Au-delà de la perspective, cartographier le passé

This paper presents different kinds of temporality emerging from the historical study of an industrial plant. The first consists in the author’s taking over the memory of an industrial worker’s former experience, and building a methodical relation to the past. By reworking in the plant, he clearly establishes his research in the present. The paper then breaks the apparent continuity between past and present, and adopts the specific historical approach to elements of the past. Through questions concerning the job, this approach attempts to make those elements work together, in order to create a representation of the past independent from the present perspective. In this historical representation, dynamics and rhythms of change and continuity vary according to the questions asked in past tense. Whether it is about working conditions or working hours, about employment or conflicts, the dynamics show particulars conducive to envisaging time as plural and plastic.