Écriture du groupe et institution. Retour sur l’Académie politique de Torcy
Abstract
Just as literary history, political and administrative history uses groups in its narratives. The Académie politique (1712-1719), an institution for the training of diplomats founded under the direction of Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Torcy at the end of the reign of Louis XIV, is thus considered, since the work of Guy Thuillier in particular, as “the first school of administration”. Despite the failure of this academy, it is a necessary step in the history of diplomacy and the history of Louis XIV’s administration. This historiographic prominence contrasts with the sources that make it possible to document the academy, which consist almost entirely of projects. They are here studied in their precise context of production and circulation, especially in the social relations within which they are taken. These contextualization operations shift the gaze of the established group towards the writing of the group, to reveal its uses by the actors and to elaborate a reflection on the way in which the academy has been naturalized since the 18th century. This article shows that the literalization of the academy played an important role in its institution, both because the writing of the group fell within the construction of a position for the men of letters who wrote the projects, and because an English periodical, the Spectator, froze and published its name to denounce the enterprise in a parody article as early as 1712. The Académie politique, which is not a group identified by literary history, nevertheless maintains a relationship with the written word and with the social fact of literature
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