History Is a Contemporary Literature

Ivan Jablonka, J. Bracher Nathan

Description

Ivan Jablonka's History Is a Contemporary Literature offers highly innovative perspectives on the writing of history, the relationship between literature and the social sciences, and the way that both social-scientific inquiry and literary explorations contribute to our understanding of the world. Jablonka argues that the act and art of writing, far from being an afterthought in the social sciences, should play a vital role in the production of knowledge in all stages of the researcher's work and embody or even constitute the understanding obtained. History (along with sociology and anthropology) can, he contends, achieve both greater rigor and wider audiences by creating a literary experience through a broad spectrum of narrative modes.Challenging scholars to adopt investigative, testimonial, and other experimental writing techniques as a way of creating and sharing knowledge, Jablonka envisions a social science literature that will inspire readers to become actively engaged in understanding their own pasts and to relate their histories to the present day. Lamenting the specialization that has isolated the academy from the rest of society, History Is a Contemporary Literature aims to bring imagination and audacity into the practice of scholarship, drawing on the techniques of literature to strengthen the methods of the social sciences.

Sujets

• Sociology
• Literary theory
• Historiography

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501710773
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

HistoryIsa Contemporary Literature

HistoryIsa Contemporary Literature

ManifestofortheSocialSciences

Ivan Jablonka

Translatedby Nathan J. Bracher

CornellUniversityPress IthacaandLondon

OriginallypublishedunderthetitleL’histoire est une littÈrature contemporaine: Manifeste pour les sciences sociales, by Ivan Jablonka. © Èditions du Seuil, 2014. e Collection La Librairie du XX sicle, sous la direction de Maurice Olender. PrefacetotheCornellUniversityPressedition,©ÈditionsduSeuil,2017 Thiswork,publishedaspartofaprogramofaidforpublication,received support from the Institut FranÇais. Cetouvrageabnficidusoutiendesprogrammesd’aideĀlapublication de l’Institut franÇais.

FundingforthetranslationwasprovidedinpartbyaHemingwayGrant from the Book Department of the French Embassy in the United States. Copyright©2018byCornellUniversity Allrightsreserved.Exceptforbriefquotationsinareview,thisbook,or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Firstpublished2018byCornellUniversityPress PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData

Names: Jablonka, Ivan, 1973– author. | Bracher, Nathan, 1953– translator. | Translation of: Jablonka, Ivan, 1973– Histoire est une littrature contemporaine. Title:Historyisacontemporaryliterature:manifestoforthesocial sciences / Ivan Jablonka ; translated by Nathan J. Bracher. Othertitles:Histoireestunelittraturecontemporaine.English Description:Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress,2018.|Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017028414 (print) | LCCN 2017031020 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501710766 (epub/mobi) | ISBN 9781501710773 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501709876 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects:LCSH:Socialsciences—Authorship.|Historiography. Classification:LCCH61(ebook)|LCCH61.J27132018(print)| DDC 907.2—dc23 LCrecordavailableat.goc/2ov700141284.lcnlc//s:tpht CornellUniversityPressstrivestouseenvironmentallyresponsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

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TheNewFrontier:PrefacetotheCornellEdition

Introduction

PartI.TheGreatDivide

1.Historians,Orators,andWriters

2.TheNovel,FatherofHistory?

3.HistoryasScienceand“LiteraryGerms”

4.TheReturnoftheLiteraryRepressed

PartII.TheHistoricalWayofReasoning

5.WhatIsHistory?

6.WritersofHistoryasScience

7.ApproachestoVeridiction

8.FictionsofMethod

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Contents

PartIII.LiteratureandtheSocialSciences

9. From Nonfiction to LiteratureasTruth

10.History,aLiteratureunderConstraint?

11.TheResearchText

12.OnScholarshipoftheTwentyFirstCentury

Index

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236

256

269

TheNewFrontier PrefacetotheCornellEdition

Toreconcileresearchwithcreation,inventnewformsforembodying knowledge, and take on the challenge of a creative history: for me, these propositions are one and the same thing. This book aims to highlight under what conditions they are possible in the realm of the social sciences. I do not claim to decree norms; I am speaking in terms of opportunities. Thecontinuedprofessionalizationofdisciplinesfromthenineteenth century on has led to progress on the level of method but regression in the areas of form, emotion, and pleasure. History—to speak just of my own discipline—has not learned much from the modern novel, journal ism, photography, cinema, or the graphic novel, and this lack of interest is not unrelated to the closure that is now threatening the social sciences, with the increasing hyperspecialization of scholars, fascination with the “impact factor,” and the belief that an article published in an academic journal is more “scientific” than a documentary or museum exhibit. Onemightobjectthataresearcherisahighlytrainedspecialistwho needs colleagues and students as readers, not laypersons. The problem is

