History Of Theory Research Articles

“TESTIMONY STOPS WHERE HISTORY BEGINS”: UNDERSTANDING AND ETHICS IN RELATION TO HISTORICAL AND PRACTICAL PASTS

ABSTRACTThis article explores the relation between testimony and history by considering the recent “ethical turn” toward experience and memory in historical research. By way of a brief history of the concept of testimony in historical research, the article pinpoints current discussions as being about historical understanding rather than factual knowledge about the past. With reference to the revaluation of history within the linguistic turn, influential historical theorists have argued that abandoning objectivism calls for a rapprochement between historical research and attempts to make sense of the past in accounts of memory. Both history and memory accounts, they argue, offer forms of understanding that are equally conditioned by language as well as politics, culture, and identity. Thus, the inclusion of testimony has been framed as not only legitimate but also important for an “ethical” understanding of the past within historiographical discourse. In relation to this development, the article shows that abandoning objectivism in the wake of the linguistic turn cannot justify a general rapprochement between history and memory accounts. On the contrary, abandoning objectivism only increases the importance of appreciating the conceptual distinction between testimony and history as different forms of understanding. For clarifying the conceptual distinction, the article reexamines R. G. Collingwood's (in)famous contention that “testimony … stops where history begins.” Collingwood's main point was not, as previous interpreters have argued, only about epistemology but was about the qualitative difference between historical and practical pasts. In conclusion, the article articulates the importance of the distinction between history and practice in relation to questions about the historian's ethical responsibility.

Poetry in Islamic Historical Writing: The Dialectic of Creativity and the Politics of Truth

Benefiting from various post-positivist historical theories and approaches, this paper aims to seek some new entry points to Islamic historical traditions from the perspective of the presence and function of poetry within it. It is known that looking at history as a “representation” of the past where the real, the imaginative, the artistic, and the narrative intersect, is now considered as one of the pivotal points emphasized by new theories of historical knowledge. However, although this understanding applies to Islamic culture as it applies to others, it cannot be denied that it has been established in Western contexts that may not be suitable for analyzing the circumstances in which Islamic historical writing arose. Accordingly, it is not possible to study the presence of poetry in Islamic historical writings in terms of quantity, quality, and employment, without reconsidering the various theories of literary genres and its oversimplifications that may not apply to ancient Arabic writing systems, and thus to the Arabs’ perception of historical writing. In this perspective, we suggest that studying this presence and its functions may open the way for new hypotheses about Arab and Islamic sources, and the way the Arabs understood poetic writing while formulating their ways of belonging to history.

Protocols of Production: The Absent Factories of Digital Capitalism

Contrary to dominant theories of postindustrial society, this article advances an alternative account of digital capitalism that repositions the factory—so often associated with industrial manufacturing—as a defining yet largely overlooked feature of the internet economy. I pursue this claim by interpreting data centers and microwork platforms as digital embodiments of the factory system through a historical theory of the factory model that reconstructs the consistent mechanisms of control and extraction that have distinguished factories as consolidated infrastructures of production since their inception. I define these “protocols of production” as formal rules deployed by a combination of technological systems, spatial arrangements, and management regimes devised to fragment tasks, discipline workers, and supervise production. By probing the socioeconomic consequences of the factory’s algorithmic redeployment and adaptation to global data production, I contend that these absent factories have amplified alienation and precarity as structural social qualities of the digital labor process.

Kontribusi Khalifah Mochammad Ya’qub bin Muhamad Atim Dalam Thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah di Palembang (1970 – 2023 M)

