10.7340/anuac2239-625X-6063
application/pdf
2239-625X
6063
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urn:nbn:it:unica-29871
Lise Foisneau
Anuac
Patrick Williams, Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans, Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage…, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2022, pp. 601
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Book reviews
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2024-02-01
2023-12-31
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Lise Foisneau
2023/12/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-6063
179
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, France
2239-625X
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182
urn:nbn:it:unica-29871
Patrick Williams, Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans, Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage…, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2022, pp. 601
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                                      2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 2, Dicembre 2023: 179-182




                                                                         Recensioni

Patrick Williams | Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans,
Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage…, Paris,
Presses Universitaires de France, 2022, pp. 601.

   At the age of seven, Patrick Williams discovered the Mānuš world from the
counter of his grandmother, who ran a café in a small Creuse village1. At twen-
ty-one, he stepped through the door of a little house in Bagnolet and was
introduced to the world of the Parisian Roma. The choice of ethnology came
later. Drawn into the hustle of romani life, Williams made ethnographic writ-
ing his compass, a way of travelling between worlds. Tsiganes ou ces inconnus
qu’on appelle aussi Gitans, Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins,
Gens du voyage... is a declaration of love to anthropology and an inestimable
testimony of its critical power.
   Published posthumously, Williams’ latest work brings together in one vol-
ume the two books he finished writing in 2015. Originally self-published, the
work now appears under a single cover thanks to the editorial work of Mar-
tin Olivera and Jean-Luc Poueyto. The first opus, soberly entitled “Souvenirs”,
is a crossed ethnography in which two very distant worlds, that of Mānuš of
Creuse and that of Parisian Roma, respond to each other.
   As a child, Williams became friends with boys his own age, sons of Mānuš,
who sometimes stopped off in his village in Creuse. These childhood comrade-
ships developed into solid friendships as he grew out of adolescence. Nini, to
whom he dedicated his famous book on Mānuš («Nous, on n’en parle pas». Les
vivants et les morts chez les Manouches, Paris, Éditions de la MSH, 1993), would
take him on stormy expeditions to visit his scattered family, living in caravans
all over the Massif Central. These trips in an old navy-blue Peugeot van were
an opportunity to learn the Manouche language, spoken by his friends in their
territory between Limagne and Combraille. The roads travelled by Mānuš are

1.      This text was originally published in French in the journal En attendant Nadeau
(2022): https://www.en-attendant-nadeau.fr/2022/10/05/williams-tsiganes-inconnus/


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Lise Foisneau
2023 | Anuac. Vol. 12, n° 2, Dicembre 2023: 179-182.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-6063
180           Patrick Williams | Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans

punctuated by stories and fortuitous encounters: their outings were a time of
learning for the narrator and his fellow travelers. Although Nini and Williams’
friendship lasted a lifetime, a turning point came: Nini married into a Mānuš
family, Williams into a Roma family in Paris.
    The anthropologist’ entry into adulthood was marked by a new encounter:
with the Parisian Roma. While he was studying literature, he was introduced
to the Roma parižoske – we are not told how, it is one of the mysteries of the
book. Williams found himself thrown into a world very different from that of the
Mānuš living in Creuse. Very discreet about his marriage to Iultcha, a Parisian
Romni woman about whom the reader will know almost nothing, Williams gives
a detailed account of his tours in and around Paris with his Roma comrades. Af-
ter the muddy roads of the Creuse department, the narrator takes the reader to
the “north-north-west” suburbs of Paris: Montreuil, Bagnolet, Bondy, Sarcelles,
Saint-Denis, Courbevoie and so on. There was no planned itinerary to guide the
young men; it was luck (e bax) and visits to pubs that kept them wandering.
    These two narratives avoid the traps of the conventional ethnographic
present: Williams never shows us “the Gypsies”, but a small group of Mānuš
in Creuse in the Sixties and a company of Roma in Paris in the Seventies. This
first opus is therefore a monographic demonstration of how suspicious any
global discourse on “Gypsies” can be. Throughout his career, the anthropolo-
gist never stopped saying it in different ways: it is important to “consider each
community in a certain place and at a certain time”, and start the ethnograph-
ic work from scratch with each new encounter. In the author’s own words, the
“Souvenirs” book foreshadows all the themes addressed in the second, enti-
tled “Definitions”: “When I reread it, I have the feeling that I’ve written the
same book twice” (p. 15).
    The second volume of Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans,
Bohémiens, Roms, Gypsies, Manouches, Rabouins, Gens du voyage… is indeed a
theory of Romani diversity. Hence the importance of this long-winded title,
which the author describes as a “tintinnabulous ribambelle of labels” (p. 560).
Let’s not be fooled by the trompe-l’œil typography of the cover page which
displays the word “Gypsies”. The book’s central idea is to explore the recompo-
sitions of Romani worlds throughout various situations, and discuss whether
it is possible to speak of a totality and to give that totality a name. The so-
cial sciences and common sense use of categories such as “Gypsies”, “Roma”
and “Travellers” erases the singularity of those they are trying to name. For
over forty years, Williams was considered by the academic world to be the



