Ways of writing the Real: Ivan Jablonka

Ivan Jablonka The Three Continents or the Literary World, Threshold, 2024.

Introduction: Interpreting and Changing

In The Third Continent Ivan Jablonka, Professor of Contemporary History at Sorbonne Paris Nord and a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), undertakes a remapping of the intellectual world and its forms of writing. According to him, the traditional intellectual landscape has been dominated since the 19th century by two "continents": fiction and scientific research. The first continent, "fiction," is considered a realm of pleasure and freedom, while the second, "grey literature," is understood as a sphere of truth and rigor, with novels contrasted with the social sciences. This binary division, Jablonka argues, is outdated.

The real problem lies in the non-recognition or marginalization of those writings of the real (“écrits du réel”) that belong neither entirely to fiction nor to purely academic research. These “wandering texts” (“textes errants”), as Jablonka calls them, encompass reports, testimonies, biographies, news reports, diaries, and travelogues. They are neither granted the dignity of the first continent nor fully welcomed by the second, which at best considers them “sources.” Jablonka asks how these texts, which represent a different way of understanding the world and a different kind of literature, can find their rightful place.

The central aim of the book is to reconcile literary creation with the social sciences. Jablonka proposes the existence of a "third continent" where "literature of truth" ("littérature-vérité") resides, a literature that distinguishes itself from both fiction and gray literature. The corpus of this literature of the real ranges from mass-produced works of the late 19th century to contemporary literary expressions. He understands his own work as an attempt to "repair" the injustice of the "disappeared," in the sense of restitution or reparation. The goal is to create a literature that interprets and transforms the world.

The crucial questions Jablonka raises in this work are manifold: How can one write, for whom and why, especially with regard to the role of fiction and the definition of literature? How can the social sciences be modernized by adopting a literary dimension without losing their scientific rigor? And how can research reflect on its own form while integrating the researcher's "self"?

This latest work by Jablonka should not be understood as an isolated publication, but rather as a further development of his work already presented in The History is a contemporary literature: manifest for the social sciences (2014) theoretical considerations. In this earlier manifesto for the social sciences, Jablonka already argued that historiography, sociology, and anthropology can achieve both greater accuracy and a wider audience by creating literary texts that utilize a broad range of narrative modes and rhetorical figures. The repetition and refinement of this core idea—bridging the gap between social science and literature—suggests that The third continent This volume represents a culmination or further elaboration of a long-standing intellectual project. It is a collection of articles, reviews, interviews, and speeches that offers insights into Jablonka's working methods as a historian and editor. The consistent development of these ideas across several works demonstrates Jablonka's sustained attempt to redefine disciplinary boundaries and methods. The significance of The third continent It can therefore only be fully grasped if one views it as a mature articulation of his vision within a broader intellectual career.

Arguments

From novel to investigation

Jablonka outlines his own path from novelist to historian as exemplary for the emergence of this "third continent." He began as an aspiring writer, yearning for the great novels in his mother's library, and wrote several novels, all of which were rejected by publishers. He closed his "fiction notebooks" and abandoned his "vocation," instead focusing on his historical thesis. His later works, such as Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eus and Laetitia These are "historical works in which everything is true." Nothing is invented; everything is documented and based on evidence and eyewitness accounts. Jablonka emphasizes that, unlike novelists, he embellishes nothing and strives for certainty. This led him to the realization that "research did not contradict literature and that it was possible to work on a creation within the social sciences." For him, history became his "literary school," which committed him to sobriety, clarity, precision, and intellectual rigor. His aesthetic lies in making the structures of human action visible and harmonizing them with the structures of the text. He no longer wanted to create characters, but rather forms. A key concept is the "fiction of method" ("fiction de méthode"), which he defines as "supported, assumed, framed fictions that, as such, contribute to the argument." These can be hypotheses, counterfactual arguments, or anachronisms used within the framework of an argument to better explain reality. The novelistic ("romanesque") can thus exist as a narrative element in the social sciences without compromising the requirement for accuracy.

The discourse of method

Jablonka distinguishes between "texts" and "non-texts" in academic production. While "non-texts" are purely instrumental and linguistically dead, designed to convey a message and to deflect their literariness in order to avoid jeopardizing scholarly rigor, "texts" are works that reach a wider audience beyond the circle of colleagues. He argues that research without writing is incomplete, "an orphan of its form." The literary dimension of a text need not be "pretty, chic, or desirable," but rather is based on a conception of the social sciences in dialogue with literary creation, aiming to invent forms and "research texts." A central element of his method is the "I of the method" ("je de méthode"). This "I" serves to clarify the researcher's position, to narrate the research process, and to make the author's encounters and travels transparent. It is a reflection on one's own subjectivity, necessary not out of narcissism, but for scientific reasons, in order to minimize bias and make one's own position explicit. The "I of the method" is thus a "subjectivity rescued from narcissism." Pluridisciplinarity is also a cornerstone of his method. According to Jablonka, it is not about juxtaposing different disciplines, but about "mobilizing all social sciences and the tools they have created to answer the problems that researchers pose." This is evident, for example, in his biographies, such as the one on Jean Genet, which combines history, sociology, and literary studies.