This research discusses thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah in Palembang. The arrival of the Shiddiqiyyah thoriqoh in Palembang in 1970 AD brought by the caliph Mochammad Ya'qub bin Muhamad Atim. Caliph Mochammad Ya'qub bin Muhamad Atim was one of the students who was given the mandate to broadcast the teachings of Thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah precisely in Palembang. The teachings are conveyed through several methods such as the da'wah method, teaching Shiddiqiyyah teachings to the community, collective dhikr (Kautsaran), and with programs contained in Shiddiqiyyah, such as National Compensation, Construction of Livable Thankful Houses (commemoration of Indonesian National Independence and Youth Pledge Day) and others. other. Its followers have increased, with this increase in followers it can also be seen that the development of thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah in Palembang is increasing, visible and known to the public. Caliph Mochammad Ya'qub bin Muhamad Atim arrived in Palembang alone at a young age at that time, there were no friends or students from other thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah. At that time he lived in the Aryodilla area. With existing programs, you can increase followers of thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah in Palembang. This research aims to determine the entry and development of thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah and the contribution of the caliph Mochammad Ya'qub bin Muhamad Atim. This research is qualitative research that uses historical research methods utilizing a sociological approach. This research uses historical theory. Data collection techniques were obtained through a process of observation, interviews, documentation and literature study. Data sources were obtained through direct observation, interviews and documentation by the administrators and followers of Thoriqoh Shiddiqiyyah. and use books, journals or archives that are appropriate to the research.

Idealism, materialism, and Vygotsky's cultural historical theory.

Vygotsky straddled the period of the Russian Revolution and found himself facing the Marxist materialist ideology of the Soviet Union with the need for a new method of psychology. Ironically, the Soviet Union's need for a Marxist based method of psychology coincided with Vygotsky's prior research on methods of interpretation which were inspired by Hegel and primarily based on the role of consciousness and culture. As a result of Vygotsky's pre-revolutionary work and inspiration from Hegel clashing with the post-revolutionary need for a new methodology for psychology, Vygotsky developed his Cultural Historical Theory. In presenting his new theory, Vygotsky attempted to resolve a fundamental ideological conflict between idealism and materialism. Furthermore, Vygotsky worked to create an effective new research method by drawing inspiration from Gestalt psychology, Hegel, Marx, and Engels. The result of Vygotsky's efforts was a theory based on psychology of consciousness and mind rather than a biology-based psychology focused entirely on analysis of stimuli and responses. In analyzing Vygotsky's theory, it is useful to draw inspiration from Vygotsky's criticism of pure empiricism, and to be inspired by Vygotsky's demonstration on how deeply rooted differences between societies may be bridged by finding unexpected commonalities within opposing ideologies.

PAINTING HISTORY: PICTURE, WITNESS, AND ANCIENT HISTORIOGRAPHY

ABSTRACTThis article treats an analogy that is used persistently in the history of historiography: the equation of historiography with painting and the identification of the historiographer with the painter. In examining the conceptual stakes of this (auto)identification, the article mobilizes the analogy in order to explore larger issues of historical theory and, through the prism of historical painting, reflects on the problem of representation and narrativist approaches to history as text. The article argues that the historiographic desire surfacing in a comparison with painting does not concern painting's ability to capture the past; rather, it concerns its ability to capture the viewer. Opening with a brief survey of the ut pictura historia analogy in the history of historiography, the article makes this claim by analyzing historiographical engagements with the analogy in antiquity (turning to Herodotus and Polybius) and by exploring ancient history painting itself (offering pride of place to the Alexander Mosaic). In thus engaging with the theory of historiography via concrete historical material, the article leverages a historical episode of interaction between textual media and visual media to find that they are structured by the same simple desire that continues to exert its force today: the desire to see for oneself.

NARRATIVITY, EXPERIENCE, AND MEANING1

ABSTRACTThis review essay aims to reconstruct the main tenets of the “narrative constructivist” position defended by Kalle Pihlainen in his book titled Historia fallida and to lay out some of the ambiguities this position generates. I begin by exposing the core commitments underwriting this theoretical project and insist upon the centrality of the distinction between constructivism and constructionism and upon the arguments he advances against the contemporary approaches in the theory of history that advocate the idea of an experience or a presence of the past. Then, I outline the criticism he levels against the understanding of historians’ work as a “conversation with the past” and highlight that, on Pihlainen's account, a responsible historical enterprise must necessarily assume the unavailability of the past and, hence, the ontological distinction between the present and the past. In the final part of the essay, I formulate three interrogations with regard to the overall orientation of this project. First, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck's concept of a “historical nonsynchronicity,” I question the possibility of establishing a clear‐cut separation between the past and the present and show that the present is never a homogenous field, for it entails different levels of temporality and a plurality of conflicting registers of meaning. Then, I challenge the description of the past as “a closed domain with no room for interaction.” Finally, I point out that the gap Pihlainen introduces between historical narratives and existential narratives cannot be maintained insofar as the historian's practice must be anthropologically grounded—that is, it must be understood as drawing on a narrative capacity (narrativeness) that belongs to the human life‐form.

