Historiography

This paper proposes a media studies that foregrounds technological objects as communicative and historical agents. Specifically, I take the digital computer as a powerful catalyst of crises in communication theories and certain key features of modernity. Finally, the computer is the motor of “New Media” which is at once a set of technologies, a historical epoch, and a field of knowledge. As such the computer shapes “the new” and “the future” as History pushes its origins further in the past and its convergent quality pushes its future as a predominate medium. As treatment of information and interface suggest, communication theories observe computers, and technologies generally, for the mediated languages they either afford or foreclose to us. My project describes the figures information and interface for the different ways they can be thought of as aspects of communication. I treat information not as semantic meaning, formal or discursive language, but rather as a physical organism....

"Besides numerous significant works concerning the fields of both natural and humanistic disciplines written by the famous Renaissance scholar Faustus Vrančić, there is also a less well-known manuscript, Illyrica historia, fragmenta ex variis Historicis, cum Latinis, tum Graecis, hinc inde collecta a Fausto Verancio Siceno, Episcopo Chanadiensi. This article deals with precisely that unfinished compilation of fragments from the works of Greek and Roman authors. A detailed analysis of quotations included in this manuscript shows Vrančić’s good knowledge of the Greek and Roman literary corpus, and places him among the supremely learned persons of his times. The Illyrica historia presents Faustus Vrančić as an versatile Renaissance scholar and thinker. This work of his fully meets the criteria of quality of the contemporary historiography of his age, but today does not have a great scholarly value. However, the sources quoted in this compilation of fragments testify not only to the level of preservation and accessibility of particular works, but also to the interest of Vrančić himself, who by this work represented himself as a versatile Renaissance scholar. Besides the all mention above, this manuscript is valuable also because it contains quotations from some today less well-known and less often used works.
 
Keywords
historiography, Dalmatia, Šibenik, cultural history, humanism
"

Quatrième de couverture:
Cet ouvrage est motivé par ce constat paradoxal : alors que l’histoire de la philosophie a pris une importance énorme dans la production philosophique, la réflexion épistémologique sur les méthodes et les enjeux de cette histoire est restée tout à fait négligée. Or, faire quelque chose sans s’interroger sur la façon dont on le fait, c’est prendre le risque de mal le faire. Parmi le grand nombre de questions qui se posent à cet égard, on doit se demander que signifie bien comprendre un auteur du passé ? Faut-il considérer avant tout ce qu’il a voulu dire, ou bien expliquer ce qu’il a dit par des influences souterraines non conscientes ? Faut-il expliquer les penseurs par les courants qui les comprennent, ou bien ne considérer les courants, les écoles et les traditions que comme des affiliations intellectuelles abstraites ? L’histoire de la philosophie doit-elle servir à former le jugement philosophique présent, ou bien valoir pour elle-même ? Qui est le plus à même de l’écrire : l’historien ou le philosophe ? Qui doit l’enseigner, et selon quelle méthode ? La seule thèse que cet ouvrage se permet de défendre est celle-ci : toutes ces questions se posent, et l’historien de la philosophie aurait profit à se les poser plus frontalement qu’il ne le fait de coutume. Les contributions regroupées ici l’y aideront.

Contributeurs
Pascal Charbonnat, Stéphane Chauvier, Vincent Citot, David Cosandey, Stanislas Deprez, François Dosse, Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos, Christophe Giolito, Christian Godin, Michel Hulin, Alain Laurent, Jean-Michel Muglioni, Louis Pinto, Serge Trottein, Dominique Urvoy, Stéphane Van Damme, Nicolas Zufferey



Table des matières

Présentation – Vincent Citot

Première partie – Philosophie, histoire, sociologie

François Dosse – Historiens et philosophes : généalogie d’un non-rapport

Stéphane Van Damme – Une approche historienne de la philosophie de l’époque moderne est-elle possible ?

