Pierre Vilar and Louis Althusser: a dialogue regarding historical knowledge production

• Grant number: 16/08241-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: August 01, 2017
• End date: May 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Theory and Philosophy of History
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Marcia Barbosa Mansor D'Alessio
• Grantee: Geise Targa de Souza
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The current project aims to be included among the studies in history of historiography. As our objects of investigation, we have chosen some works by the French historian Pierre Vilar, an exponent of the Annales School, and by the French-Algerian philosopher Louis Althusser. More than a critique, Vilar seeks a dialogue with Althusser, given that both are defend the explanatory potential of Marxism, compared to other analysis of reality. In spite of this common point, there are several divergences, which are, according to our hypothesis, oriented towards the definition of raw material for historical knowledge production, as defended by each of the two authors. The French context of the 1960s and the 1970s was chosen as a space-time delimitation for this study, since it encompasses many theoretical and political events that marked Marxist production in the 20th century. The dialogue between Vilar and Althusser still raises challenges, as it brings back the historiographical need to discuss the relation between theory and method and the scientific status of the discipline. (AU)