How can historiography of the so-called "modern" period still grasp the problematic concept of modernity? Wouldn't it benefit from freeing itself from the narrative and analytical frameworks it imposes, all the more so as the period itself is marked by competing definitions, periodizations and localizations, emblematically reflected in the division between first(Frühe Neuzeit, Early Modern) and second modernities(Neuere Zeit, Modern...)?
The aim of this session is to reflect on the ruptures and transitions that, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, underpin the conditions (material and intellectual) of modern historical experience. Relying in particular on the works of Hans Blumenberg and Reinhart Koselleck, it will review the inventory of global historical processes likely to produce threshold effects (structural, conjunctural and event-driven) and to distinguish transitions and epochal changes. By questioning the possible historiographical uses of the "modern" category (particularly in political history and legal history), the aim is to reflect more broadly on the links between the history of concepts, political history and social history.
