Guillermo Zermeño Padilla. Historiography, Temporality, and Historical Knowledge. Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2025, 310 pp.

Abstract

In his work Historiography, Temporality, and Historical Knowledge (2025), Professor Guillermo Zermeño Padilla delves into the epistemological crossroads that have shaped the discipline of history, tracing a critical path from the emergence of the archive in modernity to the crisis of the grand, totalizing narratives of the 20th century. The book is not merely a recounting of historiography, but a profound "archaeology of modern knowledge" (Zermeño Padilla, 2025, p. 233) that exposes the foundations upon which the profession of the historian has been built, while simultaneously subjecting it to rigorous conceptual revision. Zermeño Padilla's central thesis revolves around the need to "place historiography at the center" (2025, p. 17), transforming it from a subsidiary space into an essential field of reflection that not only studies the past, but also examines the conditions of possibility and the cognitive limits of its own practice. This effort is articulated through the analysis of temporality, demonstrating that the problem of the past is, in essence, a problem of the future and of the present in constant renegotiation.