The inflation of the word "inquiry" in contemporary discourses on literature invites us to question the insistent presence of practices that are the object of unprecedented visibility and recognition. Recourse to inquiry, as a practice and as a word, can thus be part of an effective strategy - whether conscious or not - for asserting oneself in the literary field, which invites us to study it as part of a dominant discourse, or one that is in the process of becoming so. It's in this sense that we can speak of an "investigative effect", for it's not simply a question of writers conducting investigations, but of saying so, and taking note of a transformation in the way we think about literature as part of a global economy of discourse. The term "inquiry" among contemporary writers thus covers a double paradigm of investigation, which the article brings to light using the example of Olivier Cadiot's Histoire de la littérature récente, and then examines the relationship between contemporary literature and the scientific model of inquiry and the methods of the social sciences.