Abstract
Desnain shows how, in spite of their, apparently narrow, focus on events and episodes from recent French history, Dominique Manotti’s novels move far beyond the limits of nation to explore the complex intersections between global capitalism and state power within, and beyond, French borders. In works, such as Lorraine Connection and Affairs of State, Manotti uses crime fiction to address such issues as the arms trade, human trafficking and the takeover of French companies by foreign interests. By starting with a single event and pursuing connections between individuals and institutions until the ‘bigger picture’ is finally revealed, Desnain examines how Manotti uses the conventions of crime fiction for a very specific purpose: to enable the reader to understand the wider global implications of current affairs within France while, on a wider level, denouncing the failures and abuses of capitalism inside, and beyond, France’s borders. In doing so, Desnain argues, Manotti redefines crime not as a unique event that can, in turn, be tackled and punished by the forces of the state, but as part of a global system where it is increasingly hard to distinguish the legal and illegal, and where the police and other agents of the state are increasingly powerless to intervene.
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- 1.
“The criminal is no longer a lone individual. It is the world of suffering, poverty, violence, and corruption in which we live that produces criminals.” Manotti quoted in Kimyongür, 238.
- 2.
The latter is not named directly in the novels but banking giant Parillaud, which features in several of Manotti’s texts, is clearly a thinly disguised pun on its name.
- 3.
The hostage taking, as well as several assassinations and bombings, were perceived by many as a consequence of France’s refusal to honor its contract to provide Iran with enriched uranium and later to recognize Iran’s share-holding interests in the Eurodif consortium. For more information, see, for example, http://www.iran-resist.org/article167.
- 4.
In the novel, Elisa Picot-Robert is the mistress of the future president and a purely fictional character. Nonetheless, it would be very hard indeed not to compare those fictional events with Sarkozy’s efforts to privatise Areva, which he set in motion shortly after his election in 2007 by asking government officials to assess plans for a merger with Alstom, an engineering group. The Areva-Alstom merger was presented as part of an industrial strategy designed to make France the uncontested leader in nuclear energy but the tie-up also placed Bouygues, the group which owns 25 per cent of Alstom, at the heart of the process and left Martin Bouygues, its chairman, as the dominant figure in the new group. Bouygues is a close friend of Sarkozy, to the extent that he is god-father to Sarkozy’s son. He and the fictional Picot-Robert have similar business interests (construction).
- 5.
On the relationship between money and power in Manotti, see Sounac.
- 6.
On the relationship between globalization and profit, see Harvey.
- 7.
Manotti also gives a much more succinct analysis of this through the character of economic journalist Thiébaut in Or Noir, 116-17. Thiébaut’s assessment of the similarities between the way legal and illegal businesses are run concludes with the assertion that they are “two worlds which are far more similar than you might think” (116).
- 8.
Occasionally, the two economies actually overlap, as seen in both L’Honorable Société, with the planned sale of part of a state owned company to the Italian Camorra and Lorraine Connection, in which the Daewoo factory serves as a smokescreen for the laundering of illegally acquired EU funding.
- 9.
On this issue, see Véronique Desnain, ‘Le Polar, du fait divers au fait d’histoire’, in Itinéraires (2016, forthcoming).
- 10.
The EAW applies to 32 ‘generalized’ offenses and signatories must comply with requests regardless of whether the offense exits in the national laws of the country fulfilling the warrant.
- 11.
« Inspecteur, la situation est très tendue aujourd’hui entre les Etats-Unis et l’Iran. La France a en Iran des intérêts considérables […] Pour éviter une rupture irréparable, M. Kashguri est un allié précieux de la diplomatie française […] Cela ne signifie évidemment pas qu’il est au-dessus des lois de ce pays. Mais …’
[Inspector, the situation between Iran and the US is currently extremely tense. France has considerable investments in Iran […] Mr Kashguri is a most precious ally to French diplomacy in its efforts to avoid an irreversible breakdown in negotiations […] Of course this does not mean that he is above the law. But …] (181).
- 12.
Through his association with the president of the Lorraine region (represented by Quignard in the novel), a politician close to Chirac, with whom he collaborated for the implantation of Daewoo in France. This was done with the help of large European subsidies that were then diverted into Kim’s pockets but most crucially to those of high ranking RPR officials. It is also suspected that Kim was given French nationality in order to escape an Interpol warrant, which would have brought him back to Korea and perhaps revealed the role of French officials in his fraudulent activities. He was eventually sentenced to 10 years in jail in May 2006 in his country of origin after being found guilty of charges including embezzlement and accounting fraud, which precipitated the collapse of the company in 1999. Having been amnestied by the Korean president in 2007, he is now a consultant for French company Lohr.
- 13.
See in particular Schmid.
- 14.
“The detective story is the realm of the happy ending. The criminal is always caught. Justice is always done… Bourgeois legality, bourgeois values, bourgeois society, always triumph in the end. It is soothing, socially integrating literature, despite its concerns with crime, violence and murder” (Mandel, 47).
- 15.
Borzeix, in L’Honorable Société, is approached by a head-hunter from the Carlyle Group, which she immediately identifies as “le faux nez financier de la CIA” (a cover for the CIA’s financial dealings) (326). Whether this is an accurate description, it is the case that the Carlyle Group, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, has been the target of numerous conspiracy theories, both because of its interests in cutting edge technology and weaponry and because its executives include a number of political figures: former secretary of defense and CIA deputy director Frank Carlucci, former secretary of state James Baker, George Bush, and John Major among others. In his book The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group (2004), Journalist Dan Briody portrays the group as a hub of corporate cronyism, conflicts of interest, and war profiteering.
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Desnain, V. (2016). The State We’re In: Global Politics and Economics in the Novels of Dominique Manotti. In: Pepper, A., Schmid, D. (eds) Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-42573-7_5
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