The historian as a critical intellectual. Approach to the work of Josep Fontana

Abstract

This article makes a brief balance of the work of the Catalan historian Josep Fontana, and in particular of some of the points that we consider to be of greatest interest from the wide range of analytical possibilities that his work allows us. At first we will collect his discussion in relation to historiographic currents, within the framework of the end of state socialism in the early 1990s. Later we will stop at a perhaps not so well known aspect of his thought, but not for that less important and to which I dedicate a considerable part of my reflections: the teaching of history. Finally, we will comment on some of his main proposals in relation to the renewal of the historian's profession and his intellectual and social role in contemporary society. The article ends with some conclusions, among which the relationship between political commitment and social utility that should characterize the historian's work stands out.