W. E. B. Du Bois’s universal history in Black Folk Then and Now (1939)

Abstract While debates about ‘Eurocentric’ versus ‘Afrocentric’ theories of history have driven previous studies of Du Bois’s writings on ancient Africa, I read his account of African antiquity in Black Folk Then and Now in the context of the moral and educational projects articulated within both Greco-Roman and African American historiography. I pay special attention to conventional ancient views of history that Diodorus expresses in his Bibliotheke, which treats history as a source of morally instructive examples and ‘universal history’ as especially educational because it synthesizes different historical narratives: these concepts of history were broadly influential into the nineteenth century, including among African American writers. An ancient model of universal history allows Du Bois to tell the story of a distinct human community and nevertheless insist on the unity of peoples, a principle which is central to his philosophy of race and of human history writ large.

The Midwife-Witch on Trial: Historical Fact or Myth?

New developments in social history have generated scholarly work re-evaluating the history of the witch trials of early modern Europe. This paper explores the claim that the European witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries persecuted midwives. Multiple historical theories of the persecuted midwife-witch are discussed, including those that construct the midwife-witch as a skilled, respected member of a local female healing culture and alternately as a marginal figure in her community who was ignorant, disrespected, impoverished and therefore vulnerable. Medical histories of the midwife-witch have often relied on a construct of the marginal figure to champion the progress of medicine from earlier discredited and unscientific practices. Feminist analysis poses the witch trials as the suppression of women healers and the midwife-witch as symbolic of the threat of female control of reproduction to powerful patriarchal forces. Although these theories have been important to the revival of midwifery in North America specifically and to feminism more broadly, there is limited evidence to support these claims. The figure of the witch, like many myths, may tell us more about the interpreter of history than the witch herself.

History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice, written by Stefan Berger

History and Identity: How Historical Theory Shapes Historical Practice, written by Stefan Berger

Reinhart Koselleck’s Personal Sluices of Memory and Sediments of Experience

The article analyses selected aspects of the biography of Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), a German historian and theoretician of history. In particular, it brings to the fore significant traces of the Second World War experiences of the author of Kritik und Krise. Further, it looks at their influence on Koselleck’s critical approach to the concept of collective memory and on the anti-utopian thrust of his historical theory.

Legal awareness of the individual: a view from the standpoint of cultural, historical and activity methodology

The article is devoted to the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of legal consciousness of personality from the standpoint of L.S. Vygotsky's cultural and historical theory and A.N. Leontiev's general psychological theory of activity. The regularities of the formation of the legal consciousness of the individual are presented, the psychological properties and functions of the legal consciousness of the individual are described, the hypothesis of the systemic and semantic structure of the phenomenon under consideration is theoretically substantiated. The content of the legal consciousness of the individual is described at the level of "meanings", "personal meaning" and "sensory tissue" of consciousness. The process of formation of the system of legal consciousness of personality is considered through the application of the principle of unity of affect and intelligence, formulated by L.S. Vygotsky, according to which the will of the subject is a single basis and an intermediary link in the formation of consciously controlled processes (the formation of arbitrariness), where in the process of development there is a change in the relationship between affect and intelligence. The theoretical propositions formulated by the authors can form the basis for extensive empirical studies of the legal consciousness of the individual in line with the national psychological tradition, laid down in the cultural-historical approach and the general psychological theory of activity. The regularities of the formation of the legal consciousness of the individual are presented, the psychological properties and functions of the legal consciousness of the individual are described, the hypothesis of the systemic and semantic structure of the phenomenon under consideration is theoretically substantiated. The theoretical propositions formulated by the authors can form the basis for extensive empirical studies of the legal consciousness of the individual in line with the national psychological tradition, laid down in the cultural-historical approach and the general psychological theory of activity. The theoretical analysis of the phenomenon of legal awareness from the standpoint of the national cultural, historical and activity methodology allows us to draw the following conclusions and generalizations. The process of formation and development of legal awareness is a transition from simpler semantic generalizations about law to more complex ones, in the course of general personality development. Thus, the system of meanings of the "language of law" (with different levels of generalizations) determines the content of the components of the structure of legal consciousness, the "development" of these generalizations may indicate the level of development of legal consciousness. A deep study of legal consciousness is impossible in isolation from the categories of "personal meaning", "sensual fabric", as well as those "meanings" in which law finds its objective expression in culture and in a specific person, a subject of law.

