« Daniel Fabre. Entretien avec Alain Morel et Nicolas Adell »

Presentation:
Daniel Fabre (1947–2016) was director of studies at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and chair of anthropology of Europe. He founded (with Jean Guilaine) in 1978 the Anthropology Centre of Toulouse, then in 2001, with fifteen anthropologist, sociologist and historian colleagues, the Laboratory of Anthropology and History of the Institution of Culture (LAHIC). He was also president of the Ethnological Heritage Council of the French Ministry of Culture from 1993 to 1997 and of the Anthropology and Comparative Studies of Contemporary Societies section of the CNRS from 2004 to 2008. After years of research on oral literature, the carnival and rural communities in the Pyrenees, he became interested in the anthropology of symbolism in 1981 and worked on the social production of sexual identities and initiation practices (discrete, even invisible) in our society. His research then led him to the emergence of writing in oral societies and the anthropological approach to literature and art: modern forms of the cult of the artist and the writer. Possessing immense erudition, he excels in leading seminars with his ability to theorise, to pose problems and to synthesise the ideas of others. Since the 1990s, he has led the emergence of a new research trend, which today attracts many students: the anthropology of heritage. At the head of the LAHIC, he has played a key role in the reflection on the cultural institution and in the renewal of the theorization of the notion of heritage, extended to ethnological and intangible heritage. The culmination of his career has led him in recent years to work on the conditions of artistic and literary creation. Finally, he was also a historian of his discipline.