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The Trace Factory
Traces Set
coordinated by
Sylvie Leleu-Merviel
Volume 3
The Trace Factory
Yves Jeanneret
First published 2020 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced,
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© ISTE Ltd 2020

The rights of Yves Jeanneret to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954215
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-420-9
Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Chapter 1. The Mediatized Trace of the Social World,

the Object of Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. There are traces and traces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.1.1. The avatars of a trace of use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.2. Metamorphoses of the trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.1.3. Mediation, mediatization, device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2. The social trace as a problem: the legacy of the
history of the book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2.1. From book to reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
1.2.2. A constellation of categories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.2.3. Structural difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3. Relevance and efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1.3.1. The evasive relevance of the trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.3.2. An efficient figure of relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
1.3.3. Trace as an interpretative schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Chapter 2. The Schema of the Trace, a Paradoxical Semiotics . . . . . . . . 31

2.1. The false evidence of the Peircian index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.1.1. The concept of index and semiotic theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.1.2. The index as a commonplace category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.1.3. The production of indexicality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.1.4. Assessment: a problematic legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.2. The trace, appearance and presence of the past in the present . . . . . . . . . . 47
2.2.1. The photographic scene, here, now and in the past . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.2.2. The theoretical issue of Barthes’ analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
vi The Trace Factory
2.3. From the archetype of the trace to its theoretical status . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

2.3.1. Photography as a commonplace archetype . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.3.2. From the trace schema to the deployment of devices . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2.3.3. Photography as a pretext . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.4. The mediatized trace, a complex info-communication device . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.4.1. Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2.4.2. Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
2.4.3. Representation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
2.4.4. Competence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
2.4.5. Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Chapter 3. The Complex Genesis of the Written Trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

3.1. The available inscription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
3.1.1. Inscription as a framework for thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
3.1.2. Grammatology or philosophy in the camera obscura . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
3.1.3. Ichnology as radical logistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
3.2. The thickness of the traced-out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
3.2.1. Actualized presentification in absentia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
3.2.2. Between inscription device and graphic gesture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
3.2.3. The traced-out feature, a figure of mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
3.3. It has been… written . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
3.3.1. Signature, a social act between identification
and authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
3.3.2. Genetic criticism in the context of the
trace/traced-out couple. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.4. The written trace as an institutional fact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
3.4.1. The written trace, a scientific assumption. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
3.4.2. The written trace, a device of social knowledge power . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.4.3. The written trace, an educational mediation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Chapter 4. The Emerging Trace of the Media Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

4.1. The poetics of Mnemosyne: media forms and social memory . . . . . . . . . . 154
4.1.1. A mediatized space of thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
4.1.2. The trace schema questionned by the atlas of forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
4.1.3. The poetics of Mnemosyne at work in media analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
4.2. Indexical reading of media texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
4.2.1. The textual witness as a ferment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184
4.2.2. The “index paradigm”, from its commonplace life
to its heuristic scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
4.2.3. Quotations, from second hand to guestimates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
Contents vii
4.3. Writing in the future perfect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

4.3.1. Mnemosyne struggling with Lethe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
4.3.2. Changes in authority, economy of writings and
media genesis of traces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
4.3.3. Memorial writing in devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Introduction
Questioning the Evidence
Over the last two decades, the interest of many observers of society – journalists,
essayists, activists, researchers, innovators, lawyers, writers, etc. – has been focused on
the role played in the ecosystem of our lives by the fact that the traces (i.e. the trail of
marks) an action leaves behind it of our exchanges, actions, interests and attitudes are
recorded and processed by powerful actors. The feeling is that this traceability of our
lives increasingly influences the definition of our identity, practices and culture. This
observation, which causes some to be frightened and others to dream of control, has
given rise in recent years to a number of works, manifestos and procedures.
The phenomenon is not really new, but it has undoubtedly taken on a new
dimension. Many tools for producing traces of acts, events, transactions and social
relationships are very old. Some of them are centuries old. The major technical
devices for identifying individuals and groups (Ollivier 2007), such as social
statistics, photography, sound recording, mechanography and anthropometry, are
more than a century old. My generation has been confronted, without necessarily
being aware of it, with an impressive deployment of conceptions of society
based on the idea of the “trace” at the theoretical, political and technical levels. The
conception of thought as a trace in philosophy, the definition of power based on
surveillance, sociology produced from the analysis of statistical correspondence, the
generalization of surveys on lifestyles and public opinion, the defense of a paradigm
of indexation based on the study of traces in the humanities, all date from the 1960s
and 1970s. Over the past half-century, the challenge of collecting and producing
traces, initially somewhat unnoticed, has become increasingly pressing. What has
brought the presence of traces within social life to the forefront of concerns in recent
years is the patent nature of the knowledge and power effects associated with their
processing, so much so that the idea is spreading that we are now living in a society
of traces.
x The Trace Factory
But in what sense? For those who have examined the considerable corpus of
these topical texts, two observations are striking. On the one hand, the genesis of the
idea of traces left behind over a lengthy period of time is almost totally absent; on
the other hand, the omnipresence of the idea of the trace is accompanied by an
obstinate sub-conceptualization – a feature it shares with other notions, such as
information or data. It would seem that the use of the terms “trace” and
“traceability” leads to a conceptual black hole. The trace seems to be at the
foundation of everything and does not in itself need to be founded.
In the past, I often played Don Quixote (too much?) by breaking my lances
against postures that seemed ideological to me and insufficiently protected from
vested interests. Such a distance is certainly necessary with regard to the society of
traces. However, in this book, I do not principally wish to pursue a critical aim. I
take seriously the initial observation that the trace is more often invoked than defined
by proposing to give it meaning. I would like to contribute, among other things, to a
problematic clarification of the questions raised by the use of the idea of the trace as
well as the multiplication of info-communicative devices that claim to be based on
this idea. This requires considering the trace more as a scientific concept, as a
circulating notion having social and cultural effects, promoting a certain way of
looking at the world, giving rise to social practices, taking the form of
info-communication devices, some of which are very elaborate. In other words, I
take seriously the fact that the trace is difficult for anyone to think about – for myself
and others – and that it is thus all the more necessary to work together to do so.
It is indeed a question of working together. This book is a personal contribution

to a shared effort over time. It is part of a collective research movement to which it
aims to make a specific and limited contribution. This is reflected in its publication
within a collection of various research projects focused on the notion of the trace
and intended to create dialogue between them. Returning quickly to this both
individual and collective journey will allow me to explain what led me to identify
one specific question, because it is not a matter of dealing here with all the forms of
traces or all the issues related to them.
The reflection I am offering today has been largely inspired by the place of
dialogue in the activity of teachers and researchers in Information and
Communication Sciences (ICS), my academic discipline. The definition of the object
of study gradually emerged during these exchanges. The idea of making the trace an
object of research was born when I joined the Teaching and Research Unit (UFR) of
Information, Documentation, Scientific and Technological Information (Idist) at the
University of Lille 3 to train students in information and documentary science. It is
the dialogue with my colleagues, specialists in documentary activity and information
theories and with students involved in library studies, information technology
Introduction xi
systems and knowledge mediation that has made me aware of the importance of this
issue. The problem has taken shape, in particular, through my lectures and the
textbook resulting from them (Jeanneret 2000), and the conference Indice, Index,
Indexation organized by my colleagues at the university (Timimi and Kovacs 2007).
It is thus by taking part in series of research projects developed within the

framework of inter-institutional networks of researchers brought together by
common questions that I had the opportunity, stimulated by these exchanges, to
gradually problematize the schema of the trace1: in particular, but not exclusively,
the ICS research projects funded by media metamorphoses2, the Franco-Brazilian
network Médiations et usages sociaux des savoirs et de l’information (MUSSI) led
by Viviane Couzinet and Regina Marteleto and the interdisciplinary program
“L’homme trace” led by Béatrice Galinon-Mélénec and Sylvie Leleu-Merviel; they
were opportunities for numerous scientific debates and publications3. All of these
exchanges have led me to appreciate the complexity and scope of the issues raised
by the trace in the most diverse fields such as that of the psyche, health, corporeal
disciplines, the archaeological, historical and geographical sciences, and the
engineering of information devices. This has engendered an immense space of
possibilities for exchanges within the L’homme trace network, along with several
invitations to conferences organized by other disciplines (engineering, history,
geography, literature) and my participation in the Transformations du
numérique/par le numérique project at the University of Sorbonne, which have
constantly furthered my explorations. Finally, the doctoral theses I supervised and
those I was given the opportunity to read during doctoral defenses played a decisive
role in identifying the scientific and political stakes of research of traces.
In this fertile scientific polyphony I have chosen, for my part, to focus on a

relatively limited question, that of the mediated traces of the social world: traces
produced via media devices that claim to reflect aspects of society and culture. In the
first chapter of this book I will give a more precise definition of the limits of this
field. At the initiative of Sylvie Leleu-Merviel, scientific director of the ISTE’s
Trace collection, I undertook to gather and structure these questions accumulated
over the years into a book.
1 This term is discussed in section 1.3.

2 Published in Souchier, Jeanneret and Le Marec (2003); Tardy and Jeanneret (2007); and
Davallon (2012).
3 In particular, the four volumes entitled L’homme-trace (Galinon-Mélénec 2011; Galinon-
Mélénec and Zlitni 2013; Galinon-Mélénec, Liénard and Zlitni 2015; Galinon-Mélénec
2017), issue 59 of the Intellectica magazine (Mille 2013) and Sylvie Leleu-Merviel’s book
Informational Tracking (2018).
xii The Trace Factory
However, it soon became clear to me that the task was considerable and that it
could hardly be carried out within a single book. There are two main reasons for
this. On the one hand, the effort to explain a theoretical problematic of the trace,
even though it is to be reduced to mediated traces of the social world, has proved
much more difficult than expected, both in terms of the realities to be taken into
account and the theories to be discussed. This is the case, notably, if we do not
intend to prefigure the work based solely on the questions that history puts forward
today, which in my opinion would be a serious scientific and political error. On the
other hand, as I tried to identify the current political dimension of research, I
observed both a constant and diversified process of innovation, enough to cause
vertigo, in the creation of tools for producing and processing traces, particularly on
the part of the dominant actors in the media industries; and an astonishing
productivity in empirical work devoted to social logic, professional situations and
precise “branding tools”, particularly in doctoral researches and in ICS.
I therefore intend to describe and question in the near future, less partially than I
have done so far in a series of articles, the current, extremely diversified and
complex forms taken by current mechanisms of social traceability. I plan to do this
work later, alone or with others, in a new book. However, it seemed to me more
urgent and necessary today to carry out observations in order to develop
fundamental tools for an analysis of the media production of the trace that is not
confined to the dominant forms of this process, while allowing us to approach
current events with sufficient objectivity.
I have, therefore, chosen to work in this book to construct an explicit

conceptualization of how the idea of the trace could give rise to media constructions,
taking advantage of the temporal distance and the readings of works that have
structured how we come to think about traces. This book is based on the conviction
that without this dual perspective, historical and theoretical, the anthropo-social
research community may be able to nurture the changes underway, but without truly
understanding what is at stake. It consists of a work of problematization, conducted
in stages, through confrontations of particularly explicit texts, specifically
accomplished methodological initiatives and socio-political mechanisms that
demonstrate the powers of a mediatized trace. Without excluding the current state of
the political and symbolic economy of the media – often referred to as digital – this
investigation is not limited to it, but seeks to place it in the perspective of older
practices, theories and frameworks. However, while taking a communicative
approach, this volume will attempt to make the most of a reading of works borrowed
from a wide range of disciplines, from history to philosophy, literary studies, socio-
anthropology, language sciences and aesthetics.
Introduction xiii
This book is structured into four chapters. Chapter 1 defines more precisely the
space, scope and limits of this reflection by identifying the object of study:
mediatized traces of the social world. It highlights the mediations to be taken into
account in order not to assimilate this social production of traces as a natural
phenomenon. Chapter 2 develops the notion of the schema of the trace, in order to
highlight a particular socio-semiotic process which particularly involves indexical
reasoning in a specific logic of which photography constitutes the social archetype.
It questions the paradox of a sign that seems to be self-evident while its
interpretation is extremely complex. Chapter 3 examines a particular type of trace,
the written trace, considered as the prototype of the gesture of inscription, with the
aim of understanding the privileged status that it has been led to occupy in the life of
a culture and its reflection on the historical construction of this status. It shows that,
if writing is first and foremost marked by its ability to externalize, record and
disseminate thought, its character as a trace is not self-evident and raises multiple
issues. Chapter 4 examines how the most complex and richest of media
constructions can be used to serve a society of traces: texts becoming traces. It
endeavors to show the poetic, complex and responsible nature of this activity.
The overall ambition of this volume and the path it proposes though a social and
intellectual history is to participate in the scientific debate by providing avenues for
analyzing current events, while avoiding taking for granted that the life of traces in
the social sphere must necessarily take the forms that the industries of media
capitalism favor today.
I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of Dominique Cotte who, until
the end of his short life, did not stop sharing with me his penetrating reflections on
the epistemological criticism of the categories of information analysis. I would like
to thank my colleagues who have given me the opportunity to develop this reflection
through numerous invitations to seminars, symposia and teachings in France and
abroad, and the young researchers who have honored me by sharing with me, as part
of their doctoral studies, reflections that have greatly contributed to the maturation
of the questions presented here. I wish to thank Béatrice Galinon-Mélénec, Sylvie
Leleu-Merviel and Adeline Wrona who all supported this project over the years,
as well as Dominique Jeanneret who accepted that it took up too much of my
time and thoughts. This book owes much to those who agreed to read all or part
of it: Julia Bonaccorsi, Fausto Colombo, Jean Davallon, Maria-Giulia Dondero,
Jean-Jacques Franckel, Sarah Labelle, David Martens and Aude Seurrat as well as
the translation team at ISTE. I also thank Sylvie Leleu-Merviel and Michel Labour
for having reread and improved the English version of the book.
1
The Mediatized Trace of the Social

World, the Object of Research
This initial chapter states the purpose of the research presented in this book,
distinguishing it from other possible research on traces and defining a stance
towards a term that circulates in social discourse of all kinds. It is a question of
transforming a concrete object of contemporary information-communication, the
production and treatment of traces of the social world, into an object of research
(Davallon in Jeanneret and Ollivier 2004, pp. 30–37).
This research puts forwards the scientific study of an object that is not itself a
scientific concept, but is what I call a cultural being. By this deliberately fuzzy
and flexible expression, I mean a complexity that associates material objects, texts and
representations, leading to the sharing of ideas, information, knowledge1, and judgments.
The importance of this type of research object lies in the fact that it plays a role in:
“[…] the historical elaboration of the resources and challenges of

culture for a society: stances, knowledge, values, which cannot be
understood without one another and which are based on a panoply of
objects and procedures, without however being reduced to this single
technical inventory” (Jeanneret 2008a, p. 16).
This is the case with the term “trace” and the powerful movement to create
devices for collecting and processing traces that we witness: in my opinion, they
play a major role in the development of resources and challenges for our society and
even affect the definition of society. It is, therefore, a question of understanding how
1 In this work, "knowledge" refers to savoir in the French version of the text and "personal
knowledge" refers to connaissance in the original text.
The Trace Factory, First Edition. Yves Jeanneret.

© ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
2 The Trace Factory
it is possible to produce, capture and process traces of the social world; or, to be
clearer, to analyze all the devices, discourses, objects and processes that lead to
qualifying certain representations of the social world as traces.
The reader will have noted the distance, even the uneasiness, that marks my
relationship to the word “trace”. Indeed, this study will not avoid a paradox that lies
in wait for any research on the development and circulation of a cultural being: “it is
necessary to recognize the existence of cultural beings in society, without artificially
reifying or limiting them” (Jeanneret 2008a, p. 15). What we call “traces” in our
society are extremely disparate, as we will see in detail below. Let us say at the
outset that we must renounce the idea of giving it a fixed definition or
comprehending it by means of a single concept. Precision in the analysis of
historical social constructs – and the trace is a historical social construct – is paid for
by accepting a certain vagueness in their definition. It would, therefore, be a mistake
to undertake this research with the aim of transforming trace into a concept, i.e. to
confer on all the social constructs associated with the idea of trace a unique
theoretical status, which would amount to transforming circulating representations
into scientific knowledge. “The risk for the researcher is then to believe that they
will find within the actors ‘personal knowledge’ of the object, thus dispensing him
or her purely and simply from building a research object, since this knowledge
already exists within this object itself” (Davallon in Jeanneret and Ollivier, p. 32).
The trace is, therefore, approached here as a configuration of objects, utterances and
ideas that has a certain consistency, but which must be problematized – and, therefore,
studied with concepts that are in some ways external to it.
Nevertheless, it is a question of taking these constructs seriously, of not treating

them as pure illusions, which would lead to not understanding them and above all
not thinking about their existence and social impact. I assume that, despite the
considerable dispersion of objects related to the idea of trace, something is at stake
in this circulation and in these inventions. In a way, the purpose of this book is to
test this hypothesis. In short, we must understand why these traces are not quite, or
not only, traces (in the physical sense of the term) in order to describe the life of the
trace as a cultural being; and, at the same time, we must recognize a meaning in this
crystallization of diverse objects around the idea of trace, which I do by assuming
that a certain regime of social representation is at work through this ongoing project.
In short, the difficulty I encounter here was perfectly expressed by Roland

Barthes in the last pages of the postface to Mythologies, entitled “Myth Today”,
where he described the “unstable grasp of reality”:
“[…] we constantly sail between the object and its demystification,

powerless to make it whole: for if we penetrate the object, we liberate
The Mediatized Trace of the Social World, the Object of Research 3
it but we just destroy it; and, if we leave it its weight, we respect it,
but we leave it still mystified […]” (Barthes 2002 [1957], p. 868)2.
I ask the reader to accept this unstable grasp of the trace. This book will deal
with traces that are not traces in the sense that physicists give to this term and maps
that are not maps according to the definition of geographers: it will be a question of
understanding why these objects are not (quite) what they claim to be, and also why
they can make such claims and what the effects of this effective claim are. We must
accept playing the game of this oscillation between deconstruction and
reconstruction of the object in which we are interested. Thus, in the following
sections, the idea of the trace will be confronted with concepts constructed within
the theoretical framework of ICS, such as index, inscription and writing, and it will
sometimes even have to be replaced by them to lead to well-stated questions;
however, it will nonetheless be constructed as a specific object of research, because
it is not reduced to any one of these concepts.
First, I would like to assess the wide range of objects, discourses and postures
that can today be associated with the trace object; on this basis, I will endeavor to
define the concrete object to which the research specifically relates, the traces of
social practices embodied in media devices. Then, I will begin an initial approach
into the specificity of this object, using the results of historical research and based
on readings, to define an initial conceptual constellation in order to establish a
problem statement. Finally, I will address the question of situating the stance and
aim of the research that addresses the trace (category and schema) in terms of
efficiency with regard to research that aims to ensure its scientific relevance.
1.1. There are traces and traces
I have chosen to start, here, from a very concrete example by considering a set of
objects that have the particularity of being commonly defined as the traces of a
social3 practice and that show in a particularly spectacular way the metamorphoses
of such an object and its great heterogeneity. I wish to first make an inventory of this
protean set by asking myself at each step what can justify this qualification – whose
relevance I will not discuss at this stage. This example has the merit of allowing a
2 Texts by Barthes included in the Œuvres complètes published by Le Seuil are cited in this
edition, with the mention in square brackets of the date of first publication. The reference will
also be given in square brackets for texts whose original publication date is important for
analysis. It will be omitted in other cases.
3 I will study further on the processes of attributing the quality of traces to objects. I ask the
reader, here, to accept the observation that all the objects mentioned commonly receive the
qualification of trace, a statement based on observations concerning the social life of this type
of object.
4 The Trace Factory
precise examination of the transformations undergone by the idea of trace when it

passes from the physical world to the social world and from the space of direct
observation to mediation by communication, information and documentation
devices and actors. This will allow me to establish a set of fundamental distinctions,
to define an initial set of concepts and to specify to the reader which of these objects
is the object of the research – which is not intended to analyze all and every type
of trace.
1.1.1. The avatars of a trace of use
The chosen example concerns testimonies that can be found of a practice relating
to a cultural object, what is commonly called a trace of use. We will have to
critically examine this expression, but let us adopt it for the time being. Let us say
that it is a set of concrete objects which, in one way or another, bear witness to this
practice4.
In the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome there is a statue of the saint which has the
peculiarity of presenting one foot which is almost totally worn away, to the point of
being unrecognizable5. This example is of particular interest to us because it has in a
sense both a physical and a social face, and thus crystallizes several modes of
existence of the trace, highlighting their kinship and differences. Indeed, as a
material object, the statue shows a change in its appearance that is quite similar to
that of many other objects that have worn over time: a transformation that results in
what is called patina, an erosion of matter that is accompanied by a change in the
appearance of the surface. The unusually smooth, distorted and shiny physical
appearance of these objects draws our attention to their relationship to time.
There is, however, patina and patina. Some patinas are strictly natural, such as
the one that characterizes those stones that have been rolled downstream by torrents,
compared to the sharp ones that have just come off the mountains in the bed of the
glaciers. Sometimes, and this is the case here, the patina not only indicates (natural)
wear and tear but also (human) use. This may be ordinary wear and tear, similar to
that of an ordinary utensil made of rather fragile material: for example, keys on a
computer keyboard or the handle of a door, suggesting fairly common use. In this
case, it is clear that it is something else: the condition of the statue attests to the
exceptional duration and intensity of the use of very many anonymous people, as is
the case for some stones in passages that have been used for centuries, for example
the stairs of very busy monuments or the pavement of Roman roads.
4 Passages marked by a border are dedicated to the analysis of concrete situations and
devices.
5 A first version of this analysis was presented in Jeanneret (2013) from a limited corpus,
which has over time been diversified and augmented up until the present.
However, the interpretation of use is even more complex in the case of the
statue, because the exceptional nature of this phenomenon immediately suggests a
particular practice, without being as easy to understand as a simple passage, which
would undoubtedly be the zero degree of the interpretation of a trace. The worn and
shiny appearance of bronze (its patina) can easily be noticed and interpreted as an
indication of the considerable volume and duration of a use, if by this we mean a set
of gestures constituting a widely shared behavior. The visual aspect of the material
is a sign that refers both to the “thickness” of time and to the density of uses: “as a
phenomenon, patina is […] the expression of ‘passing time’ and of use, inscribed on
the outer surface of objects” (Fontanille 2004, p. 245). In fact, beyond this or that
limited gesture, it is an elaborate practice on which history has had a transformative
effect. A practice that has evolved considerably and has been charged with meaning
and values: much more, for example, than knowing how to follow a path or open a
door. A practice that includes an obvious and an enigmatic part. This is what Mary
Carruthers calls “orthopraxis” (Carruthers 2002): a way of doing things that is linked
to a culture and field of belief that has largely become commonplace and implicit,
starting with attending Mass in churches and St. Peter’s Basilica in particular. As in
the case of worn paving stones, wear and tear can be interpreted as a trace of use;
however, here, the nature of this use is more unusual and more enigmatic. It is
highly uncertain and has been affected by profound historical changes. Let us say
that it is a use linked to a complex social practice.
Let us now move on to a new stage by considering the collection of the many
printed and digital documents that mark this statue as a curiosity. These are also, it will
be said, traces of a use. But this time, the use is described and represented. Travel
guides provide an explicit expression of the idea of a material trace of a social use and
also place this use in the context of a cultural regime, i.e. tourism. Without analyzing
all of this production, I present, as an example, four comparable but slightly different
formulations of such a leitmotiv of the trace of use in tourist guides: “the right foot is
almost worn out by being kissed by the faithful” (Baedeker Guide 1905); “eaten away
by pilgrims’ kisses” (Routard Guide 1999); “many visitors come to touch the foot of
the statue” (Autrement Guide 2000); “worn down by the devotion of pilgrims” (Guide
Voir 2005). These formulations are related but unique.
Such a work of written mediation6 of the trace is not specific to the publishing
industry. We may also find on the Internet comments by network users posted under
pseudonyms, like this one: “One may also pass in front of the thin statue of Peter
(13th century) with his feet worn out by the caresses of pilgrims who follow one
another ridiculously in their shared goal”7. In addition, some Internet users go so far
6 The concept is further defined in section 1.1.2.

7 Posting entitled “San Pietro n’est pas piètre ***** licorne66, 29/08/2007 17.46”. Accessed
April 18, 2012. Currently unavailable.
6 The Trace Factory
as to devote a series of articles in their blog to analyzing this phenomenon and even
to stigmatizing it, such as the author of the blog Jack aime, Jack n’aime pas, who
wrote on August 8, 2011:
“I have already told you (click here) about this statue of Saint Peter in
Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, whose feet are the object of attacks by
visitors (pilgrims?). I have even already shown you the statue ‘in all its
glory’ (you definitely have to go click here). But I had not shown you
the effect that these assaults had on the feet of the statue, especially on
the right foot (his right foot), the one that we are advised to touch,
probably to do like the pagans who were to touch the right foot of the
statues of their gods, to worship them, or their monarch, to signify to
him their total submission. You can see this effect in the picture above,
which I have finally found8”.
Some blogs take the form of an organized genre, the travel journal, creating what
can be called a deliberate mediation of use. This is the case of the site Les voyages
de Surtsey: voyager, visiter, goûter, a notebook kept by an Internet user and hosted
successively on several “blogging” platforms, which explicitly expresses its role as
an intermediary for the transmission of lived experiences. It contains a combined
description of the object and its uses similar to the previous one, but nevertheless
different in tone and conclusion:
“In the nave, a few people line up in front of a famous bronze statue of
Saint Peter holding the key to heaven, dating from the 13th century. In
turn, the faithful will touch or even kiss his right foot, which is a little
worn. A somewhat mystical reverence, but you get caught up in the
game”9.
Here, we can see the role that development of the media can play in the
collection and transmission of traces of use: the existence of online networks allows,
much more than printed publishing, the multiplication of “voices” (of these different
enunciations) that combine in varied ways the description of the object, that
of past and present practices, the interpretations of gestures, judgments and
recommendations. The development of so-called participatory media and Web 2.0
has led to the production of anthologies (Doueihi 2008, pp. 69–72) of posts that can
be seen both as engines for disseminating traces of uses of all kinds – and, therefore,
as accelerators in the adoption of these uses – and as the expression of diverse
8 Blog “Jack aime/n’aime pas”, post of August 8, 2011, accessed October 11, 2011. Available at:
http://jackaimejacknaimepas.blogspot.com/2011/08/estropier-pour-obtenir-le-salut.html?m=1.
The words “click here” printed in brackets were originally hyperlinks.
9 Available at: http://surtsey.canalblog.com/archives/2015/03/13/31686707.html. Accessed
October 15, 2018.
stances towards the object as well as the practices related to it. Thus, on the
Tripadvisor industrial tourism platform, the following post titles can be seen: “À
voir” (To see) – “Au passage” (In passing) – “Toucher” (Touch) – “Nous ne
toucherons plus le pied de Saint-Pierre” (We will no longer touch St. Peter’s foot) –
“Touchez-lui le pied” (Touch his foot)10.
We could say that all these small written publications describe and comment on
the use that they define. They illustrate a certain power acquired by the media to
create memories. But writing – handwritten, printed or computerized – is not the
only medium that bears the trace of this set of practices. For example, there are two
paintings in French museums that give an image of visitors and the gestures they
make in front of and on the statue: a drawing from the 18th Century attributed
without certainty to Hubert Robert, which is kept in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in
Tours with the caption Les pèlerins à la basilique Saint-Pierre de Rome and a
painting by Léon Bonnat in 1864 entitled Pèlerins au pied de la statue de Saint
Pierre dans l’église Saint-Pierre de Rome, part of the collection of the Musée
Bonnat-Helleu de Bayonne. In addition, there are photographs online by Internet
users who have “immortalized” crowds of visitors queuing at or touching the
statue11, in addition to countless photographs of the statue itself, which can also be
considered as a record of the visits of their authors and more generally of the fact
that this object has acquired the status of a curiosity on the Web.
Figure 1.1. Pèlerins au pied de la statue de Saint Pierre dans l’église Saint-Pierre de
Rome (Pilgrims at the Foot of the Statue of Saint Peter) by Léon Bonnat, Bayonne,
Bonnat-Helleu Museum (© Bayonne, Bonnat-Helleu museum, photo: A. Vaquero)
10 Available at: https://www.tripadvisor.fr/ShowUserReviews-g187793-d195266-r430310166-

