Nikolay Koposov
Distinguished Professor of the Practice at the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Institute of Technology
He previously taught at Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Saint Petersburg University, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He had fellowships at Université Paris-IV, Maison des sciences de l'homme, Budapest Collegium, and Helsinki Collegium. His academic interests include modern European intellectual history, the history of concepts, and the history of memory. He has published ten books, including Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Pamyat' strogogo rezhima (NLO, 2011), and De l'imagination historique (Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2009).
From Critical History to the Identitarian Paradigm: Historiography in the Post-Truth Age
Critical history, best represented by the French Annales School, emerged as an attempt to overcome the nationalization of the past in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century politics, culture, and historiography, and developed fully in the context of the postwar social-liberal consensus. It combined cautious epistemological optimism with moderate cultural relativism, a belief in universal human nature, and an understanding of history as a relatively autonomous "field" of intellectual and social practices. I find this model, to which we owe modern historiography's most significant achievements, fully consistent with liberal democracy. However, the decline of the welfare state, the postmodern challenge to scientific rationality, the rise of neoliberalism and populism, the diminishing autonomy of the academic sphere, and the late-twentieth-century "memory boom" have resulted in the disintegration of critical history, the return of the most direct forms of the politicization of the past, and the formation of a new, identitarian paradigm whose main features are particularism, epistemological relativism, and the re-politicization of history. This has contributed to the eruption of memory wars across the world and, in some cases, mass crimes against humanity. History has once again proven itself to be "the most dangerous product that the chemistry of the intellect has invented," as Paul Valéry claimed in 1931. In the best-case scenario, I see the future of history as critically dependent on the strengthening of its autonomy, its reconceptualization as a foundation of critical thinking, and the rehabilitation of its universalistic dimension.
Nikolay Koposov
Distinguished Professor of the Practice at the School of History and Sociology at Georgia Institute of Technology
He previously taught at Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Saint Petersburg University, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales. He had fellowships at Université Paris-IV, Maison des sciences de l'homme, Budapest Collegium, and Helsinki Collegium. His academic interests include modern European intellectual history, the history of concepts, and the history of memory. He has published ten books, including Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Pamyat' strogogo rezhima (NLO, 2011), and De l'imagination historique (Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2009).
From Critical History to the Identitarian Paradigm: Historiography in the Post-Truth Age
Critical history, best represented by the French Annales School, emerged as an attempt to overcome the nationalization of the past in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century politics, culture, and historiography, and developed fully in the context of the postwar social-liberal consensus. It combined cautious epistemological optimism with moderate cultural relativism, a belief in universal human nature, and an understanding of history as a relatively autonomous "field" of intellectual and social practices. I find this model, to which we owe modern historiography's most significant achievements, fully consistent with liberal democracy. However, the decline of the welfare state, the postmodern challenge to scientific rationality, the rise of neoliberalism and populism, the diminishing autonomy of the academic sphere, and the late-twentieth-century "memory boom" have resulted in the disintegration of critical history, the return of the most direct forms of the politicization of the past, and the formation of a new, identitarian paradigm whose main features are particularism, epistemological relativism, and the re-politicization of history. This has contributed to the eruption of memory wars across the world and, in some cases, mass crimes against humanity. History has once again proven itself to be "the most dangerous product that the chemistry of the intellect has invented," as Paul Valéry claimed in 1931. In the best-case scenario, I see the future of history as critically dependent on the strengthening of its autonomy, its reconceptualization as a foundation of critical thinking, and the rehabilitation of its universalistic dimension.