Accessing recognition as a Belgian female writer
The case of Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb puts into question the traditional historical tension between art and money. Indeed, the novelist succeeded in accumulating both literary and economic success. By mobilizing different types of data, Amélie Nothomb’s literary path was reconstructed and portrayed as a series of positions at the intersection of contextual constraints and individual inclinations and resources. This approach makes better sense of the difficulties and issues that French writers usually face, and better identifies certain current mechanisms used in the production of works as well as the social and historical conditions that make it possible to gain heterogeneous profits.