Border writings. Cultural connexions in the margins of the literature

The dispute between the literary task and the mode of knowledge of the human sciences (especially sociology), clearly initiated at the end of the 19th century, remains alive if we think of the proximities, similarities and differences between one and the other. If at first the human sciences vacillated between a scientist orientation, ready to seek models in the natural sciences, and a hermeneutic attitude that brought them closer to literary studies, from the 1980s onwards, anthropology, especially American anthropology, deliberately sought out literary theory as a source of interlocution to reflect on ethnographic texts. A dialogue was thus established between ethnographic experience and narratives that seek to analyse and interpret the "facts".

In the opposite direction, critics and writers set out to carry out tasks of observation and participation typical of fieldwork in social research, where theory and practice are imbricated in the artistic endeavour, with notable precedents such as the dissident surrealism of the black movement. Such an approach, by superimposing, interspersing or opposing these practices, has crucial ethical and political implications, as it directly affects the politics of the representations of otherness, as well as theoretical and methodological implications, since it challenges conventional conceptions that separate ethnographic and literary texts, etc.

In these movements of approximation, comparative literature went beyond the boundaries of its canon, opening up to non-fictional genres and written products that became of interest as representations of the diversity of social life. At first, the focus of the research was restricted to the mere reception of printed matter and manuscripts, but cultural historians and other social scientists began to value the potential of the written production of the popular classes. “Ordinary writing", almost always autobiographical, was revealed as an important object for social research, and in this turn the contributions of comparative literature became indispensable for interpreting these new objects.

We believe that the empirical problems concerning these discourses, not only written but also oral, but in any case marginalized or forgotten by institutions, can be better addressed in this border zone between literary and anthropological studies. Papers on the situations in which these discourses are produced, how they are unequally constructed by different social groups in different contexts, and how we can understand them in relation to these contexts are welcome in this dossier. We also intend to welcome articles that strengthen the debate on the understanding of the uses of bordering writings, from the theoretical bases shared by comparative literature and the social sciences.