Vincent Citot – L’histoire de la philosophie comme science rigoureuse

Louis Pinto – Le sociologue face à l’histoire de la philosophie

Stanislas Deprez – Pour une histoire rhétorique et critique de la philosophie

Deuxième partie – Questionnements épistémologiques et philosophiques

Frédéric Fruteau de Laclos – Comment on écrit l’histoire de la philosophie

Christophe Giolito – L’histoire de la philosophie : problèmes et pratique

Jean-Michel Muglioni – Lire les philosophes

Stéphane Chauvier – Compréhension réelle et compréhension simulée : deux façons de lire les philosophes du passé

Pascal Charbonnat –Vers un modèle pour l’historiographie des énoncés philosophiques

Christian Godin – La consistance du concept d’histoire de la philosophie

Troisième partie – Historiographie des philosophies non occidentales

Dominique Urvoy – À propos de l’histoire de la philosophie

Michel Hulin – La « philosophie » indienne a-t-elle une histoire ?

Nicolas Zufferey – L’histoire de la philosophie chinoise : problèmes épistémologiques

Quatrième partie – Esthétique, histoire des sciences, pensée politique

Serge Trottein – Esthétique et historiographie

David Cosandey – Histoire des sciences et histoire de la philosophie : cousines, soeurs ou jumelles ?

Alain Laurent – De quoi le libéralisme est-il vraiment le nom ?

Publicado como introducción a Javier Moreno Luzón (ed.), Construir España. Nacionalismo español y procesos de nacionalización, Madrid, Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales, 2007, pp. 13-24. En una célebre frase de 1979, el intelectual valenciano y catalán Joan Fuster afirmaba que, "en plan de broma, podríamos decir que España-no el estado, la 'ideología'-es una invención de don Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo". Fuster, con una evidente intención provocadora-lo que Pierre Vilar llamó "su inimitable capacidad panfletaria"-, venía en realidad a denunciar la presencia de un españolismo rampante no sólo en las derechas sino también en las izquierdas españolas. Lo mismo le daban los herederos de la dictadura franquista que los socialdemócratas o los comunistas. No obstante, y por encima de sus objetivos políticos inmediatos, aquel panfleto señalaba la enorme importancia de un tema apenas estudiado, el nacionalismo español, y la necesidad de abordarlo desde perspectivas múltiples y rigurosas. A su juicio, había que desentrañar la historia del concepto de España y de las ideas españolistas en sus distintas versiones, así como la dinámica de sus relaciones con el catalanismo y su interiorización por parte de los españoles, atendiendo tanto a los discursos más elaborados como a la cultura popular. Hoy, casi treinta años más tarde, pocos compartirían las premisas filomarxistas y pan-catalanas de Fuster. Pero éste tampoco podría detectar tantas carencias, porque los historiadores se han empleado a fondo en tareas como las que él recomendaba y las polémicas sobre el nacionalismo español y la nacionalización de los españoles ocupan ya un lugar preeminente en la historiografía 1. El Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales acogió, en mayo de 2006, un coloquio internacional sobre estos asuntos al que fueron invitados diversos especialistas con un fin fundamental: que sometieran a discusión los resultados de investigaciones en marcha. Vaya por delante nuestro agradecimiento a quienes participaron en ese foro, tanto a los ponentes como a los comentaristas que moderaron los debates: José Álvarez Junco, Andrés de Blas Guerrero, Carolyn P. Boyd y Alfonso Botti. Este libro es el fruto de la revisión, a la luz de aquellas sesiones, de las ponencias presentadas entonces. Ya es el segundo de estas características, después del que dirigió Carolyn P. Boyd y se publicó hace unos meses bajo el título Religión y política en la España

The article analyzes the development of spatial sensitivities in the Israeli historiography of the Mizrahi Jews. The goal of the article is to examine and illustrate the impact of this sensitivity among different generations of historians who focus on distinct subjects and geographical regions.
The article first examines the contribution made by scholars from the 1940s through the 1960s along the spatial dimension. It then considers studies written by scholars born from the 1970s onward while focusing on the contribution of this sensitivity to the study of the role of Mizrahi Jews in pan-Jewish cultural, ideological, and social movements, namely the Kabbalah, the Haskalah, and Hebrew culture. I find that the growing sensitivity to spatial issues is associated with the “long history” (longue durée) approach to the study of Mizrahi Jews in Israel. Thus, for example, several of the scholars discussed in the article helped to eliminate the artificial boundary between the pre- and post-1948 periods. Sensitivity to the spatial dimension also helps to link the discussion of the Mizrahim in Israel to the “long history” of solidarity between Jews from the “East” and the “West.”