‘Objects bring us traces of life’: Cavaleri, Cernuschi and Giambattista Vico’s theory of history

Abstract This essay explores the profound impact of Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history on two nineteenth-century museographic projects.1 The two collections are Michele Cavaleri’s museum in Milan and Enrico Cernuschi’s museum in Paris. Vico’s emphasis on historical knowledge as the key to understanding human civilization, and his unique approach to the aesthetics of primitive cultures influenced scholars and collectors interested in the origins of art and architecture throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I first discuss the Milanese school of philosophy, which played a pivotal role in re-evaluating Vico’s contributions, and its impact on both Cavaleri and Cernuschi. The two collectors, deeply rooted in Milan’s intellectual circles, incorporated Vico’s ideas into their museums, which aimed to showcase the interconnectedness of art, culture and history. Their endeavours to advance the contextual understanding of works of art are discussed, shedding new light on the influence of Vico’s anthropological historicism on nineteenth-century thought and culture.

Marx and the many lives of Marxism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

ABSTRACT At the turn of the century, pioneers of poststructuralist analysis in the US called for a radical and, as they argued, urgently needed upgrade of historians’ theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of history. Marxist epistemologies of the British and American schools of social history that had come to dominate the postwar decades were reprimanded for their entrenchment in flatfooted materialist determinism and naive disregard of what one scholar called ‘constitutive powers of culture’ in people’s lives. By the beginning of the new century, even those who wrote to counter these critics could not help but agree that Marxism had become a ‘name for everything that now seemed to have been superseded’. In the counter-plot I am proposing, far from being superseded, historical theory and methodology that were developed by Marxist scholars in the second half of the twentieth century play a defining even if unacknowledged role in the making of contemporary fields of social and cultural history in the US.

世界历史理论视域下《马克思恩格斯论中国》对新时代建设“人类命运共同体”的启示

Abstract: Makesi Engesi Lun Zhongguo explains the formation of modern world history and explores the development path of modern China from an international perspective. The world historical theory reflected in its discussion provides us with Basically theoretical perspective under historical materialism to elaborate on the construction of the “community with a shared future for mankind” in the new era. This article first analyzes the academic logic of the formation of Marx and Engels’ world history theory, and then elaborates on the theoretical basis and practical exploration of building the “community with a shared future for mankind” under the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics. It believes that the “community with a shared future for mankind” is the application of world history theory. The theory’s serious criticism of the capitalist logic in the past international political and economic order and the sublimation of the goal of “common values for all mankind” are the inheritance and innovative development of Marxist historical materialism and the concept of “community”. Makesi Engesi Lun Zhongguo has important enlightenment and reference significance for building the contemporary “community with a shared future for mankind”.

TRANSLATION IN HISTORY AND METAHISTORY1

ABSTRACTTheo Hermans's Translation and History: A Textbook offers an insightful, clear, and sophisticated account of debates in translation history as a transdisciplinary field that remained, until recently, at the margins of historiographical debates. It discusses essential theoretical and methodological tools through which historians of translation may wrestle with the problem of defining their object; with modalities of historicizing associated with specific fields and perspectives (including, for instance, memory studies, microhistory, and the history of concepts); and with questions of context, temporality, space, and agency by accounting for translation's transformative movement, migration, and metamorphosis. This review essay follows the book's journey in and out of disciplinary and conceptual borders in order to discuss some of the stakes at play in it, especially problems pertaining to the delimitation of translation as a differential, but distinct, object of historical research, one that lays bare the power of translations to mobilize cultural works and frontiers. By the same token, it attempts to inscribe a translation paradigm into historical theory and, crucially, into debates that shift our focus from rigid historiographical borders toward mobilizing and transformative motifs, identities, and domains of history. This focus grants a new orientation to (translation) history, setting malleability, thresholds, mobility, and resistance to movement at the center of ongoing attempts to configure alternative spatialities, temporalities, subjects, and worlds of the past beyond conventional accounts of contextualizing, periodizing, and only human history.

