Mariana Imaz | UNAM Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (original) (raw)

Papers by Mariana Imaz

Resistances. Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2024

The concept of presentism has been at the center of current discussions in the hist... more The concept of presentism has been at the center of current discussions in the historical discipline. Among the efforts to define presentism, we face radically different approaches. On the one hand, we have scholars that see it as ‘a cardinal sin’ or as a vice, while on the other, there are many who recognize in it something that is unavoidable and should be understood and welcomed. In this article, we explore and discuss these contras-ting positions and argue for three central virtues that presentism can bring to our understanding of the past. Through the analysis of narratives surrounding World War II and the founding of the United States, we argue that presentism: 1. allows history to be critical by motivating present reviews to established–mostly western--centric– accounts; 2. allows us to create new perspectives about the past by strategically using the tools of our present and finally, 3. welcomes pluralism rather than a single historical truth. These points allow us to defend a view of the past that is not static, fixed, and forever closed, but instead, see it as a place of debate, dispute, and constant renewal.

História da Historiografia, 2024

Recién se publicó en el volumen 17 de la revista História da Historiografia la totalidad del doss... more Recién se publicó en el volumen 17 de la revista História da Historiografia la totalidad del dossier que coordinamos Mariana Ímaz-Sheinbaum y yo: "Una tríada reflexiva: ausencia, presencia y desaparición como aproximaciones historiográficas".
Les compartimos las reflexiones que Mariana y yo propusimos como detonantes y presentación del dossier. Con esto damos cierre a un ciclo de publicaciones continuas de varios autores: Hugo R. Merlo, Camilo Vicente Ovalle, Diana Napoli, María Ema Llorente, Lucas Saporosi, Affonso Thomaz Pereira, Caroline Silveira y Leandro Ferreira.

https://www.historiadahistoriografia.com.br/revista/issue/view/47

INTERPRETATIO. REVISTA DE HERMENÉUTICA, 2024

Este artículo busca introducir una nueva idea de libertad dentro del discurso histórico. La libe... more Este artículo busca introducir una nueva idea de libertad dentro del discurso histórico. La libertad histórica que busco desarrollar aquí tiene que ver con la posibilidad de reinventarnos a través de la redescripción y resignificación de nuestras vivencias individuales y colectivas. En este sentido, hablo de que la libertad histórica está compuesta de una libertad narrativo-existencial que permite elegir nuestro pasado —así como nuestro futuro— y de una libertad expresivaque permite revisitar experiencias pasadas a la luz de nuevos marcos conceptuales. Dichas nociones —libertad narrativo-existencial y expresiva— no son de ninguna manera nuevas. El existencialismo de Sartre recuperado por Hayden White aborda la idea de la libertad existencial dentro del campo histórico. Asimismo, la idea de libertad expresiva fue desarrollada por el filósofo norteamericano Robert Brandom en 1979. La novedad de mi propuesta estriba en combinar estos conceptos para entender que nuestro pasado no es de una vez y para siempre, sino que somos libres de resignificar las vivencias para reentendernos desde nuevas necesidades presentes.

Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2024

We talk about curatorship as a process in which someone carefully and thoughtfully chooses and or... more We talk about curatorship as a process in which someone carefully and thoughtfully chooses and organizes a way to present particular artworks to the public. Some have theorized that curating an art exhibit and exercising the selection and organization of artworks is very similar to telling a story. This analogy invites us to expand it and reflect on how it can help illuminate what historians do as storytellers of the past. The central point of this paper is to think of historical work as a curatorial practice. This, in turn, allows us to understand the constructive enterprise that historians engage in and challenge a rooted and prevalent commitment in the historical discipline that the past is discovered rather than constructed. Historians as curators of the past select and organize undetermined materials that become determined when subsumed under a narrative that bestows the past with a particular meaning. The analogy also serves to clarify that no epistemic or metaphysical tension need exist between a notion of the real and an acknowledgment of narrative construction.

