Appel à com : "The Historian in the Shaping of POlitical Ideology XVIIIth-XXIst centuries"

[Madeleine L.]

APPEL À CONTRIBUTIONS


WORKSHOPS IN POLITICAL THEORY 2010


SEVENTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE, MANCHESTER METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY


DU 1er AU 3 SEPTEMBRE 2010
(www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/politicaltheory;
http://www.hlss.mmu.ac.uk/news/article.php?id=343).


ATELIER: “THE HISTORIAN IN THE SHAPING OF POLITICAL IDEOLOGY XVIIIth-
XXIst CENTURIES”


ABSTRACT :
Contemporaneous with ideological debates in the wake of the French
Revolution, the professionalization of the historian in the XIXth
century (from the romantic and national/nationalist writer to the
historical schools) falls within the scientific sphere (the history of
sciences, the establishment of knowledge and historiography) and the
political and cultural domains (institutionalization and political
stakes). Political history towered over historiography until the
beginning of the XXth century. Different movements (the philosophy of
history inherited from the Enlightenment, liberalisms and marxisms)
tinged the writing of history with their ideology which varied
according to the place and time. Concepts of progress and the nation-
state as well as interpretative schemes as linear and/or cyclical
history (positivisms), the dialectical histories of Hegel (masters/
slaves), of Marx (historical materialism), of liberals such as
T.B.Macaulay (Whig history) in the United Kingdom or Bancroft in the
United-States along with Thierry (race history) and Guizot (class
history) in France, to mention but a few, dominated the
historiographical debates of the XIXth and XXth centuries. Despite the
professionalization and the institutionalization of historical science
at the turn of the XXth century, the century of totalitarianisms
entailed the idea of an end to history and to ideologies (relativism).
Accordingly, the methods applied to historical science (and to social
sciences) along with the notions of objectivity and of historical
truth, parallel to a fragmented history and to a specialization of
historical disciplines (political, social, economic, cultural and
intellectual) even within them (which the idea of a school reflects)
have been called into question. These historiographical trends at work
in the scientific field have endeavoured to break with the universal
interpretative schemes that prevailed in the previous
historiographical movements.
It is a matter then of putting the historian’s role into context and
of interrogating his mental representations and universe (political
and religious beliefs) in relation to the public sphere from the birth
of the philosophy of history to the “end of ideologies” at the turn of
the XXIst century.


Pour toute proposition de communication, contacter: Aude Attuel-
Hallade (Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle – Paris III) : audeattuel@yahoo.fr
.