Abstract

VIDELA, Oscar R.. History of a consensus: A journey through the historiographical perspective of Juan Álvarez. Andes [online]. 2012, vol.23, n.2, pp.00-00. ISSN 1668-8090.

Even the shortest review of the contemporary historiographers' opinions about Juan Alvarez' works shows in a clear and rapid way an extremely positive balance. Authors coming from the most varied historiographic, political and ideological orientations (either those from the Academy, renovators, annalists, revisionists, marxists) agree in pointing out Alvarez as one of the best representatives of the Argentine historiographic studies, in particular of the Argentine economic historiography. But this wide consensus also includes a paradox, or more evidently, a suspicion, that such dissimilar orientations could hardly be referring to the same Alvarez. With this consensus as a starting point, in this article we intend to go deeply, in the first place, into those valuations of Alvarez' works, starting with his own contemporaries and getting to the current historiography, at the same time trying to outline an outlook which also covers a broad variety of Argentine historiographic orientations. In the second place, I intend to inquire onto which aspects of Alvarez' works these valuations are built (particularly in relation to the founding role of economic history, but also to the regional approach to Argentine history, the promoter of a social history, or to the necessary and explicit articulation of his historical inquiries with the concerns about the present time, etc.), and how they are resignified both in relation to the more general orientations in the historiographic traditions as well as the junctures in which the were formulated. In short, we are trying to point out how the points of view about Alvarez comprise a kind of kaleidoscope in which the multiple interpretations take aspects of his works, which, in fact, exist in most cases, giving as a result that consensus mentioned; but they also contain a whole series of disputes into the historiographic field from its very constitution until the present; a field to which Alvarez got integrated not without difficulty, precisely due to this matrix of historiographic orientations that later generated such a positive concept within the complex arch of Argentine historiography.

Keywords : Juan Álvarez; Argentine historiography; Consensus; Excepcionality; Heterodoxy.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )