Fictions et non-fictions d’enquête : un modèle de saisie des mondes contemporains

• Main Author: Frédéric Claisse
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Université de Liège 2019-02-01
• Series: Contextes
• Subjects: Enquête; Sociologie pragmatique; Sociologie par la littérature; Littérature contemporaine; Chauvier (Eric); D'Agata (John)
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/contextes/7129

In an approach inspired by the sociology of Howard S. Becker, the paper questions the cognitive significance of three works of nonfiction (The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal ;6/5, by Alexandre Laumonier ; Somaland, by Eric Chauvier), characterized by the centrality they give to inquiry both as an engine for narrative and as a form of knowledge. It builds the structure of an ideal-type that accounts for these works’ project of capturing the contemporary world: constant overflowing of the investigator by uncertainty and opacity, contamination of reality by fiction, increased reflexivity of the process of inquiry. Taking advantage of a hybrid framing that maintains strong constraints of documentary cross-matching while multiplying “impressions of fiction”, the texts studied here invent literary devices that are adjusted to their scope. These features make them good discussion partners for social sciences, opening up new perspectives for writing and exchanges with (non)fiction as an instrument of knowledge.