Engaging with Historical Imaginaries Through Digital Games

Immaginari storici nei videogiochi

Abstract: In this article, I will attempt at providing a map of different ways in which digital games allow users to imagine and re-imagine history. By relying on the imaginative engagement of digital games, I will discuss games that enhance and favor historical imagination, also beyond the boundaries of ‘literal’ approaches to the past, including pseudo-historical, fantasy, and sci-fi games as well. I will focus on three kinds of historical imagination leveraged, favoured, and enhanced by digital games: archaeological, counterfactual, and metaphorical imagination.
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21323
Languages: Italian, English

Nel corso di questo articolo, propongo di interpretare (sulla scia di vari game scholars) di interpretare i videogiochi come fiction interattive, o in altre parole come mondi finzionali con cui possiamo interagire. Numerose sono le prospettive teoriche e metodologiche che si aprono a partire da questa interpretazione. Alcune di queste, come sostengo in questo articolo, si dimostrano di interesse anche dal punto di vista storico. Di seguito, mi concentrerò sugli aspetti finzionali dei videogiochi storici, analizzando vari modi di fare storia nel videogioco da una prospettiva ermeneutica.

Interpretare i pixel

Seguendo questa prospettiva, considererò come i videogiochi, in quanto fiction interattive, implichino processi di comprensione, interpretazione e finzione in tutto e per tutto simili a quelli implicati da fiction non interattive.

Per videogiocare storicamente, o per interpretare un videogioco come storico, chi gioca fa inevitabilmente uso di immaginazione e interpretazione: si deve per lo meno capire che cosa stiano rappresentando i pixel presenti a schermo, o si deve accettare che il mondo videoludico sia in qualche modo ‘reale’, affinché l’esperienza di gioco abbia senso – e qualcosa di molto simile accade sia quando si legge un libro che quando si guarda un film).

Come sosterrò nel corso dell’articolo, i videogiochi storici sono così efficaci (da diversi punti di vista) proprio nel loro favorire e accrescere specifici processi di immaginazione e ri-immaginazione di eventi, processi e concetti storici. È solo attraverso un’attenta considerazione di questa dimensione finzionale che possiamo approcciare opportunamente il potenziale (e i potenziali rischi) del videogioco per la narrazione storica, tanto come analisti/e che come designer.

Di seguito, parlerò di come l’immaginazione dell’utenza videoludica entra in contatto con varie re-immaginazioni della storia. Più nello specifico, proporrò una mappatura di massima di diversi modi in cui il videogioco consente di ri-immaginare la storia, di volta in volta evidenziando il loro potenziale per il discorso storico. Considerando soprattutto gli aspetti immaginativi e finzionali dell’esperienza videoludica, non mi limiterò a trattare di approcci letterali alla narrazione storica, scelta che in questo contesto sarebbe limitante. Piuttosto, considererò come ‘storici’ (o comunque ricchi di implicazioni storiche) anche videogiochi pseudo-storici, fantasy, o fantascientifici. Il motivo di questa scelta si chiarirà man mano che utilizzerò titoli del genere come esempi al fianco di altri più esplicitamente ascrivibili al discorso storico.

Immaginazione archeologica

Con ‘immaginazione archeologica’, prendendo ispirazione da Michael Shanks, voglio indicare la capacità di immaginare, ricreare e rievocare il passato a partire dalle sue tracce nel presente. Nella pratica del fare storia, l’immaginazione archeologica è fondamentale – e possiamo trovare sia videogiochi che ci consentono di allenare questa capacità che titoli interamente basati su di essa.

Sono molti i videogiochi che favoriscono l’immaginazione archeologica pur senza essere interessati al passato reale – basti pensare a tutti quei titoli che utilizzano lo storytelling indicale o ambientale, ovvero che raccontano le loro storie attraverso indizi e frammenti sparsi per lo spazio di gioco. In molti videogiochi recenti, come Dark Souls (FromSoftware, 2011), l’utenza è sempre di più chiamata a ricostruire narrazioni senza una guida esplicita da parte dei designer: si esplorano luoghi deserti e si cerca di capire cosa sia accaduto al loro interno traendo conclusioni in completa libertà. Malgrado abbiano a che fare con un passato non reale, questi giochi danno comunque alla loro utenza la possibilità e lo stimolo di mettere in gioco la propria immaginazione archeologica – diventano quindi degli strumenti affascinanti per esercitare la capacità di interpretare tracce e ricostruire il passato.

