There is a lot to comment on this article. I will just bring one point that struck me as most poignant:

“Revolution itself, that ‘modern’ idea,” says De Certeau, “represents the scriptural project at the level of an entire society seeking to constitute itself as a blank page with respect to the past, to write itself by itself (that is, to produce itself as its own system) and to produce a new history (refaire l’histoire) on the model of what it fabricates (and this will be ‘progress’). It is necessary only for this ambition to multiply scriptural operations in economic, administrative, or political areas in order for the project to be realized.”

I think we really need to start with a blank page.