The Context as the Production of Meaning of the Sources

Abstract

This essay aims to examine the notion of context and the production of place in the chapter “Making (of) History” from The Writing of History. Michel de Certeau explores this concept and its productive function through the lens of his specialization in seventeenth-century religious history. I argue that, for the Jesuit historian, context entails the explicit articulation of the operations undertaken by the historian to confer meaning upon sources that is, ideology. I also situate the context in which his work was first received in Mexico, highlighting now geographical and cultural displacement contributes to the emergence of new interpretations. I contend that authors travel across national and intellectual boundaries, and that these new contexts generate distinct readings of their work. Finally, I argue that the historian is inevitably shaped by ideology, and that his work reflects a specific moment of interpretation within the broader process of historical inquiry.