Annotation et rature

• Main Author: Axel Pohn-Weidinger
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Laboratoire d'Ethnologie et de Sociologie Comparative 2012-05-01
• Series: Ateliers d'Anthropologie
• Subjects: access to rights; administrative record; form; ordinary writing; social housing
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/ateliers/9069

This text examines the graphical traces left on a collection of social housing application forms: annotations, erasures, crossed-out words and scribbled-out comments. The study of these traces, left in the margins of the categories on printed administrative forms in the process of being completed, shows the exercising of a right as a problematic operation. Citizens making applications must describe their living situation in a way that will establish their eligibility for a right, but quite often it is impossible to convey this through the form’s predetermined categories. The annotations and comments left on the form attempt to open the legal classification of situations to considering the uniqueness of the applicant’s living circumstances. They show the use of a right as an introspective accomplishment, requiring applicants to work both on their own perception of their situation and on that which the institution offers through the form, whose negotiation and implementation are at the heart of the production of administrative records.