Using History: The Struggle over Traumatic Experiences of the Past in Historical Culture

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Basic Issues of Cultural Interaction: A European Perspective

The paper concentrates on the issue of ethnocentrism in cultural interaction. It briefly mentions the East Asian case and mainly tackles the European one. It gives examples of ethnocentric attitudes in history, but its main point is presenting examples of overcoming the unbalanced evaluation in expressing cultural identity and difference by means of new forms of generating a sense of history. Examples are discussed as indicators of new approaches to dealing with morality beyond the highly problematic distinction between good and evil along the line of self and other

How to compare cultures? The case of historical thinking

Comparative studies in historiography are rare. In most cases authors use a pre-given idea of the essentials of historical thinking and historiography to compare Western with non-Western phenomena in the field of historical representation in general, and historiography in particular. This approach to comparison is very problematic since the presupposed paradigm of historiography is an abstraction in the Western tradition. As a consequence this comparison brings about knowledge on non-Western historical thinking and historio-graphy in so far as it is similar to or different from the Western one. Difference normally imply deviation or a lack of historicity. However, comparing Western historiography with Chinese historiography, does not bring about such a big difference as we witness in the case of for example India. Nevertheless, a cultural bias in the comparative work exists that makes the results of comparative work problematic. The article proposes a theoretical means of intercultural comparison that is grounded in a general theory of historical thinking, presented in the form of its matrix. This matrix is explicated, discussed and differentiated into a set of items which can be used as criteria of comparison

Emotional Forces in Historical Thinking: Some Metahistorical Reflections and the Case of Mourning

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History and Utopia

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The Visibility of History – Bridging the Gap between Historiography and the Fine Arts

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The Visibility of History – Bridging the Gap between Historiography and the Fine Arts

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Holocaust - Memory and German Identity - Three forms of generational practices

O Holocausto dos judeus no período nazista constitui, para os alemães , em um elemento de identidade invertida pela catástrofe. A qualificação dos papéis sociais na memóri a alemã da segunda metade do século 20 conduz à identificação da sociedade alemã (ocidental) a partir de atividades culturais dedicadas à memória e às conseqüências do passado. A alteridade é readmitida na consciência histórica do alemão contemporâneo pelo resgate moral da diferença e pela superação do trauma pelo luto

History and Utopia

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