Resumen de Primacy of the historical: On a few sinppets of text with a view to witnessing, scholarship and political

Henning Trueper

• The article conducts an analysis of everyday notions of witnessing as emerging from the marginal writings of a mid-twentieth century Belgian medievalist, François Louis Ganshof (1895-1980). The aim of the analysis is threefold: to explore a specific set of cultural conditions shaping the understanding of witnessing; to demonstrate the primacy, in witnessing, of an intricate notion of historicity as moulded by scholarly practice; and to indicate that, and in what manner, witnessing and historicity informed a notion of political experience that appears foundational to Ganshof's understanding of, and attitude towards, matters political in general. The article also stipulates the legitimacy and the value, in a historical investigation of political thought, of focusing on minor figures, discursive patterns and events of seeming insignificance. It ultimately proposes that the small-scale cultural labour on the discursive formations centred on historicity may be deployed for rethinking our understanding of epochal concepts such as modernity.