St_Peter_Enthroned-Vatican_City_Lazio.html. Accessed October 28, 2018.
11 For example: http://akai-inthesky.blogspot.com/2014/11/rome-jour-3-partie-2-tu-es-pierre-
et.html (see Figure 1.1). Accessed October 28, 2018.
8 The Trace Factory
This evocation of a few avatars of a trace of use would not be accurate if I did
not specify that many of the objects mentioned above were revealed to me through
research online: for example, the drawing and painting are easily identifiable and
their image can be downloaded, because the museums have created a presentation of
their collection on an industrial platform, Webmuseo, developed by the Lille-based
agency A&A, which specializes in creating “software solutions” for museums12.
Here, we broach a thorny question: the role of digital data processing software and
of the actors, industrialists and activists who manufacture them in the circulation
of traces.
1.1.2. Metamorphoses of the trace
All the documents of all kinds that have been mentioned, from the moment we
departed from simple observation of the object to enter into its different
representations, ensure a mediation of the trace. What does this mediation consist
of? Above all, the trace moves from the realm of lived experience to that of
inscription upon a mediatized surface. Therefore, rather than being the subject of
direct experience, it is indirectly represented in a document. First, it is brought to the
attention of the public by virtue of access to a writing with documentary status. In
addition, as such, it can circulate more widely. To be precise: it is its representation
that circulates, i.e. a set of signs that take its place at a distance and in its absence.
Throughout this book, we will try to understand how and why this appears to be so.
From there, the representation of the object gives an explicit character to its
status as a trace of a social practice. The texts not only mention the existence of the
patina, but also give an interpretation. In addition, it can be seen that this
interpretation can vary greatly. The physical appearance of the object is transformed
into an indication of human behavior (wear and tear is transformed into a trace of
use) when the narrative describes a gesture and thus this enigmatic sign takes on a
social meaning. The patina makes visible, in the physical material of the object, the
accumulation of gestures over the course of an immemorial history. But what
gestures? Here, our texts diverge: touching, caressing, kissing, assaulting, nibbling?
The image becomes thicker as part of a broader narrative scenario. Are they
pilgrims? Believers? Visitors? Is their gesture one of veneration? Devotion?
Worship? Submission? Superstition? Is it mystical, respectable, sheep-like,
ridiculous? Little by little, we have slipped imperceptibly from the observation of
something observable, evoking a physical process, to a value judgment, passing
through an object of interest, a scenario of practice, a cultural qualification and a
figuration of the social world.
12 Available at: http://www.aa-partners.com/webmuseo-solution-logicielle-pour-les-collections.

Accessed October 28, 2018.
All these observations concern the triviality of the trace of use: the fact that it
circulates on different media and that as it circulates it takes on meaning and value. It
therefore becomes increasingly complex. But two important points must be added.
First, the use of a medium is reflexive: it says something about the person who
uses it and the possibilities of the device. Hence, from the moment a trace of use is
the subject of mediation, the act of mediation itself can create a trace. The document
is not only the mediation of a trace existing outside it; the existence of a media
document itself can be considered a trace of the conditions under which it was
produced and the attitudes of those who produced it. Which is to say that which can
make a trace multiply and disperse. All these texts say something not only about the
gestures of visitors, but also about the act of writing by their author and the nature of
its medium: the tourist guide reflects a certain social regime of travel and the state of
the publishing industry, and the blog expresses through its conception and style a
form of relationship to culture. As for the very fact of keeping a blog, it is a sign of a
certain way of communicating online. For an observer interested in the evolution of
social practices, this blog is the mediation of a usage of religion and tourism, and
also a trace in itself of a cultural norm, a practice of writing and a use of the
network.
On the contrary, each new medium of mediation not only modifies the diffusion
and meaning of the trace. It affects the very nature of what we consider to be a trace.
The study of this process will occupy almost the entire book. For the moment, let us
just measure its importance by considering a few examples. When we observe the
wear and tear of bronze, the phenomenon we observe is physical (even though its
origin is social): passers-by have directly affected the material of the statue. On the
contrary, all the testimonies appearing on a medium of transmission have required
the action of collecting and representing the statue and its use. In the two cases, we
cannot speak in the same sense of a trace. It can be said, on a provisional basis, that
the patina is a physical imprint of time, but that all the documents have resulted from
a human gesture of inscription. However, a physical footprint does not make a trace
like a human inscription.
Finally, the signs that bear a representation do not have the same relationship to
the practices to which they refer. Stories are constructed by their authors and
endowed with meaning by their readers: they describe and comment on a social use
and thus explicitly attribute meaning and value to it. The painting does something
else, perhaps more: it makes a scene present to our eyes and, therefore, if we can say
so, it determines figures and gestures. This is also the case of a photograph.
However, a painting does not make a trace in the same way as a photograph,
because it is put together by the human hand and eye: it bears witness to a practice,
but it does not reproduce it in the same way as photograph, which records reality
10 The Trace Factory
through a technological process. All this deserves to be detailed later, but we can at
this stage be satisfied with recognizing the heterogeneity of what constitutes a trace.
1.1.3. Mediation, mediatization, device
Let us summarize. We have observed three major discontinuities. Firstly, there is

the distinction between objects that can be interpreted because of their natural link
with the phenomena they reveal, such as the rock rolled by the river13, and those that
acquire the status of traces of social uses through more or less complex scenarios of
practice. Then there is the fact that the process of producing the trace is not at all the
same when it comes to directly observable imprints left on objects as compared to
the trace as the result of gestures of inscription and mediatization linked to the
material manipulation of signs by human beings. Finally, we have highlighted the
technical ruptures that render the mode of presence of objects and practices strongly
influenced by the evolution of technology, and the fact that a painting cannot be a
trace of social practice in the same way as a photograph.
At this point, it is necessary to establish a clear vocabulary in order to explore

this issue further. The one I will use is borrowed from ICS. With regard to the
previous example, I will talk about mediation to designate the social act by which
the object of interest (here, the foot of the statue) can be identified, collected,
interpreted and shared (e.g. by the Guide du routard or by the blog), whilst
mediatization designates the fact that this act involves a material and technological
device: in this case, on the one hand, the use of industrial printing and, on the other
hand, the practice of computer networks. The term device will refer to the material
process by which this mediatization is carried out, the use of a more or less complex
technical object that organizes and structures our exchanges in terms of resources of
expression (words, images) and of roles (a recommendation).
To illustrate the use of these three terms, we can remain in the field of tourism
and refer to the invention of the first tourist guides14. When publishers made this
important industrial innovation, they wanted to justify it. One of the first guides
devoted to Paris reads as follows:
“It is only natural that a foreigner who visits a large city, and who has
neither the time nor the intention to make a long visit, should be
accompanied by someone from among the inhabitants who can
indicate to him what is most interesting and curious to see in the city
13 This does not mean, however, that their interpretation is not the result of a construction
like any other interpretation of a trace (Leleu-Merviel 2017). This is discussed further in
Chapter 2.
14 For a more complete analysis, see Jeanneret (2014b).
that he wishes to get to know as quickly as possible. Hence the origin

and usefulness of the cicerones found in all the cities of Italy, who are
commissioned by their antiquities, monuments or modern
establishments. Hence, the need to compensate for the lack of
intelligent cicerones among us with portable books in which we find
more or less well made notices concerning palaces, churches,
museums, etc.” (Peguegnot 1855).
Here, we see the publisher referring to an older professional practice of

mediation, that of the physical guide (a more or less improvised artisanal mediation)
to justify the innovation of publishing a printed guide, i.e. the industrial production
of a new type of device, of a mediatized genre. This example also shows that not all
social mediation necessarily involves technological mediatization, but that all
technological media coverage involves social mediation (Davallon and Le Marec
2000; Mœglin 2005).
At the end of this brief exploration of the extent of variation in the notion of
trace – which is far from exhaustive – the conditions are set to identify a specific
research object: the analysis of traces of the social work that are produced through
media devices. It is essentially a question of understanding in what capacity these
different productions receive the status of traces, how they are produced and what
part the creation of representation and communication devices takes, in what way
they contribute to generating a representation and a conception of society.
Symmetrically, it is useful to specify what this book will not talk about. It will
not be about how human beings create devices to study the nature or conditions
under which a situation of direct communication (not mediated by a device) can be
established through traces. The chemistry of printing, the detection of geological or
meteorological phenomena, the authentication of works, police investigation, the
diagnosis of medical symptoms and the observation of signs of character in
the behavior of an individual in a situation have no place here – whatever may be the
interest of these questions – and are dealt with by other researchers, in particular
within the framework of the collection dedicated to the human trace. These
limitations are linked to the idea that understanding the mediatized traces of social
life is already, in itself, a considerable challenge. From now on, when the word
“trace” is used, it will refer to objects and processes that have two claims: to reflect
social life (including culture in this definition) and to do so through media devices.
This will be the case with one exception: the development devoted to the semiotics
of the index (section 2.1), which must consider all types of indices to provide us
with appropriate theoretical concepts.
1.2. The social trace as a problem: the legacy of the history of the book
As mentioned above, the processes by which an object is assigned the status of a

trace may be profoundly different, so different that the word “trace” comes to refer
to phenomena that are entirely foreign to each other. To move forward in the
analysis, it is essential to ask ourselves what we do when we talk specifically about a
trace with regard to objects that circulate in the media: objects that belong not only
to the physical world but also to the social world and that come to us at the end of a
mediatization process.
To build this theoretical framework, upon which the book is based, I will start
from the way in which it has been developed by historians of books, published and
read, whether learned or popular. Indeed, the questions raised by these researchers
and the problems they encounter particularly enlighten us because they had to place
a critique of the trace at the very heart of their approach in order to conduct their
investigation15.
1.2.1. From book to reading
In recent decades, the history of books has undergone a major transformation

linked to two major orientations: on the one hand, not only focusing on the form of
books as objects, but also seeking to capture reading as a practice; on the other hand,
setting aside quantitative data on reading alone in an attempt to qualitatively
understand ways of reading. Consequently, as the founders of this movement
explain, “the study of the object, far from confining the history of the book to a
somewhat vain descriptive erudition, actually introduces a better understanding of
book practices and historical variations in the act of reading” (Chartier and Martin
1982, p. 10).
We read alone or in groups, aloud or in silence, in extenso or in fragments, etc.

