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'Exhilarating . . . a work of scholarship, but also inspiration. .
. Go and read Jablonka and change the world' Christina Patterson,
Sunday Times 'An unexpected bestseller in France. . . it has
sparked conversations' Challenges A highly acclaimed, bestselling
work from one of France's preeminent historians What does it mean
to be a good man? To be a good father, or a good partner? A good
brother, or a good friend? In this insightful analysis, social
historian Ivan Jablonka offers a re-examination of the patriarchy
and its impact on men. Ranging widely across cultures, from
Mesopotamia to Confucianism to Christianity to the revolutions of
the eighteenth century, Jablonka uncovers the origins of our
patriarchal societies. He then offers an updated model of
masculinity based on a theory of gender justice which aims for a
redistribution of gender, just as social justice demands the
redistribution of wealth. Arguing that it is high time for men to
be as involved in gender justice as women, Jablonka shows that in
order to build a more equal and respectful society, we must gain a
deeper understanding of the structure of patriarchy - and reframe
the conversation so that men define themselves by the rights of
women. Widely acclaimed in France, this is an important work from a
major thinker.
Ivan Jablonka's grandparents' lives ended long before his began:
although Mates and Idesa Jablonka were his family, they were
perfect strangers. When he set out to uncover their story, Jablonka
had little to work with. Neither of them was the least bit famous,
and they left little behind except their two orphaned children, a
handful of letters, and a passport. Persecuted as communists in
Poland, as refugees in France, and then as Jews under the Vichy
regime, Mates and Idesa lived their short lives underground. They
were overcome by the tragedies of the twentieth century: Stalinism,
the mounting dangers in Europe during the 1930s, the Second World
War, and the destruction of European Jews. Jablonka's challenge
was, as a historian, to rigorously distance himself and yet, as
family, to invest himself completely in their story. Imagined
oppositions collapsed-between scholarly research and personal
commitment, between established facts and the passion of the one
recording them, between history and the art of storytelling. To
write this book, Jablonka traveled to three continents; met the
handful of survivors of his grandparents' era, their descendants,
and some of his far-flung cousins; and investigated twenty
different archives. And in the process, he reflected on his own
family and his responsibilities to his father, the orphaned son,
and to his own children and the family wounds they all inherited. A
History of the Grandparents I Never Had cannot bring Mates and
Idesa to life, but Jablonka succeeds in bringing them, as he
soberly puts it, to light. The result is a gripping story, a
profound reflection, and an absolutely extraordinary history.
Ivan Jablonka's History Is a Contemporary Literature offers highly
innovative perspectives on the writing of history, the relationship
between literature and the social sciences, and the way that both
social-scientific inquiry and literary explorations contribute to
our understanding of the world. Jablonka argues that the act and
art of writing, far from being an afterthought in the social
sciences, should play a vital role in the production of knowledge
in all stages of the researcher's work and embody or even
constitute the understanding obtained. History (along with
sociology and anthropology) can, he contends, achieve both greater
rigor and wider audiences by creating a literary experience through
a broad spectrum of narrative modes. Challenging scholars to adopt
investigative, testimonial, and other experimental writing
techniques as a way of creating and sharing knowledge, Jablonka
envisions a social science literature that will inspire readers to
become actively engaged in understanding their own pasts and to
relate their histories to the present day. Lamenting the
specialization that has isolated the academy from the rest of
society, History Is a Contemporary Literature aims to bring
imagination and audacity into the practice of scholarship, drawing
on the techniques of literature to strengthen the methods of the
social sciences.
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