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Patrick Boucheron
What history can do
"We need history because we need rest. A pause to rest the conscience, so that the possibility of a conscience remains - not just the seat of thought, but of a practical reason, giving us the latitude to act. To save the past, to save time from the frenzy of the present: poets devote themselves to this task with precision. To do so, they must work to weaken themselves, to make themselves idle, to render ineffective that endangerment of temporality that sacks experience and scorns childhood. as Victor Hugo put it: "Surprise the catastrophe", or, with Walter Benjamin, put ourselves in the way of this slow catastrophe to come, which is more a matter of continuation than of sudden rupture."
Boucheron P., e que peut l'histoire, Paris, Collège de France/Fayard, coll. " Leçons inaugurales du Collège de France ",no. 259, 2016, 72 p.; digital edition: Collège de France, May 2016, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.4502.
ISBN : 978-2-213-70126-4
Price: €12
Publication date : May 18, 2016