Altri giochi fanno leva sull’immaginazione archeologica per raccontare il passato reale. In Attentat 1942 (Charles Games, 2017) e Svoboda 1945: Liberation (Charles Games, 2021), per esempio, chi gioca deve ricostruire degli eventi storici traumatici interrogando testimoni e collezionando indizi. Entrambi I titoli sono basati su fatti reali e raccontano di un passato vulnerabile, frammentato, e che per avere un senso necessita di essere capito, interpretato e ordinato a posteriori. Entrambi, in altre parole, chiedono a chi gioca di prendere parte attiva in un processo storico (e storiografico). In questi casi, l’immaginazione archeologica è al centro delle meccaniche di gioco: per capire cos’è successo, chi gioca non può che farne uso.

Alcuni videogiochi invece sono costruiti proprio sull’immaginazione archeologica. The Forgotten City (Modern Storyteller, 2021), per esempio, è ambientato in una città Romana del Primo Secolo. Come molti altri, il titolo è il risultato tangibile di un esercizio di immaginazione archeologica: alla base del design del gioco c’è un processo immaginativo di ambienti, abitudini, vestiti e così via, che prende ispirazione dalle tracce che la civiltà rappresentata (quella Romana) ci ha lasciato. Videogiocando a questi titoli, l’utenza entra a sua volta in contatto con l’immaginazione archeologica, magari corroborando la propria conoscenza pregressa del passato con ciò che viene simulato nel mondo finzionale.

Immaginazione controfattuale

Le implicazioni controfattuali dei giochi storici sono di primaria importanza in historical game studies. Piuttosto che concentrarmi sulla sfida che queste pongano ad approcci storici più tradizionali, mi limito a rilevare come la messa in discussione di un approccio deterministico al passato, e quindi una sua sistematica ‘virtualizzazione’, siano e non possano che essere modi per favorire un atteggiamento creativo e critico di rielaborazione della storia.

Per capire come i videogiochi favoriscano, e al tempo stesso siano anche il risultato di immaginazione controfattuale, basti pensare a un qualsiasi rinomato titolo strategico storico. In Europa Universalis (Paradox Interactive, 2000), per dirne uno, chi gioca può scegliere una nazione e condurla alla prosperità o alla sconfitta. Il gioco simula processi politici, economici e sociali con particolare accuratezza, ma malgrado questo non può che dare vita a scenari controfattuali – in alcuni titoli della serie, per esempio, la Germania può vincere la Seconda Guerra Mondiale.

I videogiochi storici, consentendo di sperimentare con la storia e di alterarne il corso in un ambiente simulato, portano a un’uso dell’immaginazione controfattuale del tutto efficace dal punto di vista storico: valutando e capendo scenari ipotetici, chi gioca può ottenere una conoscenza più profonda e completa di eventi quanto di processi storici anche molto precisi.

Al contempo, anche fuori dal gioco storico propriamente detto l’immaginazione controfattuale è utile a contrastare visioni rigide o deterministiche del passato. In videogiochi fantasy come Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Intelligent Systems, Koei Tecmo, 2019), chi gioca altera eventi macroscopici di una storia finzionale, e può giocare più e più volte per vedere a ogni iterazione le conseguenze su larga scala delle sue scelte – a livello politico, ideologico e culturale – sul mondo di gioco.

In ultima istanza, suggerisco di interpretare anche le fiction interattive ad ambientazione utopica o distopica in quanto costruite (e di conseguenza facenti leva) sull’immaginazione controfattuale. I mondi finzionali ‘come se’ in cui, per esempio, la Germania ha vinto la Seconda Guerra Mondiale (Wolfenstein: The New Order (MachineGames, 2014)) sono casi evidenti di come, utilizzando lo storytelling interattivo per costruire mondi controfattuali e distopici, il videogioco possa interagire con l’immaginazione storica in modo più che efficace. Possiamo interpretare questi giochi come forme interattive di storia virtuale, in cui il passato viene messo in discussione, sovvertito, in modo da dischiudere nuovi scenari storici ipotetici o condizionali.

