Abstract
In attempting in Retour à Reims (2009) to retrieve his earlier life experience, the sociologist Didier Eribon conveys the affective charge associated with the return to his working-class origins. The current study considers how the social and sexual obstacles that such a return brings means that the encounter with the real is frequently filtered through a series of intertextual references. With notions of digression and detour (theoretical, textual and bibliographical) forming a recurring feature in the work, access to the real thus comes via a process of circuitous re-appropriation. Eribon’s textual detours involve consideration of figures such as Foucault, Bourdieu and Wideman whose choices, respectively, of the fields of the historical archive, sociological enquiry and the genre of autobiography Eribon explores.
Published Version
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