French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Westphal, La Cage des méridiens. La littérature et l'art contemporain face à la globalisation
Art and Visual Culture
Review published in Acta Fabula (April 2017, vol. 18, no. 4): "For an Anti-Polemology of Knowledge: The Discursive Structures of the West" by Marine Meunier
Bertrand Westphal
La Cage des méridiens. La littérature et l'art contemporain face à la globalisation
Editions de Minuit, 2016
272 p.
19 €
ISBN: 9782707329585
17 in-text illustrations
Publisher's Overview:
Driving stakes, building walls and low partitions, opening service windows... Western man delights in divisions that help reinforce his territorial fantasies. In his eyes, the globe transforms into a ball of yarn made of lines and watertight borders—a vast cage of meridians that, in a manner tinged with melancholy, would sanction the immutable nature of things.
Literature and the arts sometimes adapt to this deceptive evidence. For many, however, the artistic canon is merely an expression of ethnocentrism. For many, cultural universalism is the hallmark of Westernization, or even of ongoing globalization.
Can we imagine an alternative? A world that would prioritize the periphery, and whose center—liberated from the global straitjacket—would convey the beginnings of equity? Here and there, across the oceans, writers have demonstrated this kind of imagination, as have numerous artists for whom the globe and maps have ultimately become the substance of a fluid, planetary-scale thought.
Bertrand Westphal's study investigates how Western territorial divisions and the metaphor of a cage of meridians influence contemporary cultural production. The text considers how artistic canons have historically expressed ethnocentrism, while cultural universalism often aligns with ongoing globalization. Against this backdrop, the volume turns to writers and artists who explore alternative geographies, repositioning the periphery and engaging with planetary-scale thought through maps and global motifs, reflecting ongoing scholarly interest in how contemporary creation responds to modern spatial configurations.