The publication of Benevolent and Jan Karski aroused the embarrassment, even the hostility of certain historians, embarrassed that writers approach the Shoah by using fiction. In fact, history and literature are in tension, because they both refer to the real to try to give meaning to the world ; But we must therefore put the debate in terms of competition ?
It must be recognized that literature is capable, such as the social sciences, of producing knowledge – moral, philosophical, sociological, historical. La Rochefoucauld, Balzac or Proust allow us to understand the world in the same way as Durkheim and Braudel. And some events do not seem to us “ Kafkaiian “,” Homerics ” Or “ dantesque »» ? Therefore, you have to ask yourself how literature develops and transmits its knowledge. Instead of a face-to-face between the science of historians and the freedom of novelists, we can conceive a plurality of legitimate discourse appropriating the past according to different methods.
On the occasion of the publication of the number of Annals “” Literature knowledge “, THE Annals And The life of ideas Organize, Thursday, May 27, 2010 at 6.30 p.m. at the Collège de France (3, rue d’Ulm, 75005) A round table on the theme:
Literature, a social science ?
With Patrick Boucheron (Paris 1), Florent Brayard (Cnrs), Judith-Lyon-Caen (Ehess), Dinah Ribard (Ehess))
Hosted by Antoine Lilti (ENSand director of the editorial staff of the Annals) and Ivan Jablonka (Collège de France, editor -in -chief of the life of ideas).
Free entry within the limits of available places. People who wish to attend the round table are asked to send an email to Redaction at the house of Laviedesidees.fr.