Immaginazione metaforica

Come scrive Phillip Stambovsky, le metafore sono utili a facilitare la comprensione storica a diversi livelli epistemologici. Nei videogiochi che raccontano il passato troviamo metafore storiche in varie forme.

Anzitutto, vale la pena notare come molte simulazioni storiche in generale siano associabili a metafore storiche. Quando l’utente capisce cosa viene rappresentato da una meccanica di gioco, già mette in campo l’immaginazione metaforica: capire un processo simulato, interpretarlo, e afferrare che ‘stia per’ un processo di riferimento già implicano un uso di questa facoltà, specialmente se il processo in questione consiste in una semplificazione estrema (o estremamente astratta) della sua controparte reale.

Oltre a questo, molti giochi immergono l’utenza in mondi di finzione ricchi di metafore narrative che si rivolgono, più o meno evidentemente, a eventi e processi storici: GreedFall (Spiders, 2019), per esempio,  rievoca e mette in discussione il colonialismo europeo e soprattutto le politiche mercantiliste ambientandosi nell’isola immaginaria di Teer Fradee, abitata da divinità e invasa da popoli piagati da una misteriosa malattia; Papers, Please (3909 LLC, 2013), come da titolo, propone una metafora ancora più esplicita della vita in uno stato di polizia.

I giochi possono anche simulare metafore che di solito usiamo per concettualizzare e raccontare la storia. Come nota Jason Begy, per esempio, spesso i giochi si rivolgono al passato utilizzando metafore strutturali. Un esempio è ‘progresso come competizione’, che spesso i giochi strategici propongono all’utenza – si veda come Sid Meier’s Civilization II (MicroProse, 1996), tutto basato sulla competizione tra più giocanti al fine di raggiungere la prosperità (economica, tecnologica, culturale), più specificamente arrivando a colonizzare Alpha Centauri o a distruggere tutte le altre civiltà in partita.

In tutti i casi, l’utenza può fare storia videogiocando attraverso metafore che consentono di riconoscere, reinterpretare e riproblematizzare il passato attraverso mondi fantasy, meccaniche di gioco allusive e procedure con sottotesti retorici.

Storytelling ambientale

Come detto, i tipi di immaginazione storica visti finora (archeologica, controfattuale, metaforica) sono implicati dalle caratteristiche stesse delle esperienze videoludiche: storytelling ambientale e indicale, condizionalità, reversibilità, ripetibilità e metaforicità. È anche e soprattutto facendo leva su questi tipi di immaginazione che i giochi possono diventare così efficaci dalla prospettiva storica.

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Per approfondire

  • Ferguson, Niall. Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. London: MacMillan Publications Limited, 1997.
  • Shanks, Michael. The Archaeological Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2012.
  • Stambovsky, Phillip. “Metaphor and Historical Understanding.” History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988): 125-134.

Siti web

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Image Credits

Dark © 2020 TheRealSoulsurrender CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr.

Recommended Citation

Caselli, Stefano: Immaginari storici nei videogiochi, in: Public History Weekly 11 (2023) 3, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21323

Editorial Responsibility

Enrica Salvatori / Deborah Paci

As convincingly and fruitfully argued by many game scholars, we may agree in considering digital games as interactive fictions, i.e., as fictional worlds we can interact with. Many theoretical and methodological perspectives arise from such a consideration, and some of them can prove useful from the historical perspective, as I contend in this article. As follows, I will consider fictionality as having utmost importance in historical games, and I will approach historying through digital games from a hermeneutic perspective.

Interpreting Pixels

To briefly introduce such a perspective, suffice it to consider how “interactive fiction” implies processes of understanding, interpretation, and make-believe that are similar to those at play in non-interactive fictions.

Games in general, and historical digital games in particular, rely on user interpretation and imagination to be “played historically”, or to be received as historical in the first place: at a very basic level, players must interpret the pixels on screen as depicting something, and the gameworld simulated within the game as being actual, at least to a certain degree (the same is implied if books or films are to be received and enjoyed).

