ABSTRACT
Asked to reflect on her intellectual career, Arlette Farge highlights the difficulty of retracing a journey that appears more like a broken line than a linear one. The “hard core” of her work is composed of three contiguous components: (1) the use of sources relative to the downtrodden and the poor social classes; (2) the method: numerous readings, importance accorded to the immersion into the archives, need to take into full account the richness of the language, to make room for what the archives “say” but also for what they do not say; and (3) the writing of history: how to “write” on discontinuities. Arlette Farge goes on by evoking the objects of her research. Archives have been studied to work on the margins of 18th-century society, but they were also useful to investigate historical movements and to respond to contemporary social demands. At the end, she mentions the importance of analyzing the body as a social and political protagonist. The 18th century appears as the century of bodily eloquence, a way of living, of fighting, of protecting oneself, but also of being together. In that sense, the poor person’s body can be seen as a political agent of history.