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Patrick Williams | Tsiganes ou ces inconnus qu’on appelle aussi Gitans           181

“anthropologist of Gypsies”. Yet he leaves us with a curious legacy when he
writes that “Gypsies” are “neither an ethnic group nor a scientific category” (p.
381) – in short, that “Gypsies” exist only in our representations and prejudic-
es. Those who do exist, however, and with great intensity, are the “Slovensko
Roma, Gadjkene Mānuš, Travellers, Gitanos canasteros, Gitanos caseros, Rom
kalderaš, Rom čurara, Xoraxané Roma, Gammon Travellers, Cant Travellers,
Sinti piémontais, Sinte Eftavagaria, Valštike Mānuš, Gitanos catalanes, Tinkers,
Kaale, Calos, Calon Yéniš, Mugat, Nawars, Voyageurs, Rom lovara” (p. 413), etc.
   Patrick Williams teaches us that the twentieth century saw the invention of
the “Gypsy people”, who would later be called the “Romani people”. Based on the
thesis of “Indian origin” inspired by the linguistic discovery linking the romani
language to India in the 18th century, the Nazis were the first to give existence
to the “Zigeuner Volk”. Williams examines the paradox of a “’final solution’ as
the starting point not of a rebirth, but of a birth” (p. 361). After all, it was only
after the genocide that the idea of a “people” led to the emergence of a Romani
political movement. History also contributed in part to this fiction by writing a
“history of Gypsies/Roma”, when in reality it focuses only on the point of view
of states seeking to control heteronegeous groups. The political utopia of a “Ro-
mani people” itself remains far from the minds of local communities today, as
the author reminds us with some humour: “I remember the comment made by a
middle-aged Sinto to his cousin one evening during a peaceful conversation ‘by
the fire’ [...]: ‘Ah, did you see? Now they think we’re Roma!’” (p. 561).
   But how can one talk about parts if there is no totality? Referring to Peirce
and his theory of “unlimited semiosis” (Charles Sanders Peirce, Écrits sur le
signe. Textes choisis, Paris, Seuil, 1978), Williams highlights the co-signifi-
cation of the terms “Gypsies” and gadjé – those who are not “Roma” – as an
oppositional semantic pair. There is no point in trying to define one without
the other. As for the problem of the right name, it is insoluble. Well aware that
his answer will inevitably arouse astonishment “at a time when all minorities
declare themselves in need of recognition”, the anthropologist argues that a
human group does not need a name to exist. The totality is the one formed
together by “Gypsies and gadjé”, despite the tragic asymmetry of their history.
Williams delivers a critical lesson of humanity.

                                                                    Lise Foisneau
                               Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
                                                        lise.foisneau@gmail.com



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