Literature without the novel

Jablonka strongly opposes equating literature with the novel and fiction. He asks what would become of poetry, theater, essays, diaries, history, and sociology if the novel were the sole center of literature. His book Laetitia Literature is often read “like a novel,” but he rejects this label because it is too closely associated with fiction. Instead, he prefers the term “inquiry,” which encompasses journalism, feature reporting, life story, autobiography, travelogue, testimony, and the humanities. Inquiry could become for the 21st century what the social novel was for the 19th: an undertaking to decipher the world. Jablonka does not define literature primarily through fiction, but rather as “a work on language, a narrative construction, a network of voices, a rhythm, an atmosphere, the discovery of an elsewhere, the clarification of truth.” This is an open definition that does not exclude the social sciences.

The Wrath of Truth

For Jablonka, writing is often driven by anger—"anger against forgetting, against indifference." This is particularly evident in his work on Laëtitia Perrais, where he focuses not on the crime or the criminal, but on the "disappeared" woman ("disparue") herself. His aim is to tell her story beyond her death and to liberate her from the anonymity of "victims." He views Laëtitia's life as a "total social fact" ("fait social total") in the sense of Marcel Mauss, revealing deeper societal injustices—from male violence to social inequalities and the failure of state institutions. This necessitates a "total investigation" that connects both microscopic and macroscopic dimensions. He places great importance on making his working process transparent: "It seems important to me to explain in the book how I worked, whom I saw." For him, narrative and the construction of knowledge are one and the same.

Modernizing the humanities

Jablonka criticizes the humanities for often clinging to methods and writing styles from the 19th century, disconnecting themselves from more modern forms of narrative and representation. He argues that research should not be reduced to mere quotations and commentaries, but should also be capable of creation. Literariness strengthens the methodology of the social sciences, rather than weakening it. He calls for the integration of imagination, boldness, and rigor to practice "a method within a literature." The consequences of this method are literary: the "I" serves to clarify one's own perspective, to narrate the investigation, to harness the passion of questioning, and to move between past and present. He emphasizes that "form follows function"—that the writing style results from the method. Jablonka cites concrete examples of this renewal: Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's film Chronicle of a Summer, Joe Sacco's Graphic Novel Gaza 1956 and crime novels that are simultaneously ethnographic and historical studies. These new forms are intended not only to captivate and move readers, but also to improve argumentation and knowledge transfer.

The presence of the disappeared

Jablonka's own family history – as a "Shoah child" and grandchild of deportees – shapes his research. His books, such as Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eusThese are attempts to explore the history of one's family members, overcoming the familial, the unknown, and the injustice. He distinguishes between the "I of the filiation" ("je de la filiation"), the "I of the human" ("je de l'humain"), and the "I of the investigator" ("je de l'enquêteur"). The latter is the most important, as it makes the construction of history visible and reflects on one's own role as a researcher. This contrasts with traditional "ego-history" (ego-histoire), which often maintains a separation between personal narrative and academic work. Jablonka argues that the "I" should be present and visible throughout the entire scholarly process. For him, history is a struggle against nothingness and oblivion, particularly in the context of genocide, which aims to erase life and the memory of it. He wants to "transform absence into presence." This is one of the central tasks of the historian. His work about his grandparents is an attempt to rescue them from "nothingness" and give them back their lives. He refers to Daniel Mendelsohn. The Disappeared, which highlights the individual fate in genocide, and Edmund De Waal The Hare with Amber Eyes, which connects family history with broader historical questions through objects. Both works are examples of the ability to understand the "big picture" through the "little things" of everyday life.

A central criticism of The third continent, by Alexandra Arsene ¹ The argument raised concerns the initial thematic limitation of the “Third Continent.” Arsene notes that the book “is limited to a specific number of authors, all associated with a particular theme: the Holocaust.” She argues that the characteristics of texts that could be assigned to this “third continent” should not be restricted to a single theme. Instead, the selection parameters should be “linked—in addition to the themes, which could vary (Communism, various wars, natural disasters, family or personal histories)—to the techniques and methods used by the authors, as well as the manner of representation.” As an example of broader applicability, Arsene suggests that literature on “Communist memory,” particularly by authors such as Svetlana Alexievich and Vasile Ernu, “could be an integral part of this literature of the real produced in Eastern Europe.” This “personal non-fiction literature” focuses on “visible traumas on an individual and societal level”, in contrast to Holocaust literature, which deals more with “traces, disappearance”.

