Trauma, time and spectrum (the historiographical topic of the "contemporaneity of the non-contemporary")

(o tópico historiográfico da “contemporaneidade do não contemporâneo”)

Abstract

For about two centuries, it worked. Against all odds, "history" and "memory" developed a pragmatic relationship, fully aware of their irreducible singularities but also of the significant interplay between them. Setting aside, as an irritating episode, the Halbwachsian moment—in which the very father of collective memory insisted on marking the genetic differences between memory and history—the two poles of the equation chose to focus on their points of convergence. These are, in fact, numerous: "the characteristics presented as typical of memory (selection, finalism, presentism, verisimilitude, representation) are also found in historiographic work," so that, as Fernando Catroga argues, if "history is the daughter of memory, the opposite is also true."