Informational Chaos, Rumours, and Truths: Department Stores in Au Bonheur des Dames by Zola

This article examines fake news, rumors, and truths – an entire heavy machinery of all-pervasive information – for which we propose the label capharnaüm to denote informational disorder. Reality is a composite and partial construct, shaped by the ways in which representations are produced and articulated: through techniques and technologies, but also through the intentions, strategies, and imagination of the actors of a given era. Such is the case with É mile Zola who, in Au Bonheur des Dames, offers an astonishingly visionary perspective on the world of advertising and the media, on the war of images and imaginaries – phenomena one might consider contemporary, yet whose origins go back as far as the Epic of Gilgamesh. The affinity with a certain dramatic mode of narration – here, the opening of the great department stores and the purchasing frenzy into which Zola’s female characters are drawn through exceptional sales and the flattering of their egos – transcends facts and figures. It opens a reflective window onto our own portraits, whether as reasonable buyers or as consumers of any product that enhances our self-image and, why not, as consumers of fine nineteenth-century literature.