This paper seeks to examine the second part of the career, after the Second World War, of a French folklorist and anthropologist of France, recently “rediscovered”, André Varagnac (1894-1983). Using its personal archives, I attempt to link his scientific practices and positions to “universes of possibilities” available to him after 1945, in a period of important redefinition of anthropology of France. Without always reading chronologically his biographical trajectory, the aim is to show how disciplinary historiography, scientific career and historical contexts are interlocked in this case, allowing to understand its absence in the process of reconstruction of anthropology of France after the War.