What do historians mean by ‘contemporariness’? When did ‘contemporary history’ begin as a scholarly practice? Is it true that historians have ‘always’ written contemporary history or that ‘all history is contemporary history,’ to quote Benedotte Croce's famous statement? Is it different from other segments of historiography—from ancient, medieval, or modern history? Why are there so many different notions to describe what appears to be the same historiographical field: histoire contemporaine, histoire du temps présent, or histoire immédiate in French; contemporary history, modern history, or even instant history in English; Zeitgeschichte, neure or neueste Geschichte in German; historia vivida or pasado vivo in Spanish; tempo presente in Portuguese? The definition, the borders, the possible singularity of contemporary history form the subject of this paper. Unlike among literary critics, art historians, and philosophers, the question of contemporariness hasn't yet really attracted most historians. At best, it is simply part of the general discussion about historiography as a whole—the history and theory of the historian's craft, which is rather lively among German, Italian, or French scholars, but less vibrant in the anglophone world. At worst, it is simply a nonissue: writing on the recent past seems natural, unquestionable, and so doesn't deserve any particular attention. As a historian who has dealt for 30 years with a traumatic and ever-present past, with the contested histories and memories of mass violence in the twentieth century, I think exactly the opposite. Working on the recent past is both exciting and painful, stimulating and scary. Coping with the living words of survivors or of those who went through terrible experiences is not just a job like any other. It requires a particular method, a singular theoretical framework, a specific feeling of responsibility for which my generation wasn't trained. That is why it seemed urgent to raise the question about the definition, the bounds, the uses, and the limits of the notion of contemporariness in the humanities and social sciences.

To Be or Not to Be ‘There’

At the end of 1989, the Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP), one of the first institutions in French history created to work on contemporary issues, prepared a colloquium on Vichy France to be held the following year, in 1990, and whose proceedings were published two years later.