1000 Pages Later. The Historian and Death: a Confusing Equation

The present article proposes to analyze the relationship between history/the historian and death. Starting with the evident increase in the number of articles, books and historical research on death, one could ask whether this relationship exists, whether this relationship is different in the context of other sciences analyzing death and dying. Thus, a series of possible correlations based on the idea that history could not exist without the event of death are surveyed with direct references to ideas formulated by Paul Ricouer, Jacques Derrida or Michel de Certeau. Later on we shall refer to the historiography of death and the critiques of this (especially the works of Philippe Ariès). The present discussion repeats a series of aspects comprised by an article by Antoon de Baets referring to the historians’ responsibility towards the past generations (these in the quality of deceased persons). A series of concepts such as death education and its impact on history, and the particular relationship between the historian, as a person/researcher, and death, as the main object of his analyses are also analyzed. Consequently, the confusing equation of the analyzed relationship is emphasized. This is dictated by the cohabitation of death and history as becoming and science, and, on the other hand, by the impossibility of comprising it completely in a single analysis of this type.

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