A sociological view on Sartre’s “Érostrate” and deviance

Abstract

This article explores Jean‐Paul Sartre’s short story “Érostrate,” in Le mur (1939), through sociology—an area of inquiry he apparently neglected or so misjudged by the critique, at least until Critique de la raison dialectique (1960). However, his early fictions are infused with perceptive views of selfhood creation and role relationships that present intriguing avenues with interactionist sociology and staged socialization. Role models opted for by Sartre’s antihero, Paul Hilbert, stem from publicized faits‐divers (“news items”) and the dark perpetrator from Antiquity, Erostratus. The study goal is aimed at existential situations anticipated in Sartre’s interwar writings and later theorized by Erving Goffman and Anthony Giddens. It is directed toward the comprehension of deviant individuals who resort to violence for life resolution and public attention.

Existentialising existence theory and expanding the sociology of existential milestones

“…Craib (1976) has suggested that the early Sartre is close to Goffman's focus on role-playing in social relations (also Ashworth, 1985), while the later Sartre offers a sociologically fertile typology of social formations. One can claim, as does Dalmas (2020), that Sartre was already developing a kind of sociology in his literary works of the late 1930s, implicitly ranged against the Durkheimian orthodoxies of the time, work in which anomie was presented as pure hopelessness for the individual, but alienation was understood as a force that the individual could productively struggle against (Hayim, 1980). Perhaps that insight could be resurrected in both 'existence theory' and the study of milestones.…”