Writing One’s Life: The French School of the Anthropology of Writing

Abstract

The French anthropological school of writing has centred its reflections around two social worlds: on the one hand, people ‘without quality’ (workers, marginal groups, the poor), for whom writing was ‘difficult’; on the other hand, the ‘over-qualified’ (scientists, intellectuals), for whom writing is not just a communications medium but a domain in its own right. In both these worlds, the same questions apply: how does (self-)writing happen? What effect does such writing have on the individual and the representation of his or her personal existence? This chapter investigates these issues in two specific fields: firstly, French artisans (‘men without quality’), who practised the rites of initiation associated with the Compagnons of the Tour de France, and secondly, life writing among intellectuals (the ‘over-qualified’).