‘Where did you learn to write Arabic?’: A Critical Analysis of Some Ḥadīths on the Origins and Spread of the Arabic Script

Abstract According to some ḥadīths, the art of writing Arabic in the pre-Islamic Hijaz was learned from the city of al-Ḥīra (the capital of the Lakhmid kingdom) in southern Iraq, whilst al-Ḥīra in turn learned writing from the city of al-Anbār in central Iraq. Based on a combined isnād-cum-matn analysis, form-critical analysis, and geographical analysis of these ḥadīths, the earliest iteration of this material can be dated back to the middle of the eighth century ce (i.e., the early second century ah) in Kufa, but no earlier. A further historical-critical analysis also exposes the broader cultural and ideological tendencies at play behind the creation and elaboration of this material, including salvation history, a ‘great man’ theory of history, and—above all—the creation and elaboration of an Iraq-focused Arabian folk history in eighth-century ce Iraq. This small set of reports thus exemplifies the rich potential of ḥadīth in general as both a tool and an object of historical analysis: by applying my combined approach to ḥadīth, we can trace the creation, transmission, and elaboration of the material; we can locate its geographical origins; and we can identify the broader context that ultimately produced it.

Refleksje o podręczniku metodologii historii (Wprowadzenie do metodologii historii, red. nauk. Ewa Domańska, Jan Pomorski, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa 2022, ss. 572)

Reflections on a methodology of history textbook (Wprowadzenie do metodologii historii, ed. Ewa Domańska, Jan Pomorski, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warsaw 2022, 572pp) The article is a critical analysis of selected issues examined in Wprowadzenie do metodologii historii (Introduction to the Methodology of History), edited by Ewa Domańska and Jan Pomorski, Warsaw 2022. The reviewer focuses on general methodological and epistemological issues, believing that the authors of the various chapters pay too little attention, for the most part, to the relation between the methodology of history and general methodology. The discussion concerns the history of historiography, the role of history in the emergence of the humanities, the dispute over the status of history in the nineteenth century, particularly nomothetism and idiographism in the light of Auguste Comte’s classification of sciences compiled in France and their division as seen by Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, proposed in Germany, as well as explanation in historiography. With regard to that last point, deductive-nomological and genetic explanations are considered. Attention is drawn to the problematic nature of the application of the classic pattern of deductive-nomological explanation in connection with the problem of universal laws and historical theories (more generally – concerning the social sciences), as well as to the differences in the understanding of causality in historiography and theoretical natural sciences, which is relevant to the analysis of the genetic explanation. In the final section of the article the author points to the link between the approach to historical cognition and general problems of epistemology.

Czy ufamy historii? Piotr Kowalewski Jahromi rozmawia z Veróniką Tozzi Thompson

In this interview, conducted during the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Poznan, Verónica Tozzi Thompson (professor of Philosophy of History at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina) discusses historiography in Argentina and recent trends in historical theory, in particular the epistemology of the witness. She addresses important issues concerning key concepts for the philosophy and sociology of history: truth and trust. In addition, Tozzi Thompson discusses the differences and connections between analytic and narrativist philoso-phy of history and recommends some further readings.

Międzykulturowa interwencja. Dawid Rogacz rozmawia z Q. Edwardem Wangiem

In this interview conducted at the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Po-znan, Q. Edward Wang (Professor of History at Rowan University in the US and Changjiang Professor of History at Beijing University in China) addresses the main problems in global and comparative historiography. Elaborating upon the background and impact of his scientific con-tributions, Prof. Wang discusses the modernization of Chinese historical writing, the challenges of comparative historiography, the status of historical studies today, and the future of historical theory. In addition, he refers to his recent studies in culinary history as instances of a new model of global historiography.