History as heterology: the concept of history in Michel de Certeau

Abstract

Since L’écriture de l’histoire was published in 1975, Michel de Certeau became a major figure in theoretical and methodological debates about history as practice. Specially his “L’opération historiographique” is an almost obligatory part of the reading list of theory and methodology courses in Brazilian undergraduate and graduate studies in History. With a relatively large bibliography of commentaries about his work being published after his death (1986), one may perceive the greatest – or one of the greatest – problem of our inability of labelling his thought: different readers have written different “Certeaus” in the last 26 years. Even though this work may not escape such destiny, its objective is very precise: what did Certeau mean when he refers to history as an heterology? In other words, what does it mean and what are the consequences of considering the knowledge about the past as a knowledge about the Other? After reading L’écriture de l’histoire (1975) and Histoire et Psychanalyse entre science et fiction (1986, reed. 2002), along with other of his books and essays, it is possible to affirm with a certain level of certitude that one of the ways of understanding such perspective is to perceive the tensions between science and fiction in historiography. Certeau situates history as a never-ending task by which the present tries to comprehend and make understandable an otherness it had expelled from its domains – the past or even present Others, such as working-class people, women, etc. This work is a récit de voyage (using Certeau’s own terms): it is a récit of a walking through Certeau’s work, searching for one of all possible senses of his thought.