Carlo Ginzburg

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Carlo Ginzburg (2013)

Carlo Ginzburg (born April 15, 1939 in Turin ) is an Italian historian and cultural scientist . He is one of the protagonists of micro-history .

Live and act

Carlo Ginzburg, son of Leone and Natalia Ginzburg , grew up in the literary milieu of Turin in a Jewish intellectual family , cultivated personal relationships with writers like Italo Calvino p. 279 and was significantly influenced by Erich Auerbach . P. 682 As a child he suffered from fascism , persecution and marginalization . P. 279

In 1961 he graduated from the University of Pisa . In 1970 he wrote for the organ of the radical left spontaneous movement Lotta Continua . P. 280 Shortly after graduating, he was offered a position at the University of Bologna , where he taught until 1988. Then he went to the United States at the UCLA , where he taught modern history. He is professor emerito at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa , where he has taught since 2006.

Ginzburg's area of ​​expertise extends from the Italian Renaissance to early modern Europe. He is also a leading exponent of micro-history and new cultural history .

His 1976 work The Cheese and the Worms - The World of a Miller's Around 1600 , which is about the Italian farmer Menocchio and his worldview, made him famous; it has been translated into 15 languages ​​and earned him several awards. In his works on the persecution of witches in the early modern period, for example the Witches' Sabbath , he pursues the idea of ​​European shamanism .

Ginzburg is also interested in the process of gaining scientific knowledge: In securing evidence , he compares the working methods of Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes with those of the art historian Giovanni Morelli , who was the first to use incidental details for the attribution of paintings. Against the background of the 19th century, Ginzburg describes the forms of securing evidence that are typical of the epoch.

He took part in the discussion about Adriano Sofri and presented his case in a book in 1991.

In 1979 Ginzburg and Carlo Poni from the University of Bologna announced the micro-history program at a conference in Rome. Later the publication The Name and the Game appeared on it. Ginzburg and Poni explained that Italian historians could not follow the French model of making history (the Annales School ) without adequate funding. In addition, due to the criticism of quantitative historiography , they should not do this anyway. P. 19 The Annales school emphasizes long-lasting structures and reproduces an abstract, anonymous order that distorts reality. Only the worldview of the elite would come into the view of historians. P. 273f. Instead of the social history of the Annales School, they suggested doing close-up analyzes of highly circumscribed, highly limited phenomena such as a village or individual. The precise lighting of the social network creates a historiography that is closer to anthropology . Its aim should be to allow conclusions to be drawn about “larger historical questions” and general conclusions. In this way, historiography should also open up to marginalized groups that would be left out in other methods. P. 19

In 1996/1997 Ginzburg was a member of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin with the research topic alienation and the rhetoric of the Enlightenment in Voltaire's work . At the Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research in Berlin Ginzburg is an honorary member. In 2008 he was awarded the Humboldt Research Prize at the suggestion of the ZfL . In 2009 he was elected a member of the Academia Europaea . He has been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 2013 .

reception

Both Thomas Kroll and Gianni Pomata from Johns Hopkins University praise Ginzburg's writing style. According to Pomata, Ginzburg can have the same effect on readers as novelists and convey to them the enthusiasm for his detective work through his narration. P. 24 According to Kroll, Ginzburg's literary design of his works stands out considerably from the usual academic forms of presentation. P. 279

Sue Peabody p. 7 , Francesca Trivellato p. 6 and Szijártó name Ginzburg as the most famous micro-historian alongside Poni, Giovanni Levi and Edoardo Gredi. According to István Szijártó, he is the leading figure in the microstoria branch (Italian micro-history). P. 7 According to Thomas Kroll , Ginzburg had a decisive influence on the historical scholarly discussions in Western Europe, in the USA and also in Latin America. P. 268f.

According to Edward Wallace Muir , capturing elite and popular culture interactions through Inquisition records became the guiding principle of Ginzburg's works. P. 3

According to Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon , Ginzburg paved the way for the analysis of materials that conventional historians have often marginalized and dismissed as trivial. He put an emphasis on telling an interesting story. It makes the reader a direct participant in the analysis of the topic. Ginzburg used approaches that are considered unconventional. He read into the narrative hints and methods of literary criticism . For this reason, Ginzburg would often be identified with postmodernism . Trygve Riiser Gundersen noted that Ginzburg had appeared in a series of articles as a passionate defender of the concept of historical truth and a surprisingly fierce critic of postmodern history theory. P. 113 Magnússon, too, describes Ginzburg as one of the vocal critics of traditional historiography. P. 114

