Abstract

L’inhabitable—the uninhabitable—was the bass note sounding through all of the work of Georges Perec, less a category than what categories failed to insure against: the depersonalizing, devitalizing, dark matter of modern histories and geographies, as scandalous as it was ubiquitous. At the end of Espèces d’espaces, Perec would parse “the uninhabitable” into a litany of alienating spaces produced by the very processes of industrial advancement and urban growth:L’inhabitable: la mer dépotoir, les côtes hérissées de fils de fer barbelés, la terre pelée, la terre charnier, les monceaux de carcasses, les fleuves bourbiers, les villes nauséabondes […]L’inhabitable: l’étriqué...