Table Of ContentPOLITICAL USES OF THE PAST
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POLITICAL USES
OF THE PAST
The Recent Mediterranean Experience
Editors
JACQUES REVEL
GIOVANNI LEVI
First published in 2002 by Frank Cass Publishers
Published 2014 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informabusiness
Copyright © 2002 Taylor & Francis
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Political uses of the past : the recent Mediterranean
experience
1. History - Political aspects - Mediterranean Region
2. Group identity - Mediterranean Region - History -
20th century 3. Mediterranean Region - Historiography
I. Revel, Jaques, 1942– II. Levi, Giovanni, 1939–
909'.09822
ISBN 978-0-7146-8244-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The recent Mediterranean experience / editors, Jaques Revel, Giovanni
Levi.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-7146-5271-7 (cloth) - ISBN 0-7146-8244-6 (pbk.)
1. Mediterranean Region-Ethnic relations. 2. Mediterranean
Region-Historiography. 3. Mediterranean Region-Politics and
government. 4. Religion and politics-Mediterranean Region. 5.
Europe-Politics and government-20th century. 6. Human
geography-Mediterranean Region. I. Revel, Jaques, 1942– II. Levi,
Giovanni, 1939–.
D973 .R43 2001
909'.098222-dc
This group of studies first appeared in a Special Issue of Mediterranean Historical Review
(ISSN 0951-8967), Vol.16, No.l (June 2001), [Political Uses of the Past: The Recent
Mediterranean Experience].
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior written permission of (cid:87)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:3)(cid:83)(cid:88)(cid:69)(cid:79)(cid:76)(cid:86)(cid:75)(cid:72)(cid:85)(cid:17)
ISBN 978-1-315-04014-1 (eISBN)
Contents
Preface Irad Malkin vii
Historians and the Present Conjuncture
Frangois Hartog and Jacques Revel 1
Towards an Ethnographic Phenomenology of the
Greek Spirit Michael Herzfeld 13
The Construction of National Time:
The Making of the Modern Greek Historical
Imagination Antonis Liakos 27
Shifting Boundaries, Clientalism and
Balkan Identities Drago Roksandic 43
Notes on Two Discordant Histories:
Armenia during World War I Lucette Valensi 49
The Distant Past: On the Political Use of History Giovanni Levi 61
The Two Levels of Public Use of the Past Claudio Pavone 74
Out of Place, Out of Time Elias Sanbar 87
Political Uses of History in Spain Pedro-Ruiz Torres 95
Abstracts 117
List of Contributors 120
Index 122
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Preface
This publication is the result of cooperation between the Center for
Mediterranean Civilizations at Tel Aviv University together with its
academic journal the Mediterranean Historical Review and a group of
scholars associated with the Centro di Studi Mediterranei. It follows an
international conference organized by Jacques Revel and Giovanni Levi on
The Political Uses of the Past’ organized by the Centro di Studi
Mediterranei at the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Flosofici of Naples, on
29-30 January 1999. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the
participants, the guest editors, Anthony Molho, moving spirit behind the
Centro di Studi Mediterranei, Francesca Trivellato of Venice for her
enormous help in the organization of the conference, and especially
Avvocato Gerardo Marotta, President of the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi
Flosofici, whose help and support have been generous and warm. Special
thanks are also due to Ilit Ferber, managing editor of the Mediterranean
Historical Review, for coordinating translations, proof-reading and
producing this volume.
For the past three millennia the Mediterranean has functioned as a vast
network and infrastructure for its civilizations, oscillating between unitary
and diversionary forces and perceptions. Its images have come to play
varying roles along with changing historical contexts. Mussolini’s revival of
the Roman mare nostrum (or rather, the Fascist representation of Roman
ideas associated with the Mediterranean) may serve as a convenient
illustration for a neo-unitary, political use of the ancient Mediterranean past
in recent history. However, today the Mediterranean knows no single,
national or imperial ideology. By its very nature, current Mediterranean
discourse emphasizes the multifarious nature of its contacts; ‘network’,
rather than face-to-face nations, have become its byword. And yet the
historical uses of the past in the recent Mediterranean experience often
sound (anachronistically?) national or ethnic. This is evident not only in
contacts among Mediterranean countries and societies, but especially in the
construction of the collective identity of each.
Jacques Revel and Francois Hartog provide us with an essay that also
serves as an introduction to the entire volume, followed by the individual
contributions. This volume does not pretend to cover all Mediterranean
countries, but to examine some prominent and potentially comparable
issues. Some papers from the conference, covering topics such as modem
colonization in north Africa and contemporary historiography in Israel,
failed to reach us in time for publication. With regard to the current situation
in the Middle East, Elias Sanbar asked to withdraw his paper however, since
the volume was already in production, this was impossible.
The Mediterranean Historical Review that hosts this publication
has been active since 1986, studying comparative and comparable
phenomena of Mediterranean history. Having matured in years and
reputation, it now turns to a double-reflective question: historians
discussing the uses of history especially when such uses, in and of
themselves, stimulate or even produce new kinds of collective
representations that are directly effective in history. Its editors, Alisa
Meyuhas Ginio and Irad Malkin, are happy to offer this collection of essays
and are grateful to both Jacques Revel and Giovanni Levi for
conceptualizing and editing this work.
Irad Malkin
Director
Center for Mediterranean Civilizations
Editor
Mediterranean Historical Review
Tel Aviv University
Historians and the Present Conjuncture
FRANCOIS HARTOG and JACQUES REVEL
The political uses of the past have been a classic, even a common, theme in
the reflections of historians ever since they first took up this paradoxical
activity of producing a true discourse about what time conceals from human
observation. Professional historians are not the only users of the past - far
from it: not only powers or authorities and institutions but also individuals
are constantly tempted to mobilize the cognitive, argumentative, and
symbolic resources of the past. Historians have long been aware of this
temptation. When they became a professional community in the second half
of the nineteenth century, the problem of objectivity - ‘that noble dream’ -
was at the heart of the debate about identity which brought them together.1
They knew full well that they had to guard against the fascination of
politics, and they believed that they had found the means of doing so partly
by adopting the precepts of positivism but mainly by keeping their objects
at a distance. This was clearly stated in the introduction to the very first
issue of the Revue Historique (1876), which tends to be considered
something akin to a birth certificate of the discipline in France. Addressing
future contributors, the article recommended ‘avoiding contemporary
controversies, addressing the subjects of their studies with the
methodological rigor and absence of bias required by science, and not
seeking arguments for or against any theories involved indirectly only’.
Gabriel Monod then explained the insufficient progress of the discipline as
resulting from ‘political and religious passions’ which, in ‘the absence of a
scientific tradition’, had not been curbed. Hence the utmost restraint was
called for.
A quarter of a century later it was obvious that these wise warnings had
not stood the test of time. And yet, did not the scholarly skills of the positive
method play a decisive role in the expert reports given in the Dreyfus affair?
And were not those armed with them capable of distinguishing the true from
the false under all circumstances? Nevertheless, a whiff of suspicion clung
to overcontemporary history, which for a long time was a sensitive point.
With the recent reserval in this tendency, it was then certainties of positive
history which became suspect: were not the greatest scholars likely to
continue confronting each other over the significance of the end of the