But how can we grasp this act? Working on the past, historians are led to look for
clues in objects of a culture: ways of doing things, expectations, norms of the
relationship that an era has with its books. In addition, this difficulty encountered by
historical research is precisely what interests us here. In itself, the historical
evolution of these practices is inaccessible to the historian. The latter, like the hunter
or the detective (Ginzburg 1989), will try to track the traces of what she or he wants
to analyze. From all this, the form of books, which has evolved considerably
throughout history, can certainly provide some clues. That is how:
15 For a more in-depth analysis of the contribution of book history and reading to ICS,
summarized here, see Jeanneret (2008a, pp. 63–74).
“[…] the history of books can no longer avoid readings, partly

inscribed in the object itself, which define the possibilities of
appropriation, but partly also borne by the culture of those who read
and give meaning, but a meaning which is their own, to the materials
read” (Chartier and Martin 1982, p. 11).
We understand that historians were in a way condemned to look within the book
(within the media system) for traces of reading (of a usage): this happened from the
moment they decided not to content themselves with describing objects, but to
understand a process, reading – linking the book to reading, to use Roger Chartier’s
words (1993). They explained, for example, how the appearance of the title, the
creation of indexes, the choice of collection catalogues and typography materialized
“figures of reading” (Chartier 1993, p. 89). They made the material volume and
editorial production the trace of a use. Indeed, “of these plural practices, personal
knowledge is undoubtedly forever inaccessible since no archive keeps track of it.
Most often, the only indication of the use of the book is the book itself”: this,
concludes the historian, defines “the severe limits imposed on any history of
reading, but also its compelling seduction” (p. 111). In fact, as Arlette Farge (1989,
pp. 18–19) explains, the historian cannot escape the “physical pleasure of the trace
found […] as if the proof of what was the past was finally there, definitive and close.
As if, by unfolding the archive, we had the privilege of ‘touching the real’”.
However, Farge only signals this temptation in order to defend itself from it.
Understanding this appeal and its limits is a major requirement for us. This is
precisely the purpose of the present book. In effect, as we will see below, the
practices that we expect concerning the traces of contemporary media are also
inaccessible to the eye, and not (always) because of historical distance, but because
of the unprecedented range of their dissemination. So that here again, it is very
appealing but no less risky to hope to grasp them, or even track them down, through
the traces they leave.
Let us, therefore, examine historians engaged in production of the trace of a use,
i.e. reading16. Our aim, here, will not be to assess their scientific criteria – which we
will have to examine (section 4.2) as an indexical study into social realities – but to
understand the problems they face, and which we will certainly face as well. We will
limit ourselves, here, to observing three things: what historians refer to as traces;
how this term makes sense for them in relation to certain major concepts; and what
are the aporias that this research helps to identify.
16 This is the re-reading, within the ambit of the present book, of a series of works that have
guided my research over time and that concern the relationship of historians to the archive,
the history of reading and the history of scholarly practices.
Historians use the word “trace” a lot. This is the case, for example, when it
comes to the status of archival documents (Farge 1989), the resources of historical
investigation (Chartier 1993) or the relationship between the text and its readers
(Jacob 2002). As these examples show, it is a term with a heuristic function that
aims to characterize a pressing issue.
Above all, it is a question of traces when it comes to the very issue of historical
research. As we have seen, this is Chartier’s concern, who proposes a method
“combining, on the one hand, the reading protocols specific to different groups of
readers and, on the other hand, the traces and representations of their practices”
(Chartier 1993, p. 93). It is above all the lack of direct access to personal knowledge
of practices that leads to the books or paintings of painters being qualified as the
place where traces are collected. This phenomenon does not escape those who
comment on the endeavor, who systematically place it under the sign of the trace: “it
is a question here of distinguishing the modalities of appropriation of cultural
materials, through the uses and usages of the book. The difficulty is to find its
traces” (Le Men 1986, p. 101).
The trace is, therefore, inhabited in a way by the historian’s desire, who sees in it
an object awaiting interpretation, while being very conscious of the way in which
this interpretation must be controlled:
“Traces by the thousands are the dream of every researcher… We feel

both the strength of the content and its impossible deciphering, its
illusory restitution. Tension is organized – often in conflict – between
the passion to gather it all, to present it to be read in its entirety, to
play with its spectacular side and its unlimited content, and reason,
which requires that it be finely questioned for it to make sense” (Farge
1989, p. 22).
However numerous they may be, traces are still too rare for the historian,
especially those that can give access to a popular but widespread practice. The trace
focuses attention only because it is recognized as the ability to reveal things that are
not themselves visible: not only to the extent that they have disappeared, but also
because they have not been the subject of a deliberate act of inscription. In the
review cited above, Le Men observes that as we move from scholarly reading to
ordinary reading and then to popular reading, the trace becomes increasingly rare,
and also increasingly crucial. Like the archives of trials, the humble traces bear
witness to realities to which society did not confer public status17. If the idea of trace
is omnipresent, it is, therefore, both because some practices were not considered
17 This question is further explored in relation to the “indexical paradigm” (see section 4.2.2).
memorable enough to give rise to inscription and because, when inscription took
place, it was not necessarily voluntary.
The unintentionally recorded trace then testifies within the text to a singular local
practice that it inscribes in the materiality of the book. It becomes a sign of the
reader’s active character, of the fact that the reader him- or herself appropriates the
text and manipulates it. The historian of antiquity Christian Jacob, who led a
collective research project on the history of scholarly practices, places this status of
the trace in the perspective of Michel de Certeau’s theory of uses (1990), by taking
up the images of the latter who represents the user as an actor who poaches and
moves within the territory of the text. In this case, the trace embodies the tension
between the order of the text, more or less imposed by the publisher and the author,
and the freedom of the reader:
“Through reading, two topographies seek an impossible encounter: the

first is given, materialized, encoded in the text, resulting from an
authorial or editorial will. The second is that of the pilgrim, of his
stopping points, of the places where he slows down, where he presses
the pace, jumps steps, goes back or digresses […] To peregrinate is also
to leave traces in the spaces that we travel” (Jacob 2002, pp. 16–17).
1.2.2. A constellation of categories
Finally, the trace expresses above all the historian’s problematic view of a
process whose complex, historical and conflictual nature is measured by the
historian but is not observed as such, and is only grasped through what the objects
can reveal. For the historian, the trace is both a provocation and an enigma. Hence,
in the history of reading, the trace only functions in alternation and echoes with a
constellation of categories that transform this appealing and enigmatic object into a
problem. In reading the texts, we can identify a set of terms that somehow
collectively construct the conceptual scope of the trace. I will clarify the choice of
terminology: I consider the use of terms as the expression of interlinked categories. I
advance the hypothesis that the system of relationships that unites these categories
within a problem is a concept for historical research. I hold on to the term trace as a
sign of the problem thus described. I will seek to show later that it is not a concept,
but a schema, which gives rise to various figurations.
For this analysis, I retain, here, the programmatic text delivered 35 years ago by
Chartier at the founding symposium of research on reading practices (1993)18. In this
conference, alongside five occurrences of the term “trace” (in French, or “trace” in
English) – in fact quite rare, but always in a strategic position – we find the terms
“pratique/pratiquer” (“(a) practice/(to) practice)” 11 times, “inscrire/inscription”
(“inscribe/inscription”) eight times, “form” (understood as the material “form” of
the texts) seven times, “usage/usager” (“use/user”) seven times and “indice”
(“index”) five times (and “indication/indicator” twice).
These terms are all used, in different proportions, in most historical works on
reading practices, such as in the collective Des Alexandries following the
symposium held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 1999 (Jacob 2002). I
will cover these categories in an appropriate order to construct the problem in a
simple way, but the reader should remember that the categories are interdependent
and not hierarchical categories.
The word trace applies in history and more generally in the social sciences to a
wide range of objects, some of which have nothing to do with the question of reading;
it is no less obvious that its frequency is linked here to the specific problem of
research, which consists of seeking clues to a cultural practice that takes shape through
the encounter with a medium. Above all, it defines a structural link between the idea of
trace and that of inscription, which must be understood first and foremost in the
elementary sense of the term in documentation sciences: “the smallest document is an
inscription” (Otlet 1934, p. 43). In the historian’s work, the trace/inscription dyad
embodies more precisely what documentation theorist Jean Meyriat calls the
“document by attribution”: inscriptions that have not been intentionally recorded but
are subsequently attributed an informational value by their user (Meyriat 1981). The
historian makes the trace an object of information by giving it the role of an indication
of a field of practice. In other words, the success of the term trace is related to the fact
that it can refer to both inscription and index. We, therefore, have an initial definition
of the trace: an inscription that can have the value of an index.
In Chartier, the term “form” is frequently associated with inscription. Indeed, the
study gives particular indexical status to the forms of the text, which the historian
addresses, as we have seen above, in interaction with the gestures and values of
reading. The indices that the investigation is looking for not only relate to the
content of the documents, but also to their form, and, today in ICS, to their format, if
we mean by this a materialized form, produced in an industrial technological process
and manipulated by users. What justifies the importance of forms? Precisely the fact
18 This text, first published in 1985, was the result of a conference given in September 1983
during the Pratiques de la lecture (Reading Practices) symposium in Saint-Maximin (France).
that the study takes into account the mediatized nature of the book, the fact that its
material form conditions the resources, roles and procedures of communication, that
mediatization by itself can make a trace, as we have seen above with guides and
the blog.
This first network of categories allows us to specify the analysis. When

historians speak of traces, they constitute as their research objects the inscriptions
found in the book medium and attribute informational value to these inscriptions, to
their textual content and also to their material form. They thus assimilate the
inscription to the status of a document by assigning it a posteriori. This is perfectly
summarized by Chartier’s initial formula: “This text would, above all, question the
conditions of possibility of a history of practices, made difficult both by the rarity of
direct traces and by the complexity of interpreting indirect indices” (Chartier 1993,
p. 79). We will have to return (in Chapter 2) to the fact that in reality no trace is ever
direct; however, we must undoubtedly understand this opposition between “direct
trace” and “indirect index” based on the distinction proposed by another information
theorist, Robert Escarpit, between event and document. The historian has no direct
access to the events of reading (what people actually did when they were reading)
and must rely on the indirect testimony of the document understood as “an
accumulation of fixed and permanent traces” that “remain available for reading”
(Escarpit 1991, p. 62)19. It should be noted, however, that the question indicated by
the word “trace” only becomes a clear problematic by linking two more defined
empirical phenomena, the material process of inscription and the interpretative
process of the index. In this sense, making inscriptions of the traces of culture
consists of constructing them as indices of practices. This construction is necessarily
indirect – and, therefore, problematic – because it involves interpretation, the a
posteriori attribution of informational value. To be even more precise, the trace is
the concrete representation of this link between the materiality of the inscription and
its value as an indication of a practice. The idea of trace, in other words, is a
concrete way of representing the problem enacted by the historian.
The term “practice”, therefore, appears logically in this context, since it refers, in
the broadest sense, to that of which the inscription is the index. This is the most
general and frequent term in Chartier’s texts: it is explained by the fact that this term
is richer and more open than others that could be substituted, such as “activity”,
“behavior” or “habit”. In Bourdieu’s tradition20, use of the term “practice” makes it
possible to designate a set of concrete actions without detaching them from a whole
universe of representations, beliefs and values. The preference given to this term –
19 This analysis is based on the history of the concept of the document proposed by Fraysse
in Gardies (2011, pp. 46–73).
20 For example, the Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique (Bourdieu 2000), first published
in 1972.
which I share in my own work21 – is linked to the desire not to describe cultural acts
independently of a global environment whose content is at once intellectual, ethical
and political. The notion of practice, therefore, dominates the analysis; despite
everything, it is not self-sufficient, but is part of a system along with use, which
makes it possible to situate reading gestures within a more or less strict relationship
with the “order of books” (Chartier 1992), i.e. to the materiality of forms and to all
the institutions and norms that frame it. The term “use” indicates, in line with
cultural history, that which cultural practitioners must “deal with” (Certeau 1990,
p. 52), such as devices, discourses and norms. Use is, therefore, a cultural practice
that must adapt to the social and practical constraints of a mediatized world, but that
also knows how to mark its own initiative and creativity – which is also expressed in
the term “appropriation”.
1.2.3. Structural difficulties
In the use of the word “trace” by historians it takes on meaning not through a
single category but through a set of categories: inscription, index, form, practice and
use. These will serve later (Chapter 2) as a basis for the analysis of the contemporary
schema of the trace of use. To fully understand what is learned from this research on
reading, it is interesting to identify the difficulties that historians face in interpreting
“indirect” media cues. To do this, it is enough to take up what they say about it
without claiming to escape it ourselves.
First of all, we must measure the scope that is formulated here. If inscriptions are
instituted as traces, it is because they are considered as witnesses to something that
is not directly accessible to us. This, more simply, consists of making them objects
of representation. As we have seen above, with regard to the statue of St. Peter, the
media texts perform a representational function, by virtue of their power to make
something exist that is past or inaccessible, in this case, with regard to the ordinary
reading practices of the past, both at once. The trace of use thus allows an “effect
and power of presence instead of absence and death” (Marin 1981, p. 10). However,
treating the form of the media as a substitute for practices that have become
inaccessible to us is problematic for three major reasons.
The first is the constraints that inevitably result from a real consideration of
mediation and mediatization. Historians of reading do not attempt to make the book
a mere medium. They impose on themselves the discipline of thinking the dialectic
between what the system proposes and the mode of appropriation to which it is
subject. This is the reason why, like Certeau from whom they draw inspiration, they
affirm the importance of the space of play between the editorial frameworks of
21 For a more precise argument for this choice, see Jeanneret (2007).
reading and the inventiveness of practices. However, as a result, inscription is not

only an indirect but also an uncertain indicator. It loses a little of its character as a
trace. In other words, to hold the inscription as a trace is for the historian more a
purpose than a program. Chartier, who seeks to “make Michel de Certeau’s
proposals operational”, “reminds us, against all the reductions that cancel the
creative force of usage, that reading is never totally constrained and that it cannot be
deduced from the texts that it appropriates”. Cannot be deduced. This leads to a kind
of aporia, “the founding paradox of any history of reading, which must postulate
the freedom of a practice of which it can only grasp, on a massive scale, the
determinations” (Chartier 1992, p. 33). This does not mean that the effort to link
the media to practices is futile, but it is marked by the uncertainty of interpretation.
This index is indirect in a second way. What books offer us is not a mimetic
representation of reading practices, but, in Chartier’s own words, an “implicit
figure”, which is the projection in the texts of how those who produce them –
authors as publishers and multiple actors in the book industry – more or less
consciously represent themselves as ideal readers, their expectations and their actual
uses. Indexical study on the forms of the text may allow fairly plausible hypotheses
about how publishers view their readership. We can go one step further and think
that changes in these textual formats may have been influenced by the very
evolution of practices. The hypothesis defended by this historical trend is rather that
of a dialectic. They observe metamorphoses in the forms of the book from one era to
another and from one social milieu to another. They draw from this the idea that we
can postulate a double determination (in Bourdieu’s terms a structural/structured
relationship) between two processes: on the one hand, the development of book
(lexical) cultures and, on the other hand, innovation in text-setting devices.
However, such an interaction can only be assumed without being really

