For this second year devoted to the theme of " inventions du politique ", the ambition of the lecture remains the same : to propose a general theory, not of the medieval system of powers, but of its political inventiveness - and this precisely from the conditions of its contemporary re-actualization, of the way in which they can still today make themselves available (and therefore vulnerable) to our own hauntings, let's say expose themselves to them.
In other words, it's less a question of being an enthusiastic chronicler of institutional constructs than a sober cartographer of the situations in which politics emerges - where we don't necessarily expect it, where it doesn't express itself most loudly, but rather quietly, in hushed tones. The overall proposal, then, is not to be flabbergasted by effervescent situations, the majesty of beginnings, the heroic history of great conflagrations, but to understand political experience in its duration - its wear and tear, its memory, its revivals, its relaunches, its remorse, its recommencements.
Hence the general perspective that animates this series of case studies, drawn this year for the most part from the urban and political history of Italy, from the 13thto the 16th century, by focusing on the relationship between experience and narrative, we seek to set them apart rather than confuse them. To put it simply : narrative is necessary to open a window on what happened, but what happens is not the narrative - narrative makes experience possible, experience is not structured as narrative.