Book, History or reading time, A[LS]

Language: Brazilian Portuguese. This essay reflects on the questions that permeate the writing of history today. Since the 1970s and the works of Paul Veyne, Hayde White and Michel de Certeau, historians have discussed two essential issues: on the one hand, the tension between the rhetorical and narrative form of history, shared with fiction, and its status as proven knowledge; on the other, the relationship between the social place in which history as knowledge is produced (now the university, previously the ancient city, the monastery, the courts, the academies) and its themes, techniques and rhetoric. Recalling and displacing these classic issues, this essay highlights three more recent problems: 1) The competition for the representation of the past between history, literature and memory; 2) The possibilities and effects of electronic communication and publication on historical research and writing; 3) The construction of the relationship between the experiences of time and the construction of the historical report.