French Literature Reviews - 2026

Y. Jeanneret, Penser la trivialité : Volume 1, La vie triviale des êtres culturels.
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Y. Jeanneret,

Penser la trivialité

Volume 1, La vie triviale des êtres culturels

Hermes Science Publications
Series: Communication, médiation et construits sociaux
266 pages

ISBN-10: 274621878X
ISBN-13: 978-2746218789

This book has been reviewed in Acta Fabula:

"IN THE THICK OF IT: WHAT SOCIETY DOES TO IDEAS", by Adeline Wrona.

Ideas circulate within society. This phenomenon, which we rarely question as it seems so natural, is in reality highly complex. As they cross social spaces, our knowledge and our works are transformed and imbued with new value.
This book analyses the foundations of triviality and methodically examines models of cultural object circulation, the disciplines of transmission, and phenomena of appropriation. Such an analysis also leads to a renewed understanding of information-communication processes and a re-evaluation of essential concepts in social analysis.
Moreover, *La vie triviale des êtres culturels* serves, more broadly, as a plea for prioritizing the shaping of objects within the anthroposocial sciences, in a world that heavily favors utilitarian and tactical considerations.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Everything takes place, everything is created
1 Propagating, transmitting, reproducing: three figures of the circulation of ideas
A philosophy of elementary particles
Multiple figures of transmission
Signs grasped through their triviality

2 Transcribing and transforming: the disciplines of the archive
The archive as a heuristic concept
The conceptual substance of textual history
Contemporary disciplines of the scriptible and the legible

3 The polychresis of cultural beings: a social poetics in tension
Communication as alteration
A crossroads of social logics
The poetics of statuses

4 The cybernetics of the imperfect: mediating objects and communication processes
Logistics and semiotics
A theoretical form of mediated interaction
The circulation of knowledge about communication

5 The symbolic, the popular, and the public: triviality as value
An act of valorization in its history
Paradoxes of heritage
The topologies of dissemination
The hyperbole of the public sphere
The author's journey and its *impedimenta*.

Conclusion: Embarking, on deck.

The concept of triviality concerns the way cultural works and knowledge circulate through social spaces, undergoing transformation and revaluation. By investigating models of circulation, the disciplines of transmission, and phenomena of appropriation, the work situates itself within the field of information-communication studies. It examines the processes by which ideas are shaped as they move between different social contexts, noting that these movements are complex.

This study focuses on the shaping of objects within the anthroposocial sciences, positioning its inquiry against a tendency to prioritize utilitarian or tactical considerations. By analyzing the archive, the poetics of social status, and the semiotics of mediated interaction, the text re-evaluates concepts used in social analysis. Readers interested in the intersection of communication theory and the sociology of culture may find this exploration of the life of cultural beings relevant.