Les bas-fonds : histoire d'un imaginaire

by Dominique Kalifa

De la cour des Miracles aux territoires contemporains de la misère ou de la pègre, l’existence des « bas-fonds » revient régulièrement hanter nos imaginaires.

Gueux, mendiants, misérables, prostituées, criminels, grands délinquants, détenus, peuplent de leurs figures hideuses, à la fois réelles et fantasmées, l’envers ? pour ne pas dire le « Milieu » ? de nos sociétés. Ils en constituent le repoussoir, la part maudite, mais aussi l’une des lignes de fuite symbolique et sociale.

Quoique centré sur la France des XIXe et XXe siècle, cet ouvrage n’hésite pas pour autant à puiser ses références dans la société médiévale finissante, dans l’underworld victorien, les trottoirs de Hambourg ou les ports coloniaux… Dominique Kalifa élabore ainsi une sociologie comparée extrêmement précise et documentée de cet imaginaire, propre à susciter fantasmes et divagations. Pas à pas, il met ainsi au jour ses constituants (ses décors, ses figures et ses intrigues), ses procédés de fabrication (via le journalisme, la littérature, le cinéma...), mais aussi et surtout les ressorts d’une fascination : souvent dénoncée comme malsaine, celle-ci s’avère pourtant souvent un puissant régulateur des sensibilités et des aspirations sociales.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sociology, Crime

394 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Dominique Kalifa (1957–2020) was professor of history and director of the Center for Nineteenth-Century History at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon–Sorbonne. His many books include La véritable histoire de la “Belle Époque” (2017).

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just think for a minute about what comes to mind when you think of the term "underworld": You'd get a wide swath of images, ranging from dark alleys were some indulge in desires and/or waste away, or to movies about vampires fighting werewolves, right? Probably some manner of Dickensian setting appears? Kalifa's work (fantastically translated by Susan Emanuel) means to educate on how this "state" of the underworld came to be in our collective imagination. How much of it was romanticized? What's changed over the years, and what have these underserved parts of cities come to inspire and inform?

Aside from adequately acquainting you with the terms "bas-fonds" and "milieu" (apparently it's no use to try to obtain a stout definition of the latter), we're given a selective tour of history throughout major cities (usually Paris, London, and New York) as they all slowly develop underbellies; some due to the oppressed proletariat, citizens in poverty having to resort to whatever means necessary to live, others being held all but against their will in zones while government programs sort them out---any/all of the previously mentioned, and so much more. I say "so much more" because Kalifa has put together what has to be one of the most thoroughly researched books I've ever read (maybe that's an indictment on me, but if he's impressed anyone, he can count me among them). Populated with example upon example upon example, the layers begin to thread through each other and form a tapestry of a recognizable environment instantly bringing to mind works popular to this day (Les Miserables, for instance).

I grew up hearing the phrase "slumming it up", probably like most everyone else---hell, I use it to this very day, but I couldn't have told you what it meant until I read this.

As with any book that's heavy on the examples and clipping itself to so much evidence, you're in for the experience of a dense read. Keep at it, though, and you'll be rewarded. Think about it: Kalifa has produced a great resource to discover the background for the real-life places that have inspired countless forms of good despite their reputations, going from the FDA to even Batman (by way of Detective Comics)! Can't find something to link those two anywhere else.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Columbia University Press for the advance read.

[J Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vice, Crime, and Poverty: How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld from Dominique Kalifa uses a wide range of sources in illustrating how bas-fonds or lower depths combined some reality with imagination to create what is almost universally understood when talking about underworld or lower depths.

These areas in most cities started out literally lower, prone to flooding or marshy, so not a great place to live. Yet those were the only areas available to the poor and marginalized so they settled there. The combination of poverty and unhealthy living conditions contributed to the cycle of poverty, helped by the class systems prevalent even in countries pretending they are without distinct classes. In many cities in the United States there is an area referred to as "the bottoms" which reflects exactly what Kalifa talks about. It doesn't take a big leap of imagination to associate lower depths to the bottoms, so the research and presentation is applicable in the US and the terminology used is perfectly fine.

The examples, largely from the decades after what he considers to be a major turning point (~1840), are drawn from many types of writing. Literature, newspaper accounts, social science texts, governmental/policy papers. In other words, the loss of distinction between an area (the lower depths) and people living there (underclass) is not purely the work of fiction writers writing for effect but part of how the rest of society established their hierarchy.

My brief discussion does not do the work justice. The writing is accessible, the ideas fascinating, and the works cited give each one a new appearance for us. I highly recommend this for anyone interested in how societies structure itself as well as the ways in which we still feed a mostly false imaginary when we use such terms.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Cass · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Vice, Crime, and Poverty, Dominique Khalifa explores whether representations of the “lower depths”, or “underworld”, in personal accounts reflected historic reality.

The expression “lower depths” comes from French and, unlike the opening sentences of the book suggest, it is not easily associated with the underworld for most native English speakers. I understand that this book was translated, but I do feel like this could have been changed from the original, simply because it instantly put me off, making me think I could not relate at all.

As someone tangentially familiar with the topic - I’ve previously studied the perceived degeneracy of the masses during British industrialisation - this was a pretty interesting and engaging book. It was well-written and showed strong academic structure, however it was a bit too emotive (“frightful world”, “without shuddering or flinching”) for what appeared to be an academic text. It is is definitely more oriented towards academic readers than casual readers. While it is well-written and explains most unfamiliar terms, it’s dense and isn’t easily accessible for anyone outside of the field of history or social studies.

