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Present and the Historian

Abstract

The text discusses the challenges the historian is coping with in the face of the privileged position the dimension of the present has aquired in recent times. In this sense, the author examines the crisis that historical knowledge is currently facing as it is being confronted by the ascension of the contemporary, represented in the categories of memory, commemoration, heritage and identity. He demonstrates how the social imperative of the present makes it possible to question the social space occupied by the historian since the nineteenth century, making room for the reporter, the expert who is ready to provide facts and numbers of reality or the judge who in a historical trial rules in accordance with the value of the truth for the sake of the principle of reparation.