Politics of an Author Portrait Jules Verne in the Public Space

Amiens and Nantes have dedicated several monuments to Jules Verne since his death; a number of other cities have recently paid him a monumental tribute as well. The 2005 centenary of his death has led to a push for commemorations. Between cosmopolitanism and colonialism, the cult of the superman and the defense of the oppressed, these monuments constitute an apparently consensual figure from Verne’s biography and fictions, which is however put in the service of a mobilizing discourse that is by definition political.