Witnesses and surveyors

Jablonka sees writers like Primo Levi, Georges Perec, and Annie Ernaux as pioneers of this literature of reality. Georges Perec is described as a “researcher in the social sciences,” not in the sense of a formal title, but as a writer who inspires researchers through his method, his engagement with the “infra-ordinary,” and his handling of limitations. Perec’s capacity for distancing himself allows him to see “reality from a different point of view,” which constitutes both a literary and a scientific act. His lists and research are attempts to remember and measure the scale of the genocide at a time when university historians showed little interest in it. Annie Ernaux’s work, in turn, articulates the intimate and the collective in an “auto-socio-biographical” manner. Their method consists of separating the author's "I" ("je") from the character's "she" ("elle") or from the collective's "one" ("on") and "we" ("nous") in order to create a "collective autobiography." Their "flat writing" ("écriture plate") is "profound" because it reveals the social structure through the text's structure, thereby making "the intimate historical." Another example of the renewal of forms is the fusion of history and comics. Works such as Art Spiegelman's Mouse or Joe Sacco Gaza 1956 These are examples of "drawn investigations" ("enquêtes dessinées") or "graphic social sciences" ("sciences sociales graphiques"), which pursue the same goals as major reportage and scientific research: to understand, prove, and present. Sacco's Gaza 1956 It is characterized by extensive research, meticulous maps, witness interviews, and the questioning of the credibility of statements, supplemented by written documents. This demonstrates that historical argumentation can be embodied in graphic arts.

Literary examples

Ivan Jablonka discusses a number of literary texts that support or influence his concept of the "literature of the real" or "social sciences as literature." From these interpretations, he concludes that literary creation and social science research can be reconciled and mutually enriching, revealing the truth about the world and creating new forms of knowledge acquisition and dissemination.

Here are five concrete examples of literary texts that Jablonka uses for his argument, and his conclusions from their interpretation:

Primo Levi The ceasefire (The Truce) is a travelogue describing Levi's nine-month journey home after his liberation from Auschwitz. It reads like a picaresque novel, a guide to wonder, while recording the experiences of survival in a Europe awakening to life after the Nazi fury. Levi is described as a "master of the knowledge of reawakening to life" ( maître du savoir-revivre). Jablonka sees him not only as a witness, but also as a great writer and self-explorer who combines literary creation with the quality of argumentation. Levi's work is an example of the "literature of survival" and the "literature of truth," which aims to alarm, bear witness, prove, and repair.

The work of Georges Perec (especially The things, W or the childhood memory, The infra-ordinaryHis work is extremely diverse, encompassing novels, short stories, autobiographies, crossword puzzles, and unclassifiable texts. Among other things, his works address consumer society (The things), childhood memories and the Holocaust (W or the childhood memory), Jewish identity (Ellis Island) and the anthropology of everyday life (L'infraordinairePerec can be considered a "social scientist". He "invented" research objects, posed questions, and explored problems in depth. His "method of the 'I'" ( je de méthode) and the concept of the “infra-ordinary” are tools for understanding society. Perec’s “Literature Under Coercion” ( literature under constraintHis work is compared to the historical method, in which limitations lead to new creation and knowledge production. It is profoundly historical and sociological, aiming to understand the world and invent new forms for the social sciences. He embodies "literary truth."

The work of Annie Ernaux (especially The space, The shame, The years) encompasses autobiographical works that intertwine the intimate and the collective, connecting self-knowledge with socio-history. Ernaux practices autobiography as a sociology of the self (sociology of self), in which private life is embedded in society and family history is inextricably linked to the time that gives it meaning. Its “flat writing style” (flat writingHer work reflects her rejection of fiction and her ethical and aesthetic approach to understanding individual existence as a social phenomenon. Her texts allow multiple subjectivities to coexist, forming a collective autobiography. She reinvents literature by remaining ordinary, universal, and close to reality.

Joe Saccos Gaza 1956 (in the original) Gaza 1956: Footnotes in Gaza) is a graphic novel/reportage about massacres of civilians in the Gaza Strip in 1956. According to Jablonka, Sacco's work is a "methodical investigation" (enquête méthodique) in search of a forgotten truth. Jablonka's rigorous methodology, including lengthy investigations, detailed maps, the collection of witness statements, verification, and the admission of doubt, is praised. It blurs the lines between illustrator, reporter, and historian, demonstrating that historical argumentation can be embodied in the graphic arts. Gaza 1956 illustrates how illustrated studies share the goals and difficulties of social science research: to understand, to prove, and to represent.

