François Hartog

François Hartog
File:François-Hartog.png François Hartog
Born	1946 France
Nationality	French
Occupation	Historian
Known for	Regime of historicity
Academic background
Alma mater	École normale supérieure
Influences	Jean-Pierre Vernant, Reinhart Koselleck
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub discipline	Modern history, presentism
Institutions	École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)
Main interests	Ancient, modern historiography, temporality
Notable ideas	Regime of historicity, presentism

François Hartog (born in 1946) is a French historian. He is noted for his "regimes of historicity" theory as well as his analyses of presentism and the contemporary experience of time. Hartog is also an academic and author of several works including The Mirror of Herodutus: The Representation of the Other in the Writing of History.

Biography

Hartog was born in 1946. He studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris and was part of a group of Hellenist scholars who studied under Jean-Pierre Vernant. Later, Hartog became an assistant to the German historian Reinhart Koselleck. The two collaborated on several works, which included a project that described how the problems of modern time schema are not limited to an imperialist past or present. Hartog would later challenge what he perceived as Koselleck's Eurocentric reflection of the present and the past.

Hartog's works can be classified into two: his early works that focused on the intellectual history of ancient Greece; and, his recent publications, which emphasized the subject of temporality.

Hartog is currently the director of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) for ancient and modern historiography. He is also one of the 60 historians who founded the Association des Historiens in 1997. Hartog is a member of the Center Louis Gernet de recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes.

Regimes of Historicity

Hartog explored the relationship of the past, present, and future as understood at moments of crisis in history. Like other thinkers such as Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Koselleck, Hartog maintains that there is no difference between past and present since all history is "actually contemporary history". Drawing from a broad range of sources, he published his analysis in the book Regimes of Historicity Presentism and Experiences of Time. For instance, he used texts such as the Odyssey to demonstrate the threshold of historical consciousness.

According to Hartog, there are three regimes of historicity: the history of exemplary lives; the modern history that dates back from the French Revolution; and, the regime focused on the present as the primary referent for historical interpretation (late twentieth century). The "regimes of historicity" has been understood in two ways. The first asks how society treats its past and what it says about it while the second approaches the notion as the "modes of consciousness of human community".

In his analysis of the different "regimes of historicity", he described the modern period as "presentist" - that the present turns to the past and the future only to valorize the immediate. This "presentism" concept has been interpreted as that regime wherein the present is dominant. It implies an approach to temporality, which rejects the linear, causal, and homogeneous conception of time characteristic of the modern regime of historicity.

"Regimes of historicity" is considered a heuristic tool for further research concerning experiences of time. It has also been described as part of the cooperation among historians that allow adjustments in the interest of constructing conceptual categories and configurations that promote an understanding of "historical consciousness".

A criticism of the "regimes of historicity" cites the resulting "permanent lag" produced by the discrepancies that emerge from different histories and varying relationships within this new temporality. It is also suggested that it leads to the periodizations that suppress diversity of conceptions of time formulated within their limits.

Publications

• Le Miroir d'Hérodote. Essai sur la représentation de l'autre, Paris, Gallimard, 1980. The mirror of Herodotus, FCE, 2003.
• Le XIXe siècle et l'histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges, Paris, PUF, 1988.
• Mémoire d'Ulysse: récits sur la frontière in Grèce ancienne, Paris, Gallimard, 1996. Memory of Ulysses. Stories about the border in ancient Greece, FCE of SPAIN, 2007.
• Pierre Vidal-Naquet a historien dans la cité, with Alain Schnapp and Pauline Schmitt-Pantel , Paris, La Découverte, 1998.
• Des sciences et des techniques, co-directed with Roger Guesnerie, Paris, EHESS. "Cahiers des Annales", vol.45, 1998.
• The Invention of History: The Pre-History of a Concept from Homer to Herodotus, "History and Theory", vol. 39, 2000.
• Les usages politiques du passé, with Jacques Revel, Paris, EHESS, 2001.
• Régimes d'historicité. Présentisme et expériences du temps, Paris, Le Seuil, 2003. Regimes of Historicity: Presentism and Experiences of Time. Columbia University Press, 2015.
• Anciens, modernes, sauvages, Paris, Galaade, 2005.
• Évidence de l'histoire. Ce que voient les historiens , Paris, EHESS, 2005.
• Vidal-Naquet, historien en personne, Paris, La Découverte, 2007.
• Croire en l'histoire, Paris, Flammarion, 2013.
• Partir pour la Grèce, Paris, Flammarion, 2015.
• Plutarch critical edition, Vies parallèles, Gallimard-Quarto, 2001.
• Critical edition of Polibio, Histoire, Gallimard-Quarto, 2003.