Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-9q27g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-19T12:05:46.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Entering history? Archaeologists as intellectuals à la recherche du temps perdu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2013

Nathan Schlanger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Following some comments on the notion of ‘public’ intellectuals (can they be otherwise?), this brief paper focuses on the intellectual roles that could be played by archaeologists today. Exposure to the media, usually following some spectacular discovery, serves to confirm the romantico-empirical image of the discipline, but should also lead to an engagement with key public debates. Three such debates are indicated: the idea that ‘African man has yet to enter history’ as expressed by the former French president; the creation of a Maison de l'histoire de France under the tutelage of the Ministry of National Identity; and, across the Channel, the Localism Bill, which pushes decision making to an untenably low level while promoting a historically and archaeologically questionable view of local communities.

Keywords

public intellectualprivate intellectualAfrican historyMaison de l'histoire de FranceLocalism Bill
Type
Discussion
Information
Archaeological Dialogues , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , June 2013 , pp. 58 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Babelon, J-P., Backouche, I., Duclert, V. and James-Sarazin, A. (eds), 2011: Quel musée d'histoire pour la France?, Paris.Google Scholar
Backouche, I., and Duclert, V. 2012: ‘Maison de l'histoire de France’. Enquête critique, Paris.Google Scholar
Chrétien, J.-P. (ed.), 2008: L'Afrique de Sarkozy. Un déni d'histoire, Paris.Google Scholar
Demoule, J.-P., 1992: Lascaux, in Nora, P. (ed.), Les lieux de memoire, III. Les France, 3. De l'archive à l'emblème, Paris, 237–71 (English translation: Lascaux, in L.D. Kritzman and P. Nora (eds), Realms of memory. The construction of the French past, vol. 3, Symbolism, 163–90.Google Scholar
Demoule, J.-P., 2012: On a retrouvé l'histoire de France. Comment l'archéologie raconte notre passé, Paris.Google Scholar
Fabian, J., 1983: Time and the other. How anthropology makes its object, New York.Google Scholar
Konaré, A.B., 2008: Petit précis de remise à niveau sur l'histoire africaine à l'usage du Président Sarkozy, Paris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lebovics, H., 1992: True France. The war over cultural identities, Ithaca.Google Scholar
Mauss, M., 2012: Techniques, technologie et civilisation (ed. and with introduction by Schlanger, N.), Paris.Google Scholar
Schlanger, N. 2010: Postscript. On dead canaries, guinea-pigs and other Trojan horses, in Schlanger, N. and Aitchison, K. (eds), Archaeology and the global economic crisis. Multiple impacts, possible solutions, Tervuren, 107–15 (see http://ace-archaeology.eu/fichiers/25Archaeology-and-the-crisis.pdf).Google Scholar
Schlanger, N., 2012a: Entre la France et l'Angleterre. L'archéologie à l'aune de la crise, Les nouvelles de l'archéologie 127, 16–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlanger, N., 2012b: Preventive archaeology, in Silberman, N. (ed.), The Oxford companion to archaeology, 2nd edn, Oxford, 661–65.Google Scholar
Schlanger, N., and Taylor, A.-C., 2012: Archéologie et anthropologie. Chemins parcourus et engagements partagés, in Schlanger, N. and Taylor, A.-C. (eds), La prehistoire des autres. Perspectives archéologiques et anthropologiques, Paris, 11–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Traoré, A., 2008: L'Afrique humiliée, Paris.Google Scholar
Wolf, E., 1982: Europe and the people without history, Berkeley.Google Scholar