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Pascal Ory: "A period name must be the subject of controversy to be recognized"

2023-02-10T06:15:23.039Z


INTERVIEW - Thinking of a period cannot be done without designating it. However, period names are loaded with representations that we have of a moment in history. To understand the past, it is necessary to study their origin.


Pascal Ory is a historian and member of the French Academy.

In 2020, he participated in the collective work directed by Dominique Kalifa,

The names of time.

From the “Restoration” to “years of lead”

(Gallimard).

A work in which is analyzed the genesis of what linguists call "chromonyms" - expressions which serve to designate a portion of time.

An essential work to think about the past.

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LE FIGARO.

- What is the use of naming an era?

Pascal ORY.

-

Period names are part of the need to give meaning to history.

To periodize, ideally, is to make the accumulation of events more intelligible.

As in the artistic field, when it comes to defining "baroque" or "impressionism" two groups play a decisive role in the invention and dissemination of a chrononym: the experts (historians, social observers, etc. .) and journalists (writers and essayists as well).

The economist Jean Fourastié, who launched the “Trente Glorieuses” formula in 1979, belongs to the first category.

Charles Dudley and Mark Twain, who forged the “Gilded Age” in 1873 (“the Golden Age”, which follows the end of the Civil War in the United States, editor’s note), belong to the second.

What are the phenomena that come into play in the choice of a name?

At the start, a relationship of frank delimitation of the "present", where it is invented in relation to a "past" to which it is referred.

For a name to be subsequently recognized, it is useful for it to be taken up by historians, or even for its relevance to be the subject of controversy.

Linguistic quality also comes into play: the formula should be short and striking and should not be too austere or too obscure.

To say that the Trente Glorieuses is a mystifying formula is to fail to understand the interest of chromonyms.

Because the important thing is in the temperature felt.

Pascal Ory

A certain emotional charge definitely registers it in use.

The formula, of multiple application, of the "Golden Age", tested for Spain two centuries after its end and then used for the Netherlands, is the finished model.

Dominique Kalifa spotted the launch of the French “Belle Époque” (late 19th-early 20th century), at the start of the Occupation.

That is to say at the heart of what the later period will call the “Dark Years”.

There is therefore a discrepancy saturated with value judgments: it was better or it was worse.

To what extent can an appellation be subject to a change of appreciation?

Let's take the case of "fin de siècle".

At the time of its launch in France in the 1880s, the formula was not a priori negative.

It gradually becomes so when it is connoted with a hidden meaning: that of “decadence”.

As time continued to pass, nostalgia then tended to re-neutralize the term.

Behind a period name, in short, there is always a philosophy.

Read also“Wokist rhetoric is dangerous”

Do era names used overseas play a role in determining ours?

There are moods in chrononyms.

The growing influence of Anglo-Saxon culture is thus at the origin of the success of chrononyms by decade.

After the crisis of 1929 we began to speak in the United States of the “Roaring Twenties” (“Roaring Twenties”), on the model of the “Roaring Forties” (“Roaring Forties”).

The rest of the West followed, after the war: the term "Sixties" gave in France the "60s", and so on.

Nowadays, this ten-year mode, analogous to the democratic numbering of American public roads or in the space domain, triumphs because it combines quantitative modernity and emotional experience.

Once famous, is it possible to undo the construction of an era name?

The ethics of the social sciences values ​​de-construction.

On this account, the pure and perfect researcher would be the one who is not fooled - I quite like Lacan's pun:

"the non-dupe erre"

-, but the historian observes that if the non- dupe de-constructed every morning, companies re-build every evening.

To say, for example, that the “Trente Glorieuses” is a mystifying formula is to fail to understand the interest of chromonyms.

The liberal era was exhausted at the beginning of the 21st century to give way today to what I would call a populist era.

Pascal Ory

Because the important thing is in the “perceived temperature”: a period of growth of the positive indices, between two negative periods.

It is not a question of defining a “truth” but of giving meaning to what, without that, would have much less.

We only think in categories.

For the understanding of human history, the invention of categories - cultural or political, spatial or temporal - is essential.

In History, can we think of an era if it is not named?

We always name, but sometimes more broadly, therefore more vaguely.

The “Middle Ages”, a formula derived from 17th century German scholarship, is initially a value judgment.

A weak period between two strong eras, the “Renaissance” and “Antiquity”.

Today, it has become a convention.

My colleagues call themselves medievalists without integrating value judgment.

Read alsoThe origins of the French language

Finally, what would you call our era?

On the model of the "Trente Glorieuses", it can be argued that at a roughly similar pace modern societies passed, at the end of this period, from a "progressive era" - where the various social and political actors, clashed over everything else, shared a common belief in progress, equated with growth – with a “liberal era”.

This era, opened by what I called "the Revolution of 1975", has, in its turn, at the beginning of the 21st century, been exhausted, to give way today to what I would call a "populist era ".

Source: lefigaro

All news articles on 2023-02-10

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