Speakers : Ludivine Bantigny, Malika Rahal, Guillaume Cuchet, Marion Fontaine, Guillaume Mazeau and Delphine Diaz.
This half-day of discussion and reflection aims to question the opposition, which has become commonplace, between two forms of history. The first is said to be committed, subjective and militant ; the second, neutral, objective and scholarly. Yet we all know that historians' commitments are multifaceted and do not necessarily detract from the scientific ambitions of their work, while strict objectivity is an illusion that a minimum of epistemological reflexivity conceals. We therefore need to reflect collectively on all forms of crossover, interaction and exchange. How can the scholarly work of researchers nourish their commitment (political, social, moral...) ? How can an activist history, sometimes produced on the bangs of the academic world, make a decisive contribution to the progress of research, by imposing new objects, new sources and new approaches ? But questioning is not the same as abolishing. We'll be careful not to blur the distinction between a history with scholarly aims and one produced within a militant framework. We will also try to understand how the vigour of commitment and the rigour of science can sometimes come into conflict.