Historia y Grafía, 2024

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen ha teorizado que las narrativas no involucran un tipo de actividad racional... more Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen ha teorizado que las narrativas no involucran un tipo de actividad racional, en cambio, parecieran ser sólo una práctica descriptiva que consiste en afirmaciones singulares. Es así que Kuukkanen separa el marco racional del narrativo, argumentando que la historiografía pertenece al primero y no al segundo. Este artículo establece un nuevo marco conceptual que proporciona una comprensión revisada de la narrativa como práctica racional. Sostengo que los principios de organización sacados a la luz por la escuela de psicología experimental de la Gestalt iluminan la lógica organizacional subyacente con la que se involucran los historiadores cuando construyen narrativas. Para ilustrar cómo operan estos principios en las narrativas históricas y cómo son racionales, examino obras históricas clásicas como la introducción del concepto de plusvalía de Karl Marx; la Autobiografía de Giambattista Vico y La civilización del Renacimiento en Italia de Jacob Burckhardt; Futuro Pasado de Reinhart Koselleck; y La formación de la clase obrera en Inglaterra de E.P Thompson y El Otoño de la Edad Media de Johan Huizinga. Mi análisis muestra que la narrativa implica su propio tipo de estructura explicativa ya que es una forma de pensar que proporciona significado y estructura a lo que de otro modo está desestructurado y es indeterminado. Finalmente, mi nuevo marco ofrece una base para la evaluación racional de las narrativas al mostrar cómo el contexto de descubrimiento y el contexto de justificación no pueden separarse en el caso de las historias narrativas.

Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2023

Explaining the persistence of multiple interpretations of the same historical event has been an o... more Explaining the persistence of multiple interpretations of the same historical event has been an ongoing question in the philosophy of history. In this paper I illustrate two possible answers and argue that neither offers a satisfactory resolution. First of all, the realist view, which holds a metaphysical commitment to the past that precludes it from fully recognizing the legitimacy of variability of historical interpretations. Second, Ankersmit’s representationalism which seeks to overcome the realist view by introducing the notion of aspects. Nevertheless, I contend that this latter position ultimately proves indistinguishable from the sort of realist commitments it claims to avoid. In order to overcome these views, I argue that a new conception of historical aspects is needed. By developing a Wittgensteinian notion of aspect seeing, I provide a novel account of historical explanation. Wittgenstein’s insights allow us not only to explain the multiplicity of historical accounts but also to recognize the epistemic activity that goes into historiographical construction.

Historia y Grafía, 2023

A lo largo de su carrera, Pihlainen se ha concentrado en temas que tienen que ver con la represen... more A lo largo de su carrera, Pihlainen se ha concentrado en temas que tienen que ver con la representación histórica y los usos de la historia en ámbitos académicos y populares. La posición de Pihlainen puede ubicarse dentro del marco narrativo-constructivista que busca reivindicar la función ética, política y estética de la historia. El libro La obra de historia, publicado originalmente en inglés en 2017, es una invitación a revisar precisamente los principales compromisos constructivistas sobre la historiografía,
y defenderlos de ciertos malentendidos que han puesto en tela de juicio dicha visión.

Rethinking History, 2022

How can we compare two historical narratives about the same occurrence when each of the narrative... more How can we compare two historical narratives about the same occurrence when each of the narratives satisfies the criteria of truth but nevertheless, portray incongruent views about the past? To answer such a question, we can identify a conservative view in history that commits to a correspondence theory of the past that argues that the scrutiny of the primary and secondary sources alongside a precise division of what counts as ‘objective facts’ and ‘subjective information’ can discern which narrative is the correct one. In other words, they value ‘truth as correspondence’ as the ultimate way to settle epistemological disagreements. In this paper, I challenge such a view and argue that it does not answer our primary question. I will propose a new standard for historiographic normativity, one that takes Catherine Elgin’s notion of understanding and Alva Noë’s idea of reorganization at its center. I will further argue that Elgin and Noë’s work allows us to bring Arthur Danto’s idea of redescription and Louis Mink’s notion of understanding from the descriptive to the normative realm.

History and Theory, 2021

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen has theorized that narrative does not involve rational content. Rather, he... more Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen has theorized that narrative does not involve rational content.
Rather, he suggested, narrative is only a descriptive practice consisting of singular statements.
Kuukkanen thus divorced the rational and narrative frameworks, arguing that historiography
belongs to the former and not the latter. This article establishes a new conceptual
framework that provides a revised understanding of narrative as a rational practice. I
argue that the principles of organization brought to light by the Gestalt school of experimental
psychology illuminate the underlying organizational logic that historians engage
with when constructing narratives. To illustrate how these principles operate in historical
narratives and how they are rational, I examine classic historical works such as Karl
Marx’s introduction of the concept of surplus value; Giambattista Vico’s Autobiography
and Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance; Reinhart Koselleck’s
Futures Past; and E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class and Johan
Huizinga’s Waning of the Middle Ages. My analysis shows that narrative entails its own
kind of explanatory structure. It is a way of thinking that provides meaning and structure to that which is otherwise unstructured and undetermined. Finally, my new framework offers a foundation for the rational evaluation of narratives by showing how the context of discovery and the context of justification cannot be separated in the case of narrative histories.

