Books to the left of the French scene

Today is a far cry from the days when some Arabic publications had an influential presence and a well-known identity in the cultural sphere. Perhaps the houses of Beirut provide the best example of this, and until the first decade of the new century were an important “vein” for the Arabic literary and cultural movement, today have become a shadow of that past. As for the new roles that have replaced well-known names on the publishing scene, they are rare among them that can be said to carry out a clear plan or have an editorial that can be distinguished and described in addition to the Arab. Release scenario.

As it stands, the publishing world is quite different in France. Reasons here mean the dominance of a few houses or large corporations through rights, publishing and distribution and attracting employees and teachers. However, this dominance has never prevented the presence of medium and small houses, which number in the hundreds, perhaps thousands, and offer the spectacle of publishing in the country what the big houses cannot always offer: new ideas, visions different from practice. , with new poems and names that don’t fall through the corporate filter.

La Fabrice Publications is one of these medium and small houses and is very much present in the worlds of French culture, especially on its left side. Today, the house, founded by writer and physician Eric Hassan (1936), celebrates twenty-five years since its birth (1998); It is an event not limited to “La Fabrice”, but many libraries and certainly many readers participate in more than one French city: from Paris to Marseille (south) and Strasbourg (east) to Cône (northwest) .

This extended celebration represents support for a small company (fewer than three permanent employees…) that, despite the competition and presence of many others, transformed it within a quarter of a century into one of the most important liberal roles in France. Gilles Dolot and Simone de Beauvoir are left-wing characters in the country. On the contrary, it reached this result despite the lack of its number of publications, which are around dozen (twelve books) almost every year.

Its list of authors includes prominent names such as the philosopher Jacques Rancière.

In light of the limited size, one understands that it plays a role in the arrival of “La Fabrice”. And genre here refers to the content of books, the demand of their authors and the format of their publications.

Starting with the external appearance, the first thing that can be mentioned is the simplicity of the design: cards without images (except in rare cases) and with a background of one color, with calmness and stability in the written line and way. Titles and authors’ names are drawn. This austerity in visual identity – created by graphic artist Jerome Saint-Louper Piet – gave the house, over time, part of its public identity. It also in a sense gives a first picture of the contents of his books.

The House’s publications are clear in their intellectual and political tendencies, and are far from being colored or gray, and thus, its first titles and its first writers, even if they are writing in French. or translated for them from other languages: Jacques Ransière (“An the Edge of the Politician” – 1998) Sharing: Aesthetics and Politics – 2000, The Fate of Images – 2003, Tanya Reinhart (The Destruction of Images Palestine – 2002), Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian Identity – 2003), and Sophie Vanish (Freedom or Death) – 2003).

Other important names such as Alain Badiou, Edward Said, Zygmunt Bauman, Slavoj Žižek, and Christine Delvey, and after them a younger generation of critic and academic Françoise Verger (“Decolonial Feminism” – 2019 and “A Project for Total Chaos: Museums that Decolonize Its Colonial Character” – 2023) ), and political thinker Frederick Lorden (“Capitalism, Desire and Slavery: Marx and Spinoza” – 2010, and “Living Without Institutions? Police, Work and Money” – 2019).