Life Writing as Micropolitics: Prussian CVs at the Dawn of Bureaucratic Meritocracy

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the late eighteenth century, European administrations saw the emergence of the Curriculum Vitae (CV) as a medium for job applications. These developments led civil servants who applied for employment to write about the merits of their careers. Focusing on Prussia and drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of ‘micropolitics’, I argue that the ‘meritocratisation’ of the civil service produced a competitive climate that prompted micropolitical coping strategies. Applicants used diverging ‘lines of writing’ to question the prevailing bureaucratic value system. In doing so, candidates tried to soften meritocratic rules to the maximum and shifted them in their favour. By recounting family hardships, strokes of fate, or undue career advancements of competitors, applicants legitimised the failing of their own careers and demanded professional re-compensation. The life writing exhibited in application letters and CVs was less about constructing an identity or producing meaning rather than strategically affecting the politics of advancement and career progression. The lives that are preserved in personnel files today were brought to writing only because applicants had a material interest in their integration into the bureaucratic apparatus.