A few sociological uses of digital narratives
The Raconter la vie publishing site has amassed a collection of six hundred narratives over its two years of existence. The large number of stories it has encouraged in this way presents a mosaic made up of fragments of numerous lives that can be the object of sociology from different angles focused on a specific pattern or topic. One can still try to identify types of narratives : testimonies, social life stories or even artistic performances. Through a survey, we have chosen to meet some of the main actors of this digital stage, starting with the site’s linchpin, the web editor, her contributors, called community editors, and the authors. Our goal was to examine the production of these stories and the proposal of their digital publication with respect to the authors’ writing and reading practices, taking into account a writing culture, or even the reference of a literary culture. The authors discuss a variety of practices from personal diaries to the experience of writing workshops and professional writing. Many of them are adept at using digital resources : blogs, networks and platforms. The support of a renowned traditional publisher, the commitment of a Collège de France professor, the editorial team’s competency—with double reading of manuscripts and help with technical layout—serve the authors’ widely shared latent desire to be published. Something that would help them consider themselves amateur authors and cherish the hope of being recognized as writers. Failing to promote an impossible parliament of invisible authors, the publisher’s site preserves the narrative form and at the same time supports the figure of the amateur author. It could be likened to a king size writing workshop with prisms of the digital world in which we are deprived of the sociability of shared readings, but allowed to play multiple identity games, those of characters and authors called upon to tell society’s genuine story and who are so strongly seeking publishers.