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Surveillance And Liberty In Céline's New York, The City That Doesn't Sleep (Around) , Jennifer Willging

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay focuses on Ferdinand Bardamu's account of his stay in New York City in Louis-Ferdinand Céline's bleak bildungsroman, Journey to the End of the Night (1932). In it I explore the rather surprising absence of reference to the Statue of Liberty in a text narrated by a French immigrant of sorts who spends weeks on Ellis Island and who immediately personifies the city as an androgynous, steely, and indeed statue-like woman. Applying to the text Foucault's theories on the disciplinary nature of modern western society, I suggest that it is Bardamu's suspicion that he is under unobtrusive yet constant …