Résumés
Abstract
The cliché is still lively: historians, as is well known, tend to portray themselves as craftsmen or artisans, mastering a practical know-how learned patiently through hands-on experience with dusty documents, and showing a conspicuous disdain towards theory and abstractions. This image deserves closer scrutiny. It is interesting that despite this insistence on the craftlike image of the profession, there seems to be a lack of ethnographic investigations of historians at work that would precisely pay attention to the craftiness of history and the multiple practicalities of doing history across different contexts. The idea that historians just do what they do sounds simple enough, but as is the case with any “craft,” from basket weaving to hunting in the rainforest, it is hardly self-evident, either technically or sociologically. To be sure, there are plenty of biographies, autobiographies, “ego-histories,” methodological primers and epistemological essays that tackle and debate the problems of the working historian, but these reflexive narratives remain essentially vertical. Taking our cue from some of the recent developments in science studies and the anthropology of science, we would like to propose in this article a program for a horizontal study of historians, that would be independent of their own reflexive discourse and symmetric in its explanations, and that would be attentive to the varieties of their existence and their becoming in a community of practice.
Résumé
Le cliché est toujours vivace: les historiens, comme chacun sait, ont tendance à se représenter comme des artisans, qui maîtrisent un savoir-faire pratique acquis patiemment grâce à une expérience pratique de contact avec de documents poussiéreux, et qui montrent un mépris flagrant pour la théorie et les abstractions. Cette image demande un examen plus attentif. Il est intéressant de noter que malgré cette insistance sur une image artisanale de la profession, il existe peu d’enquêtes ethnographiques sur les historiens au travail qui décriraient précisément le savoir artisanal des historiens et les multiples aspects pratiques de la pratique de l’histoire dans différents contextes. L’idée que les historiens font tout bonnement ce qu’ils font semble assez simple, mais comme pour tout « métier », de la vannerie à la chasse en forêt tropicale, la pratique ne va jamais de soi, que ce soit techniquement ou sociologiquement. Certes, il existe de nombreuses biographies, autobiographies, « égo-histoires », amorces méthodologiques et essais épistémologiques qui abordent et analysent la problématique de l’historien au travail, mais ces récits réflexifs restent dans une perspective essentiellement « verticale ». S’inspirant des travaux récents en études des sciences et en anthropologie des sciences, nous voudrions proposer dans cet article un programme d’étude « horizontal » des historiens, indépendant de leur propre discours réflexif, et symétrique dans ses explications, de manière à prêter attention aux variétés de leur existence, et à leurs devenirs dans une communauté de pratique.
Parties annexes
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