Abstract
If ‘the past is a foreign country’, as L. P. Hartley put it, Henry Rousso’s ego-history asks: what does it mean to be a historian of the present time? And what does it mean for people who, like him, were forced to leave their country of birth, had to learn foreign languages, realised that the religion into which they were born could have an overriding importance in the eyes of other people, or had to explain to suspicious clerks that their documents had been badly translated? Rousso explains how, for him, becoming a historian was to investigate and ultimately refuse given identities. His research on Vichy and the Second World War is an attempt to find meaningful explanations for the chaotic events of the twentieth century.
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Notes
- 1.
This concept has inspired the title of one of the most important books on memory, recently republished: David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country—Revisited (2015).
- 2.
Since then, this exercise has become the norm for all candidates for an HDR in History, which is a qualification that is taken at around forty and a requirement for promotion in the upper levels of French universities. It has facilitated more in-depth reflection on contemporary practices in the discipline and has endowed subjective writing of history with a greater legitimacy. These writings are the subject of a systematic analysis that provides for the establishment of the principal trends in French historiography in the context of the project ‘Histinéraires. La fabrique de l’histoire telle qu’elle se raconte’ led by Patrick Garcia, Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent (see http://crheh.hypotheses.org/82).
- 3.
A shorter version of this text was published in the introduction to Vichy, l’événement, la mémoire, l’histoire (2001). The full text was published in Spanish: ‘La trayectoria de un historiador del tiempo presente, 1975–2000’ in Anne Pérotin-Dumon, Historizar el Pasado Vivo en América Latina (2007), http://www.historizarelpasadovivo.cl/index.html; and in German: Frankreich und die ‘dunklen Jahre’ (2010).
- 4.
On this event, see Robert Ilbert and Ilios Yannakakis, Alexandrie, 1860–1960: un modèle de convivialité (1992, 97).
- 5.
‘Pieds-noirs’ is a popular term for people who lived in Algeria and who were either French in origin or came from another country in Europe . Most of them, however, were born in the French colony . After Algeria gained its independence, about one million of them moved to France, leaving their homes and facing social conditions that made their settlement in France, a country they did not know, more difficult.
- 6.
Michel de Certeau , L’Écriture de l’histoire (1975, 14–15). On the emergence of contemporary history, I refer the reader to my book, La Dernière Catastrophe. Le temps, le présent, le contemporain (2012), translated into English under the title The Latest Catastrophe. History, the Present, the Contemporary (2016b).
- 7.
L. von Ranke, Englische Geschichte, vornehmlich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (1859–1869) (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 2002, vol. II), p. 3. Quoted by Sabina Loriga, ‘Le moi de l’historien’, História da historiografia, Ouro Preto, 10 (December 2012).
- 8.
G. Droysen, Historik. Die Vorlesungen von 1857, ed. P. Leyh (Stuttgart: Bad Canstatt, 1977), p. 218. Quoted by Sabina Loriga (2012).
- 9.
These ideas are inspired by the work of François Hartog , for example: Régimes d’historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps (2003).
- 10.
And indeed, there is a real difference between those born before 1945 and those who, even though they did not experience the Second World War directly, nonetheless saw it as a founding event of their moral and political culture .
- 11.
‘L’“épuration”. Politische Säuberung in Frankreich’, in Klaus-Dietmar Henke and Hans Voller (eds.), Politische Säuberung in Europa. Die Abrechnung mit Faschismus und Kollaboration nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (1991), translated into French and published as: ‘L’épuration, une histoire inachevée’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, 33 (1992), reproduced in Vichy, l’événement, la mémoire, l’histoire (2001).
- 12.
- 13.
- 14.
Henry Rousso, ‘Un voyage au Rwanda ’ (12 March 2016a): http://tempresent.hypotheses.org/20.
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Rousso, H. (2018). From a Foreign Country. In: Bragança, M., Louwagie, F. (eds) Ego-histories of France and the Second World War. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70860-7_6
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