Passats singulars. El «jo» en l'escriptura de la història

Every time more, history is written in first person. Historians are no longer satisfied with the reconstruction and the interpretation of the past. Now they experiment the necessity to explain its own history, personal and familiar. It’s been configured that new hybrid genre, exemplified in works by authors like Ivan Jablonka or Philippe Artières, wich explain with detai the history of their own investigations and describe their own emotions with a strong literary style. From the other side and following the steps of works by Patrick Modiano and W.G. Sebald, some writers like for example Javier Cercas, Éric Vuillard or Laurent Binet have pushed the frontier between the literary truth and the historical truth and think «novels of non-fiction». This strong potency of «I» asks epistemological questions and others more deep about the realities of the contemporary world, the footstep of the neoliberalism and the cruel individualism it caracterizes. In this essay, Enzo Traverso asks this subjective twist, from wich he admits the creative potentitalities, but also underlines the politcal ambiguities amd the intrinsic limits. The author, very tied to our cultural field, has written a preface expressively for this edition. He has published in catalan

Enzo Traverso (Gavi, Piemont, 1957) is a recognized historia, specialized in the contemporary Europe and spedifically in the intelectual hisrory and the politcal ideas in the XX century. He was doctored a L’École des Hautes Etudes in Social Sciences (EHESS) of París, and during years was a teacher in the University Jules-Verne in Picardy. Nowadays he has a PhD in Humanities in the University of Cornell (Ithaca, New York). He’s author of a pool of important works translated to a dozen of languages, between wich “Afeu et à Sang. De la guerre civile européebe, 1914-1945” (2007), “L’histoire comme champ de batalle. Interpréter les violences du XX siècles”(2011), “La fin de la modernité juive” (2013) (2013) and "Mélancolie de gauche. La force d’une tradition cachée" (2016). He has published in catalan"El totalitarisme. Història d’un debat" (2002), "Els usos del passat. Història, memòria, política" (2006) i "Els nous rostres del feixisme" (2018).