University of California, Santa Cruz, Sep 1, 2021

This dissertation seeks to vindicate the place that narrative has in historiography and recognize... more This dissertation seeks to vindicate the place that narrative has in historiography and recognize the rational components that are involved in narrative construction. The first chapter of this dissertation develops a novel account of some of the cognitive principles that are involved in narrative construction. One of the central aims of this chapter is to challenge the long-standing idea that narratives do not entail any rational or logical structure. I argue that the principles of organization brought to light by the Gestalt school of experimental psychology illuminate the principles underlying an organizational logic that historians engage in when constructing a narrative. Having developed an account of the “principles of narrative reason” in Chapter 1, I turn in Chapter 2 to the challenge presented by the multiplicity of interpretations in history. An answer to this challenge needs to explain the persistence of the diversity in historiography while maintaining epistemic standards. Chapter 2 first examines two attempted answers to this phenomenon. I argue that neither offers a satisfactory resolution. By developing a Wittgenstenien notion of aspect perception I provide a novel account of aspects as applied to the case of historical explanation, one that yields a more philosophically satisfactory answer to the “diversity problem.” Finally, the last chapter of this dissertation sketches a normative epistemic account of historiography. For although there exist multiple ways of understanding a particular event, we can nonetheless identify criteria that can guide us in deciding which narrative is better than another. I argue that three prevailing normative accounts of historiography (realist, antirealist and the tripartite theory of justification account) all prove unsuccessful in providing a good normative framework. My positive account is inspired by the works of Catherine Elgin and Alva Noë. Particularly, by Elgin’s notion of understanding–in opposition to knowledge– and Noë’s conception of reorganization in artistic creation. I conclude this dissertation by suggesting an important link between aesthetics and historiography. One that recognizes the value of reorganization and understanding as central to the epistemic significance of these disciplines

Journal of the Philosophy of History, 2020

Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistem... more Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg's book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now "preempting" explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg's argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one.

HOPOS, 2018

Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of histo... more Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of history: What is history? Rüsen characterizes his project as meta-historical theorizing, claiming that only through such a lens can an answer to his opening question be discerned. Metahistory as Rüsen understands it turns out to concern, first, the characterization of the metaphysical basis of human history ; second, the cataloguing of those cognitive abilities involved in comprehending the past; and third, the intellectual issues concerning methodology, pedagogy, critique of sources, and scientific legitimacy of history. In short, in the space of 250 pages, Rüsen seeks to canvass all those intellectual and cogni-tive skills germane to the discipline.

World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, 2017

Purpose In September 2015, the UN member states approved an ambitious agenda toward the end of po... more Purpose In September 2015, the UN member states approved an ambitious agenda toward the end of poverty, the pursuit of equity and the protection of the planet in the form of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets. The purpose of this paper is to raise a concern about the context and framework that science, technology and innovation have in the finalized text for adoption that frames the SDGs especially regarding environmental degradation. The authors argue that emphasizing technology transfer in the agenda has the risk to do not recognize other technological alternatives such as eco-technologies, and endorse a limited vision of the role of science and innovation in the achievement of the SDGs. Science for sustainability has to go further than technology transfer, even questioning the limits of the current patterns of intensive use of natural resources and inequity in consumption. By discussing the historical backgrounds of this paradigm and elaborating on the role o...

Revista la Razón Histórica, 2015

Este artículo propone hacer una revisión del pensamiento de Paul Ricoeur y Hayden White acerca de... more Este artículo propone hacer una revisión del pensamiento de Paul Ricoeur y
Hayden White acerca de la importancia de la narración en la historia. Partiendo del hecho
de que provienen de diferentes posiciones filosóficas, ambos reivindican a la narrativa y a
la imaginación como parte fundamental del quehacer histórico, conceptos que fueron
despreciados durante décadas por la predominancia de la visión positivista en la historia y
que son fundamentales para entender a la disciplina misma. A partir de una exposición y
revisión de los planteamientos de White y Ricoeur en torno a la narración, se desarrolla un
ejercicio de comparación crítica entre ambos para reivindicar y valorar las aportaciones
de los autores al campo de la filosofía de la Historia.
Palabras claves: Narración, Trama, Imaginación, Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White.

