Un nouvel âge de l'enquête. Portraits de l'écrivain contemporain en enquêteur by Laurent Demanze

Abstract

Reviewed by: Un nouvel âge de l'enquête. Portraits de l'écrivain contemporain en enquêteur by Laurent Demanze Carole Edwards Laurent Demanze. Un nouvel âge de l'enquête. Portraits de l'écrivain contemporain en enquêteur. Paris: Editions José Corti, coll. « les essais », 2019. 304 pp. Paper, €23.00. In The Experimental Novel (1893), Emile Zola coined the term "the investigation age" to describe how writers relate to the real world in multiple ways, not just one. In his essay divided into five chapters, Laurent Demanze demonstrates that, at the turn of the twenty-first century, writers faced a "new age of investigation," one marked by blurred parameters in "opaque" settings ranging from the social sciences to documentaries, from testimonies to factual knowledge.1 Thus, the contemporary writer navigates all border-crossing territories, engaging in "an inquisitorial paradigm" (as Dominique Kalifa styles it), and choosing a multifaceted approach to discourse, knowledge, and practices. Demanze differentiates the posture of the researcher from that of the author. He contends that, in this time of democratization of the Humanities and Social Sciences, while researchers follow a set of protocols often defined by a specific field or a given theoretical framework, authors have the freedom to observe all disciplines but also to steer away from them all, in a perfectly whimsical way, and to remain amateurs or simply unlabeled in their creativity. In this sense, Demanze claims that contemporary writers benefit from the "porous nature of the literary fields" as they become acculturated to keep their intellectual independence, one estranged from any outside influences. In a newly remodeled imaginary, authors choose to create an "undisciplined" space to reflect a reality of their choosing, a mimicry of the world but on their own terms. By distancing themselves from any movements or trends, they run the risk of being considered as impostors in a space where the scope of authorship is renegotiated. In this vein, L'enquête contemporaine (the contemporary investigation) acts as a "displacement of all objects and support for the inquisitorial paradigm" (20), a so-called documentary turn (Mark Nash2). Writers, he argues, are not necessarily politically tainted, even though their productions can resonate with human and social "depth" (25), thereby turning their literature into a polyphonous spokesperson for the people on the margins. Demanze illustrates his theory of this new age of investigation with a plethora of examples ranging from Emmanuel [End Page 136] Carrère to Philippe Vasset, Jean Rolin and Jean Hatzfield. He contends that writers may take on multiple roles, becoming detectives, journalists, or ethnographers, without ever completely belonging to a single category, but rather cultivating this amateur status, one detached from any clearly defined scientific knowledge. A writer's sense of wonder launches the investigation (chapter 1), empowering him/her with the ability to think—and to defy—all existing borders. It deciphers singular experiences based on an epistemological defamiliarization of various discourses regrouped in a "common place" (un lieu commun, 43). Demanze relies both on Marcel Proust's nineteenth-century narratives and on detective novels to showcase how the contemporary writer leads the investigation in a playful way, challenging taxonomies by maintaining a suspenseful tension. Side stories are part of the narrative game so that enigmas only become revealed at the very end. This aesthetic challenge disorientates the reader whose task is to navigate between fiction and reality. The ambivalent position of the writer makes interpreting virtually impossible as it allies "an external alterity with an internal familiarity" (80). In the second chapter, Demanze envisions the writer as an explorer. Transformed into ethnographers, writers ought to go in situ to obtain the subject matter necessary to fuel their production. Demanze refers to George Perec to underscore how each writer invests in new spaces to offer a singular outlook mixing reality and fiction.3 Through immersion, writers "give life to a human document,"4 both reporting findings and creating fiction using nuanced voices that belong to other individuals from all social categories. These voices form a "literary journalism," one which collects singular encounters and combines facts with pure fabrication. Demanze then differentiates four types of narrators from subjective to objective, always illustrating his accounts...