Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Writing history at a time of memory -- 1 The distancing of the modern -- 2 The challenge of memory -- 3 Traditional history vs memorial history? -- 4 Conclusion: a plea for critical history -- Notes -- PART I: Rethinking Early Modern Europe -- 1. Violence -- 1 Rites of violence? -- 2 Different from us -- 3 Losing one's head -- 4 Conclusions: violence as judgement -- Notes -- 2. Popular culture -- 1 The standard historiographical understanding of popular culture -- 2 A thousand Menocchios -- 3 The hermeneutical turn -- 4 Folklore and reflexive anthropology -- 5 Inventing the people -- 6 Conclusions: rethinking the concept of popular -- Notes -- 3. Public opinion -- 1 Critique as the matrix of the crisis -- 2 A utopia of communication -- 3 A deformed ancien régime -- 4 Possible pluralisms -- 5 Conclusions: counterposed rhetorics -- Notes -- 4. Revolutions -- 1 After the revisionisms -- 2 The mother of all revolutions -- 3 Revolutions before 'the Revolution' -- 4 Conclusions: revolutions and public memory -- Notes -- PART II: Rethinking Modernity -- 5. Identity -- 1 There once was a thing called class -- 2 Between radical individualism and representations -- 3 The discovery of identity -- 4 New types of subjectivity -- 5 The modernity we have lost -- 6 The liquified world -- 7 Simul stabunt, simul cadent: nation, class and identitary divisions -- 8 Conclusions: coming to terms with lost innocence -- Notes -- 6. Power -- 1 The time of Grand Theories -- 2 The antipositivist reaction -- 3 Foucault -- 4 Power in social organizations -- 5 Power, institutions, identity -- 6 Conclusions: the communicative dimension of power -- Notes -- 7. Generations -- 1 Wave on wave -- 2 Grounding the concept of generation