Entre l’historiographie de combat et le combat de l’historiographie : formes et fonctions du discours sur le passé de la discipline historique au Québec

Abstract

Referring to Georges Stocking’s canonical ideal-typical categorization, theoretical reflection generally distinguishes two types of history of disciplines. On the one hand, « presentism » apprehends the past of the discipline so that it is useful in the present On the other hand, « historicism » apprehends the past in order to produce scientific knowledge of it. Does this categorization account for the nature of the apprehension of the disciplinary past of the historical discipline itself whose practitioners are specifically trained to historicize ? We maintain that the history of history in Quebec is in tension between a presentist combative historiography and a combat for a historicist historiography. In the end, the past of history is both and inseparably a disciplinary issue and a research object.