Using Autobiographies for a 
Sociology of Mountaineering
Delphine Moraldo
École normale supérieure de Lyon, Centre Max Weber, 33 rue André Bollier, 69007 Lyon
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6760-1949
delphine.moraldo@ens-lyon.fr
Since the beginning of mountaineering, mountaineers have produced a vast 
literary canon. Amongst these texts, autobiographies hold a special place: 
although they are much more common in mountaineering than perhaps in any 
other sport, they appeared much later than the first mountaineering accounts 
of ascents and expeditions, which have been available at least since the 1840s. 
This article addresses two questions. First, why have mountaineers written so 
many autobiographies, but only since the 1920s? And second, is this material 
relevant if we want to carry out a valid sociological analysis of mountaineering, 
and more particularly of excellence in mountaineering? The article shows that 
autobiographies present relevant, even ideal material for a sociological study of 
excellence in mountaineering. Indeed, they are characterized by a discourse of 
excellence produced by an elite (both sporting and, to a certain extent, social elite), 
a discourse that can tell us a lot about the so-called spirit of mountaineering.
Keywords: sociology of literature / literature and alpinism / mountaineering literature / 
autobiography / excellence / elitism 
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Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 45.1 (2022)
Introduction
Since its earliest stages, mountaineering as a practice has captured the 
imagination and generated stories. It has been surrounded by a dense 
literary output following its inception and gradual institutionalization 
in the United Kingdom in the 1850s and in France in the 1870s—the 
two countries on which my research for this article was conducted. At 
first, this production focused on other aspects than the sport of moun-
taineering itself, such as scientific reports and poetic writings. It then 
increasingly came to deal with the activity itself through accounts of 
ascents and expeditions (see Perret). The first autobiographies, centered 
on the climber’s career and his or her most important ascents, were 
published by the British in the 1920s. Since then, autobiographies 
have been continuously published: I have counted over 70 such texts 
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for the period 1920–2015 in France and Great Britain. This is a high 
number when compared to the number of autobiographies published 
in other sports, by any count (see Buisine; Perret; Artiaga; Moraldo, 
“Analyser”).
Why is this so? And, as social scientists, how can we use this singular 
material? These are the two questions I will try to address in this article. 
The first question immediately situates mountaineering as a singular 
practice in relation to other sports. The second is a more methodologi-
cal reflection which leads us to a questioning of the validity of this 
atypical material, a material which at least French sociologists have 
tended to frown upon.
My work on the sociological use of autobiographies has roots in 
my doctoral research project, which has resulted in a dissertation (see 
Moraldo, Sommets) and more recently a book (see Moraldo, L’esprit). 
In this research, I have focused on excellence in mountaineering—that 
is, the elite among the mountaineers—since its inception in mid-nine-
teenth century in Britain. I have examined the ways in which a so-
called spirit of mountaineering—a body of ethical rules and an esprit de 
corps—was invented, and remained over time, despite all the changes 
that have affected mountaineering, including democratization, femi-
nization, and professionalization. My research shows that this spirit 
of mountaineering still governs the ways in which mountaineering is 
practiced nowadays in the United Kingdom and France. I have ana-
lyzed 72 autobiographies of British and French mountaineers pub-
lished between 1920 and 2014, that is to say, all the autobiographies 
of great French and British mountaineers published before 2015. As 
a complement to this autobiographical material, I have also used as 
sources sociological interviews, ascent accounts, articles from moun-
taineering magazines, and obituaries.
Autobiographies as a Portal to Discourses of Excellence
Among the narratives produced by mountaineers, autobiographies and 
climbing accounts are two particularly common types of self-discourse. 
Autobiographies in particular prove to present interesting material for 
studying excellence in mountaineering.