As I will contend within this article, historical digital games are so effective (in many ways) precisely due to how they enhance and favor imagination towards historical events, processes, and concepts. It is only by acknowledging this that public historians, both as analysts and designers, can fruitfully grasp their potential (and potential risks) for historical discourse.

In this article, I will deal with how the imagination of historical digital game users engages with different re-imaginings of history during play. More specifically, I will attempt to provide a map of different ways in which digital games allow users to imagine and re-imagine history, each time emphasizing their potential for historical discourse. By relying on the emphasis on the imaginative engagement of digital games, I will not limit my enquiry to literal approaches to history, which would be restrictive here. As will become clear in what follows, I will therefore look for games that enhance and favor historical imagination beyond the boundaries of “literal” approaches to the past, including pseudo-historical, fantasy, and sci-fi interactive fictions as well.

Archaeological Imagination

Following Michael Shanks, with “archaeological imagination” I broadly point out to the capacity we enact when we imagine, re-create, and re-enact the past by drawing from its traces within the present. Archaeological imagination is pivotal for any process of historying, and games can both enhance it and be built upon it.

Many games favor archaeological imagination without being interested at all in actual pasts – suffice it to think of all those games using indexical and/or environmental storytelling, i.e., telling their story through hints and fragments spread all around the gameworld. In many contemporary games, such as Dark Souls (FromSoftware, 2011), users are increasingly engaged in reconstructing narratives without being explicitly driven by game designers: they explore deserted environments and are free to draw conclusions about what did and did not happen within them in a remote past. Regardless of their dealing with non-actual histories/pasts, these games give users the chance to experiment with their archaeological imagination – therefore becoming fascinating tools to improve our capacity to interpret traces and reconstruct the past.

Other games leverage the archaeological imagination by dealing with actual pasts instead. In Attentat 1942 (Charles Games, 2017) and Svoboda 1945: Liberation (Charles Games, 2021), for example, users must reconstruct traumatic historical events by talking with witnesses and gathering clues. Both games are based on actual historical facts and aim at depicting the past as vulnerable, fragmented, and demanding being understood, interpreted, and ordered to make sense. Both games, in other words, engage players in an active process of making (sense of) history. Here, the archaeological imagination is at the very core of the mechanics of the game: users cannot but train their archaeological imagination to understand what happened.

Other games are instead built upon the archaeological imagination. This is the case with The Forgotten City (Modern Storyteller, 2021), set in a realistic First Century Roman City. This and many other historical games are tangible results of archaeological imagination at play: designers imagine environments, habits, clothes, and so on and so forth by drawing on the traces that the civilizations depicted left us. By playing such games, users can engage with the archaeological imagination as well, maybe corroborating their own knowledge and/or imagining of the past with the one depicted.

Counterfactual Imagination

The counterfactual implications of historical games are of utmost importance for historical game scholars. Instead of delving into the challenge they posit to traditional accounts of history, I shall limit myself to exploring how countering any deterministic understanding of the past and “virtualizing” history is, and cannot but be, a good way to favor a critical and creative stance towards them.

To understand how digital games can enhance, as well as be the products of, counterfactual imagination, suffice it to think of any renowned Grand Strategy historical game. In Europa Universalis (Paradox Interactive, 2000), just to name one, users are free to choose the nation they prefer and lead it to prosperity or defeat. Although the game simulates political, societal, and economic processes with a high degree of accuracy, it may result in counterfactual scenarios – e.g., in some games of the series Germany can win the Second World War.

By allowing users to experiment and alter the course of history within a simulated historical environment, historical digital games may lead to a fruitful enactment of counterfactual imagination: through evaluating and understanding hypothetical scenarios, users can achieve a more thorough understanding of historical processes and events.

At the same time, counterfactual imagination is useful in dismissing fixed and deterministic accounts of the past, even outside of the range of historical games. In many fantasy games, e.g., Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Intelligent Systems, Koei Tecmo, 2019), users alter major events of a fictional history, and can replay them many times to see how each time a different choice would affect politics, beliefs, and habits of the world in question.

