Lorraine Noir: Didier Daeninckx and the writing of deindustrialization

Abstract

ENG) This article studies Didier Daeninckx as a writer of deindustrialization. In the novel PlayBack (1986) and in short stories such as “Traverse no 28” (1998), he weaves a multifaceted critique of France as haunted by its industrial past. Daeninckx’s first tool is to write a noir history of deindustrialization, thus producing a subaltern history of Lorraine. Reflecting on the uses of memory (and of his own work in that regard), Daeninckx also writes a criticism of the nascent business of industrial heritage. Finally, this article appraises Daeninckx’s critique by examining his writing’s nostalgia for a lost industrial world, as well and its denunciation of post-industrial subjectivations.