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My approach to microhistory is strongly indebted to the work of scholars like Erich Auerbach (whom I mentioned earlier) who developed interpretations of literary and painterly artifacts based on clues others had considered insignificant. This version of microhistory has been contrasted with another version, more oriented towards the social sciences and the critique of their methods.1 In my view, the opposition is groundless because both versions of microhistory aim at the same theoretical target, albeit from opposite directions. I know that the word theory cannot be taken for granted in this context. In the social sciences, theory is often tacitly identified with a broad approach à la Max Weber, and microhistory with a narrowly focused attempt to rescue from oblivion the lives of marginal, defeated people. If one accepts these definitions, microhistory would be confined to a peripheral and basically atheoretical role that leaves the dominant theories unchallenged. The case of Jean-Pierre Purry, that early prophet of the capitalist conquest of the world, stands a chance of knocking down some of the barriers thought to divide microhistory and theory.2 A life chosen at random can make concretely visible the attempt to unify the world, as well as some of its implications. In saying this I am echoing Auerbach. But Auerbach was implicitly referring to Proust. Let us allow Proust to have the final word: "People foolishly imagine that the broad generalities of social phenomena afford an excellent opportunity to penetrate further into the human soul; they ought, on the contrary, to realise that it is by plumbing the depths of a single personality that they might have a chance of understanding those phenomena."3 1 See Jacques Revel, "Micro-analyse et construction du social," in Jeux d'échelles: La Micro-analyse à l'expérience, ed. Revel (Paris, 1996), pp. 15-36. 2 A single case analyzed in depth will suffice to provide the basis for an extensive comparison; see Marcel Mauss, "Essai sur les variations saisonnières des sociétés eskimo: Etude de morphologie sociale" [1906], Sociologie et anthropologie, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1966), pp. 389-477. 3 Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, vol. 3. of In Search of Lost Time, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, ed. D. J. Enright (New York, 1993), p. 450. "Les niais s'imaginent que les grosses dimensions des phénomènes sociaux sont une excellente occasion de pénétrer plus avant dans l'âme humaine; ils devraient au contraire comprendre que c'est en descendant en profondeur dans une individualité qu'ils auraient chance de comprendre ces phénomènes" (Proust, Le côté des Guermantes , vol 2 of À la Recherche du temps perdu [Paris, 1959], p. 330). The passage, which is on Françoise and the Russo-Japanese war, has been quoted by Franceso Orlando, "Darwin, Freud, l'individuo e il caso," La Rivista dei libri 5 (Feb. 1995): 21. |
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