In high-profile sports such as football, autobiographies sometimes 
represent a means of accessing a population of inaccessible people (see 
Juskowiak and Nuytens). Similarly, but for different reasons, it was a 
question of inaccessibility that led me to the use of autobiographies in 
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
29
the first place: given the object of my research, namely the (self-)dis-
courses of mountaineers, many of which had long since passed away, 
and the long historical time-frame I was interested in (150 years), auto-
biographies at first seemed to be a practical means of accessing much 
of the information which would have been otherwise unavailable. 
However, this primary, essentially practical reason was quickly rele-
gated to the background. Indeed, autobiographical material has proved 
to have an unsuspected richness for studying excellence in mountain-
eering, particularly from a longitudinal perspective. Thus, from belong-
ing to default material autobiographies quickly became a central and 
indispensable tool in my work. This idea requires further clarification.
A Literary Production Reserved for an Elite
Autobiographies are a form of literary production reserved for a cer-
tain mountaineering elite: very few minor mountaineers (if we can call 
them that) publish autobiographies for a wide audience, and the few 
who have done so have been excluded from my corpus. There are sev-
eral reasons for this.
First, this type of publication is often justified and legitimized by 
the achievement of extraordinary feats: one does not write a moun-
taineering autobiography without having unpublished episodes to tell. 
This does not mean, as I will show later, that this criterion is sufficient. 
Specific social conditions are also necessary to engage in autobiographi-
cal writing.
Second, mountaineering is a specific activity in that it requires the 
prowess of its practitioners to be narrated in order to receive validation 
within their peer group, and for the feats to thus be recognized into 
existence. Indeed, since its beginnings, mountaineering has been made 
visible through narrative. In a way, a new ascent only exists insofar as it 
is told afterwards, with sufficiently clear and numerous details to sup-
port the claim. For those who wish to have their exploits recognized 
and validated by their peers, the absence of judges or spectators means 
that they have to relate, in one way or another, the climbs they have 
made. Hence the strong propensity of elite mountaineers to publish.
Finally, the way in which mountaineering is practiced lends itself 
well to written narration. As an activity close to exploration, and unlike 
standardized sports, mountaineering allows for relatively varied narra-
tives: the places where the action takes place are always different, cap-
ture the imagination, and usually require detailed description; the out-
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come is often uncertain; the risks are high; etc. Moreover, unlike more 
institutionalized sports, where all the work and actors who contributed 
to the making of the heroes are visible, the mountaineer can give the 
impression of having become who he is, and of having accomplished 
remarkable feats, alone. Autobiography is a form that corresponds par-
ticularly well to this representation of the individual, and which in turn 
helps to validate it.
That being said, if one must be a member of the mountaineering 
elite to publish an autobiography, it is less clear that the authors of 
autobiographies are representative, in social and gender terms, of the 
mountaineering elite as a group. This question is fundamental: indeed, 
it is one of the conditions for approaching autobiographies as valid 
empirical material for studying excellence in mountaineering. To 
address this concern, I have sought, throughout my research, to iden-
tify according to objective criteria, decade by decade, who the most 
important mountaineers of each period were (e.g., those who achieved 
the greatest ascents, or the greatest number of ascents), thus recon-
structing an elite of mountaineers since the 1850s. Using this method, 
the elite comprises 364 mountaineers. What I found is that when the 
social properties of this (reconstitution of the) elite are compared with 
those of all the authors of autobiographies, the two are extremely, and 
surprisingly, similar. I say surprisingly because my population of auto-
biographers was not constituted with a view to being representative. 
This allowed me to consider, with all due caution, that what was found 
in the autobiographies was representative, in a way, of the discourse and 
views of the great mountaineers in general (as a group), and reflected 
their conceptions of excellence and, more generally, what I have called 
the spirit of mountaineering.
