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The formulation 'egalitarian strangeness' is a direct borrowing from Courts voyages au pays du peuple (Short Voyages to the Land of the People) (1990), a collection of essays by the contemporary French thinker Jacques Ranciere. Perhaps best known for his theory of radical equality as set out in Le Matre ignorant (The Ignorant Schoolmaster) (1987), Ranciere reflects on ways in which a hierarchical social order based on inequality can come to be unsettled. In the democracy of literature, for example, he argues that words and sentences serve to capture any life and to make it available to any reader. This book explores embedded forms of social and cultural 'apportionment' in a range of modern and contemporary French texts (including prose fiction, socially engaged commentary, and autobiography), while also identifying scenes of class disturbance and egalitarian encounter.

Social classes --- Social classes --- Social change --- Social change --- Social classes in literature. --- French literature --- French literature --- History --- History --- History --- History --- History and criticism. --- History and criticism. --- Contesting social apportionment --- inequality --- Voices from below --- contemporary French fiction --- class intersections --- the theory of radical equality --- Social class in modern French literature --- Jacques Rancière --- The manual and the intellectual in modern French literature --- social order