Rap et récits « banlieusards »: enjeux de la représentation fictionnelle des espaces urbains périphériques

Abstract

Ever since the first instances of rap on French territory, the working-class banlieue has become one of its ‘common places’. However, there is nothing obvious and automatic about the way rap songs put forward representations of the marginal areas of French cities. Certain figures of speech seem to be recurring and, strangely enough, similarities appear between those representations of the banlieue and a set of narratives published since the late 1990s, which use the banlieue as a setting for their plots, and whose authors share with many rappers a personal familiarity with urban peripheries. Such similarities can be observed by comparing rap lyrics with novels and short stories published by a collective Qui fait la France? Nevertheless, rap can be distinguished from literary narratives by its uses of voices, bodies, and sound technologies which, in addition to their musicality, can reinforce its system of representations of the banlieue. This article undertakes to study the representations of the working-class banlieue in a corpus of French rap, through the lens of the similarities and differences with literary narratives about and from the banlieue.