Edmund De Waals The rabbit with the amber eyes (in the original) The Hare with Amber EyesThe novel is a family saga that traces a collection of netsuke (Japanese miniatures) across generations of the Ephrussi family, grain merchants and bankers throughout Europe, back to the author himself, a ceramicist. Although the work is by an artist, it is profoundly a history book, as it poses questions that extend beyond the specific family story: the branching of families and fortunes in 19th-century Europe, the deceptive assimilation of Western European Jews before the Holocaust, family migrations, the circulation of objects, and the uniqueness of the artwork in an age of industrial mass production. De Waal's use of a "triple self" (family lineage, investigator, emotion) enriches the argumentative and research process, increasing transparency and reflexivity. It demonstrates that historical and sociological thinking can be embedded at the very heart of literature. The book is a “hybrid object” that redefines the debate between historians and literature, proving that a ceramicist can be a historian and a historian a writer by combining sensitivity, reflexivity, narrative construction and scientific methods.

Overall, Jablonka concludes from his interpretation of these texts that a new “cartography of writings” is necessary, one that transcends the traditional separation between novelistic fiction and “grey literature” (academic research). He proposes the “third continent” as a concept upon which the literature of the real unfolds, driven by the desire to understand and structured by the social sciences. This “literature of truth” (littérature-vérité) is capable of reflecting on and explaining the world, denouncing injustices, and bringing about social change. The literature of the social sciences is not only possible but necessary for conveying a deeper and more accessible understanding of reality.

The establishment of the “third continent” as a legitimate literary category depends heavily on its acceptance by the public and critics. The positive reviews praising Jablonka’s approach contribute to building this consensus and canonizing the new form. Discussions about the “gap” or “deficit of familiarity and dignity” of the “third continent” underscore the need for active engagement with its reception in order to establish this new form. The fact that Jablonka’s earlier works, such as Laetitia (2016) and Goldman (2023, see the Review (in this blog) have already received widespread recognition and awards, indicating that his approach has already undergone a certain canonization, which influences the reception of The third continent influencing it and forming the basis for its further acceptance.

Consequences for contemporary French literature

Jablonka's reflections have far-reaching consequences for contemporary French literature. They call for a fundamental reorientation away from the dominant novel as the sole point of reference. Instead, "investigation" ("enquête") becomes the new center of gravity for writing forms. This legitimizes "literature of truth" ("littérature-vérité"), which clearly distinguishes itself from pure fiction and traditional gray literature. The promotion of hybrid forms and genuine pluridisciplinarity is a direct consequence. Literature is no longer viewed as an isolated artistic sphere, but as a space open to the methods, questions, and insights of the social sciences—history, sociology, anthropology, geography, and political science. This encourages authors to make their research process visible, to employ the "I of method," and to explicate their own positioning within the text, thereby increasing the transparency and honesty of their representation. The consequences are also of a civil society nature: such literature aims to "tell the truth and change the world." It helps to make complex social phenomena more understandable and to create clarity in opaque times where populism and "fake news" are rampant. By making knowledge accessible and shareable for a wider audience, it contributes to the deepening of democracy. The boundary between science and art blurs, allowing for a more vibrant and relevant literature that is both rigorous and approachable.

The yield of Jablonkas The Third Continent The key lies in his consistent redefinition of literature and scientific research. He transcends the rigid boundaries between fiction and non-fiction by opening up a new space for the "literature of reality," deeply rooted in the methods of the social sciences. His central thesis is that literature of truth need not necessarily be fictional, but is defined by the quality of its insights, its methodological rigor, and its capacity to understand and explain the world. The "third continent" is a space of encounter where the researcher's "self" is integrated into the text not out of narcissism, but out of methodological transparency, in order to strengthen objectivity. The realization that research itself is a search for its forms leads to a willingness to innovate in the humanities, which have traditionally clung too tightly to outdated modes of representation. The book is a call for "creation in the social sciences" that is both intellectually demanding and accessible and relevant to a broad audience.

The “literature of truth,” which emerges from a “reconciliation” of literature and social sciences, offers not only a new cartography of knowledge but also a new form of collective engagement. By exploring human experiences—whether individual traumas or… Laetitia Whether it's individual tragedies or collective tragedies like the Shoah—illuminated through the precise lens of research, this literature fosters deeper empathy and a profound understanding of the world. It becomes a "therapeutic agent of democracy," not only providing facts but also exploring the emotional and social resonances of history. It helps us not only to understand the past but also to process the present and shape the future with greater clarity and humanity. It is a literature that teaches us not only to know but also to feel and act, based on a well-founded and shared truth, counteracting forgetting and helping to heal the wounds of history.

1. Alexandra Arsene, “The historification of the Personal: The Return of Reality in Literature,” ResearchGate, May 2025. – “Istorificarea normalității: O întoarcerea a realului în literatură”, Meridian critic 2 (2024): 223-37.>>>