Global Humanities Distinguished Lecture with François Hartog
(École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales)
The concept of History today
During the last two centuries, the word History has been one of the "crossroad" terms around which belief crystalized itself. But what do we mean when we utter the word History today? What do we (still) believe in? We must start by abandoning the prior meaning of the term: That modern notion of history written with a capital H which was launched and imposed by Europe and was charged with the progress of civilizations; which wanted to be, simultaneously, the engine of the modern world as well as its ultimate judge. Only then can we ask if the ancient name of history can be redeployed once again to offer a new way of articulating the three categories of past, present and future--which humans have always needed to regulate their life together--without subjecting any of them to the tyranny of the other. Is such a project possible in a world so far removed from the one which regulated the meridian in Greenwich?
Video recording of the Global Humanities Distinguished Lecture on October 27, 2014
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