ABSTRACT
The studies grouped together in Pre-liistoires emerge from a poetics that is wholly orientated in this way towards history. Each of the studies of Pre-histoires begins, then, with the particular, the singular even, rather than the general, and does its best not to fill in the blanks, the dark patches, of history. The metaphor of the archipelago is invoked, as if Rabelais's Quart Livre had provided the model of an approach characterized by its irregular landfalls and its detours rather than by the coherence of the mainland or of some wide-reaching empire. Finally, pre histories are least vulnerable to the magnetic power of singular thresholds when they, like the thresholds, are plural. The fundamental tool in such a method is the microanalysis of a specific textual instance carrying a structured individual perception, be it of a disquieting pattern of ideas or beliefs, a disturbing personal experience, or an unexpected tremor in the political or economic situation of the day.