“Mountaineering” Autobiographies—Not Autobiographies “of 
Mountaineers”
Another reason why autobiographies quickly became a central and in-
dispensable source material in my research is because they are above all 
texts about “mountaineering”: they are life stories centered on moun-
taineering and in which the other social roles and statuses of their au-
thors are obscured. The writers tend to present themselves as “moun-
taineers” above all, giving the impression of a life exclusively devoted to 
mountaineering. This reduction of the author of an autobiography to 
one aspect alone, this coherence, which has been strongly criticized in 
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
31
sociology (see Bourdieu 69–72), is not, however, detrimental to a so-
ciological analysis of mountaineering excellence. On the contrary, the 
very fact that elite mountaineers produce this type of discourse reveals 
something about their relationship with an activity that is primary in 
their eyes. Moreover, these discourses indicate a lot about excellence 
in mountaineering, since they are texts in which their authors develop 
both their trajectories—within the mountaineering elite—and their 
conceptions—that is, their definition of excellence in mountaineering. 
The research for my book (see Moraldo, L’esprit) was thus shielded 
from the dangers of the so-called biographical illusion—the disparity 
between an individual’s outward discourse and his or her (often unthe-
matized) social reality—because the forms of official discourse carried 
on by a social elite about itself were precisely what I sought to access.
Although this presents relevant material for studying excellence, it 
is not the only type of source used in my research: accounts of ascents, 
biographies, obituaries, articles from Alpine journals from the 1850s 
onwards, but also interviews (15 in total) conducted with living moun-
taineers, were analyzed.
Objectivizing Autobiography
Prior to analyzing their content, autobiographies written by mountain-
eers ought to be rigorously objectified: reinscribing this material in the 
historical and social frameworks that make it possible and give it mean-
ing is necessary in order to understand what it can—and does—tell us. 
But this sociological work of objectification is not a mere preliminary 
to the so-called real stage of analysis: it already tells us a lot about excel-
lence in mountaineering and its spirit.
The Historical Conditions for the Emergence of Mountaineering 
Autobiographies
First and foremost, it is necessary to put the mountaineering autobi-
ography back into its historical context by asking how this type of self-
discourse could appear among mountaineers in the first place.
The autobiographical genre, whose founding text is arguably Saint 
Augustine’s Confessions, developed progressively during the Middle 
Ages and the Renaissance, before taking off at the end of the eigh-
teenth century (see Grève). In the nineteenth century, the genre spread 
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throughout Europe. In France and the United Kingdom, a number of 
writers and essayists wrote their autobiographies. These make up the 
majority of the texts listed by Philippe Lejeune in his “repertoire” of 
autobiographies (Lejeune 11). Autobiography was thus already a well-
established genre in the nineteenth century, when mountaineering was 
at its early beginnings.
However, the first autobiographies of mountaineers appear much 
later. While the first compilations of mountaineering stories by Alpine 
Club members were published in the 1840s,1 the first mountaineering 
autobiography, Mountain Memories by Martin Conway (1856–1937), 
appeared in 1920 and was followed in the same decade by no less than 
five other similar texts: The Making of a Mountaineer by George I. 
Finch (1888–1970) in 1924, The Mountains of Youth by Arnold Lunn 
(1888–1974) in 1925, On High Hills by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young 
(1876–1958) in 1927, and Day In, Day Out by Elizabeth Aubrey-Le 
Blond (1861–1934) in 1928. In France, the situation is different. 
The first mountaineering autobiography was Vocation alpine (Alpine 
Calling) by Armand Charlet (1900–1975), published in 1949. It was 
not until 1961 that Les conquérants de l’inutile (Conquistadors of the 
Useless) by Lionel Terray (1921–1965) was published. Pierre Puiseux 
(1855–1928) and Micheline Morin (1900–1972) had certainly pub-
lished mountain memories, the former in 1928 with Où le père a passé 
(Where Father Went), and the latter in 1936 with Encordée (On the 
Rope), but both were compilations of accounts of climbs rather than 
autobiographies. We are therefore faced with what appears to be a 
British specificity: the early appearance of autobiographies. Two ques-
tions can be asked at this point: the question of the gap between France 
and the United Kingdom in terms of published autobiographies, and 
the question of the late appearance among mountaineers of a literary 
genre that was already established elsewhere.
