Les « effets Rashomon »

Abstract

The notion of the “Rashomon effect” concerns the difficulty of reconstructing facts from the testimonies of participants in tense or contested situations.This text first aims to give a precise content to this term, whose use has become commonplace in the Anglo-Saxon humanities since the 1980s at the cost of precision.Here, this paper shows the interest to distinguish three types of Rashomon effects from the film. Then, it discusses the opportunity to find a “technical solution” to the Rashomon effect through the example of an interview survey aimed at reconstructing events that happened in a call center. Finally, faced with the lack of real solutions, the paper examines two possible “overcomings" options and their consequences: the postmodern renunciation of positivism and the use of participatory observation.

Keywords

• Rashomon ; sociological methodology ; interviewing ; problems of interpretation ; call center ; participant observation ; postmodernism