described in its concrete sources; moreover, establishing such a link does not
eliminate the irreducible discontinuity between the reading that is represented (in the
editor’s head, in the format of the text) and the reading actually practiced by real
people in society. In reality, historians’ analyses circulate between three readership
concepts: one mobilized by actors in provision of books and named by Chartier as
the “implicit reader”; one concretized by the very forms of the text itself, and named
by Umberto Eco (1985) as the “model reader”; and finally, one reflected in the
practices of effective reading in a community. To add to this complexity, it should
be noted that the implicit reader, the principle of action for producers of print, is not
entirely confused with the model reader, the principle of interpretation for the reader
within the text, and that in terms of effective reading, collective reading does not
correspond either to individual forms of practice. However, this complexity is due to
the fact that the trace is mediatized here, which it relates to devices, interactions
and signs.
The third difficulty revealed by these works is that the trace is not only studied
by the historian, but also produced and often interpreted by the actors themselves.
The study of the collective for the study of literate practices, which paid particular
attention to the evolution of the ways in which texts are appropriated, showed the
richness and diversity of the activity of producing traces among readers themselves.
Readers may produce traces for themselves or others and, in this case, what is
referred to as the trace is an inscription that works less as an index than what has
been “traced-out” (or a tracé in the original concept in French) – a term that will
play an important role in the rest of our analysis (see section 3.2). The practice of
reading can be approached as a means of tracing one’s own path in the text, breaking
it up or reorganizing it according to a path. This metaphor expresses the will to give
material thickness to the act of reading:
“The open path and the trail markers left along the way, whether it be
deliberate or unknown, can guide other readers or serve as signs of
recognition for the walker wishing to find their own traces. Some
traces are discreet and evanescent, others may permanently affect the
ecology of the text, modify the system or even subvert it” (Jacob
2002, p. 17).
Even more fundamentally, this image embodies the idea that “reading is
rewriting, by inscribing in the text itself new conditions of its intelligibility” (Jacob
2002, p. 128). In ICS-specific terms, what is highlighted, here, is the mediation
function of writing and rewriting. It means that inscription cannot simply be
approached as an index of a practice that is external to it. When it is mobilized by
human beings in society, and not simply by an automaton, it is also a trace intended
to be read, i.e. a piece of writing22. If it is always possible to look at a text as an
indication of what it reveals, this does not completely erase its dimension as a
gesture addressed to others. This consideration, already fundamental in antiquity,
has acquired a major significance in the context of industrial media. Indeed, in the
cultural and technological universe studied by historians of ancient literary practices,
the medium of the written word (papyrus, parchment, paper) defines the spaces and
limits of annotation, for example that borne by handwriting in the margins of the
printed word. However, current media devices integrate this process and this trace
much more intimately into their textual material, which should lead us to pay greater
attention to the fact that traces can be indexes, and also mediations of use.
All these difficulties point to a more general reality, the communicative nature of
what are called traces of use in the media: the fact that what both of them describe as
traces are signs that circulate in society via devices of communication.
22 These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

1.3. Relevance and efficiency
To conclude this journey devoted to the construction of a research object, I

would like to quickly situate the specific aim of this book within the many studies of
the trace that have developed over the past two decades in an interdisciplinary
perspective and in particular within ICS. I will of course have to enter into a
dialogue with these works throughout the book, since also, as I pointed out in the
introduction, this exchange has been alive for a long time, particularly within the
framework of the “l’homme trace”/“Human Trace” collection, a theoretical and
empirical dialogue without which this book would not have seen the light of day. I
will confine myself, here, first of all, to specifying the particular aim of the approach
which I advocate within this constellation of research.
Of course, if I consider, here, the communicative forms of the trace – and not only
the semiotic category of the index – it is because my reflection is nourished by all
the exchanges linked to the Human Trace collection, in its general scope. It is,
therefore, necessary to link these particular objects to a more general regime of traces
and traceability. I will summarize these givens by means of three shared theoretical
options, to which I will have to return in detail: the trace does not naturally exist as a
given, but it must be constructed as such and it updates a particular form of thought;
therefore, it cannot be opposed, as has often been intended, to the sign, because the
trace only exists when it is interpreted and, therefore, constitutes a sign, certainly a
particular and complex one but linked to a defined interpretative regime, the
“sign-trace” (Galinon-Mélénec 2011, pp. 191–209); as such, the trace is a political
and scientific object, because it plays a decisive role in the construction of the
information and knowledge that regulate our relationship to the world (Leleu-
Merviel 2017).
Nevertheless, I do not seek to deal with this general problem here. As I said
earlier, I am considering, here, a particular type of trace, traces of social practices
(and not natural phenomena) that are borne by the media (and not in the natural
environment or on the body). These objects are of interest to me because they
circulate widely and condition the circulation of ideas and knowledge in society. In
other words, it is a problem related to the “trivial life” (Jeanneret 2008a) of the trace
that concerns me. As such, the dissemination of objects and their role as
intermediaries in the circulation of social conceptions will be the criteria for
choosing the empirical examples that I will analyze. What characterizes the research
conducted here is also the point of view adopted. It is based on the importance of the
question of relevance in the analysis of traces and devices of traceability, but it seeks
above all to understand the efficiency of these devices, the power that they manage
to exercise.
1.3.1. The evasive relevance of the trace
To clarify this approach, it is useful to situate it in relation to that proposed by

Leleu-Merviel in her book Informational Tracking (2018). The trace is approached
in an epistemological and critical approach aimed at making explicit the
construction of devices of information processing. It contributes more broadly to the
identification of a new theoretical framework, breaking with the first theories of
information, which, to simplify, have two major shortcomings: on the one hand, the
fact that they were based on eliminating the production of meaning, and on the other
hand, the fact that information is seen as an object while it is a relational process.
Leleu-Merviel separates the trace from its apparent naturalness to show its
procedural, complex and largely uncertain character. A trace appears as one
of the moments of a very elaborate intellectual construct, which assumes prior
states (apprehension, data, aggregate, for example), based on material conditions
(indexical retention), a technological process (inscription) and above all a work of
qualification which gives a basis to its interpretation and guarantees its reliability.
The trace is not isolated but is based, in Leleu-Merviel’s words, on a double
aggregate of data, that which establishes the informational value of the trace and that
which authenticates it.
What justifies this methodical construction is the fact, which is immediately

apparent, that the current omnipresence of the terms information and trace is
accompanied by a lack of definition and, above all, an insufficient examination
of the conditions for their relevance in use. As we have seen above, my
observations in this respect are similar to those of Leleu-Merviel. This effort
has been made necessary by the uncontrolled transfer of technological theories of
telecommunications to human activities, which has led to decades of confusion in
information theories, so that deconstructive work, carried out very methodically in
the first chapters of Informational Tracking, is necessary to subsequently reconstruct
the process mentioned above. Therefore, the notion of the horizon of relevance
affords a structure for a critique of the uses of the notion of trace. Nothing is a trace
in absolute terms, the interpretation of marks is based above all on a domain and a
questioning that can justify their meaning.
As such, Leleu-Merviel’s analysis is controversial, in the sense given to this term

by Bachelard’s epistemology: it is a question of undoing the confusion upon which
the use of the word trace is usually based. The work therefore involves the
identification of, and separation from, a trivial and illusory epistemology based on a
set of conceptual “optical illusions”, mainly the belief in a direct and objective
apprehension of the world (Leleu-Merviel 2017, pp. 93–104). The challenge of this
critical work is to contribute to a controlled use of the category, and thus of
methods of information processing. This clearly formulated objective at the end of
the journey is briefly summarized here. In the contemporary digital world, where
“systems only contain clusters of brand-data without horizons of relevance”, it

becomes urgent to “create the necessary consensus with the appropriate
methodological rigor […]. In the age of Big Data and deep learning, the current
challenge is to help the emergence of consensual interpretative frameworks with the
necessary analytical and methodological rigor” (Leleu-Merviel 2018, pp. 235–236).
This critical model – which participates in the collective theoretical dialogue

over time – will provide an essential framework for the following analyses.
However, we will not go into more detail on the criteria for proper use of the trace.
If epistemological discussion seemed necessary to Leleu-Merviel, as a device
designer and information theorist, it is because the idea that the trace could be a
direct and objective grasp of the (social) world is doing very well, it circulates
widely, and especially because many devices are built based on this hypothesis. This
is what this book is seeking to understand.
Leleu-Merviel evokes this “trivial” conception of the trace by commenting on

research devoted to the analysis of media audience calculation systems. The critical
examination of these mechanisms clearly highlights the fact that they are not guided
by a concern to define a horizon of relevance:
“[…] the quantitative measurement of audiences is everywhere, a very

efficient operator for the media, for their internal and external
organization; to do so, it aggregates phenomena that are not
comparable. Watching TV or listening to the radio refers to practices,
to investment levels, to behavior whose heterogeneity each of us has
experienced” (Meadel 2010, quoted by Leleu-Merviel 2018, p. 200).
The process is nevertheless efficient, as the quoted text underlines at the outset,
since this way of creating traces, however questionable it may be on a scientific
level, has considerable power in the political economy of the media, and, therefore,
in the sorting of the representations of the world that are disseminated to us.
1.3.2. An efficient figure of relevance
Many of the situations that we are confronted by the media today are related to
the use of the trivial trace, epistemologically uncontrolled but socially efficient and
widespread. Let us take three small real-life examples. I exchange e-mails with a
friend who is preparing for the Geneva Conservatory competition and our messages
do not avoid mentioning the name of this city: shortly afterwards, during an
information search, I see a series of proposals for shows and accommodation in the
Swiss capital. I am preparing a course in tourism semiology and to do this, I visit a
large number of sites of guides and tour operators dedicated to the city of Rome
(basic corpus building technique): afterwards, connecting myself to a social

network, I see a message appearing to invite me to go through the most powerful
intermediary to book plane tickets, a rental car and a hotel there. Colloquia
sometimes lead researchers to cite individual works, sometimes collective works
designated by the sole name of their coordinators: I read in a book devoted to power
relations in science based on the frequency of citations that the presence of my name
proves an act of domination, whereas, upon verification, the majority of authors cite,
not my texts, but articles written by others in these collective volumes where my
name appears. To deduce from a visit to a site dedicated to Rome or from a
correspondence with a person who goes to Geneva, or a plan to travel to Geneva as a
tourist involves, in Leleu-Merviel’s words, a very uncertain interpretative aggregate,
linked to the fact that no aggregate of authentication forms the basis of the evoked
practical scenario. Evaluating the intellectual authority of an author or document
based solely on the calculation of the occurrences of their name is based on “the
ejection of semantics from the system” (Leleu-Merviel 2018, p. 33), leading to
confusion between the calculation of signal frequency and information value.
Nevertheless, these mechanisms are multiplying and a relative social consensus

can be organized around the reliability of these calculations, as is the case with
political surveys (Jeanneret and Souchier 1997), which are subject to the same
confusion. To be more precise, there are devices whose horizon of relevance is not
an example of epistemological rigor. The recommendation engine is wrong when it
attributes to me the willingness to visit Geneva when I ask for information about a
friend, or when it identifies a plan for a stay in Rome when I am preparing a
semiology course. However, in a significant number of cases, the recurrent presence
of a city in messages indicates the intention to go there; and above all, there are
many more who plan to visit Rome than those who teach semiology. By this logic, it
does not matter how misinterpreted a conduct is if the overall efficiency of the
system provides opportunities for commercial gain. Similarly, it is unlikely that
those who defend the evaluation of researchers on the basis of citations or that of
universities by the so-called Shanghai ranking believe in the validity of these
calculations to define a scientific advance or the quality of education; however, if
their objective is not intellectual but managerial or political, it works; as a result, the
reality of these calculations is becoming widespread.
What these examples show is that the sharing of belief and the creation of
devices can powerfully spread certain qualified media products such as traces into
society in material terms and certain conceptions of what a trace is in imaginary
terms, without having given rise to critical evaluation. Trivial relevance is therefore
constructed by the circulation of objects and by the fact that, little by little, devices
diffuse traces which are then seized by actors. A survey conducted by colleagues
among students at the beginning of their university education on their use of Google
(Simonnot and Gallezot 2009) shows this very clearly. The efficiency of the search
engine gradually imposes confusion between different possible definitions of

relevance, to the point of making it very difficult to teach documentary methods.
Indeed, the main argument used to avoid these classic distinctions for documentary
techniques (relevance to a situation, a subject, a use, a user, etc.) is that “it works”.
The challenge of considering the quantitative processing of code transactions as
an indicator of the relevance of documents is de facto successful, conveying
with it an absolute and general definition of relevance. Calculating occurrences
with an algorithm would ensure the relevance of any search. The categories
related, in Leleu-Merviel’s terms, to the value of information are, therefore, in fact,
overwhelmed by the efficiency of the calculation. For example, the calculation of a
person’s or text’s popularity is equated with its authority value23.
1.3.3. Trace as an interpretative schema
The purpose of the research summarized here therefore to understand the

effective mode of the trivial existence of the trace, as it circulates in media forms
and social representations, including and even more importantly when what is
defined as trace does not deserve to be so defined in the critical problematic of
Leleu-Merviel. In her effort to justify the importance of the step of qualifying the
trace, she writes: “so-called traces may not always be such a thing” (Leleu-Merviel
2018, p. 183). By this Leleu-Merviel means that the power indexical reasoning gives
to testify to or to prove this or that reality is not valid. I could say that I am
particularly interested in these traces that are not traces. This is because we are
literally surrounded by the mass of so-called traces – or at least inscriptions that are
not indicative of what they claim to reveal.
However, taking this trivial construction of relevance and efficiency seriously

