Guessing the Past. On a Footnote by Carlo Ginzburg
The starting point for this reflection is footnote 48 of Carlo Ginzburg’s 1979 essay “Traces. Racines d’un paradigme indiciaire,” which refers to an “epistemology of a divinatory type.” From this note, I set out to explore the implications for the human sciences of a theory of minor knowledge (non-systematic, non-repeatable, such as intuition, analogy, conjecture, informal techniques of knowing). This research was guided by a conviction as a writer, who also publishes documentary narratives and poems based on private, found, and institutional archives. The editing that takes place can be described as “critical lyricism,” an exact lyricism, but one that gives voice to traces, gives voice with and for traces, and does not renounce the subjective experience of the archive. This lyricism thinks and cries, questions and is moved, argues and imagines, it gives public form to what is often forgotten by the res publica.