic rise." (Kinney, 2016: XV). Following massive investments by billionaires, the downtown area is attracting more professionals anddeveloping its infrastructure. In 2024, Michigan Central Station was restored after decades ofabandonment, and the city’s population grew for the first time since 1957. However, Rebecca J. Kinneyshows that narratives portraying Detroit as a new Frontier must be questioned, particularly because theycould lead to gentrification to the detriment of the city’s historic Black inhabitants (2016). The city'srebirth might also signify its reintegration into the neoliberal capitalist system, whereas for the pasttwenty years, Detroit has become "a global capital of 'Do it Yourself' movements [...] and social andenvironmental justice" (Renoir, 2024; my translation). This rebirth therefore stands in contrast to thoseimagined in narratives portraying Detroit as the epicenter of a possible way out of the economic and industrial system that the city once symbolized. Among the many works imagining Detroit as an urbanmodel of ecology, degrowth, or social and racial equality, let us mention the short story Stochasticity(Tobias S. Buckell, 2009) or the essay Detroit is the Place to Be (Mark Binelli, 2013).
Submission guidelines
Please send your abstract (around 300 words) with a short biographical and bibliographical notice at: detroitconference2025@gmail.com
before February 28, 2025.
Organizing committee
- Vincent Jaunas (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne)
- Emilie Seguin (Université de Lille)
- Jonathan Tichit (Aix-Marseille Université)
Scientific committee
- Oscar Barnay, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne
- Sophie Chapuis, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne
- Anne-Sophie Letessier, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne
- Denis Mellier, Université de Poitiers
- Simon Renoir, Université d’Avignon
- Aliette Ventéjoux, Université Rennes 2
Bibliography
- APEL, Dora, Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline, Rutgers University Press,2015.
- EDENSOR, Tim, Industrial Ruins: Space, Aesthetics and Materiality, Oxford, Berg Publishers, 2003.
- HELL, Julia, SCHÖNLE, Andreas (eds.), Ruins of Modernity, Durham, Duke University Press,«Politics, history, and culture », 2010.
- HERRON Jerry, After Culture: Detroit and the Humiliation of History, Detroit, Wayne State UniversityPress, 1993.KINNEY, Rebecca J., Beautiful Wasteland: the Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier,University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
- LE GALLOU, Aude, « Géographie des lieux abandonnés. De l’urbex au tourisme de l’abandon :perspectives croisées à partir de Berlin et Détroit », thèse de doctorat en géographie, sous la directionde Maria Gravari-Barbas et Boris Grésillon, soutenue le 3 décembre 2021 à l'université Paris 1 PanthéonSorbonne.
- RASHID, Frank S., “Interrogating the Urban Crisis: Teaching Detroit in Literature”, in Robert T. TallyJr. (ed.), Teaching Space, Place and Literature, New York: Routledge, 2018, 121-131.
- RENOIR, Simon, « Détroit dans le cinéma étatsunien : mise en doute du rêve américain et conflits declasse et de race », Les enjeux de l’information et de la communication, n°1, 2024.https://lesenjeux.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/2024/dossier/01-detroit-dans-le-cinema-etatsunien-mise-endoute-du-reve-americain-et-conflits-de-classe-et-de-race/
- SCOTT, Diane, Ruine. Invention d’un objet critique, Paris, Amsterdam, « Les Prairies ordinaires»,2019.
- SUGRUE, Thomas J., Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, PrincetonUP, 1996.
Subjects
Places
- Auditorium, Cité du design - 3 Rue Javelin Pagnon
Saint-Étienne, France (42)
Event attendance modalities
Hybrid event (on site and online)
Date(s)
- Friday, February 28, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- Détroit, représentations, ville, urbain, imaginaire, arts, culture
Contact(s)
- Jonathan Tichit
courriel : jonathantichit [at] gmail [dot] com - Vincent Jaunas
courriel : vincent [dot] jaunas [at] univ-st-etienne [dot] fr
Reference Urls
Information source
- Jonathan Tichit
courriel : jonathantichit [at] gmail [dot] com
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Triomphe, chute et renaissance », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Wednesday, November 06, 2024, https://doi.org/10.58079/12mti