The differences in autobiographical production in the two countries 
ought to be considered in relation to the different roles mountaineer-
ing had played within the two national sports spheres before the inter-
war period, and can be read in the light of the respective dominant 
definitions of the activity in the two countries. My research was able 
to show that the appearance of these mountaineering autobiographies 
(that is, autobiographies centered on mountaineering) was conditioned 
1 These include James Forbes’ Travel through the Alps of Savoy (1843) and the Peaks, 
Passes and Glaciers volumes published by the Alpine Club from 1859 onwards, before 
the bestselling mountaineering stories such as Leslie Stephen’s The Playground of Europe 
(1871) and Edward Whymper’s Scrambles amongst the Alps (1871) were published.
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
33
by the possibility of gaining social standing from mountaineering and, 
more simply, by the fact that it became possible to declare oneself to 
be a mountaineer as a principal undertaking rather than as a secondary 
activity. In other words, writing autobiographies became possible when 
mountaineering as an activity became respectable enough to be more 
than a mere leisure activity or hobby. In France, until the 1920s, moun-
taineering remained a “cultivated excursionism,” a “cultivated practice 
not unlike the activity of learned societies,” a practice focused on the 
scientific or contemplative dimensions of mountaineering rather than 
its conquering and sporting dimension (Hoibian 56). In this context, 
it was rare to see people devote more time to mountaineering than one 
would to a leisure activity, and the profit to be made from mountain-
eering exploits (which were quite rare among the French) were small. 
In the United Kingdom, on the other hand, mountaineering was insti-
tutionalized earlier, from the 1850s onward, and the so-called golden 
age of British mountaineering (1856–1865) was characterized by the 
emergence of a sporty and conquering mountaineering against a back-
drop of British imperialism. This culminated in the Everest expeditions 
of the 1920s (see Ellis). Two of the early authors of autobiographies, 
Martin Conway and George Finch, published their books after their 
respective Himalayan expeditions (Conway went to the Karakoram as 
early as 1890, and Finch took part in the Everest expedition in 1922). 
Such a definition of mountaineering creates a space for the autobio-
graphical production, limited, granted, to the best mountaineers, those 
who have joined the ranks of national heroes together with the great 
British explorers of the period. This is one reason why autobiographies 
focused on mountaineering appeared in the United Kingdom from 
the 1920s onwards. Another possible reason could be that, before the 
1920s, it was still not acceptable in the United Kingdom to give too 
much importance to an activity that was not one’s profession, let alone 
to write memoirs centered on this activity. As mountaineers were pro-
fessionals (businessmen, teachers, lawyers, diplomats), it would have 
been undignified, especially in the Victorian era, to present oneself first 
and foremost as a mountaineer.2 Leslie Stephen (1832–1904), a major 
mountaineer of the golden age and author of the bestselling book The 
Playground of Europe (1871), thus published several articles, but these, 
2 Even though accounts of climbs were published, their titles emphasized the 
fact that mountaineering remained a secondary activity, reserved for free time: The 
Playground of Europe (Stephen), Scrambles amongst the Alps (Whymper), Wandering 
amongst the High Alps (Wills), Norway, the Northern Playground (Slingsby), Summer 
Months among the Alps (Hinchliff), Hours of Exercises in the Alps (Tyndall), etc.
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although his mountaineering activity can sometimes be mentioned in 
them, are mainly devoted to his professional and intellectual career. 
Similarly, in Penultima, the memoir published by Alfred Hopkinson 
(1851–1939) in 1920, mountaineering takes a minor place when com-
pared to his professional career as a professor of law and headmaster of 
Owens College.
