The return of the individual as object of history: reflections from the semiotic perspective

Abstract

From the late 1970s and early 1980s on, the biographical method - which had never been fully forgotten - regained a place of prestige in the French production of historiography. A variety of studies have been carried out to explain the conditions of this return. This article intends to contribute to the investigation of such field of study from a semiotic perspective, with a focus on the analysis of the construction and investment of values in the so-called historical object, namely the individual, who has reappeared in the historiographical scene - at first, in opposition to the quantitative historiographical model and, then, as a result of the paradigmatic shift of the biographical method itself.