Thresholds of modernity : archaeology and uses of a problematic scansion

In the dialogue between philosophy and history, the notion of modernity, as we know, brings together the acts of periodization and evaluation: at times, it acts as a normative element which, by marking a break between before and after, intends to project the development it qualifies onto a teleological axis; at other times, judged to be compromised with a historiography that has become suspect, it itself becomes the object of an investigation which, by tracing the way it was imposed, reveals other cuts, sequences and stations beneath the apparent unity it displays. In this respect, Michel Foucault's archaeology is exemplary of an approach that simultaneously challenges the axiology underlying the term "modern", revisits the gesture of thinking through discontinuities, and ultimately duplicates or multiplies the thresholds that modernity sought to synthesize. This session will discuss the implications and topicality of this oscillation in the contemporary practice of historians and philosophers alike: what uses can the exercise of periodization - understood as this modification of the gaze by shifting historical boundaries - make today of a concept of modernity that has become both indispensable and impracticable?