Cuadernos sobre Vico, 2012

Este ensayo es un acercamiento al pensamiento de Giambattista Vico y Wilhelm Dilthey. En esta apr... more Este ensayo es un acercamiento al pensamiento de Giambattista Vico y Wilhelm Dilthey. En esta aproximación a las propuestas de ambos autores, surgió la idea de analizar la autobiografía de Vico a través de los ojos de Dilthey, es decir, a través de su noción de vivencia como forma de comprensión humana. Una vez adoptada esta decisión en torno al trabajo, pude darme cuenta de que la narración autobiográfica, al ser considerada como puente de doble vía entre la vivencia humana y su compren-sión, se presenta como una postura filosófica en contra y alternativa al modelo racio-nal-cientificista de conocimiento de lo humano.

Fractal, 2015

The Practical Past, libro de Hayden White publicado en 2014, busca establecer una distinción entr... more The Practical Past, libro de Hayden White publicado en 2014, busca establecer una distinción entre dos tipos de pasado: el histórico y el práctico. El primero queda definido aquí como aquel que aparece sólo en los libros y los artículos publicados por los historiadores profesionales. Es un pasado seleccionado, corregido y revisado. En este sentido, es sólo una parte del pasado como totalidad. Asimismo, este pasado-histórico es la versión del pasado que puede ser comprobada y autentificada por otros historiadores; es el cúmulo de información con evidencia que es aceptado en la corte de la disciplina histórica.

Historia Mexicana, 2016

(eds.), El exilio español del 39 en México. Mediaciones entre mundos, disciplinas y saberes, Méxi... more (eds.), El exilio español del 39 en México. Mediaciones entre mundos, disciplinas y saberes, México, El Colegio de México, 2014, 260 pp. iSBN 978-607-462-703-9 A propósito del 75 aniversario del exilio español en México, en el año 2014 se organizaron gran cantidad de actividades para conme-morar uno de los exilios más importantes del siglo xx. Se lanza-ron convocatorias, se dieron conferencias y charlas, se montaron exposiciones, se presentaron varios libros e incluso se proyecta-ron películas. 1 En este esfuerzo compartido surgió un importan-te número de publicaciones que buscaron recordar las experien-cias vividas y las aportaciones intelectuales que dicho exilio tuvo en nuestro país. Algunas de ellas recuerdan en primera persona la vivencia del exilio como es el caso del libro de Ady Crespo Weber Yo y el exilio español. 2 otras buscan reconstruir el ambiente mexi-cano al cual llegaron los exiliados, como es el libro 1945: entre la euforia y la esperanza. El México posrevolucionario y el exilio republicano español. 3

Books by Mariana Imaz

Historia ¿para quién?, 2024

, por el texto: El lugar de la disciplina histórica en el contexto actual. Polifonía de una traye... more , por el texto: El lugar de la disciplina histórica en el contexto actual. Polifonía de una trayectoria y sus desafíos. D. R. © Karla Espinoza Motte, por el texto: Academia neoliberal o la instrumentalización del olvido.

Routledge Approaches to History, 2023

This book explains some of the psychological processes that go into narrative construction and wh... more This book explains some of the psychological processes that go into narrative construction and why it is that we have so much variability of historical accounts about a single historical event. A central focus of this book is how historians go from having unconnected units of data to having a coherent, structured, and organized flow of experiences. The author argues that the way these connections are established responds to certain Gestalt psychological principles that allow us to understand not only how histories are constructed but also how this construction can be rather different depending on how these principles are applied. To illustrate how these principles are present in history, the author analyzes classic historical writers such as Burckhardt, Huizinga, Vico, and Marx. As well as an explanation of why historical multiplicity happens, the book also offers a way to evaluate different historical narratives about the same historical event. To illustrate how the evaluative framework is at play, the author analyzes two views about the so-called discovery of America. The first one explains what happens in 1492 by using the term "discovery." The second one uses the notion of "invention" to talk about the same set of circumstances. The book provides an important epistemic tool to evaluate these different accounts-one that can be applied not only to this case but also others. This book appeals to scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduate students of history and philosophy. In addition, the book may also attract intellectuals, generally considered, who are interested in how philosophy can inform and question historical practice.