L'écriture publique du pouvoir

It is perfectly natural for interaction to take place between research on literacy and research on power, given that it is possible to argue that the birth of the State, or at least of complex States, is linked to the use of writing. But this volume is not concerned with writing used for utilitarian and administrative purposes, it is concerned with literacy as a kind of power.

According to Max Weber, legitimacy is the key to all forms of control. In order to establish and maintain its power, the State uses various strategies, among them writing, a fact which may surprise, when one considers that in most ancient societies the majority of people were illiterate. The fifteen papers published in this volume deal with this paradox, across a wide chronological range, from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to modern times, but always in relation to societies untouched by the “disenchantment of the world” and the rationality of modem States.