How to study the stability of interstitial spaces: an analysis based on the case of the visibility of French intellectuals

Abstract

This article reports on an investigation into the channels through which intellectuals have gained public recognition since the 1970s (quality press, intellectual journals, think tanks, conference venues, cultural radio and TV programs, publishing houses, etc.). Through the prism of field theory, we explored a space – that of the visibility of ideas – situated at the crossroads of several institutionally established fields (academic, intellectual, media, political, and economic). While the number of studies devoted to this type of interstitial space has multiplied since the 2000s, the focus has mainly been on their heteronomy through comparisons with autonomous fields. This approach tends to lose sight of the fact that they could neither emerge nor endure in the absence of stability. Based on the notion of the space of visibility of ideas, the present paper attempts to show that it is possible to apprehend the stability of these labile spaces by adopting an ethnographic approach, conducive to the articulation of micro/meso/macro levels and the mixing of methods. In so doing, we put forward the idea that interstitial spaces can ultimately be analyzed in terms of perimeters and capital, in other words, as fields.