necessarily produces an inversion of the approach in relation to the project of
methodically grounding a legitimate use of the concept of trace. In a rigorous work
of constructing the conditions for the scientific interpretation of indices, the trace is
not a given, it is the result of a complex elaboration. The “deployment of the trace”
starts with observations captured by perception and leads to the writing of their
status as an index, passing through a set of controlled constructs: trace-capture, data,
retention, inscription, study and qualification. Each step involves reflective work to
explain operations of thought and writing. In social life, on the contrary, it is
common to declare an object as the trace of something based on its manifestation, on
how it presents itself to us, without necessarily questioning all the aggregates that
legitimize it in fact. It can even be said that in the media, for a semiotic production
(a map, a curve, a data visualization) to acquire the status of a trace, it is necessary
23 This analysis is provisional, since we will see later (in particular section 4.2.3) that the
semiotic dimension of interpretation does not completely disappear behind the calculations.
that we do not question too much the way it was produced. This holds, for example,
for the fact that a news photograph attests to an event, that the search engine’s
response list displays accessible information, that a survey curve expresses opinion,
and that a line graph identifies a community – all examples that will concern us later.
In the trivial life of ordinary and technically produced traces, the trace is
inseparable from the context that delivers it and from the more or less implicit
interpretative aggregates that accompany it. So much so that, to simplify the idea, a
trace in the media is first of all an object that has the material, formal and semiotic
means to manifest itself as such.
What, for example, is the efficiency of a political survey? It is the claim to

account for by mathematical calculation, a certain state of opinion. Thus, in May
1995, polling firms were accused of “failing” because they had announced Édouard
Balladur’s victory in the French presidential election. Certainly, in Leleu-Merviel’s
words, this so-called trace is not one, because it is based on the confusion between
extrapolating the actual votes on election night and collecting voting intentions a
few months earlier. The trial of the pollsters expresses this confusion. What does the
statement the pollsters were wrong mean? It is based on the assumption that a
survey must accurately represent opinion; moreover, the defense of the institutes
reproduces and reinforces the same confusion: “it is, they say, only a snapshot of
opinion at a given moment in time”24.
With this example, we are faced with a certain trivial regime of the trace, with its
forms of expression, its “epistemological beliefs” and its “optical illusion” (Leleu-
Merviel 2018, p. 101) and with the particular play it introduces between relevance
and efficiency. However, this regime is defined not only by a word or a device, by a
media message or by a belief, but also by all of this. It circulates between devices
(the questionnaire), forms of expression (the curve), aggregates of objects (the
opinion barometer), discourse regimes (foresight), interpretative principles (the
volatility of the electorate) and communication spaces (political broadcasts). What
we have called an “interrhetoric” (Jeanneret and Souchier 1997, pp. 153–154).
The layout of the multiple configurations of signs that embody the trace thus
crosses social spaces in the game of chains of interpretations, that which I call
“triviality”. Therefore, I have chosen to define the mediatized trace as an
interpretative schema and not as a concept. We introduced the term “schema” with
Émilie Flon as part of research we conducted together on the modes of presence
of places and their practice on the Web (Flon and Jeanneret, in Davallon 2012,
pp. 99–104; Flon and Jeanneret 2010). The aim was to analyze mediations of the
24 The meaning of this argument as an example of the trace schema is analyzed in detail in
section 2.3.1.
representation of relationships between tourism practices and places in the

computerized media. I had the opportunity to take up the concept of an
organizational schema in the context of an analysis of so-called “cartographic”
representations of the social world (Jeanneret in Galinon-Mélénec and Zlitni
2013, pp. 235–267). Jean-Édouard Bigot (2018) mobilized this concept in his
critical research on devices produced by technologists in their claim to replace the
social sciences and humanities with “metrics” (a claim that will be discussed in
section 4.2.3). On this occasion, he explained the epistemological status of the
category (Bigot 2018, pp. 237–240), attributing to it a role of articulation between
the phenomenological posture of the analyst and the concrete forms by which it is
actualized: what can be called, following Marin (1994), “figurations”25. For Bigot,
the notion of a schema makes it possible to understand how this type of media object
“organizes a particular regime of visuality that is at the same time an ‘intellectuality’
and to describe [their] particular ways of organizing, structuring and informing the
realities they ‘deal with’” (Bigot 2018, pp. 237–238). The result of this analysis is to
highlight and make debatable the “claims of mediation” of calculation-based
methods of social knowledge, claims that they most often naturalize.
In the study of tourism sites, indeed, as in Bigot’s research, the expression

“organizing schema” refers to a structure that is sufficiently prominent, and also
sufficiently flexible to be able to take a certain number of organizational forms
while embodying within info-communication devices an analogous view of the
world. The choice of terminology for the expression “interpretative schema” here
meets the same objective of identifying “a structural construction that ensures a link
between the technological, semiotic and phenomenological dimensions of
representation and for this reason defines certain determining conditions for the
construction of the meaning of information within a device” (Flon and Jeanneret
2010, p. 4). In this case, it was then a question, within the organizing schema, of a
certain way of articulating, in various graphic configurations, a relationship between
the space of writing and the space of the places of practice. The organizational
schema was, we wrote, “both a process and a meaning, in fact a creation of meaning
in the narrow sense. The schema is, therefore, dynamic” (Flon and Jeanneret 2010,
p. 4). It is the search for such relationships that will serve, starting from the next
chapter, as a basis of our investigation into the lives of traces and how they are
translated into ideas, gestures and tools.
The comment we added applies to the trace schema. “The schema is not reduced
to a semiotic modality (as piece of writing), nor to a form (as a list), nor to a
cognitive procedure (as a classification) but integrates these different levels into a
singular construction” (Jeanneret and Flon 2010, p. 4). In the following chapter, we
will see the trace using different semiotic substances (writing as figures), mobilizing
25 On the use of the concept of figuration in ICS, see Jeanneret (2014a, pp. 71–78).
different forms (a graph as photography), engaging complex cognitive and

normative operations (observation and belief) and mobilizing the properties of
different media in particularly numerous and creative configurations. The trace
schema is, therefore, not a simple form of expression. It has great formal plasticity
and can be actualized in a very diversified range of different figurations, which our
investigation will have to explore.
All the uses of the term “schema” are related to the role that the schematism
plays in Kant’s philosophy of personal knowledge, that of a dynamic and flexible
structure mediating between sensibility and understanding. In the article cited (Flon
and Jeanneret 2010), we discuss the choice of this term by comparing it with other
authors and their theoretical framework, in particular the use of the same expression
in a different sense by Marin (1994) and the concept of pattern in Leleu-Merviel and
Useille (2008). In communicational terms, the concept of schema is similar to that of
composite (Le Marec 2002) and is derived from it, because it is also a structure that
associates, in a flexible way, devices, knowledge, texts and situations. However,
where the composite derives its main value is that is allows the study of the
singularity of a situation and a situated and singular practice, the schema aims to
identify circulating features in such a way that it establishes a relationship to social
reality. It cannot be reduced to a category of thought or a product, but as a process, it
has a structural character that we will seek to understand.
The interpretative schema obeys the same principles as the organizing schema,
but targets a somewhat different object, because it finds its main relevance in
writing, and that in turn within reading and the production of knowledge. The
concept of an interpretative schema bears some relation to Jean-Michel Berthelot’s
(1990) “intelligibility schemas”. This proximity is because, in either case, the main
issue of the analysis is the paths of “social intelligence”, to use its picturesque
expression, and because, in any case, we must accept the reason that it is always
marked by uncertainty. Hence, the definition of this concept given by the social
science epistemologist (“a matrix of operations making it possible to inscribe a set
of facts in a system of intelligibility, i.e. to reason or provide an explanation”)
applies to the trace of the schema. However, there are two differences with the trace
of the schema used here. On the one hand, once intelligibility schemas are
formalized they define, for Berthelot, well-defined systems of acceptability of a
theory in anthroposocial sciences, the trace of the schema taking multiple and
unequally controlled forms, and concerning more or less well-defined, more or less
valid trivial modes of existence of the social knowledge project in the name of the
idea of trace. On the other hand, where Berthelot seeks to isolate the cognitive part
of the work of social intelligence, the schema of the trace draws its strength from the
historical construction of strong relationships between signs, objects, practices and
representations.
Finally, the interpretative schema is not unrelated to the cognitive schema as it is

mobilized in Jean Piaget’s genetic epistemology. It has the same character as a
flexible structure that is repeated in similar circumstances and, therefore, has a
repeatable and transferable character in different circumstances. However, where
this usage has as its main purpose the genesis of individual capacities, these are
categories that circulate in the social sphere and inform the construction of devices.
We will, therefore, seek to describe in the chapter that follows the trace as a
trivial interpretative schema that presides over the contemporary multiplication of
efficient devices for the production of mediatized representations of the social
world. This initial work is necessary to then explore the multiple configurations of
the trace in the media.
2
The Schema of the Trace,

a Paradoxical Semiotics
To be clear from the outset, the trace will be considered, here, as a sign.
However, this definition is not at all universally shared.
It is quite disturbing to see how the trace gives rise to different positions. This
can be seen by observing the way in which scientific publications construct this
object. I studied the frequency of a few terms in French in two collective
publications, the issue of the journal Hermès devoted to the theme of “Traceability
and Networks” (Merzeau and Arnaud 2009) and the collective volume L’homme-
trace (Galinon-Mélénec 2011). This comparison shows to what extent the trace
object spreads according to the logic of thought that make use of it. This will put us
on the path of the paradox with which it confronts us.
Table 2.1, below, shows the frequency of a set of terms in each of the two
corpora. The chosen terms are of two types: on the one hand, a series of categories
that play a major role in the theoretical texts discussed so far, and on the other hand,
some terms whose particular frequency in the corpus appears clearly upon reading1.
This work does not claim to be representative, because the list has been compiled
intuitively on the basis of the review of historical literature presented in section 1.2
and the exhaustive reading of the two corpora, and it does not obey any systematic
principle; these partial results, here, have no other claim than to show that
construction of the notion is done in different and even largely incompatible ways,
because each of the collectives marks a preference for certain categories and in
contrast neglects others. The diversity of the authors united around this theme
nevertheless gives a certain relevance to this study.
1 All terms in the titles of articles and chapters have been tested, but those whose frequency is
not verified in the corpus have not been included in the table.
The Trace Factory, First Edition. Yves Jeanneret.

© ISTE Ltd 2020. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Number of occurrences Number of author

Terms in the Hermés occurrences in
publications L’homme-trace
Donnée (Data) 434 39
Numérique (Digital) 140 19
Identité (Identity) 86 45
Usage 71 94
Pratique (Practical) 49 77
Signe (Sign) 20 450
Sens (Meaning) 13 115
Interprétation/Interpréter 11 58
(Interpretation/Interpreting)
Inscription/Inscrire 10 98
(Inscription/Inscribe)
Écrit/Écriture 8 81
(Written/Writing)
Indice/Indiciel/Indiciaire 3 112
(Index/Indexed/Indices)
Présence (Presence) 20 64
Représentation/Représenter 21 57
(Representation/Represent)
Table 2.1. Frequency of use of some French

2
terms in two collective volumes on the trace
We may be surprised by the limited presence in the Hermès collective journal of

concepts that play a major role in the reflections of historians of reading as well as in
the epistemological analysis of the trace conducted in Leleu-Merviel (2017). These
include, for example, the notions of inscription (cited 10 times in all and absent from
2 The numbers indicate the number of occurrences of words in their full use as notions
(expressions such as “il est pratique de” (it is practical to…) or “comme l’écrit untel” (as
written by so-and-so”) have not been counted). The terms are lemmatized, the verb in its
different inflections, the noun and the adjective being assimilated.
The Schema of the Trace, a Paradoxical Semiotics 33
2/3 of the texts), evidence (almost absent with three occurrences from a single
author), interpretation (used only 11 times by five authors) and meaning (mentioned
13 times and absent from 3/4 of the texts). In comparison, the same categories play a
major role in the volume L’homme-trace, where meaning is mentioned 115 times,
index 112 times, inscription 98 times and interpretation 58 times. For the credited
authors of the issue of Hermès, the trace particularly evokes the concepts of data
(454 occurrences), the digital (140 occurrences) and above all functions as a kind of
avatar of identity (87 occurrences)3. In a more synthetic way, we can say that for the
authors of L’homme-trace, the question of the trace leads to a semiotic reflection,
because it is a sign to be interpreted, whereas for those of the journal Hermès the
trace is a reality experienced as a datum related to the technological substrate and
the question that arises is what can be done with it. This is probably why the major
concepts of historical analysis and epistemological reflection (inscription, index,
practice, interpretation) are very important in one case, and much less so in the other
case. This very strong contrast is apparent if we give a visual representation of these
two constellations of categories (Figures 2.1 and 2.2).
Figure 2.1. Weighting of some terms in the journal Hermès, no. 584
3 I must mention the particular case of the term “document”, which is quite common in
Hermès’ corpus (80 occurrences), but which is used by only one-third of the authors, two of
whom are responsible for almost all of the occurrences (58 and 17 respectively). These data
may be affected by the fact that the title of the Hermès issue includes the word “networks”,
which may have indicated the digital for authors.
4 The font size varies with the frequency of occurrence of the terms, but the variation has
been significantly reduced because a readable representation of the actual values is not
possible within the same visual range.
Figure 2.2. Weighting of some terms in the