...Utilizamos las siguientes páginas de esta introducción del volumen para ofrecer un contexto historiográfico de las contribuciones que presentamos. Consideramos tres temas —o, más bien, tres procesos historiográficos—, que han influido en las interpretaciones arqueológicas de manera fundamental: el medioambiente, el desarrollo del concepto de Chachapoyas a través de la época colonial y la historia de la arqueología regional

This article undertakes a historiographical review of the composer Sebastián Raval as a case study illuminating the influence of ideology on the shaping of history and the perpetuation of established views. The portrayal of Raval as an arrogant Spaniard originated in his participation in two musical contests celebrated in Rome and Palermo. Whereas this characteristic was mainly understood as a stereotypical description in the Early Modern period, the influence of nationalism in the nineteenth century led to it becoming an objectionable personal flaw. This was enough to start a process of vilifying the composer in which the assessment of his professional stature outweighed the actual analysis of his music.

According to the historian and sinologist Joseph Needham, Piyo Rattansi is "one of the most profound students of the English world of the scientific revolution". In this interview, Rattansi addresses several topics including historiography, history and philosophy of science, history of Kenya, history of 17th-century England, Isaac Newton, among other themes.

Editorial: https://revistas.pucsp.br/circumhc/article/view/43321/28799

The creation of a hegemonic, master narrative for Hawaiʻi—sourced almost solely from English-language materials—has long offered a highly exclusive characterization of past events and figures in Hawaiian history. Elements within this dominant narrative not only shape understandings of specific individuals and actions but also work together to construct a general understanding of a people and their nation. This article advances analysis of a political biography, set in a crucial period of Hawaiian history, to highlight a historical process that continues to inform paradigmatic yet problematic histories. It calls for a decided and comprehensive move to a more inclusive historical process that offers a more complex, rich picture of Hawaiʻi's past.

"This paper points out an important gap in conventional historical narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which when filled, suggests a solution to the previously-though-to-be irresolvable problem of creating an integrated Israeli and Palestinian historical narrative.  Comments and criticisms are appreciated.

ABSTRACT:
"Zionist and pro-Palestinian political positions are generally based on sets of historical assumptions which morally legitimize the cause of one side while delegitimizing that of the other.

Interestingly, historical and polemical texts about the conflict as a whole tend to pay little attention to the implications which early violent encounters between Palestinian Arabs and Zionists have on these historical assumptions.

This essay argues that the 'ethical pillars' of both Zionist and Palestinian historical narratives can be put to the test by exploring the issues surrounding these violent clashes and that these episodes are neglected precisely because the details surrounding them pose a fundamental challenge to the moral legitimacy of both sets of Israeli and Palestinian nationalist narratives"
""

This is the first book on the genesis, impact and reception of the most-widely read History of England of the early 18th century: Paul Rapin Thoyras' Histoire d'Angleterre (1724-27). The Histoire and complementary works (Extraits des Actes de Rymer, 1710-1724; Dissertation sur les Whigs et les Torys, 1717) gave practical expression to theorizations of history against Pyrrhonian postulations by foregrounding an empirical form of history-writing.

Rapin's unprecedented standards of historiographical accuracy triggered both politically-informed reinterpretations of the Histoire in partisan newspapers and a multitude of adaptations that catered to an ever-growing number of readers. Despite a long-standing assessment as a "standard Whig historian", Rapin fashioned the impartial persona of a judge-historian, in compliance with the expectations of the Republic of Letters. His personal trajectory illuminates how scholars pursued trustworthy knowledge and how they reconsidered the boundaries of their community in the face of the booming printing industry and the interconnected growth of general readership. Rapin's oeuvre provided significant raw material for Voltaire's and Hume's Enlightenment historiographical narratives. A comparative foray into their respective different approaches to history and authorship cautions us against assuming a direct transition from the Republic of Letters into an Enlightenment Republic of Letters. To study the diffusion and the impact of Rapin's works is to understand that empirical history-writing, defined by its commitment to erudition in the service of impartiality, coexisted with the histoire philosophique.

