Textual Criticism, Psychoanalysis and the Historical Method. A Conversation

Abstract

In this conversation, Carlo Ginzburg and Andreas Mayer address a number of epistemological issues central to the articulation of historiography and psychoanalysis: the notion of unintentional revelations (or involuntary testimonies), the relation between the specificity of cases and the generalizations implied by them, the problem of reopening old cases and of their proper contextualization, and the question to what extent translation can serve as a metaphor for the work of psychoanalysts and historians.