
Práticas da História Nº 6
Set 13, 2018 | 2018, Edições, Revista Práticas da História

Práticas da História – Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past
- 2018
- Número 6
- ISSN: 2183-590X
- Tema: The History of Hayden White
Excerto do editorial:
The homage the present issue embodies is far from an original gesture, or even one that would have to wait for Hayden White’s death. Since the 1990s, White and his academic trajectory have been the object of a number of tributes.10 On this occasion, we challenged a group of co-leagues from different countries to engage with one of the many essays penned by White throughout his career. We asked them to comment that specific essay as they saw fit, namely by exploring the way White questions their own field or line of research (as Paul-Arthur Tortosa does, within the frame of the History of Medicine) or exploring the relations between White and other authors – in some cases, classical authors (such as Vico, by Maria-Benedita Basto, and Freud, by Nancy Partner), in others, contemporary with White (such as Paul Ricoeur, brought to this issue by João Luís Lisboa, and Frederic Jameson, by Luís Trindade, or Dominick LaCapra, by Rui Bebiano).
To make White’s essays the topic or motto for the issue’s contributions was not an innocent choice. As previously mentioned, he was the author of one of the most influential History books ever published, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-century Europe, whose 40th anniversary was recently acknowledged in different parts of the world (see, for instance, the book Metahistoria: 40 años después. Ensayos en homenaje a Hayden White, edited by Aitor Bolanõs de Miguel, who also happens to participate in this same issue). But White’s interventions in the field of theory of History were not limited to monographs. In fact, most of his work was first published in journals or as chapters in collective works.12 As a counterpoint to this dispersion, from time to time he published works such as Tropics of Discourse. Essays in Cultural Criticism (1978), The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (1987), Figural Realism. Studies in the Mimesis Effect (1999) and The Practical Past (2015). The Fiction of Narrative – Essays on History, Literature, and Theory (2010), mentioned earlier, is a collection of White’s essays selected by Robert Doran with a biographically-structured anthological purpose.14 The same anthological principle presides over White’s essay collections published in languages other than his native English. Such is the case with Forme di storia: dalla realtà alla narrazione, published in Italian in 2006, Proza historyczna, published in Polish in 2009, or, more recently, L’Histoire s’écrit, published in French. The texts that the organisers of those works sign in the issue of our journal – respectively, Eduardo Tortarolo, Ewa Domanska and Philippe Carrard – bring to light some of these editorial processes and their relation with the historiographical cultures of the countries where these anthologies were published.
There is a well-established genealogy of the essay as a genre – or, we could also say, as an anti-genre – that can be traced back from Lukács to Montaigne, for example.16 The point here is not to re-trace or extend this particular topic. And the place of the essay as a form in White’s work also has been acknowledged, among others, by LaCapra, Richard Vann and Robert Doran. I would just like to add that the choice of White’s essays as the starting point for the various contributions we gather in this budding academic journal also springs from our will to insist on the need to problematize what is implied in the modes of production historians nowadays are subjected, or subject themselves, to. Some of the conceptions of the discipline of History and of historical time itself that we have attributed to White in the previous paragraphs seem to fit uneasily with the conventions of writing and academic publishing that currently prevail within social sciences and humanities. Those conceptions rather bring to our mind a text of T. W. Adorno originally published in German in 1958, in which he exalts the untimely nature of the essay. It is with Adorno’s words in «The essay as form» that we conclude: «The usual reproach against the essay, that it is fragmentary and random, itself assumes the giveness of totality and thereby the identity of subject and object, and it suggests that man is in control of totality. But the desire of the essay is not to seek and filter the eternal out of the transitory; it wants, rather, to make the transitory eternal. Its weakness testifies to the non-identity that it has to express, as well as to that excess of intention over its object, and thereby it points to that utopia which is blocked out by the classification of the world into the eternal and the transitory. In the emphatic essay, thought gets rid of the traditional idea of truth.»
José Neves (IHC — NOVA FCSH)
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Detalhes do Evento
Conferência que pretende enquadrar o ativismo individual nos estudos mais recentes que concebem a solidariedade contra o colonialismo português como parte de um movimento transnacional. Anticolonial Struggle, Transnational Solidarity
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Detalhes do Evento
Conferência que pretende enquadrar o ativismo individual nos estudos mais recentes que concebem a solidariedade contra o colonialismo português como parte de um movimento transnacional.
Anticolonial Struggle, Transnational Solidarity and Agency of Individual Actors:
Dialogues with the Portuguese Colonies, 1945-1975
Basil Davidson, a British journalist, took interest in African history from 1951 onward and went on to write about the struggle of the national liberation movements from Portuguese colonies. By the middle of the decade, Ben Barka and other Moroccan students engaged in the struggle for the independence of their country encountered Aquino de Bragança, Edmundo Rocha and Marcelino dos Santos in Paris, where they were pursuing their university studies, and these contacts facilitated later the establishment of the Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies’ (CONCP) permanent Secretariat in Rabat. Jean Mettas, a French anticolonial activist during the Algerian war for independence, came across Amílcar Cabral in Dakar, in 1962, and due to their friendship was one of the first activists to publicize in France the struggle for independence of Guinea-Bissau. Years later, in 1967, at a dinner organized by South African exiles in Kenia, the African American lawyer Robert van Lierop met Eduardo Mondlane and together they conceived the idea of producing, for American audiences, the film A Luta Continua about the armed struggle in Mozambique.
