When the Theory of History is Considered Redundant
Когато теорията на историята се мисли за излишна
This essay asks who is the author in history? and attempts to understand whether the study of the traps of biographical illusio (in Bourdieu’s sense), and the overcoming of Foucault’s contempt of intellectual autobiography could become methods of introducing more reflexivity into historical production. It analyses cultural patterns of the Bulgarian historiography in transition through the study of ‘what’ does not allow a real debate on the historiographic heritage of the 1970s and 1980s, and problematizes the different complicities in the creation of a cultural context of the transition that impedes the construction of the ‘historians’ reflexive Ego’, working consciously with the idea where-and-why-I-am and where-and-why-They-are. Working with the transitional textbook as a functional place of memory and as a function of historiography, this essay outlines to a certain extent how transition historiography is still trying to bid farewell to the political history and conventional narratives practised within the framework of the reformist communist identity discourse in the historiography situation lacking of theories.
More...