Departures and Homecomings

Abstract

This essay explores the theme of diaspora and departure in the context of the city of Marseille, identified by the legendary journalist Albert Londres as the definitive symbol of departure and return in the French twentieth-century imaginary. The work of the late twentieth-century novelist Jean-Claude Izzo draws upon Londres’ analysis of the city as the locus of diaspora and departure, especially in Total Khéops and Les Marins perdus, and is constructed through a precise awareness of cultural production in Marseille and representations of it in journals such as Les Cahiers du Sud and authors as diverse as Dumas, Marcel Pagnol and José Giovanni. In his complex evocation of Marseille, Izzo plays upon an ambiguous relationship between the stereotype of the city as the site of successive diasporas, often with conflictual social consequences, and its more positive role as a centre of Mediterranean culture and an unlikely, but historically consistent, positive influence as a place of homecoming and assimilation. In this context, the bleak depiction of Marseille as a centre of social deprivation and conflict is counterbalanced by a powerful belief in the city as the object of homecoming.