Modernity and presentism: the writing of history in front of the experiences of time

• Grant number: 12/15741-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: November 01, 2012
• End date: May 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Theory and Philosophy of History
• Principal Investigator: Sara Albieri
• Grantee: Francine Iegelski
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 13/18182-8 - Modernity and presentism: the history writing under the experiences over time, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

The publication in the last thirty years of important works on the nature of historical knowledge and on the methods used in the writing of History indicates an increasingly experience of the "temptation of epistemology" among professional historians. For our investigation of such times of theoretical thinking, we shall devote more attention to the important works of two historians, Reinhart Koselleck and François Hartog, who made their questions about time the very way to understand History. If it is true that the works of Hartog and Koselleck may be approximated by the attention devoted to the connections between time and History, it is also true that they have different ideas of time and different historiographical projects. While Koselleck's theoretical reflections on history aim to give epistemological foundations to a discipline that carries within itself the seal of modernity, Hartog is trying to think what can be done of History when it escapes the modern Western regime of historicity that gave it its forms and was strengthened by it. Our work is installed precisely on the tension between these interpretations of experiences of the present time and writing of History: modernity and presentism. But we do not benefit from either: our aim is to explore the questions and assumptions of these two types of relation between time and History to understand what are their possibilities and limits and show how Koselleck and Hartog's different diagnoses of the present time impact on historiography. (AU)