HISTOIRE ET PSYCHANALYSE ENTRE SCIENCE ET FICTION

by Michel de Certeau

Historien du domaine religieux, membre de l'École freudienne de Paris, Michel de Certeau a porté un regard incisif sur l'entrecroisement des méthodes qui déterminent les manières d'écrire l'histoire.

Genres: History, Psychology

310 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2002

About the author

Michel de Certeau, historian, cultural theorist, psychoanalyst, and theologian was one of the most multifaceted French intellectuals and scholars of the late 20th century. His concept of everyday life practices was of signal importance for the development of cultural studies in the Anglo-Saxon world. His use of space as a key category in the history and analysis of cultural practices has also influenced the later “spatial turn” in history and art history. Finally, his works on early modern mysticism constitute ground-breaking research in religious studies and theology. Interestingly enough, these studies on mysticism were less influential in the Anglo-Saxon world than they were in France or Germany, whence the distinction between the “American” (of the cultural studies) and the “European” Certeau (the historian of mysticism). In spite of the diversity of his oeuvre, Certeau saw his scholarly work as one, integrated, intellectual enterprise. Asked about his scholarly profession, this French Jesuit used to answer that he understood himself in the first place as a historian of spirituality. Understanding the meaning of Christian mysticism in an era in which it started to lose its self-evidence required a broader focus, embracing the most divergent and complex cultural developments up to his own time. The gradual broadening of his interest field also required new methodological directions, which he found in Lacanian psychoanalysis and in semiotics, resulting in his own topographical way of thinking. He became a public intellectual in 1968, after the publication of his La prise de la parole, a book in which he applied his insights on the role of the mystics in the 16th and 17th centuries to the protesting students in the streets of Paris. From that moment onward he started to develop his theory of everyday life practices, resulting in a number of different books, of which L’invention du Quotidien 1980 was the most elaborate.

Reviews

[Sencer Turunç · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gerçek adına söz alan anlatı, oldukça etkilidir. Gerçeği anlattığını iddia ederken gerçeği üretir. Performansa dayanır. Söylediğini inanılır hale getirir ve nasıl gerekiyorsa o biçimde harekete geçilmesini sağlar. Kendi müminlerini üretirken, o inancın gereklerini yerine getirecek olanları da yaratmış olur. Haberlerde şöyle denir: "Anarşi sokaklarımızda kol geziyor, suç kapımıza dayandı!" Halkın silahlanması sağlanır. Hemen ardından şu eklenir: "En çok yabancılar suç işliyor, göstergeler ortada."

Temsillerin gerçek adına konuşmasına, ancak üretildikleri koşulları unutturmaları koşuluyla izin verilir.

Tıpkı rüya gibi, söz de "eksik gerçekliğe adanmış"tır.

Şunu demeden noktalamayım, De Certeau çok leziz bir kaleme sahip...

[Pierre · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este libro es una compilación de escritos del autor. Dichos escritos son en torno a la historiografía y a la historia como ciencia. El psicoanálisis no es el tema central de la compilación sin embargo es mencionado en casi todos los capítulos ya que la propuesta historiografica de de Certeau se basa en la epistemología que extrae del psiconalisis. Para él este último tiene la virtud de rescatar la historicidad y al mismo tiempo de eliminar las dicotomías que permean en los estudios historiográficos. Es un libro en apariencia sencillo ya que el autor es claro en su escritura no obstante, en el fondo, es un libro complicado debido a la complejidad del pensamiento del autor.