"The writing of history: Between Literature, Memory and Justice", Enzo Traverso

Abstract

This text aims to shed light on two methodological problems that have been particularly debated by historians over the last twenty years. The first refers to the very nature of history as narration, which seeks at the same time to reconstitute and reinterpret the past. Avoiding the pitfalls of the old quarrel between positivism and postmodernism, the author tries to show that history is an act of writing, a narrative construction, but he insists on its irreducible bond with a factual foundation, without which this narration would lose its historical character. The second theme analyzed refers to the relationship between the writing of history and justice, considered both as a moral requirement emanating from the past, with its courtship of victims and losers, and as a judicial device that can frame and condition, sometimes negatively, the work of historians.

Keywords

• Historiografia
• Teoria Literária
• Memória
• Justiça