The goal of this session is to provide a space to explore contemporary postcolonial serialized narratives across media in hexagonal France. While the field of postcolonialism has become a fixture in contemporary French and Francophone studies, investigations tend to overlook the unique subjectivity of descendants of immigrants and the ways their ambivalent identity produces alternative modes of temporality in their self-making practices and in their reconfiguration of French space and national identity. The four presentations comprising this panel explore these new modes of individual and social definition through the concept of seriality, which not only delineates the contours of this new temporality but, most importantly, challenges the still colorblind ethos of the French Republic. Moreover, the array of media foregrounded in the session (music, streaming series, cinema) expands the already explored space of the banlieue, i.e., French urban projects, and provides new formal approaches to analysis of the uncharted territories of new media, with engagements where seriality can be used as a tool of emancipatory praxis both in cultural productions and society.

This session echoes the renewed interest among French and Francophone, as well as Film and Media, scholars in the French banlieue, given the recent increase in production across media of this peripheral space by descendants of immigrants themselves. Anchored in the pioneering work of Carrie Tarr and Alec Hargreaves, this session continues the most recent exploration led by Marzia Caporale, Claire Mouflard, and Habib Zanzana. To my knowledge, the MLA has not recently sponsored a panel addressing these specific questions, and the association of multimedia and postcolonial studies is likely to attract a substantial audience given the transnational dimension of the presentations and the seriality framework, which could resonate with many beyond postcolonial studies. To promote these discussions, we have selected four panelists, all at different stages of their academic careers, who will present 10-minute papers to ensure a productive conversation. Ph.D. candidate Kévin Drif will initiate this discussion, pose questions to the panelists, and foster an engaging exchange.

The session will begin with Ph.D. student Julie Catel and her presentation “Le coeur étranger en forme hexagonale”: National Identity and Counter-Imaginaries in Médine’s Albums, in which she foregrounds the work of rapper Médine and sets the scene of the session by engaging with the thorny definition of French identity. This paper compares Médine’s two most recent albums as cultural interventions seeking to reshape French national identity, while critically assessing rap's capacity to function as a counter-imaginary in contemporary France. This paper argues that seriality highlights both the emancipatory potential and the fragility of rap as a national counter-imaginary.

As she remains in the banlieue, Assistant Professor Mary E. Allen proposes a serial analysis of two cinematic productions by Black French director Ladj Ly that center the banlieue but reconfigure that space in ways that refashion the very definition of French identity in its postcolonial contemporaneity. In her presentation titled “Serializing French identity in Ladj Ly’s cinema,” the films Les Misérables (2019) and Bâtiment 5 (2023) function as cultural signifiers of a new multicultural age in French cinema, recentering the still marginal on-screen postcolonial identities.

From music to cinema to streaming series, Assistant Professor Amber P. Sweat focuses on the temporality of serialized narrative in new media in her presentation “Fara, ever-girl: On Miskina, la pauvre and Episodic Arrested Development”. This paper examines Miskina, la pauvre as a serialized narrative that stages a form of “arrested development” to rethink girlhood and immigrant identity in contemporary France. Drawing on the narrative logic of seriality, this paper argues that serial storytelling enables the articulation of a distinctly diasporic temporality marked not by linear progression toward integration but by repetitions and detours that reflect the coming-of-age of young people outside Eurocentric norms.

Finally, Associate Professor Stève Puig, in his presentation “Vodou in the Banlieues: The Supernatural World of Mortel,” eschews the realistic, almost naturalistic explorations of postcolonial identities to date, opting instead to engage with the supernatural teen drama Netflix series Mortel (2019–2021). This paper investigates how the series uses a reimagining of Vodou as a catalyst for the adolescent coming-of-age experience, thereby creating a distinct cultural vernacular. Ultimately, this paper questions the efficacy of Mortel’s hybridity: does this blend of Haitian Vodou, French rap, and "Netflix-standard" pacing foster a truly original domestic genre, or does its pursuit of a global audience dilute its socio-political potential?