Irene Quenzler Brown of the University of Connecticut criticizes Ginzburg and the historians of microhistory for the fact that their work is often careless and scanty. They would have a tendency to expand their generalizations well beyond the material they are working with. Magnússon adds that when this happens, the very virtues of micro-historical focus are often lost. In this way, the view is diverted from the actual research object and the perceived context. P. 128

According to Trivellato, Simona Cerutti and Ginzburg deny the existence of a division of microhistory into cultural and social history . Ginzburg points to the common theoretical basis of both approaches. Even if several editions of the Quaderni Storici (an academic journal in Italy) attempted in the 1990s to point out new intersections between social and cultural-historical approaches to microhistory, Ginzburg's interior view, according to Trivellato, does not reflect the image of microhistory from the outside. P. 11 Szijártó describes Ginzburg as a cultural scientist, even if he does not clearly position himself. P. 7

Awards

Works (selection)

Il formaggio ei vermi (1976)

Ginzburg's works were mainly published in the Einaudi publishing house, which his father co-founded . German editions were published by Syndikat and Wagenbach , among others .

Translations

  • The cheese and the worms: The world of a miller around 1600 , trans. v. Karl F. Hauber. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-8108-0118-6 .
  • The Benandanti. Field cults and witches in the 16th and 17th centuries , trans. v. Karl F. Hauber. Syndicate, Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-8108-0160-7 .
  • Explorations about Piero: Piero della Francesca, an early Renaissance painter , trans. v. Karl F. Hauber. Wagenbach, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-8031-3500-1 .
  • Securing evidence: about hidden history, art and social memory , trans. v. Karl F. Hauber. Wagenbach, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-8031-3514-1 .
  • Witches' Sabbath: deciphering a nocturnal story , trans. v. Martina Kempter. Wagenbach, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-8031-3549-4 .
  • The Judge and the Historian: Reflections on the Sofri Case , trans. v. Walter Kögler. Wagenbach, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-8031-2189-2 .
  • The Venus of Giorgione , trans. v. Catharina Berents. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-05-003217-0 .
  • Wooden eyes: about proximity and distance , about. v. Renate Heimbucher. Wagenbach, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-8031-3599-0 .
  • The sword and the lightbulb: a new reading of Picasso's Guernica , trans. v. Reinhard Kaiser . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-518-12103-0 .
  • The Truth of the Story: Rhetoric and Evidence , trans. v. Wolfgang Kaiser. Wagenbach, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-8031-5165-1 .
  • Thread and traces: true, false, fictional , about v. Victoria Lorini. Wagenbach, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-8031-5184-1

literature

  • Cora Presezzi (ed.): Streghe, sciamani, visionari: In margine a 'Storia Notturna' di Carlo Ginzburg. Viella, Rome 2019, ISBN 9788833132129 .
  • Alexander Schnickmann: Under another moon. Carlo Ginzburg and the hermeneutics of cracks. In: Weimarer Contributions Vol. 66/1 (2020), pp. 19–35 ( [1] ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Interview with Luca Sofri and Ginzburg in: Jungle World, 1998 ( Memento from January 16, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Thomas Kroll: The beginnings of the microstoria . In: Jeanette Granda / Jürgen Schreiber (eds.): Perspectives through retrospectives. Economic history contributions. Festschrift for Rolf Walter on his 60th birthday . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Weimar / Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-412-21086-1 .
  3. ^ Carlo Ginzburg: Latitude, Slaves, and the Bible: An Experiment in Microhistory . In: Critical Inquiry . tape 31 , no. 3 , 2005, ISSN  0093-1896 , p. 665-683 , doi : 10.1086 / 430989 , JSTOR : 10.1086 / 430989 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i István M. Szijártó, Sigurdur Gylfi Magnússon: What is Microhistory? Theory and practic . Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London / New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-69208-3 .
  5. ^ Page of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Ginzburg
  6. ^ Page from Ginzburg at the ZfL
  7. ^ Directory of members: Carlo Ginzburg. Academia Europaea, accessed October 5, 2017 .
  8. ^ Member History: Carlo Ginzburg. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 21, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Sue Peabody: Microhistory, Biography, Fiction. The Politics of Narrating the Lives of People under Slavery . No. 2 . Transatlantica, 2012.
  10. ^ A b Francesca Trivellato: Is There a Future for Italian Microhistory in the Age of Global History? No. 2 (1) . California Italian Studies, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Ginzburg, Carlo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian historian and cultural scientist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin