As a commemoration of sort of Roland Barthes’s centennial, this paper explores the notion of ethnographic impulse in connection with the evolutions of both literature and the anthropological discourse in France in the 20th century. This notion is analyzed in comparison and contrast with another notion (which can be considered both as an analogue and a converse), namely that of “temptation.”Indeed, while Roland Barthes refers to his own “tentation ethnologique,” Pierre Bourdieu clearly states that social sciences need to resist any “tentation littéraire” – on both sides, the issue is framed in terms of impulse and resistance or repression. But is it the same logic in both cases? What exactly are those impulses that should be refrained? And on what grounds?