« Certains de nos désirs ont construit cette ville » : Google Earth et glocalisation dans GeoGuessr, Darrieussecq et Houellebecq

Abstract

This article discusses literary texts and other cultural practices that resemble, refer to, or make use of material from Google Earth. The aim is to elucidate experiences of glocalization (globalization and localization), an emerging form of spatiality that is related to the interactive ‘Web 2.0.’ The initial analysis of the browser game GeoGuessr and the interactive music video ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ explores this spatiality from two opposing starting points: while the game fosters a sense of place within locales that are essentially unknown to the player, the music video integrates images from places that are related to the viewer's personal memories into an otherwise impersonal work of art. This glocalized experience of place, which is both eroded by global systems of communication and recreated within these systems, is then traced in Marie Darrieussecq's novel La mer à l’envers and in several works, including novels, poems, and photographs, by Michel Houellebecq.