"Transclass", this scholarly term, born from the pen of the philosopher Chantal Jaquet, has emerged in recent years to designate a phenomenon as old as the world: people who have evolved during their lives from one social environment to another. .
The awarding of the last Nobel Prize for Literature to Annie Ernaux, daughter of Norman grocers, who defines herself as a "class defector", has institutionalized the concept.
From a Marxist or Bourdieusian perspective, abandoning an oppressed environment to find a place in the bourgeois sun is nevertheless synonymous with high treason.
The transclasses preserve themselves from such an accusation by the (long) description of their sufferings: despised by all, they wander in the world, bending under the weight of their talent.
The narrative is well known: Stendhal already demonstrated with Julien Sorel that navigating between two waters is not easy.
In his latest essay
(1)
, based on his own experience as a child from a Nancy city who became an influential teacher…
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