Towards a Cultural Approach to the French World of Intelligence

The world of intelligence combines an internal bureaucratic dimension with a large capacity to produce multiple narratives, imaginaries and fantasies. Secrecy, the anthropological pivot of the domain, constitutes the powerful engine of these socio-cultural and political proliferations. By exposing the triple relation of culture and intelligence and the recent evolution of the relations between fiction and the worlds of intelligence in France, this programmatic article underlines in conclusion the interest of a history and a cultural anthropology of these stakes between the worlds of intelligence, culture and popular imaginary in the French context.