On a Possible Rivalry. Considerations on the Relationships Between Political Economy and Realistic Fiction in France in the First Nineteenth Century[D'une possible rivalité Considérations sur les relations entre l'économie politique et le récit réaliste dans la France du premier XIX e siècle]

The literary elites of the first nineteenth century willingly criticise the utilitarian footprint in political economy, a position that goes far beyond a mere condemnation, as in the case of Balzac. Indeed, the creator of La Comédie humaine denounces the claim of political economy to occupy a prominent place in the hierarchy of knowledge. This claim was then illustrated and transmitted by the pedagogical rhetoric of the liberal publicists. It is thus appropriate to study how the latter resort to fiction, not only to illustrate their theories, but also in terms of performative strategies with the aim of embodying theoretical principles and encouraging their mass adoption. In that, this form of narrative opposes to literary fiction, whose staging of the economy involves complex effects meant to express the profound changes engendered by the extension of capitalism. Modelling on the one hand, decrypting on the other: these two modes of setting the real into fiction are rivals, not only because they offer different conceptions of the human being, but mostly because they are two ways of representing the world; a strategic issue for the project of the moderns.