The rise of mountaineering autobiographies in the United Kingdom 
in the 1920s can thus be explained by a combination of several factors: a 
favorable ideological and political context, including the unique access 
to Everest, the imperialist aim of the first expeditions to the Himalaya, 
encouraged by institutions such as the Royal Geographical Society 
(see Ellis), and the revaluation of the figure of the explorer; the pres-
ence of institutions both old (the Alpine Club, the Royal Geographical 
Society) and new (the Everest Committee); and the action of the media 
in disseminating the exploits of mountaineers and creating a reader-
ship. Mountaineering had thus become so popular that it was possible 
for mountaineers, at last, to publish their life stories without tarnishing 
their image.
Later, for the generation of mountaineers born in the 1920s in par-
ticular, it was France that dominated autobiographical production. 
This reversal corresponds historically to a renewal of the dominant defi-
nitions of mountaineering in both countries, marked in particular by 
the great post-war era of French Himalayanism, following the ascent of 
Annapurna in 1950, which consecrated the mountaineers as national 
heroes. An important element must be added, though, namely the 
growing media coverage of mountaineering which opened up a kind 
of market of testimonies that was seized upon by mainstream publish-
ing houses. This phenomenon is particularly visible in France, where 
mountaineering autobiography took off as the result of the media cov-
erage of Himalayan expeditions. Additionally, editorial constraints and 
the organization of the publishing field are elements that influence 
autobiographical production as well.
Finally, mountaineering narratives emerged when it became legiti-
mate to present oneself as a mountaineer first and foremost, which did 
not happen until the 1920s in the United Kingdom and the 1960s 
in France. Subsequently, the publication of an autobiography became 
commonplace among the best mountaineers. As a result, in some cases, 
autobiography came to resemble what it is in other sports: a medium 
for self-promotion and a way to profit from a career. The age of moun-
taineers when they published their autobiography is an indicator of 
these new functions of autobiography and, in short, of the profession-
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
35
alization of mountaineering. The earlier the climber publishes his or 
her autobiography, the more likely it is that the aim is to gain noto-
riety, especially for the latest generation of professional climbers who 
have to manage their media image. While the average age at which an 
autobiography is published in any period is around 50 years (47.3 years 
in the United Kingdom and 50.1 years in France), this average age 
decreases over time (see Figure 1). This decrease has another indirect 
consequence: the increase in the number of autobiographies published 
in recent decades. Indeed, to publish at a young age is to avoid the risk 
of dying in the mountains before having had the chance to write the 
autobiography. The generalization of Himalayanism has contributed to 
the increase in this risk, just as it encourages a truly vocational invest-
ment in mountaineering among the latest generations.
Figure 1. The age at which climbers publish their autobiographies. Autobiography 
base (N=62). In grey the British, in black the French.
We can thus see that both the ways in which autobiographies appear 
and the different functions that they can take on (from a strategy of 
achieving notoriety to a disinterested discourse) should be put in rela-
tion to their historical and social conditions of enunciation. In this 
sense, it is important to bear in mind that a mountaineer’s autobiog-
raphy obtains a different meaning and different stakes depending on 
whether it is written in the 1920s or in the 1980s, by a middle-class 
amateur or by a professional mountaineer, in old age or at an early age. 
It is therefore essential to restore, as far as possible, its exact frameworks 
of enunciation in order to better understand its function and to appre-
hend it for what it is.
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The Social Conditions of Possibility of the Autobiography
Among these frames of enunciation, the author’s background and gen-
der should also be taken into account. Among the authors of autobiog-
raphies, there is an over-representation of men (89% of authors from 
both countries) and of mountaineers from privileged backgrounds 
compared to their share in the general population (around 70% of 
British authors and almost 50% of French authors).
This over-representation leads us to question of the properties that 
might give the mountaineer a sense of entitlement that leads to writing 
and publishing about himself. Does this sense of legitimacy come from 
the social, sporting, or literary sphere? At the end of what type of life 
trajectory does it appear?
