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Key research themes
1. How do different theoretical frameworks conceptualize the epistemological and metaphysical foundations of historiography?
This theme investigates the possibility and limits of historiographical knowledge, focusing on epistemological challenges such as truth-making, rational evaluation of interpretations, and the ontological status of historical claims. Understanding these foundations matters for clarifying what it means to 'know' the past and how historians can validly assert historical truths without falling into relativism or absolutism.
Key finding: Kuukkanen argues for a postnarrativist perspective that rejects truth-functional evaluation (i.e., absolute truth or falsity) of historical narratives but yet upholds that historiography can be rationally assessed using... Read more
Key finding: The paper identifies a metaphysical challenge as more fundamental than epistemological ones: the absence of truth-makers for historiographical claims about past events, since those events no longer exist. It proposes an... Read more
Key finding: The author develops a typology of historians’ modes of 'talking about history', tracing a genealogy from Greek historiography’s visual witness paradigm to present-day narrativism and textual analysis. This work clarifies the... Read more
2. How do historians and theorists conceptualize and negotiate the multiplicity of historicities and temporal experiences across cultural, social, and indigenous perspectives?
This research theme addresses historicity as a plural and culturally embedded phenomenon rather than a singular, universal concept. It explores how historicities vary by cultural group, colonial histories, ideological situations, and intersect with indigenous worldviews, collective identities, and postcolonial critiques. This pluralistic approach shapes historiography, anthropology, and cultural studies by recognizing heterogeneous temporal experiences and reflexive historicities.
Arzyutov and Lukin 2023 Introduction to ‘Entangled Indigenous historicities from the Eurasian North’
Key finding: The authors extend François Hartog's notion of historicity as 'temporal experience' to emphasize a relational understanding where Indigenous and non-Indigenous historicities co-exist, conflict, and interpenetrate across time... Read more
Key finding: The paper argues that historiography has often overemphasized 'events' as objects of history, neglecting other pasts like social structures, cultural webs, and non-events with recursive temporalities. The acknowledgment of... Read more
Key finding: François Hartog’s concept of 'regimes of historicity' is elaborated to conceptualize how societies articulate and organize pasts, presents, and futures differently, forming culturally specific 'modes of self-consciousness'... Read more
Key finding: The essay historicizes 'historicity' as a foundational modern philosophical category intertwining finitude, birth, death, and the metaphysical condition of existence. Historicity is framed as simultaneously multiple and... Read more
Key finding: The article surveys philosophical traditions from Kant to poststructuralists in theorizing historicity, emphasizing the tension between universal teleological historicities and the plurality of historicities as expressed in... Read more
3. What are the cultural and practical implications of different notions of historicity for understanding identity, memory, and historiographical practice?
This theme explores how historicity informs cultural memory, collective identity formation, and practical historiographical methods, including narrative constructions, moral economies, and the negotiation of political challenges such as populism and appropriation. It also examines how historicity relates to contemporary issues like public history, heritage, and the politics of historical expertise.
Key finding: Through analysis of narrative reconstructions of the Basque conflict, this study reveals that participants' identitarian positions shape divergent historical narratives, embedding moral content and claims to rights and... Read more
Key finding: This interdisciplinary study situates historicity as epistemologically central to Collective Health, drawing on Canguilhem’s concept of normativity to reconceptualize health as the capacity to establish new norms historically... Read more
Key finding: Roberts’ book analyzed shifts from modernist historicity—characterized by faith in progress and universal ends—to presentism, emphasizing the dominance of the immediate present detached from historical traditions. The review... Read more
Key finding: Although only an extract is available, this chapter problematizes the impact of populism on historical expertise, proposing an ethical framework that balances truthfulness with acknowledgment of difference. It raises critical... Read more
Key finding: This work reflects on contemporary Witchcraft practices as modern, constructed responses to historical and colonial contexts, highlighting debates over religious appropriation and ethical dimensions shaped by historical... Read more