vi i i

The New Frontier

that ignoring matters of form and disregarding writing are obstacles to the very enterprise of knowledge. For without writing, knowledge is incom plete, an orphan from its form. All the great leaps forward in epistemology— Herodotus, Cicero, Bayle, Michelet, Nietzsche, Foucault—werealsoliter ary revolutions. That is what leads me to say that, instead of weakening the method of the social sciences, literature strengthens it. Howdoweproceedsothatresearchdoesnotsimplyamounttoci tation and commentary but to creation? How do we bring imagination and audacity together with scholarship? It would be a mistake to return to seventeenthcentury belles lettres, and an illusion to transform history into a grand nineteenthcentury novel. Hanging on to the existing hyper specialization would simply mean following the path of least resistance. It is possible to get beyond both literature without method and method without literature, in orderto practice literature within a method, a form designed for knowledge, a research text, with research inextricably tied to the facts, to the sources attesting to those facts, and to the form in which they are conveyed. Theideaofreconcilingsocialscienceresearchwithliterarycreation can lend itself to a certain number of misunderstandings. If, for example, we define history simplistically by the “facts” and literature by the “fic tion,” then the two domains may well be incompatible. If we judge his tory to be a serious pursuit while deeming literature to be dilettantism, we have to consider the former as our profession while relegating the latter to weekend hobbies. But if we consider history to be an investigation, and historians investigators driven by a problem, we can thendraw the literary consequences of our methodngthe“:usiuttaeno’”eItspaois proach and perspective, telling the story of the investigation as well as its “results,” going back and forth between the past and the present to which we belong, using emotion as a tool for a better understanding, placing the cursor at the right spot between distance and empathy, choosing the right words, and allowing for the languages that the investigator usually does not share with the people (living or dead) that he or she encounters. Thesenewrulesareoperatorsoftextuality,thatistosay,bothcogni tive and literary tools that, all while increasing the rigor and the self reflexive character of the investigation, drive the researcher to write, in other words, to create. The point of intersection between history and literature is situated here. More than an academic discipline, history is

The New Frontier

i x

a voyage in time and space, an investigation based on a way of reason ing; without being limited to the realm of fiction, literature engages lan guage, with a narrative construction, a singular voice, an emotion, an atmosphere, a rhythm, an escape to another world, as well as a canon fashioned by institutions. Happily, these two definitions overlap: history is a contemporary literature. The way of reasoning, which enables the production and transmission of knowledge, is the living heart of writing, the pulse of the text. That is how we can create new forms: social sciences for the twentyfirst century. Sinceitwasfirstpublishedin2014,Ihavepresentedmybookatsev eral European, North American, and South American universities, where it was then discussed. The debate over writing the social sciences and the crossfertilization of disciplines has been particularly rich in the United States. I am not unaware of the fact that a large number of researchers, intellectuals, and epistemologists on American campuses and throughout the world have already reflected on a wide swath of the issues that I am fo cusing on so insistently. I pay them homage. However, while their thought has enriched my work, it has also allowed me to understand what distin guishes my work from theirs. It was inWriting History: Essay on Epistemology(1984) that Paul Veyne set forth the notion that “history is a true novel.” That striking formula recalls a crucial point: the historian tells a story; history is a nar rative. But why the novel? I am not sure that one could do something new with Zola or Steinbeck. Or else one has to be capable, in the manner of Proust, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner, of breaking with the conventions handed down from the nineteenth century (realism, a linear narrative, a hierarchy of heroes and secondary characters, a chain of actions pro ceeding by cause and effect, and so forth). But we do not have to limit lit erature to the novel. Poetry, theater, the essay, autobiography, testimony, feature newspaper and magazine stories, and creative nonfiction belong to literature, not to the genre of the novel. InThe Writing of History(1988), Michel de Certeau recalled that, con trary to what the partisans of scientism have repeatedly claimed, history is written. But the title of his book suggests that it is the vocation of all his torians to write, which is far from what they do. Quite often, they put into practice not writing but a technique: a set of archival sources, a patch work of citations, and footnotes, all arranged according to a structure laid