Ego-Histoire and Beyond

Contemporary French Historian-Autobiographers

Bibliographic Data

ID8940427
AuthorsJeremy D Popkin (corresponding author)
Year1996
Volume19
Issue4
Pages1139-1139
Publication date1996-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueFrench Historical Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-1071 • E-ISSN: 1527-5493
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/286667
OpenAlexW2329033228
LanguageEN
Citations received12

In France and elsewhere, autobiographies by historians are rare birds. Our disciplinary training makes us acutely aware of pitfalls involved in any attempt to reconstruct past, especially when attempt is made by someone who was directly involved in events being recounted. As contemporary French historian Rene Remond has written in preface to his own recent autobiographical essay, even though reconstruction of past is historian's raison d'etre, the application of this procedure to his own case is completely unfamiliar. The historian's whole training, rather than making process seem natural, raises epistemological barriers to it. A long tradition has taught [historians] to be on their guard against subjectivity, their own as much as others'. They know from experience precariousness of recollection, unreliability of first-person testimony. Their professional training has taught them that everyone has an unconscious tendency to introduce a factitious coherence into path of his life. They have no reason to believe that they are better armed against these distortions. They have no reason to think that they have any better chance to avoid tricks of memory that they have learned to spy out in others. ' Despite his awareness of pitfalls of enterprise, Remond has contributed to remarkable outpouring of such texts that has occurred in France in past decade and a half. In various formats, almost twenty prominent French scholars have recounted their own lives, with specific intent of throwing light on connections be

Art · Id, ego and super-ego · Psychoanalysis · Canadian Identity and History · Cultural Identity and Heritage · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Psychology

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