Abstract:
In fact, we do not endeavor to disqualify any form of knowledge. We do not desire to repeat the discourse of self-sufficiency – critical with others – claiming that only this type of thinking knowledge is valid. Our intention consists in attracting attention onto the singular fact, onto the radical contingency we constantly meet in our daily lives. Consequently, we suggest the sociologist's training be oriented towards the capacity to identify a problem starting from a single fact, in other words, we request heeding minor knowledge. The large majority of graduates in sociology work with this kind of reality. Secondly, we try to prove that any kind of knowledge, including this minor knowledge, is part of a war and that it cannot raise above it. Put differently, that truth is relative to power and power relations. No one can maintain that the individual is saved if we regard him as an atom, as a statistical number. Usually, sociologists competent in problems of validation procedures obstinately avoid defining the significance an individual has within a sample. Within minor knowledge the possibility of hiding the fact that power endeavors to produce both the individual and the truth it needs, does not exist. In the case we are presenting, this minor knowledge found in travel diaries has generated some of the social representations onto which major political and historical decisions were founded. Thirdly, we want to state that we are witnessing the sociologist's dissimulation precisely because he is hiding a refuse and an abandonment.