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The Writing of History ReviewAlong with French intellectual giants such as Lacan, Foucault, Derrida and Levinas, stands Michel de Certeau. Despite being far less kown than these other figures of post-structuralist thought, it has been said that his thought and range of interests exceeded all of them (He studied and taught history, anthropology, sociology, psychoanalysis, theology, literature and French). He deserves to be better well-known in the English speaking world, and will undoubtedly become so, now that his major works have been translated and are available.This book, The Writing of History, is where de Certeau deals most comprehensively with post-structuralist theory and history, or, more specifically, historiography. Although American academia is still very hesitant about anything smacking of "postmodernism", it is inevitable that they too will have to acknowledge the sea change taking place, and find a place or at least a thought-out response to, theory. Despite definitely locating itself within the post-structuralist camp, de Certeau's work offers a way forward that is neither repulsive nor irrational, but can in fact be seen as liberating and promising. He argues that historians have worked on a principle of exclusion, whereby they draw an artificial line between the past and present, and separate what is "dead" from what is not. Through this navigation, they neglect the fact that they themselves are historical beings - they fail to historicize themselves and to recognize fully the ways in which historical processes shape their own actions, their own writing. They also believe - wrongly - that they are somehow above "politics", and that they may be able to describe politics without being themselves implicated in political processes. Even Foucault, de Certeau argues, fell victim to this trap (see Birth of the Clinic) since he attempts to point out the fundamental basis for knowledge systems without addressing his own basis.
De Certeau's thought cannot be summarized here. I would encourage this book to all historians who are not theory-phobic, especially those who are interested in the possibilities of thinking about ethics and history together (de Certeau is influenced by Levinas, here). Not many are doing this today, and it is a topic worth exploring more fully, especially as we wrestle with problems in the historiography of the holocaust, genocide, oppression, and other important issues.The Writing of History Overview
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