Cafés Heterotópicos Y Resistencia Urbana: Una Lectura De Los Paisajes Urbanos Nostálgicos De Modiano Y Debord

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of the café in Patrick Modiano’s novel In the Café of Lost Youth (2007), examining the problems involved in renewing this highly socially charged space of French culture. The author brings into relief contemporary citylife, where people are dispossessed of their spaces. In spite of Modiano’s ostensible lack of social engagement, I argue that his quotation from one of Guy Debord’s films, encourages a re-examination of the Situationist conception of the café as pivotal ground, where resistance against the politics of capitalism, can take root. It is necessary that both the cultural and historical conceptions of the café as critical social space be taken into account. The café is then conceived as a Foucaultian heterotopia. These works point to the absence of city spaces still permeated by such vital otherness, and by way of the nostalgic glance, they evoke a yearning for a renewed urban spatiality