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Those Present in History. Historians’ Trajectories: Places, Practices, Writings (P(H)IST)

Those Present in History. Historians’ Trajectories:  Places, Practices, Writings (P(H)IST)

Here and elsewhere, the past is written in the present. History belongs not only to historians but also to the producers of history, who include historians of course, but also artists, novelists, and filmmakers. This research explores the category of the present based on the idea that the present is not limited to the immediate moment. The research chair that Pierre Nora held at the EHESS after 1978 and from which he wrote the seven volumes of Realms of Memory, was originally titled “the history of the present”, just as since 1978 there has been the Institut d’histoire du temps present (l’IHTP). Yet this shows that this present has a depth that cannot be limited to contemporary history. Events from far in the past may take on urgent meaning in the current day, revealing the heterochrony of time, too long considered as a successive, linear, and supposedly causal order, that some have called, “the hell of consecution”. In the minds of Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre, for whom the past and the present shed mutual light on each other, history is not the science of the past, but the science of the past in the present, as Henri-Irénée Marrou emphasized as early as the 1950s. This historic present takes on a temporal depth which produces an opacity that must be examined more closely. The present time must thus be examined as an in between, a study of the past trapped in the present. This present time cannot be seen as an additional period, but a new gaze, a new conception of historiographical work. It is this new gaze that this project sets out to examine. This investigation of the interplay of temporalities is not limited to professional historians, but also questions the way artists, writers, and filmmakers use time.

Project managers

François DOSSE , Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP) - UMR 8244

Caroline GALLAND , Université Paris Nanterre - Centre d'histoire des sociétés Médiévales et Modernes (MéMo)

Patrick GARCIA , Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP) - UMR 8244

Frédérique LANGUE , Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP) - UMR 8244

Bertrand MÜLLER , CNRS - Centre Maurice Halbwachs

Internal cluster partners

  • CNRS
  • Institut d'histoire du temps présent
  • Centre d’histoire des sociétés Médiévales et Modernes (MéMo)

Associated partners

Centre Maurice Halbwachs
https://www.cmh.ens.fr/

Laboratoire AGORA - EA 7392, Université de Cergy-Pontoise
http://www.u-cergy.fr/fr/laboratoires/agora.html

Duration

1 year

Keywords

présent, Passé, présentisme, temporalité, possibles temporels