Histories ─ French Constructions of the Past : Postwar French Thought

The period from 1945 to the present has been one of the most intellectually fruitful in French history. Entirely new approaches to a number of fields have been developed, and the influence of French thinkers has resonated throughout the West, in many ways reformulating our approach to modern knowledge. This 654-page volume traces developments in French historiography from questions of social history and global history (1945-1960s), structuralism (mid-1960s through mid-1970s), the territory of the historian (1970s through mid-1980s), to criticisms and reformulations (1980s to the present). Featuring work by Francois Furet, Michel de Certeau, Michelle Perrot, Pierre Nora, Roger Chartier, Ernest Labrousse, Fernand Braudel, Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Le Goff, Pierre Bourdieu, and others, this volume illuminates the most important controversies about historical method in the twentieth century.