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E-story, or the New Hollywood Myth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Claudia Moatti
Claudia Moatti*
Affiliation:
Université de Paris 8and, The University of Southern California
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Abstract

David Armitage and Jo Guldi’s History Manifesto has sparked an important debate in the United States. This article criticizes three specific aspects of their work. First, it takes issue with their description of a “moral crisis” of history, which they postulate without any discussion of serious epistemological and political issues. Second, it calls into question their enthusiasm for technological solutions, an ideological stance highlighted by their call for a return to long-term history and large-scale syntheses relying on the crunching of vast quantities of digitized data. Finally, it interrogates their conception of the utility of history, a notion that reveals serious confusion between research, teaching, and popularization and supports their unquestioning acceptance of the direction taken by institutions of higher learning. Although the scientism and positivism expressed in their manifesto illuminate their lack of attention to, and perhaps simply awareness of, the slow construction and transmission of accumulated knowledge, they do reflect the prevailing intellectual nonchalance and philosophical regression. The authors’ vision would see the replacement of “history” by “e-story,” the dissolution of historicity and scholarly critique and their substitution by techno-chronology and marketing.

Type
Debating the Longue Durée
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 255 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2015

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