These are few examples of how personal connections, established in places serving as hubs of decolonization–for instance Lisbon, Paris, London and Rome, but also the newly-independent African countries–were instrumental for the solidarity towards the struggle for independence of Portuguese colonies. Not only the liberation movements actively sought to cultivate personal contacts to internationalize their liberation struggles, but a wide variety of actors from across the globe voluntarily engaged in complex relationships with the anticolonialists from Portuguese colonies. Journalists, academics, film-makers, missionaries, priests, doctors, intellectuals and students, to name a few, became activists, fuelling anticolonial and anti-racist discourses for international audiences and attracting material and non-material resources for the liberation movements. Even Portuguese opponents to the Estado Novo regime, exiles, emigrants and military deserters living for instance in Algeria, France, Brazil and Morocco played a role in the international debate on Portuguese colonialism and interacted with the liberation movements. In many circumstances, the activists were at the centre of campaigns to support the national liberation movements, acting on an individual capacity. Sometimes they brought with them a web of connections, helping to create formal and informal networks of support such as the anticolonial solidarity groups.
Nevertheless, while the role of governments, non-governmental organizations, and international organizations in the solidarity towards the liberation movements from Portuguese colonies has received an increasing attention, the agency of individual figures needs to be explored in greater depth to strengthen our knowledge on the subject. To expand the parameters of inquiry on solidarity to individual players who engaged in the support of the struggle against Portuguese colonialism from 1945 until 1975, the Institute of Contemporary History — NOVA University of Lisbon and the University of Florence will organize a conference to be held in Lisbon between 26-27 January 2023. The conference intends to frame the individual activism in the most recent scholarship that conceives the solidarity against Portuguese colonialism as part of a transnational movement, nurtured by multiple ties and interactions across state frontiers.
>> 📎 Download full programme (PDF) <<
Call for papers
>> 📎 Download the call for papers (PDF) <<
Proposals for 20-minute presentations on issues related to individual solidarity will be accepted, including but not limited to the following topics:
-The schemes, plans of action and approaches devised by individual figures to link with the liberation movements.
-The many different forms of connections established between individual activists and the liberation movements.
-The networks of support to the liberation movements shaped by individual connections.
-The ways in which countries around the world–specially the newly-independent African countries–became platforms for contacts between the liberation movements and individual actors.
-The strategies used by individuals to influence public opinion, advance the cause of the liberation movements and transform the policies of their own governments.
-The personal trajectories of the individual activists and the paper trail they produced.
Abstracts of presentations (300 words) and biographical notes (250 words) should be sent to: anticolonialstruggleactors@gmail.com
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 25 July 2022
Notification of acceptance: 15 September 2022
Working language: English.
The organizers foresee the publication of the communications.
Keynote speaker
Rob Skinner (University of Bristol)
Organizing Committee
Alba Martín Luque (University of Florence)
Aurora Almada e Santos (IHC — NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST)
João Miguel Almeida (IHC — NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST)
Miguel Filipe Silva (IHC — NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST)
Rebeca Ávila (IHC — NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST)
Scientific Committee
Alda Romão Saúte Saíde (Universidade Pedagógica de Maputo)
Ângela Coutinho (IPRI — NOVA University of Lisbon)
Conceição Neto (Universidade Agostinho Neto)
Eric Burton (University of Innsbruck)
Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali (Howard University)
Julião Soares Sousa (CEIS20 — University of Coimbra)
Víctor Barros (IHC — NOVA University of Lisbon / IN2PAST)
Picture: Basil Davidson and Agostinho Neto in Moxico, Angola (© Basil Davidson, 1970)
Tempo
26 (Quinta-feira) 10:00 am - 27 (Sexta-feira) 5:00 pm
Localização
Link dedicado na plataforma Zoom
Organizador
Instituto de História Contemporânea — Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas da Universidade NOVA de Lisboacomunicacao.ihc@fcsh.unl.pt Avenida de Berna, 26C — 1069-061 Lisboa
Notícias
Victor Pereira recebe Prémio Aristides de Sousa Mendes
Dez 8, 2022
Victor Pereira foi um dos premiados com o Prémio Aristides de Sousa Mendes 2022.
IHC Contribui para Memória da Diplomacia Portuguesa
Dez 5, 2022
Foi publicado o website do projecto Memória Oral da Diplomacia Portuguesa.
Fernando Ampudia de Haro — In Memoriam
Dez 3, 2022
Nota de pesar da Direcção do IHC pelo falecimento de Fernando Ampudia de Haro.
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