volume L’homme-trace (CNRS editions)
In the corpus of the journal Hermès, the absence of the words sign, writing, index
and interpretation goes hand in hand with the fact that the words trace and
traceability are used to designate various empirical objects but do not give rise to
definition or discussion. Reading the articles in this issue, we may consider that the
trace evokes, on the one hand, computerized data and, on the other hand, a digital
duplicate of the person. On the contrary, the low use of semiotic categories (sign,
index, interpretation) is explicitly justified in two articles of the collection, Louise
Merzeau’s article entitled “Du signe à la trace, l’information sur mesure”, which
affirms the need to move from the paradigm of the sign to that of the trace and
Olivier Ertzsheid’s article entitled “L’homme, un document comme les autres”
which does not consider as relevant the difference between the person and their
representation by a media inscription. In any case, the question of the meaning that
can be given to the trace, which occupies the authors in L’homme-trace, does not
seem to arise for those of Traceability and Networks.
This is not the place to discuss these arguments of the substitution of the trace for
the sign or the transformation of the human being into a document, which we will
find after having more clearly conceptualized the leitmotiv of the trace. We will
retain from this initial exploration of lexical dispersion within a corpus taken as an
example that the trace is an object in tension: a sign whose semiotic nature and
interpretation are particularly complex, but which can make the question of its
interpretation disappear behind its obviousness. A sign that can claim to be a
non-sign. It is an important component of the trace schema. Nevertheless, to
understand this paradox, it is first necessary to understand how the trace can be
interpreted and even created as a trace, and for this purpose to seriously study what
is called, in semiotics, an index. It is from this that we can work to understand what
particular type of index the trace is.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
resistir ni sufrir sin mortal passion.
Corria de oriente a poniente sin
çesar. En este auia imnumerable
cuento de almas que nunca faltan
alli; y pregunté al mi angel qué rio
era aquel tan espantoso y él me
respondió que era el que los
antiguos llamaron Flegeton, en el
qual entran todas las almas que
entran en el infierno, porque este
es el fuego que tiene fuerça en
las almas, por ser instrumento de
la justiçia de Dios. Este fuego las
abrasa y quema do quiera que
estan para siempre jamas.
Ninguna alma puede passar
adelante sin entrar por él, porque
no tiene puente ni varca; y si el
alma quisiese bolar la quemaria
aquel fuego las alas y caeria en
él. Por las riberas deste rio estan
infinitos coxixos, sierpos[804],
culebras, coquodrillos, aspides,
escorpiones, alacranes,
emorrhoys, chersidros, chelidros,
cencris, amodites, çerastas,
scithalas, y la seca dipsas;
anphisibena sierpe de dos
cabeças, y natrix, y jaculos que
con las alas volan gran distançia.
Estan aqui las sierpes phareas,
porphiro, pester, seps y el
vasilisco. Tambien estan aqui
dragones y otros ponçoñosos
animales; porque si acaso
aconteçe salirse alguna alma del
rio pensando respirar por la ribera
con algun alibio y consolaçion
luego son heridas destas
venenosas serpientes y coxixos
que las hazen padeçer doblado
tormento y mal; y ansi de algunos
que salieron te quiero contar su
arrepentimiento. Aconteçio salir a
la ribera delante de nosotros vn
viejo capitan español que
conoçimos tu y yo. El qual açertó
a pisar vna dipsas, sierpe cruel, y
ella buelta la cabeça le picó, y
luego en un momento se estendió
por todo él la ponçoña de vn
fuego que le roya los tuetanos y
vn calor que le corrompia las
entrañas, y aquella pestelençia le
chupaua el rededor del coraçon y
partes vitales, y le quemaua el
paladar y lengua con vna sed
imensa y sin comparaçion, que en
todo su ser no auia dexado punto
de humor que sudar, ni lagrima
con que llorasse, que todo se lo
auia ya la ponçoña resoluido; y
ansi como furioso corria por los
campos a vuscar las lagunas que
en las entrañas le pedia el
ardiente veneno. Pero avnque se
fuera al rio Tanais y al Rodano y
al Po, y al Nilo, Indus, Eufrates,
Danubio y Xordan no le mataran
todos estos rios vn punto
insensible de su ardiente sed, y
ansi desesperado de hallar aguas
se boluio a zapuzar en su rio de
donde salio. Pregunté que pecado
auia causado tal genero de
tormento y respondiome mi angel
que este auia sido en el mundo el
mas insaçiable y viçioso vebedor
de vino que nunca en el vniuerso
se vio, y que por tanto le[805]
atormentauan[806] ansi. Dende a
poco açerto a salir a la ribera, otra
alma, y vna serpiente[807]
pequeña llamada seps le picó en
la pantorrilla, y avnque en picando
saltó afuera, luego se le abrio en
torno de la picadura vna boca que
mostraua el hueso por donde auia
sido la mordedura, todo nadando
en podre, y ansi se le resoluio y
derritio la pantorrilla, morçillos y
muslos destilando del vientre vna
podre negra, y reuentole la tela en
que el vientre y entestinos estan y
cayeron con las entrañas. En fin
las ataduras da los neruios y
contextura de los huesos y el arca
del pecho, y todo lo que está
ascondido en derredor de las
vitales partes, y toda la
compostura del hombre fue
abierta con[808] aquella peste; y
todo lo que hay natural en el
honbre se dexaua bien ver, que
no pareçia sino vna muerte
pintada; sino que miramos que
con estar todo deshecho y
conuertido en podre nunca acabó
de morir, pero ansi fue tomado
ante nosotros por vn demonio y
fue arroxado por los ayres en
Fleton. Esta me dixo mi angel que
era el alma de vna dueña muy
delicada y regalada que con
vnturas curiosas y odoriferas
curaua su cuerpo y adelgaçaua
sus cueros, y que con semejantes
tormentos son fatigados los que
en tales exerçiçios se ocupan en
el mundo para satisfazer la laçiuia
de su carne. Desde ay a poco
salio del rio otra alma que como
escapada de vna prision o
tormento muy brauo yua por el
campo huyendo pensando
poderse librar, y acaso le picó vna
sierpe llamada pester y al
momento paró y se le ençendió el
rostro como fuego y se començó
toda a inchar que en breue tiempo
vino a estar tan redonda qne
ningun miembro mostraua su
forma ni façion, sino toda ella se
hizo redonda como vna pelota y
mucho mayor de estatura que ella
vino alli, y por cima desta
inchaçon por todas partes le
salian vnas gotas de sudor de vna
espuma dañada que la ponzoña
le hacia votar, y ella estaua allá
dentro zabullida en su cuerpo que
le tenia dentro del pellejo
abscondida como a caracol, y
estaua dentro en sí heruiendo
como vna olla de agua puesta a
vn gran fuego; ansi la heruia
aquella ençendida ponçoña
dentro en las entrañas, hasta que
subiendo en demasia la creçiente
de la hinchaçon, dando un gran
sonido a manera de trueno
reuentó, saliendole aquella
pestelençial podre por muchas
partes con tan fuerte hidiondez
que por ninguna via se podia
sufrir; y luego llegó vn demonio
atormentador que la cogio por
una pierna y la boluio por el ayre
arrojar en el medio del rio. Esta
nos dixo aquel demonio ser el
alma de vn muy inchado y
soberuio juez que con tirania
trauajaua tropellar a todos en el
mundo sin hazer a alguno justizia,
pero a todos hazia[809] agrauio y
sin razon. A otra alma que yua
huyendo del fuego y prision
mordio vna serpiente llamada
hemorrois en vn braço y luego
subitamente saltó dél al suelo y
quedó toda el alma acreuillada de
agujeros pequeños y muy juntos
por los quales la ponçoña les
salia enbuelta en sangre; de
manera que por todos los poros le
manaua con gran continuaçion y
las lagrimas que por los ojos le
salia era de aquella
emponçoñada de sangre; y por
las narizes y boca le salia vn
grande arroyo sin nunca çesar.
Todas las venas se abrieron y
subitamente se desangró, y con
gemidos muy doloridos pareçia
morir sin poder acabar; y ansi
tomandola vn demonio sobre sus
espaldas se lançó al fuego con él.
Esta era vn alma de vn medico
que en el mundo con gran
descuydo sin estudio ni
consideraçion vsaua de la
mediçina por solo adquirir honrra
y riquezas con peligro de los que
a sus manos venian;
prinçipalmente vsaua de la
sangria con peligro de los
paçientes sin miramiento alguno.
Luego fue mordida por vna
serpiente llamada aspide vna
alma de vn soliçito cambiador
despierto y vibo para atesorar, la
qual en siendo mordida se
adormeçio de vn sueño
mortal[810] y luego cayo en el
suelo. Aun le pareçia a la
desuenturada alma auer açertado
en alguna suerte que la pudiesse
dar algun momento de descanso,
pues el punto que dormiesse
podria no sentir, y ansi no
padeçer; y avn juzgamos que le
era buen trueque, pues no
auiendo dormido con sosiego en
el mundo por adquerir riquezas
venia a dormir aqui. Pero
engañose; porque llegó a ella vn
demonio atormentador que a su
pesar la despertó, porque tanto
quanto más el veneno del aspide
la adormeçia el demonio la
despertaua con vn agudo[811]
aguijon de tres puntas de azero.
En esto padeçio la desuenturada
alma por gran pieza el más cruel
y desgraçiado tormento que con
ninguna lengua humana se puede
encareçer; porque con ningun
genero de muerte ni tormento se
puede comparar. Estando pues
mirando esta tragedia cruel llegó
al rio vna gran multitud de almas
que querian pasar, las quales
todas venian hermosas,
agraçiadas y bien dispuestas al
pareçer, y miré que cada vna
dellas lleuaua vn ramillete en la
mano quál de enzina, quál de
castaño, roble y çipres; yo
pregunté a mi angel qué
compañia era aquella de almas
que estauan alli, porque me
pareçio ser para el infierno de
demasiado solaz. El me
respondio, que todas eran almas
de mançebas de clerigos; yo le
pregunté, ¿ques qué significan
aquellos ramilletes que lleuan en
las manos, pues en ellas no
denotan la virginidad?; y él me
respondio que desde la primitiua
iglesia auian sido las mançebas
de los abbades mulas del diablo
para acarrear leña para atizar el
fuego del infierno; y que por ser
entonçes pocas avnque trayan
grandes cargas no lo podian
abastar, y agora les mandauan
que lleuasse cada vna vn solo
ramillete con el qual por ser
tantas bastauan proueer con gran
ventaja lo que antes no se podia
con mucho basteçer; y ansi las
arrebataron sus demonios
atormentadores y las metieron en
el rio Flegeton. En fin, mi angel
me tomó por vn braço y
façilmente me pasó de la otra
parte de la ribera, y plugo a Dios
que avnque era gran distançia fue
sin alguna lision; y çierto el mi
angel acerto a me passar sin me
lo dezir, porque presumo de mi
que no quisiera passar allá.
Porque segun lo que vimos antes
que passassemos pareçiome que
no me atreuiera a passar; pero el
mi angel lo hizo bien. Pusome en
vn gran campo. ¡O dios inmortal!
¿que te diré? ¿Por donde
començaré? ¿Que vi? ¿Que
senti? Mi angel ¿que me mostró?
¿Duermes acaso, Miçilo? Agora
te ruego me prestes tú atençion.
Miçilo.—¡Oh gallo! quán
engañado estás conmigo pues
me preguntas si duermo. Cosas
me cuentas que aun con ser
picado del aspide vn puro
flematico no podria dormir.
Despierto estoy y con gran
atençión. Porque es tan grande el
espanto y miedo que me han
metido en el cuerpo esas
visiones, sierpes, demonios,
penas, tormentos que viste alli
que si me viesses abrias de mí
piedad. Enheriçados los cabellos,
fria toda la sangre, sin pulso y sin
pestañear. En fin, estoy tal que de
temor he çesado del trabajo; por
tanto dy, que ansi te quiero oyr.
Gallo.—Porque ya casi viene la
mañana oye, que solo proporne lo
que adelante oyras. Pareçiome
como en aquel gran campo me
apeé vn poderoso y estendido
real, qual me acuerdo auerle visto
por Xerses Rey de persas en la
segunda expediçion que hizo
contra athenienses despues de
muerto su padre Dario. En el qual
exerçito juntó vn millon y çien mil
hombres. En aquel dia que
Xerxes se subio en vna alta
montaña por ver su exerçito que
estaua por vn gran llano tendido
por chozas, ramadas, tiendas y
pabellones, que a vna parte auia
fuegos, a otra humos, a otra
comian y bebian los honbres, y a
otra se matauan. En fin,
espantado el mesmo Xerxes de
ver tanta multitud lloró
considerando que dentro de çien
años ninguno auia de quedar de
aquella multitud. Ansi me pareçió
Miçilo, ser aquel campo del
infierno, donde auia vna
inimaginable distançia, en la qual
vagaua inumerable cantidad de
demonios y almas. Auia vn ruydo,
vna grita, vna confusion que no sé
a qué te la pueda comparar,
porque en el mundo nunca tal se
vio. Auia llamas, fuegos, humos,
golpes de espada, de segures y
hachas. Sonido de grillos y
cadenas, lagrimas, lloros y bozes.
¡O Dios inmortal! quando aqui me
ví, no sé con qué palabras te lo
pueda encareçer; ¡tanta era la
confusion y espanto! En fin no me
osaua soltar vn momento de la
mano del my angel, porque del
mesmo suelo que ollaua tenia
temor. Auia horcas de diuersas
maneras en que estauan almas,
vnas colgadas por los pies, otras
por la cabeça, otras por medio del
cuerpo, otras por los cabellos.
Auia hoyas muy hondas llenas de
culebras, sierpes, lagartos, sapos,
alacranes, aspides y otros
animales ponzoñosos, donde los
demonios echauan grandes
cantidades de almas. Otros
nadauan por rios y lagunas de
pez, azufre y resina, ardiendo sin
se hundir ni nunca poder llegar a
la orilla; y en otras lagunas de
fuego eran echadas otras que en
cayendo se hundian sin más las
poder ver; lo qual prouenia de la
grauedad de los pecados de parte
de sus çircunstançias. En otros
lugares se dauan tormentos muy
crueles de agua de toca, de
garrote y de cordel, y a otras
atormentauan leuantandolas
atadas por las muñecas atras y
subidas con fuertes cordeles por
carrillos y poleas en lo alto,
colgadas vnas grandes pessas de
hierro de los pies, y soltandolas
con furia venian a caer sin llegar
al suelo. De manera que aquel
gran pesso las descoyuntaua
todos los miembros con
grandissimo dolor. A otras hazian
cabalgar en cauallos de arambre,
que en lo huero del cuerpo
estauan llenos de fuego que los
abrasaua hasta las entrañas, que
los hazian renegar de sus padres,
y del[812] dia en que naçieron y
fueron engendrados[813]. Estauan
infinitas almas de mugeres
bagabundas luxuriosas y viçiosas,
atadas a vnos palos y troços de
arboles y açotadas por demonios
con pulpos, anguillas y culebras,
abiertas a açotes hasta las
entrañas, gimiendo
miserablemente [814]; almas de
rufianes, ladrones y soldados
atados por los pies a fieros
cauallos, potros y yeguas sin
rienda ninguna eran lleuadas
arrastrando con gran furia por
montañas y sierras de grandes
pedregales y aspereças. A las
almas de los blasfemos
renegadores sacauan las lenguas
por el colodrillo y luego alli
delante dellos se las picauan en
vnos taxones con vnas agudas
segures y ansi se las hazian
comer y que las maxcassen y
comiessen moliendolas entre sus
dientes con graue dolor. Las
almas de los vanos lisonjeros de
prinçipes y señores, y de truhanes
y chocarreros las trayan los
demonios gran pieza por el ayre
jugando con ellos a la pelota sin
dexarlas sosegar vn momento, y
despues las arrojauan en lo más
hondo de aquellas ardientes
lagunas. Estaua tan admirado de
uer la[815] espantosa tragedia y
miseria infernal que casi andaua
fuera de mi, y ansi con vn
descuydo notable, que de mí
mesmo no tenia acuerdo ni
atençion, me senté en vn trozo de
vn arbol seco y chamuscado que
estaua alli, y ansi como
descargué mis miembros como
hombre algo cansado gimio el
madero mostrando que por mi
causa auia reçebido afliçion y
dixo: tente sobre tí, que harta
miseria tengo yo; y como lo oy
espeluçaronseme los cabellos
quedando robado del calor
natural, temiendo que algun
demonio subitamente me queria
sorber, y ansi apartandome afuera
por me purgar de alguna culpa si
en mi huuiesse le dixe: diosa, o
deydad infernal, quien quiera que
tú seas perdona mi ignorançia,
que por poco auiso he faltado a tu
deuida veneraçion. Dime, yo te
suplico, quién seas, que con
digna penitençia te satisfaré; y si
eres alma miserable hablame con
seguridad, que yo no soy furia
que a tu miseria deseo añadir; y
ella dando vn gemido de lo intimo
del coraçon dixo: yo soy el alma
de Rosicler de Syria, la más
infeliz y malhadada donzella que
nunca en el mundo fue, pues por
amar a quien me engendró me
fue a mi mesma tan cruel que
peno aqui con açerrimo dolor para
siempre jamas. Mi angel la
importunó nos dixesse la pena
que padeçia alli, y ella con gran
fatiga prosiguio. Y porque el dia
es ya venido, en el canto y
mañana que se sigue oyras lo
demas.
Fin del deçimo quinto canto del

