Writing as a Religious <i>Lieu de Savoir</i>

Abstract

Taking its start from the analysis of the notion savoir-pouvoir in Foucault's philosophical work, the article discusses the applicability of the concept lieux de savoir in the study of writing activities in late medieval France and Italy performed by non-professional vernacular scribes. The act of copying a text is evaluated as an active contribution to the dissemination of religious texts. It is approached as a social act and process, which creates a communication circuit facilitating the flow of information within a textual community created by the very same act of writing. The approach to lieu de savoir as an activity, in which a process-oriented methodology is preferred to a material one, paves the way for new applications of the concept, in which the spaces, the objects and the actors are studied in a continuous exchange and dynamic.