The End of Contemporary History as We Know It? : A Franco-German Plea for the Dissolution of a Historiographic Singularity

Résumé 0

This paper, written from a Franco-German comparative and cross-cutting perspective, tries to initiate a dialogue between two national historiographical traditions, which have had little contact until now. The main goal of this exercise is to take stock of the emergence, entrenchment and normalization of contemporary history on both sides of the Rhine. On the basis that we make choices within the intellectual legacy of the first academic generation within this historical sub-discipline, this paper now pleads for the dissolution of contemporary history as a separate historical field. More than twenty years after the turning point of 1989, we think now is the right time to tackle the question of reintegrating the study of contemporary history fully into the historical fold. By abandoning the idea of contemporary history as different, we hope to reconfigure history as a social science of the "past-present."