Lastly, I suggest interpreting dystopian and utopian interactive fictions as built upon (and leveraging in turn) counterfactual imagination. “What if” fictional worlds in which, e.g., Germany won the Second World War (see Wolfenstein: The New Order (MachineGames, 2014) are evident cases of how, by approaching counterfactual dystopian worldbuilding through interactive storytelling, games can engage with historical imagination in a powerful way. These games can be conceived as interactive forms of virtual historying, in which the past gets questioned or subverted to open up new hypothetical and conditional historical scenarios.

Metaphorical Imagination

As argued by Phillip Stambovsky, metaphors facilitate historical understanding on different epistemological levels. In games that deal (both literally and non-literally) with the past, historical metaphors appear in many ways.

First, it is worth mentioning how many historical simulations in general can be conceived as inherently similar to historical metaphors. In this sense when users understand what a game depicts, they are already enacting metaphorical imagination: to understand a process within a simulation, interpret it, and acknowledge it “stands for” what it is simulating already implies using metaphorical imagination, especially if such process consists in an extremely simplified (or extremely abstract) re-enactment of its actual counterpart.

Moreover, many games provide users with fictional worlds imbued with narrative metaphors that refer, more or less evidently, to actual historical events and processes: GreedFall (Spiders, 2019), for example, is set in the fantasy island of Teer Fradee, inhabited by deities and invaded by people plagued by a mysterious disease, to re-enact and question the European colonialism, and especially its policies of mercantilism; Papers, Please (3909 LLC, 2013), as the title itself suggests, provides players with an even more explicit playable metaphor for life in a police state.

Games can also simulate metaphors that we use to conceptualize and narrate history. As noticed by Jason Begy, for example, structural metaphors are widely used in games that deal with the past. An example could be that of “progress as competition” that many strategy games provide users with – see, e.g., how Sid Meier’s Civilization II (MicroProse, 1996) is based on players competing with each others to reach (economical, technological, cultural) prosperity, more specifically by colonizing Alpha Centauri or by destroying all the other existent civilizations.

In all these cases, digital games can be used by players for historying through metaphors, as they allow players to recognize, re-interpret, and re-problematize the past by means of fantasy worlds, allusive game mechanics, and procedures with rhetorical overtones.

Leveraging Imagination

As mentioned, the kinds of historical imagination I have been introducing so far (archaeological, counterfactual, and metaphorical) are implied by the very defining features of digital gaming experiences: environmental and indexical storytelling, conditionality, reversibility, repeatability, and metaphoricity. It is by leveraging such kinds of imagination that games can become so effective from the historical perspective, as I hope I managed to demonstrate here.

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Further Reading

  • Ferguson, Niall. Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. London: MacMillan Publications Limited, 1997.
  • Shanks, Michael. The Archaeological Imagination. New York: Routledge, 2012.
  • Stambovsky, Phillip. “Metaphor and Historical Understanding.” History and Theory 27, no. 2 (1988): 125-134.

Web Resources

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Image Credits

Dark © 2020 TheRealSoulsurrender CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via flickr.

Recommended Citation

Caselli, Stefano: Immaginari storici nei videogiochi, in: Public History Weekly 11 (2023) 3, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21323

Editorial Responsibility

Enrica Salvatori / Deborah Paci

Copyright © 2023 by De Gruyter Oldenbourg and the author, all rights reserved. This work may be copied and redistributed for non-commercial, educational purposes, if permission is granted by the author and usage right holders. For permission please contact the editor-in-chief (see here). All articles are reliably referenced via a DOI, which includes all comments that are considered an integral part of the publication.

The assessments in this article reflect only the perspective of the author. PHW considers itself as a pluralistic debate journal, contributions to discussions are very welcome. Please note our commentary guidelines (https://public-history-weekly.degruyter.com/contribute/).


Categories: 11 (2023) 3
DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2023-21323

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  1. To all readers we recommend the automatic DeepL-Translator for 22 languages. Just copy and paste.

    OPEN PEER REVIEW

    Three Types of Imagination

    New ways of intending and interpreting History in the “new age” mass media are conceived every day. In the article we are given new and engaging ways to utilize one of these mass media, namely the digital games, in a more comprehensive and useful way for the sharing of otherwise, at least for the greater audience, boring historical subjects.