gallo.
NOTAS:
[788] G., canto del gallo.
[789] R. (Tachado). Siguesse el deçimo quinto canto del sueño o
gallo de Luçiano, famoso orador griego. Contrahecho en el
castellano por el mesmo auctor.
[790] G., oy la.
[791] G., aqui.
[792] R. (Tachado) hondo.
[793] G., condenados.
[794] G., entendiamos grandes blasfemias de.
[795] R. (Nota Marginal). Augustinus Contra Faustum herecticum,
lib. 22, cap. 74.
[796] G., no auia razon.
[797] Este parrafo se halla tachado en el manuscrito y de tal
manera que nos ha costado sumo trabajo el leerlo.
[798] G., y que.
[799] Este párrafo está escrito al margen del anterior.
[800] G., aunque avn estauamos.
[801] Siguen tres ó cuatro palabras tachadas é ilegibles.
[802] G., en el infierno los.
[803] G., que passo el pecador su ley.
[804] G., sierpes.
[805] G., se.
[806] G., atormentaua.
[807] G., sierpe.
[808] G., de.
[809] G., tropellaua haziendoles.
[810] G., profundo sueño.
[811] G., cruel.
[812] G., maldiziendolos juntamente con el.
[813] G., en que fueron engendrados y naçidos.
[814] G., hasta abrirles las entrañas gimiendo miseramente.
[815] G., tan.
ARGUMENTO
DEL DEÇIMO
SEXTO CANTO
DEL GALLO
En el deçimo sexto canto que se

sigue el auctor en Rosicler hija
del Rey de Siria descriue la
feroçidad con que vna muger
acomete qualquiera cosa que
le venga al pensamiento si es
lisiada de vn lasçiuo interes, y
concluye con el deçendimiento
del infierno imitando a Luçiano
en los libros que de varios
dialogos intituló.
Gallo.—¿Qué has, Miçilo, que

tales vozes das? Despierta y
sosiega tu coraçon, que pareçe
que estás alterado.
Miçilo.—¡O gallo! en quanta
congoja y afliçion me vi, y de
quanta misericordia has vsado
comigo en me despertar; porque
soñaua que era lleuado por todos
esos lugares espantosos de
penas y tormentos que propusiste
en el canto de ayer, y soñaua que
por la gran actiuidad y fuerça que
tiene aquel açerrimo y espantoso
calor con que abrasa el fuego
infernal era imposible entrar alli
alguno sin se contaminar, ahumar,
chamuscar o quemar; y ansi en
sueño me vi en vn gran campo
tan rodeado de llama que el
resuelgo me faltaua, que por vn
momento que tardaras se me
acabara el vibir.
Gallo.—Pues oye agora y verás
quanta differençia ay de verlo a
soñarlo; como de lo fingido,
sonbra a lo verdadero y real;
verás con quanta façilidad se
ofende Dios mientras viben los
malos aqui, y con quanto rigor se
satisfaze la suma justiçia
despues. Verás la maliçia humana
quan en el estremo se colocó en
el sexo femenil, y los homiçianos
y inçestuosos en el rigor que van
a pagar; y venidos pues donde
dexamos el canto de ayer, si bien
me acuerdo te dixe que por
inportunidad de mi angel proponia
Rosicler la pena que padeçia alli,
y ansi la desdichada nos dixo:
Sabreis que este es el lugar
donde son atormentadas las
almas miserables de los
auarientos vsureros,
cambiadores, renoueros,
negoçiadores, que a tuerto y a
derecho no hazen sino llegar gran
suma de dineros para satisfazer
su insaçiable cobdiçia, y cada dia
son traydas aqui estas y otras
muchas almas de otros diuersos
generos de pecadores, las quales
con gran tormento son aqui
picadas tan menudas como sal
con vnas hachas y segures sobre
mi cuerpo como sobre vn taxon.
Bien puedes[816] pensar el dolor
que me hazen cada vez que
hieren sobre mi. Dinos agora la
causa de tu[817] mal, dixe yo;
porque segun he oydo dezir,
descansan los afligidos dando
parte a otros de su passion;
prinçipalmente si presumen que
en alguna manera los que
oyen[818] sienten su mal.
Respondiome la desuenturada
alma: ¡Ay! que a las infernales
almas es al reues, porque
despues que entramos aqui, cada
momento se nos ofreçe a la
memoria, la culpa y causa de
nuestra infeliçidad con que nos
atormenta más Dios. Pero por os
complazer yo os lo quiero dezir
avnque augmenta las llagas y
renueuase el dolor recontando la
causa del mal. Pero el mal no se
puede augmentar a quien tiene el
supremo que se puede padeçer,
como yo. Pues sabed que yo fue
hija de Narçiso, rey de Damasco y
de toda la Syria, prinçipalmente
de aquella prospera y deleytosa
prouinçia decapolitana, que ansi
se llama por las diez ricas
ciudades y antiquissimas que en
ella ay. Damasco, Philadelphea,
Scitoplis, Gadara, Hypodron,
Pella, Galasa, Gamala y Jope; yo
era por marauilla en el estremo
hermosa donzella y deseada de
todos los poderosos prinçipes del
mundo y a todos los menospreçié
porque mis tristes hados lo
permitiendo y mi infeliz suerte lo
ayudando fue presa de amores de
Narçiso mi padre, que en
hermosura y dispusiçion no auia
en el mundo varon de su par, y
por serle yo vnica hija y heredera
me amaua más que a si de amor
paterno. Pero por mi
desuenturada suerte todos
quantos plazeres y regalos me
hazia era para en daño y miseria
mia, porque todos redundauan en
augmento de mi maliçia. Agora os
quiero contar hasta dónde llegó
mi mal[819]. Sabreis que por tener
yo fama de tan agraçiada[820]
donzella vino a la corte de mi
padre vn graçioso y valiente
cauallero hijo del Rey de Scoçia
con voluntad de se casar comigo
si lo tuuiesse yo por bien, y
trabajar por su esfuerço y buenos
hechos mereçerme la voluntad. El
qual como me vio fue de nueuas y
fuertes cadenas preso, y
ençendido de nueuo amor de mí,
por lo qual procuró con todas sus
fuerças por mí seruir y agradar
exerçitandose en señalados
hechos en las armas; y ansi mi
padre por ennobleçer su corte y
exerçitar su caualleria a la contina
tenia justas y torneos echando
vando por todas las tierras del
mundo que viniessen los
caualleros andantes y de
nombradia a verse en las armas
lo que valia cada qual, y como
Dares (que ansi se llamaua el
prinçipe de Scoçia) me seruia y
pretendia ganarme por sus
señalados hechos a la contina se
auentajaua a todos quantos a la
corte y fiestas venian, dando
mucha honrra a mi padre y
enobleçiendole y afamandole su
casa por el mucho valor de su
persona. De manera que demas
de estar contento mi padre de
Dares, demas de ser hijo del rey
de Scoçia, por sus grandes
hechos y ardid en las armas
deseaua que yo le quisiesse por
marido y que fuesse comigo su
suçesor. Pero como yo tenía
puesto mi coraçon tan asentado
en Narçiso mi padre, los hechos
de Dares y su gentileza, ni ser
hijo de Rey no me mouia la

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The Trace Factory

ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

© ISTE Ltd 2020

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019954215

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Chapter 1. The Mediatized Trace of the Social World,

Chapter 2. The Schema of the Trace, a Paradoxical Semiotics . . . . . . . . 31

2.3. From the archetype of the trace to its theoretical status . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Chapter 3. The Complex Genesis of the Written Trace . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Chapter 4. The Emerging Trace of the Media Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

4.3. Writing in the future perfect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213

Questioning the Evidence

It is indeed a question of working together. This book is a personal contribution

It is thus by taking part in series of research projects developed within the

In this fertile scientific polyphony I have chosen, for my part, to focus on a

1 This term is discussed in section 1.3.

I have, therefore, chosen to work in this book to construct an explicit

The Mediatized Trace of the Social

“[…] the historical elaboration of the resources and challenges of

The Trace Factory, First Edition. Yves Jeanneret.

Nevertheless, it is a question of taking these constructs seriously, of not treating

In short, the difficulty I encounter here was perfectly expressed by Roland

“[…] we constantly sail between the object and its demystification,

1.1. There are traces and traces

precise examination of the transformations undergone by the idea of trace when it

1.1.1. The avatars of a trace of use

6 The concept is further defined in section 1.1.2.

10 Available at: https://www.tripadvisor.fr/ShowUserReviews-g187793-d195266-r430310166-

1.1.2. Metamorphoses of the trace

12 Available at: http://www.aa-partners.com/webmuseo-solution-logicielle-pour-les-collections.

1.1.3. Mediation, mediatization, device

Let us summarize. We have observed three major discontinuities. Firstly, there is

At this point, it is necessary to establish a clear vocabulary in order to explore

that he wishes to get to know as quickly as possible. Hence the origin

Here, we see the publisher referring to an older professional practice of

As mentioned above, the processes by which an object is assigned the status of a

1.2.1. From book to reading

In recent decades, the history of books has undergone a major transformation

We read alone or in groups, aloud or in silence, in extenso or in fragments, etc.

“[…] the history of books can no longer avoid readings, partly

“Traces by the thousands are the dream of every researcher… We feel

“Through reading, two topographies seek an impossible encounter: the

1.2.2. A constellation of categories

This first network of categories allows us to specify the analysis. When

1.2.3. Structural difficulties

reading and the inventiveness of practices. However, as a result, inscription is not

However, such an interaction can only be assumed without being really

22 These issues are discussed in more detail in Chapter 3.

1.3. Relevance and efficiency

To conclude this journey devoted to the construction of a research object, I

1.3.1. The evasive relevance of the trace

To clarify this approach, it is useful to situate it in relation to that proposed by

What justifies this methodical construction is the fact, which is immediately

As such, Leleu-Merviel’s analysis is controversial, in the sense given to this term

“systems only contain clusters of brand-data without horizons of relevance”, it

This critical model – which participates in the collective theoretical dialogue

Leleu-Merviel evokes this “trivial” conception of the trace by commenting on

“[…] the quantitative measurement of audiences is everywhere, a very

1.3.2. An efficient figure of relevance

(basic corpus building technique): afterwards, connecting myself to a social

Nevertheless, these mechanisms are multiplying and a relative social consensus