The reign of Qin Shi Huang [259-210 BCE] is one of the most discussed in all of Chinese history.  Tales of this emperor’s brutal first unification of China have been referenced by every major historian in Chinese history.  Over time, appraisals of Qin Shi Huang became a way that Chinese intellectuals could discuss contemporary politics under the ever present eye of the censor.  However, the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong [1893-1976 CE] sent that lively historiography into an unprecedented ideological frenzy.  Every major figure, event, and system of the Qin era was politicized and analogized to their contemporaneous counterparts.  Above all, the central analogy of Mao Zedong to Qin Shi Huang necessitated an unyielding defense of the Qin.  The way the ideological historians of this period dealt with this long-passed era sheds dramatic light on the elite politics, the fractional infighting and the debates of the People’s Republic of China in 1973.  Moreover, it also reflects the timeless and powerful relationship between China and its history.

Any cursory review of the past five years of Italian historiography on fascism obviously would be subject to multiple criticisms and be Condemned for partiality, especially since the time span under investigation is relatively brief and only the work of select Italian scholars can be considered.
Not all the published literature on fascism could be taken into
account, given the enormous attention still given to the subject in academic monographs and journalistic accounts.

Na década de 1980, técnicos do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Na-cional (Iphan) passaram a utilizar argumentos do campo disciplinar da história para justificar a seleção do patrimônio para além dos cânones da excepcionalidade. Mobilizando autores e conceitos da Escola dos Annales, justificavam tombamentos de conjuntos urbanos cujas car-acterísticas não se enquadravam nas narrativas de identidade nacional via colonial praticadas nas primeiras décadas da Instituição. Laguna/SC, Cuiabá/MS, Morro da Conceição e Praça XV de Novembro no Rio de Janeiro, por exemplo, serão preservados não somente pelo valor histórico das suas edificações, mas também pela sua potencialidade como fonte histórica. Elab-oram-se, então, argumentos de preservação de bens imóveis que buscavam driblar os conceitos do aporte legal do Decreto-lei no 25/37, buscando proteger sítios e lugares por seu valor documental. O artigo discute as relações entre escrita da história e preservação do patrimônio cultural, tendo como foco o caso de Laguna/SC. Pretende-se compreender de que maneira a proteção legal foi justificada a partir do inédito entendimento da cidade como documento por meio do estudo do processo de tombamento, seus estudos técnicos e as mobilizações teóricas do campo da história social e de autores como Marc Bloch e Jacques Le Goff. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Laguna/SC. Escola dos Annales. Cidade como documento. Iphan.

ABSTRACT: In the 1980s, technicians from the Institute for National Artistic and Historical Heritage (Iphan) began to look to the academic discipline of History for arguments to support the selection of heritage assets that went beyond the grandiose. Engaging actors and concepts from France's historiography they justified listing buildings and urban ensembles with characteristics that did not fit into the colonial-based national identity narratives used by the institution in its early decades. During this time, sites such as Laguna (in Santa Catarina State), Cuiabá (in Mato Grosso State), Morro da Conceição and XV de Novembro Square (in the City of Rio de Janeiro), among others, were preserved not only for the historical value of their buildings, but also for their potential as a source of history. New preservation rationales for immovable assets were developed; these sought to circumvent the concepts set out in the provisions of Decree-Law No.

The First of the Modern Ottomans blends biography with intellectual history. On the one hand, it is the story of an Ottoman life – the life of the scribe, ambassador, and prolific historian Ahmed Vâsıf (ca. 1735-1806), a man who improbably rose from obscurity in Baghdad to travel the empire, fight its wars, advise its sultans, and, in time, write its history. As a full-scale biography, the book is a rarity for the field of Ottoman history and reconstructs Vâsıf’s life, career, and opinions through meticulous research in both Ottoman and European sources. On the other hand, The First of the Modern Ottomans is also one of the first detailed intellectual studies of the early modern Ottoman Empire. Weaving together Vâsıf’s life and thought with the larger intellectual currents of the day – especially at the court of Sultan Selim III in Istanbul – it explores central debates among the Ottoman ruling elite over Europe, political reform, war and peace, justice, and the empire’s renewal. Vâsıf’s life reveals a vital response to the empire’s challenges at the turn of the nineteenth century – one that was novel and deeply enmeshed in Islamic philosophy, ethics, and statecraft.

