Institut d’histoire du temps présent - IHTP

The Institut d’histoire du temps présent, the European Network for Contemporary History (EURHISTXX) and the network “Historiography and Epistemology of History” organize a series of lectures in preparation of the international conference to be held in Paris, October 2010, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the IHTP :

“The Writings of Contemporary History Today”

The seminar will compare the perspectives of contemporary history in different intellectual, scientific, and linguistic contexts. Whatever one calls it – “histoire du temps présent” or ”histoire immédiate” (instant history), “Neueste geschichte” or “Zeitgeschichte”, “historia del presente”, “historia actual” or “historia vivida” or simply contemporary history – this is the only part of historiography which constantly provokes conflicts about its definition, its boundaries, even its legitimacy, disputes which doesn’t occur, at least not with the same intensity, for ancient, medieval or modern history. The series intends to understand the diverse ways to define contemporary history, but overall to analyze the real practices, the research topics, the cultural contexts into which historians all over the world try to understand today their “own” time”.

First session : Thursday April 2, 2009

2:00 - 5:00 PM at the IHTP

Questioning Contemporary History in France

This opening session will gather Guy Pervillé, Professor at Toulouse II-Le Mirail University and Director of the Groupe de recherche en histoire immédiate, Henry Rousso, Senior researcher at the CNRS (IHTP) and Jean-François Sirinelli, Professor at the Institut d’études politiques de Paris and Director of the Centre d’histoire de Sciences Po. Moderator : Philippe Bourdin, Professor of Modern History at Blaise-Pascal University of Clermont-Ferrand.

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Friday June 05, 2009 Eli Zarestky, New School for Social Research, New York, Visiting Professor at the IHTP, "Contemporary History viewed from the United States"

Friday October 09, 2009 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, Professor at Laval University, Canada.

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Friday December 11, 2009 Thomas Lindenberger, director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, Linz, Austria.

Experts Whithout a Cause ? Contemporary History Between Memory Governance and Ostalgia in Unified Germany

History as a profession is a disciplined practice of knowledge : its search for truth is bound by criteria of objectivity such as the veto power of the source, the reconstruction of singular contexts and conditions of actions, the possibility to differentiate several degrees of grey where other modes of representing past events prefer the dichotomy of black and white. The post-revolutionary condition of unified Germany constituted a particular challenge to German historians to maintain this stance when dealing with the recent experience of the failing communist dictatorship. On the one hand, Manichean interpretations derived from totalitarianism theory established themselves as the seemingly incontestable and quasi-governmental interpretation of the catastrophic German history in the 20th century. On the other hand, East Germans¹ first experiences with the hardships of capitalist transformation provoked waves of nostalgic feelings for the defunct real socialist state they just had wiped from the stage of history. The lecture will give an overview over how German contemporary history seized the opportunity to develop concepts and narratives which, on the whole, reassured its stance as a relatively autonomous sphere of expert knowledge meeting the requirements of internal scientific pluralism while nevertheless addressing salient needs of orientation in society at large. The strong international interest in the history of 20th century Germany, both in the scientific community as in high politics, will be discussed as a constitutive factor of this development.

Frifay, January, 29 2010 Anne Pérotin-Dumon, University of Chili, Santiago, Chili

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Friday, April, 30 2010 Patrick Garcia, Université de Cergy-Pontoise - IHTP

"Un usage public de l’histoire : les Présidents de la République et l’histoire depuis 1958"

"At regular intervals the presidents are the speakers of national history. "Telling the Story" appears in many respects as a structural constraint that reinforces the logic of the Fifth Republic that the President is "l’homme de la Nation" (De Gaulle). But beyond the differences of sensitivity and cultural value which is actually devoted to these statements on the collective past ? Can we distinguish, from 1958 to today, the changes in status devoted to the history that would be needed to actors and fall of an overall transformation of the past ? The story set in this context it is a simple variable adjustment of political discourse or she commits fundamental choices ? These questions open than focus intervention of Patrick Garcia as an extension of work already published on this site."

Friday, May, 28, 2010François Dosse Université Paris XII - IHTP "Archéologie des Lieux de mémoires"

"The issue of Lieux de mémoires was born in a laboratory, that of an seminar that began in 1976 at the EHESS, given by Pierre Nora, whose chair was titled : "History of now". He will have to see what conditions have emerged in the themes that will later be deployed in 7 volumes of places, to draw the map and intellectual to relate the singular path of Pierre Nora with the renewal of critical historiography. Indeed, the biographical component here can better understand the meaning and avoid nonsense cons of many critics. At the same time, as we showed François Hartog, Pierre Vidal-Naquet borrow their way to writing his own memoirs to ease the tension of French Jewish historian Pierre Nora opted for an alternative path of writing of history to appease a similar test."