Author(s)

Presentation

We need history because we need rest: a pause to rest our consciousness, so that the possibility of a consciousness may remain – as the seat not only of thought, but of practical reason, affording full latitude for action. Saving the past, saving time from the frenzy of the present: the poets devote themselves to this with exactitude. For this purpose we must work to weaken ourselves, to make ourselves idle, to make inoperative this endangering of temporality that wrecks experience and despises childhood. “Surprise the catastrophe”, said Victor Hugo. Or, as Walter Benjamin put it, throw oneself against the slow oncoming disaster that is more a continuation than a sudden rupture.
Patrick Boucheron is a historian. He is the author of Léonard et Machiavel (Verdier, 2008), Conjurer la peur: Sienne, 1338. Essai sur la force politique des images (Seuil, 2013), Prendre dates (with M. Riboulet, Verdier, 2015) and the editor of Histoire du monde au xve siècle (Fayard, 2009). In August 2015 he became Chair of the History of the Powers in Western Europe, 13th-16th centuries at the Collège de France.
ISBN
978-2-7226-0501-5
Publication date
Language
anglais
Translator
Liz Libbrecht
Price
4.99 €
Distribution
OpenEdition
Format
Édition numérique

Table of contents

Roger Chartier : Introduction Patrick Boucheron : Of what is History capable?