History

This book explores the changing relationship between historical truth, fiction and lies through a series of cases. And it takes a bold stand against naive positivism and allegedly sophisticated neo-skepticism. It looks deeply into questions raised by decades of post-structuralism: What constitutes historical truth? How do we draw a boundary between truth and fiction? What is the relationship between history and memory? How do we grapple with the historical conventions that inform, in different ways, all written documents?

The ambivalent connection between the two parts of this book (the first dedicated to Machiavelli, the second to Pascal) is embodied by the comma (,) in its subtitle. Is this comma a conjunction or a disjunction? In fact, both.

We are surrounded by images, fairly drowning in them. From our cell phones to our computers, from our televisions at home to the screens that light up while we wait in the grocery store checkout line, images of all kinds are seducing us, commanding us to buy!, scaring us, dazzling us.

Night flights to lonely places, sexual relations with the devil, orgies and infanticide, desecration of the cross and the sacraments: for several centuries, between the 17th and 18th centuries, the image of the Sabbath emerged throughout Europe (and then in other continents, in countries colonized by Europeans), described by women and men accused of witchcraft before secular and ecclesiastical courts. Confessions were rarely spontaneous, more often than not extracted through torture and pressure from judges: but what lay behind the image of the Sabbath?