Regarding the trajectory, writing is legitimized by an exceptional, 
exemplary, sporting career that is deemed worthy of interest; in a word, 
an excellent career. The justification of the autobiographical enterprise 
in terms of the transformation or conversion of the self in the course 
of one’s life (see Poliak 9) is implicitly present in the texts, as they tell 
the story of this transformation. The exemplary dimension inherent in 
the autobiographical project explains, once again, the rarity of accounts 
by ordinary mountaineers and the proximity of the social and gender 
composition of the population of autobiographical authors to that of 
great mountaineers.
When it comes to the social properties and skills that preside over 
the autobiographical enterprise, one condition appears to be necessary: 
one has to possess the literary skills and social dispositions that allow 
one to feel authorized to write and publish a life story (see Lahire). 
Because of phenomena of self-selection of a social or gendered nature 
(see Poliak 11; Bertaux 215; Peneff 56), mountaineering legitimacy 
alone is not enough. Being a man (rather than a woman) or a bourgeois 
(rather than a member of the working class), however great a moun-
taineer one may be, are two factors that make writing and publishing 
more likely.
Finally, being a great mountaineer who has written an autobiogra-
phy requires two conditions to be fulfilled: to have accomplished feats 
that make one part of the mountaineering elite, and to have the liter-
ary skills and social dispositions to feel entitled to write and publish a 
life story. The combination of these two effects can be seen in the case 
of female climbers. Their under-representation in the autobiographi-
cal corpus reflects their dominated position in mountaineering: to be 
implicitly accepted as part of the elite, they must demonstrate an excep-
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
37
tional sporting level, that is, they must not only be better than other 
women but also equal to the best men (see Moraldo, “Women”). This 
may explain why there are no women from working-class backgrounds 
among the authors of autobiographies, as they have a double deficit 
of legitimacy, one based in gender and the other one in class. Among 
men from working-class backgrounds who belong to the mountaineer-
ing elite, it is above all a deficit of literary legitimacy that may hinder 
a possible autobiographical project. From this point of view, if authors 
from working-class backgrounds are not under-represented compared 
to their proportion in the mountaineering elite, it is also because their 
upwardly mobile sporting trajectory is often coupled with a literary 
acculturation, often caused or triggered by the reading of mountain-
eering stories, which can act as an entry point to reading in general 
and then to writing. The acculturation of working-class climbers can 
also take place through contact with other climbers and, for guides, 
with their clients from privileged backgrounds (see Moraldo, Sommets). 
Another reason stems from the construction of the autobiographical 
corpus: to get more data, I have chosen to include the four autobiog-
raphies written with the help of a co-author: it happened that they are 
all autobiographies of mountaineers from working-class backgrounds 
who did not undertake secondary education, namely Don Whillans 
(1933–1985), Robert Flematti (1942–), Pierre Leroux (1921–2005), 
and Benoit Chamoux (1961–1995).
The social properties of the authors also depend on their generation, 
and must be seen in the light of what has been said above about the 
historical objectification of autobiographies. For example, while almost 
all writers born before 1914 belong to the social and intellectual elite 
(90%), post-war climbers are more often from the working class, in 
relation to the changes in the meaning of mountaineering autobiogra-
phies: it is increasingly sanctioned solely by sporting success. Women, 
on the other hand, are still in the minority among the authors of auto-
biographies: gender remains the last bastion. There is much to be said 
about the evolution of literary style, the episodes chosen, and the length 
of the texts, all of which testify to a decline in literary skills over time.
Bad Material or Bad Uses?
If autobiography could appear to be an ideal material for capturing 
what I have called the spirit of mountaineering, that is, the rules and 
representations which govern a so-called excellent practice and which 
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are shared by all elite mountaineers, this material is viewed with suspi-
cion by sociologists, as they prefer sociological interviews.
The first reason is that autobiographies do not belong to material 
generated by the sociologist: indeed, he or she does not control their 
production. The second reason, linked to the first, is that autobiogra-
phies hold the reputation to be more biased than other materials. The 
usual criticisms of the autobiographical process thus concern its propen-
sity to generate illusions that make it unsuitable for sociological use: a 
“referential illusion” concerning the veracity of the text; a “biographical 
illusion” (Bourdieu; Bertaux 213), denouncing an ex post reconstruction 
of the author’s trajectory, seen solely from the point of arrival.
False Criticisms of Autobiography
In my view, these are false objections: reality is always considered in 
retrospect, through the prism of a discourse, regardless of the way in 
which the information is collected. Such a reconstruction is inevitable. 
It is even indispensable to the narrative endeavor itself. Gérard Mauger 
points out that it would be just as illusory to think that a lived life 
could be exempt from narration, and reminds us that the so-called self 
is already a biographical institution (Mauger 35).
On the other hand, to address the specific objection of referential 
illusion, there is, in a practice such as mountaineering, a cross-checking 
by peers that lessens the possibility of lying, as it were. The publicity 
of the autobiography thus brings into play, as in the case of the soci-
ologists studied by Jean-Philippe Bouilloud, the “recognition” of the 
author “by those he recognizes” (Bouilloud 60), and must propose a 
public version of the facts considered to be accurate.
The question is not so much whether the material is in itself or natu-
rally good material—it is not about modelling on autobiographies the 
procedures and expectations in terms of sociological knowledge that 
are those of tried and tested sociological methods and techniques (the 
interview in particular)—as it is to ask how it is questioned and what 
we can hope to find in it.
Mauger refers to autobiographies “from below”, written by workers 
who have experienced an upward social trajectory, as “undertakings of 
self-aggrandizement,” justified by the exemplary nature of a journey, 
by the knowledge acquired, and by the self-transformation brought 
about during this journey (Mauger 39). The same can be said of auto-
biographies of mountaineers: they are exemplary narratives and under-
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
39
takings of the so-called growth or heroization of the self. As a result, 
they are almost ideal for studying excellence: its values, its ideologies, 
its practices.
But even if the mountaineer were to lie (in terms of the referen-
tial illusion) or give a distorted vision of his or her existence because 
it is reconstructed according to the point of arrival (in terms of the 
biographical illusion), autobiographies would still provide useful mate-
rial. I believe that we should avoid these false questions and analyze 
the autobiography as both a factual discourse (not devoid of historical 
veracity) and a discourse of excellence and vocation, that is, a presenta-
tion of oneself as an elite mountaineer. Rather than sticking to a factual 
perspective aimed at comparing narrative and reality, the interest of 
the autobiography lies in the attempt at reconstruction it carries out, 
and in what this particular formatting reveals. In this respect, Nathalie 
Heinich’s argument seems relevant when she writes that “from a com-
prehensive perspective […], [the] narrative is part of the very matter of 
investigation: not only what makes it possible to understand, but also 
what must be understood” (Heinich 425)—provided, of course, that 
the discourse is articulated with the author’s social properties. In the 
study of mountaineering excellence, more than knowing which dis-
courses are supposed to be true, it is the image that the individual gives 
of himself and the way in which he reinterprets his trajectory, always 
put in relation to his social affiliations, and what this discourse tells 
us about the relationship (passionate, vocational, etc.) to the activity, 
that matters. As Mauger writes, in the autobiography, “the definition, 
necessarily relative, of the ‘essential’ and the ‘accessory’ is determined 
by the interests and problems of the author” (Mauger 43). It is precisely 
these interests and this problematic that I am interested in. In contrast 
to a critical sociology interested in revealing the truth hidden behind 
indigenous beliefs, and following Jacques Defrance’s suggestion that 
we “take seriously the discourses of disinterestedness and apoliticism of 
the agents of the sports field […] and adopt the anthropologist’s point 
of view as we study the beliefs or worldviews of a social group,” I want 
to consider the reconstruction carried out in the autobiography as a 
sociological object that tells us something about the ethos, beliefs, and 
representations of the mountaineers, but also about the factual course 
of their trajectories. This has been done, but without a consideration of 
these objects “as primary truths” or renouncing “any critical analysis of 
the role of the dominant” (Defrance 23).
PKn, letnik 45, št. 1, Ljubljana, maj 2022
40
The Three Functions of Autobiographies for a Sociological 
Analysis of Excellence
Hence, by considering autobiography as an exemplary narrative pro-
duced by an equally exemplary individual, one can consider autobiog-
raphy to fulfil the following functions, which are also conditions of its 
production.
The first function is to bear witness to the reality of mountaineering 
at a particular time. The mountaineer has the legitimacy to do this as an 
insider and privileged witness. This is why, at a first level of analysis, we 
can say that the autobiography constitutes a source of factual informa-
tion on the world of mountaineering. By cross-checking it with other 
sources (climbing stories, alpine journal articles, biographies), I have 
been able to draw up an accurate portrait of the ways in which moun-
taineering was practiced and considered over time.
The second function is to tell the story of an extraordinary life 
journey. As accounts of transformation and calling, autobiographies 
of mountaineers narrate trajectories, but in ways that must be objecti-
fied. By comparing these texts, I was able to reveal the main stages 
of a mountaineer’s career and its evolution over time. This, in turn, 
allowed me to show how mountaineering had gradually evolved from 
a so-called leisure activity to a truly vocational practice, requiring an 
always greater investment (in time, money, but also physical and men-
tal fitness).
The third function is to justify a place among peers, alongside the 
other elite mountaineers. By publishing an autobiography, the author 
asserts his or her status as an exemplary mountaineer. These texts thus 
partake in a discourse of distinction and entitlement, allowing one to 
justify one’s place in a group (the elite of mountaineering). By analyz-
ing the discourse, it is possible to bring out the representations, prin-
ciples, and rules, in particular the ethical rules, which govern the spirit 
of mountaineering.
Conclusion
This article set out to answer two questions: Why are mountaineers so 
keen on autobiographies? How can a sociologist legitimately use this 
atypical material? The answers to these questions relate to the question 
of excellence and, ultimately, to what constitutes the spirit of moun-
taineering. Autobiography is a discourse of excellence, produced by an 
Delphine Moraldo:     Using Autobiographies for a Sociology of Mountaineering
41
elite (both sporting and, to a certain extent, social elite), from the mo-
ment it became legitimate to exist as a mountaineer first and foremost. 
For those who want to analyze excellence, it is close to the ideal mate-
rial, provided that it is analyzed for what it is, and with the awareness 
that it does not say what it cannot say.
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Avtobiografije kot vir v sociologiji alpinizma
Ključne besede: sociologija literature / literatura in alpinizem / alpinistična literatura / 
avtobiografija / odličnost / elitizem
Vse od vznika alpinizma alpinisti in alpinistke s svojimi spisi vzpostavljajo obsežen 
literarni kanon. Med temi teksti imajo posebno mesto avtobiografije. Te so za 
alpinizem veliko značilnejše kakor nemara za kateri koli drug šport, a so se poja-
vile bistveno pozneje kakor prva alpinistična poročila o vzponih in odpravah, ki 
jih zasledimo že okrog leta 1840. Članek odgovarja na dve vprašanji. Prvič, zakaj 
alpinisti in alpinistke pišejo toliko avtobiografij, a šele od dvajsetih let 20. stoletja 
naprej? In drugič, je to gradivo lahko relevantno za sociološko analizo alpinizma 
in zlasti odličnosti v alpinizmu? Članek pokaže, da so avtobiografije relevantno in 
celo idealno gradivo za sociološko proučevanje odličnosti v alpinizmu. Gre namreč 
za diskurz odličnosti, ki ga proizvaja elita (in sicer športna in v določeni meri tudi 
družbena elita) in ki nam lahko veliko pove o tako imenovanem duhu alpinizma.
1.01 Izvirni znanstveni članek / Original scientific article
UDK 82.0:796.52
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3986/pkn.v45.i1.02