Anachronism in the writing of History: ¿Error or Possibility? Some reflections about the concept of time in Carlo Ginzburg, Marc Bloch and Georges Didi-Huberman

Abstract

In his unfinished and posthumously published book Apologie pour l’histoire, Marc Bloch bestowed on future historians a seminal legacy of critical reflections on the concept of time as the object of historical analysis. During the last decades, the concept of time in History has experienced a renewed interest by professional historians, in particular in reference to the category of anachronism. The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg and the French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman are among those engaged in this debate. This article offers a reading of two works by these historians with the purpose of underlying the fundamental influence that Marc Bloch’s ideas on time had in Ginzburg and Didi-Hubermans’ critical interventions.

Keywords

• anachronism
• historical time
• Marc Bloch
• Carlo Ginzburg
• Georges Didi-Huberman