    The core idea of the article is that there are mainly three ways in which the digital games result in stimulating the historical interest of the users: the archeological imagination, the contrafactual imagination and the metaphorical imagination.

    The archeological imagination is perhaps the most interesting concept of the whole article. Re-imagining the past starting from some hints or insight given by the present time is a process that the historians must utilize to reconstruct portions of the past. In the digital games this concept is in fact proving to be successful not only in historical games but also in the “normal” ones as represented in the many successes of the FROM Software where the telling of the storyline is only given to the player by hints. Accustom players to this way of thinking could be very useful in generating, after months if not years of exercise, a genuine and functioning historical thought. However, it’s fundamental to remember that this process must be led by some competent historian since the reconstruction of the players, if not supported by reliable historical sources, can easily become simple instances of anti-history or fake history that can harm the subject if shared to the public.

    The contrafactual imagination is a well fleshed idea that has many admirers, like me, in the field of Public History. In fact creating instances of contrafactual history is a desire that many game developers, namely Paradox (Victoria, Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron) and Creative Assembly (Total War saga) have captured and exploited to create some digital games that have become famous even in the large audience. Underlining the positive features of the contrafactual imagination is important, as stated in the article is useful in going outside of deterministic or strict historical narrations. However, it’s important to remember that contrafactual history is not real history, sure it’s worthwhile for a healthy historical thought and for creating new questions for the research field but going too deep in those imaginations can make the users miss real information in favor of more interesting but fictitious narrations. Of course for bringing in more people into historical subjects the infinite “multiverse” imagined by the contrafactual imagination is important but even more important is remember that the real historical experience is one. Even in this case, the users of the game, directed into historical thoughts thanks to the contrafactual imagination must be rightfully guided by precise historical information given by the software house that developed the game experience. An astounding example of this is the Paradox Interactive, developer of some of the “contrafactual” games cited in the article, like Europa Universalis, which during the game, gives the player the real historical context thanks to many in-game input that the user must read if he (or she) wants to acknowledge the historical background of the titles.

    The third type of imagination described in the article, the metaphorical one, is probably the most complicated one to grasp for a non-expert of the sector. In fact historical (and non) digital games, in the need of transposing a message, usually must use metaphors if they want to deliver that in an interesting way for the public. The cited Papers, Please (2013), achieves this in an unique way, that, partially, it’s the main cause for its success in public. In the game you become a frontier guard of a Soviet-like dictatorial state, a state that is only inspired by real history. You become a gear of a rotten mechanism that is a metaphor of the Eastern Europe socialist regimes of the XX century but without any evidence of real world history since the game takes place in a fictitious universe, with only some recall to the real one.  By doing this, the game designer could make the players interested in the real historical subject which he based his game on even without giving any real world history lesson thus avoiding the possibility of boring the players with otherwise  difficult to bear “wall of text” that could drive them away from the historical matter.

    To summarize, as stated in the conclusions of the article, these types of imagination described are the basis that the digital historical games must use to deliver strong and meaningful experiences that can in fact, influence the audience in getting into historical subjects. Personally I find myself agreeing with this idea, having the software houses invested into developing those types of imageries to build more engaging historical games is fundamental in making them useful for a true historical experience. However, even if the article only wants to summarize and introduce those types of imageries there is an important lack, namely the fact that those imageries are presented only in a “positive” manner without underlining the potential threats that they can bring into the Historical discussion. For a healthy and organic historical discussion is fundamental to acknowledge that the digital games experiences even if analyzed following these imageries aren’t “all golden” but, in fact, keeping attention on their contents and how it’s delivered is necessary.

    The idea of dividing those imageries to better explain them is interesting if the aim, like stated in the introduction, is only to introduce them to the greater audience. Considering the fact that most of the people will meet this information for the first time, organizing it into different “scaffolds” must be the perfect solution.  However, since in reality the theme of imageries in digital games can be described as fluid, dividing information into solid compartments it’s not always a good solution, particularly in a subject like “public history” whose aim is, in fact, to go against closed knowledge in favor of more freedom.

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