That said, I did engage well with the content, it had a good natural progression and quotes from personal accounts were included seamlessly. I enjoyed it and I’d be interested to see if there is anything else by the author that matches my subject interests as well.

*An ARC of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5 stars*

Rich, exhaustively researched take on perspective...

This book opened my eyes to many decades of reporting, discussion and reality of some of the largest cities “underworlds”. How did the many adjectives born, and continue to be used today, to describe the poorest segments of our population. An egg and chicken thing? Did crime or vice result from poverty or some other formula? Did these worlds even exist as told by many purported observers…

It was intriguing to ponder the different points the author brought up. Using many, many references, there are dozens and dozens of examples where the reality may not have matched how it was written or talked about. Other reviewers described this work as dense – I wholeheartedly agree – but I also agree that it was well worth the read.

*I happily reviewed this book
**Thank you to NetGalley and Columbia University Press

[Roosevelt · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ideas that Dominique presented in this books are refreshing. There were times where I had to stop during a section and had to really think about what I read because of how profound some of these ideas he presented.

On the other hand, he took a lot of references that he used to defend his case of which seem like there needed to be more preconceived information the audience needed to know in order to follow along. While it is a writing to propagate a better understanding of the “underworld” as he calls it, this reading feels much more like a research based project that would have fitted well in a urbanization course as an additional textbook.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the translation suffers perhaps from taking Kalifa's original Bas-Fonds too literally, this book supplies a rich sweep of criminal culture, or rather the "imaginary" of criminal culture, across the medieval through modern West. While the vignette feel of the piece is imaginative and evocative, the erratic chronological and geographical focus (which leaps from the medieval to the 19th century to a very brief discussion of the modern and focusing mostly on France, England and to some degree the US) seems slightly random

[Clémence Corday · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai voulu lire ce livre en hommage à Dominique kalifa qui nous a quitté récemment.
Ce livre est une thèse intéressante sur l'univers des bas-fonds. La fascination et l'horreur que ces bas fonds peuvent dégager...
Ils représentent le monde de l'envers et tout ce dont on peut avoir peur... De Victor Hugo à Eugène sue en passant par Albert Londres une thèse très bien documentée.

[Beth Younge · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was interesting read but i found it a little bit too dry. The premise generally held my interest but I never had the want or desire to pick this up when I put it down.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An exploration into the historical imaginary of the "underworld" of the poor neighborhoods of major cities of the Western world.

The author does not focus as much on the actual lived experience of life in poor neighborhoods in major urban areas in Western Europe and the United States as the stories which were written about such areas. The author begins with a history of the conception of people in poor areas of towns, from medieval concerns about vagabonds to the development of the view of a seedy "underworld" orchestrated into its own sub-cultural state as promulgated in books and papers in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The author explores the morbid fascination of the upper middle class and the elites in society regarding how the "underworld" lived: how they consumed books and articles on the subjects of life and crime in poor areas, would participate in guided tours of such neighborhoods, yet all the while maintaining their distance and finding sufficient reasons for moral approbation. The author chronicled the societal changes in attitudes about the poor and how the whole "underworld" concept would eventually shift considerably in the 20th century away from being a neighborhood dependent thing into associations which were centered in far "nicer" areas.

Much more is made of Paris than London or New York, as befits the author's primary focus. Yet the author does well to demonstrate the validity of his thesis that the "underworld" of poor people reveling in and saturated with vice and crime was mostly an imagined construct. Yes, there was vice and crime in poor areas, and it perhaps was more pervasive than in other realms; nevertheless, the wealthier were generally more interested in profiting from it, exploiting it, and justifying themselves and their distance from it than being honest about it or doing much to help the situation. Creating the imaginary of the highly orchestrated underworld in seedy neighborhoods did its work to establish effective distance and justify moral approbation towards the poor and feelings of superiority among those who were not.

Thus, most of what we think about the experience of urban slums is not historically accurate. A sobering read indeed.

**--galley received as part of early review program

[Gondolindrim · Rating 4 out of 5]

En tant qu'étudiant je suis très intéressé par les populations oubliées, marginales et marginalisées ainsi que les représentations qui les entourent. Avec ce livre je suis servi. Dominique Kalifa y examine les représentations des bas-fonds et l'histoire de ces dernières entre le XIXe et le XXe siècle. Les bas-fonds, ce terme regroupe une idée très forte que nous connaissons tous. Des lieux froids, sombres et sales dans l'intérieur des villes. Des personnes louches, furtives, qui passent rapidement et qui chuchotent entre-eux. Dominique Kalifa examine ce sujet en dix chapitres divisés en trois parties.

suite: http://hassan.blog.tdg.ch/archive/201...

[Andrei Chirila · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most in-depth and well researched books I've read. Although Kalifa's examples and findings were interesting, the book itself was very difficult to get through. Extremely dense with information and literary examples, it read more like a research/thesis book than something you can read on any given day.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book blends history and literature to explore Western representations of Vice, Crime and Poverty, showing how criminals and the poor were affected by industrialisation. A vast number of the references are to either the United Kingdom or to France, focusing on the work of Dickens and Hugo in particular. I thought that it was well researched and for a scholarly work, very readable to the point that I would have enjoyed reading more. Of particular interest was the origin of the fascinating argot of the underworld, and this book is full of some great characters. Good analysis of the characters in literature, but mainly focused on 19th century