Memoirs and Madness examines memoir as a literary genre, investigates the creation of Leonid Andreev's posthumous legacy by his contemporaries, and explores the possibility that Andreev, Russia's leading literary figure at the beginning of the twentieth century, suffered from mental illness. Frederick White's primary focus is A Book About Leonid Andreev (1922), the most important collection of memoirs dedicated to the Russian author, presented here in the first English translation. The agendas of the memoirists resulted in portraits that have influenced how Andreev is read and spoken about to the present day. White pays special attention to Andreev's history of mental illness, which the memoirists described with vague terms such as "creative energy" or "inner turmoil." Past scholarship has focused on philosophical and sociological factors in the author's life but this concentration on his mental health provides a fruitful approach to deciphering the literary portraits.

Fifty years ago, Thomas Kuhn wrote a thin volume entitled The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn challenged the traditional view of science as an accumulation of objective knowledge toward an ever more ‘truthful’ understanding of nature. Instead, he argued, that there is no ‘Truth’, what scientists discover depends to a large extent on the sorts of questions they ask, which in turn depend in part on scientists’ philosophical commitments. Sometimes, the dominant scientific way of looking at the world becomes obviously replete with problems; this can give birth to radical and irreversible scientific revolutions that Kuhn described as “paradigm shifts”.

A collective intellectual biography that sheds new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy.

Would the most recognizable ideas in the French social sciences have developed without the influence of Brazilian intellectuals? While any study of Brazilian social sciences acknowledges the influence of French scholars, Ian Merkel argues the reverse is also true: the “French” social sciences were profoundly marked by Brazilian intellectual thought, particularly through the University of São Paulo. Through the idea of the “cluster,” Merkel traces the intertwined networks of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Fernand Braudel, Roger Bastide, and Pierre Monbeig as they overlapped at USP and engaged with Brazilian scholars such as Mário de Andrade, Gilberto Freyre, and Caio Prado Jr..

Through this collective intellectual biography of Brazilian and French social sciences, Terms of Exchange reveals connections that shed new light on the Annales school, structuralism, and racial democracy, even as it prompts us to revisit established thinking on the process of knowledge formation through fieldwork and intellectual exchange. At a time when canons are being rewritten, this book reframes the history of modern social scientific thought.

Manfredo Tafuri’s 1966 book L’architettura del Manierismo nel Cinquecento europeo is an early and oft-overlooked instance of his decades-long inquiry into the architectural history of early modern Italy. Read today, it comes across as both an imperfect attempt at a scientific treatment of his subject and an engaged plea for a new orientation in the historiography of architecture. Leach presents a brief guide to this book, acknowledging its relationship with more widely read works on the problem of doing history in the architectural culture of the nineteen-sixties and making the case for its importance for contemporary reflections on the relationship between architecture’s past and present.

This paper is a study of Voltaire's treatment of the Ukrainian Cossack Hetman, Ivan Mazepa, in Voltaire's two histories dealing with eastern Europe, his 'History of Charles XII' and his 'History of the Russian Empire under Peter the Great,' with some reflections upon that famous author's method of "philosophical history" and his use of both oral and printed sources.

Water and waterways encircle the coastal community lives and the dyeing practices in the Coromandel region in Southern India. The dyeing practices in this region have transformed over time but the dependence on water resources for dyeing has remained. Whereas the brilliant dyes of early modern Coromandel textiles are widely studied, the significance
of coastal water resources and the artisanal knowledge in practicing dyeing remain undertheorized. Both water and artisanal life stories were too fluid to be contained in the early modern travelers’ tales or early colonial scientific expeditions. These studies set a methodological direction where artisanal practices are considered technical and divorced from intellectual knowledge, and this approach has shaped the more recent studies on Coromandel textiles to a great extent. I argue, the
insights of the dyer communities in Polavaram, in the Coromandel region, allow us to consider the relevance of salt and sweet water resources, in order to reconstruct the history of Coromandel textiles and to extend our understanding of the multiplicity of historical resources.
Master dyer Mukkantieswarudu Rao and the dyers’ first-hand narratives serve as a counter to the early modern traveler W. H. Moreland, colonial botanist William Roxburgh, and dyer Thomas Wardle’s scholarship on dyestuff. My study is based on the triangulation of artisanal knowledge, object analysis, and archival studies. This methodological approach not only calls for the agency of artisans but also suggests how artisanal knowledge can effectively inform the studies on textile, craft, and historical material culture.