Er(r)go,

wie es ist eigentlich gewesen? History: facts, chronology, objectivism, truth, meaning, ideology, profanum, narration, construct, metaphor, representation, interpretation, memory, reflection, manipulation, myth, fiction, magister vitae. Or rather, and maybe in spite of the above, history is a privilege, which makes it possible to remember who one is (Michel de Certeau), since it saturates us with the continuity of the same and the other, and situates the outside within the space of subjectivity. Only paradoxically history seems to be an eschatological domain: it is death after all, that is the condition of historical discourse; and yet, according to the French thinker, "the dead souls resurge, within the work whose postulate was their disappearance and the possibility of analyzing them as an object of investigation." The dis/em/bodied dead - their ashes - elude their dead objectuality and speak to us through (sub)liminal traces of presence (cf. Ewa Domańska). All the more, then - if the multiplying questions fall into chasms between value and fact, politics and morality, objectivity and selfconscious subjectivism, if attempts at historical epistemology remind us of the work of philistines (Frank Ankersmit), if discourse as representation fails the will to truth - should we perhaps take a detour through the path (road?) that gives priority to ontology. At least, if not for other reasons, because it may lead us safe amongst the dictates of the regime of binarity. The third issue of Er(r)go is the first which is devoted to problems from one thematic area. An important "historical" incentive came from the conference organized in Poznań by the Department of History, called Time, space, and the Evidence of Experience. Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Past. Thanks to the collaboration and warm enthusiasm of its animator, Dr. Ewa Domańska, we are able to publish here there papers (by Frank Ankersmit, Georg G. Iggers, Fernando Sánchez-Marcos) delivered at the conference in March 2000.

Wojciech Kalaga

Georg G. Iggers

The Uses and Misuses of History. On the Historian's Responsibility in the Past and Now

The instances of misusing history raise the issue of the historian's responsibility for the misuse. Iggers assumes that an honest approach to history is possible but he claims that the relation between using and misusing history is very complicated. The notion of misuse implies that the past can be treated instrumentally and can be disfigured for practical purposes. It also implies that at bottom there is some real past which is vulnerable to misuse. Iggers traces the development of history as an academ­ic discipline (Wissenschaft) which came into being at the Berlin University after 1825. The profession­alisation of the discipline should have ensured its reliability and immunity from ideological manipula­tion but Iggers's examples demonstrate that professional historians have also been part of institutional/ political structures and have participated in the distribution of power. Ultimately, Iggers believes that there are certain rational standards of practising historiography; he advises historians to be critical of their own premises and capable of realising the subjective limitations of their own point of view.

Frank Ankersmit

In Praise of Subjectivity

Frank Ankersmit argues that even in ancient times the historian's moral and political convictions affected the shape of his account of history. But other factors may also contribute to what we often describe as the historian's 'subjectivity' — his favourite field of research, characteristic mannerisms of style, a particular way of conducting an argument and finally his own intellectual capacities and limi­tations. In his essay, Ankersmit invokes the traditional views of subjectivity and objectivity, and argues that they miss an essential point about the source of the actual problem with subjectivity, which lies in the logical proximity of (historical) truth and value. Ultimately, he claims that the interrelationship between the two (truth and value) is so intimate that in historical research they define each other. Thus value emerges as a useful and not infrequently indispensable guide to historical truth.

Ewa Domańska

Towards an Archeontology of the Dead body (A Contemplative Approach to the Past)

Ewa Domaiiska distinguishes a distinct contemplative approach to the past which — unlike doc­umentary, commemorative or 'oral evidence' approaches — undertakes, among other things, reflec­tion on various aspects of the dead body's existence and functioning. She traces the facets of 'end-ism' in historical reflection, which is increasingly skeptical of the prospects of historiography characterised by anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism, eurocentrism and phallocentrism. Thus many scholars think that present-day historiography should first of all study historians — their motivations, sponsors and backgrounds. Those who want the Third Millennium to be a new beginning for histo­riography postulate that scholars should give more thought to death, the deceased and their corpses. Domaflska's claim is that in future-oriented human sciences questions concerning the past cannot be answered until we refer to ontology, to those thinkers who — like Martin Heidegger — study exist­ence, death and the issue of being.

Fernando S6nches-Marcos

The Historian as Translator

This essay focuses on the possibilities faced by the historian as well as the limitations and require­ments that he must face in his capacity as a translator of one culture into another. Fernando Sanches­Marcos's project takes its inspiration from dialogical hermeneutics as presented in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. At the same time Fernando Sanches-Marcos incorporates into his discussion our contemporary experience of technology and economic globalisation. Those aspects of the world in which the historian lives make it necessary for him to sustain and cultivate the dialogue between cultures. Fernando Sanches-Marcos postulates that historians should erect bridges of under­standing between various groups of people and various temporal perspectives. Thus historians could help their contemporaries get used to a peaceful coexistence in a multicultural society. In Fernando Sanches-Marcos's view, the historian's responsibility is so much the greater that the future of all hu­manity, not only the Western civilisation, is at stake here.

Aleksander Wilkoń

Primary and Secondary Genres in Two Perspectives: an Historical One and a Contemporary One

Aleksander Wilkon's essay challenges some of Mikhail Bakhtin's conceptions which have been taken for granted in textual linguistics and genology. Wilkon is particularly critical of those generalisa­tions which ignore the categories of the individual, the non-systemic and the inimitable Regardless of their inspirations, the generalisations have tended to lead to simplifications and schematism. In the second section of his essay Wilkon questions Bakhtin's division into primary and secondary genres, which comes down to a distinction between utilitarian genres (both spoken and written) and their literary transformations and mutations. Wilkon argues that Bakhtin's overlooks the influence of sec­ondary genres on those genres which function as primary ones and at the same time derive from literary forms. In the final section of the essay its author identifies secondary genres within spoken forms of language, which include magic speech, the speech of play and customs and folk art speech.

Maria Solarska

Foucault, First of All, Serves the Making of War

Maria Solarska undertakes an examination of selected aspects of Foucault's vision of history. First of all, she observes that Foucault's writing is characterised by spatial metaphors. His historiography is a description of certain spatial configurations and thus can be inscribed within the contemporary ten­dencies in historiography which replace the linear notion of time with multiplied duration (duree). Foucault's project requires that he should use geographical terms of description, spatial tropes and architectural figures. Those include his notions of utopia and heterotopia, which Solarska discusses at length in the latter part of her essay pointing to the belligerent overtones of Foucault's statements.

This short piece commemorates Tadeusz Kantor on the tenth anniversary of his death.

This is a polemical text written in response to Zybertowicz's critical reading of an earlier essay by Trela published in Er(r)go 2.

The article focuses on linguistic features of historical discourse to interrogate the degree of difference between historiography and imaginary narration: is it valid to regard historiography as secured by its privileged signifying relationship with reality it purports to be representing? In the section devoted to the act of utterance Barthes uses the concept of shifters introduced by Roman Jacobson in order to identify those features of historical discourse that organize it, address the reader or announce the presence, or absence, of the writing subject – the historiographer. In the section devoted to the issues of utterance, in turn, he underlines those discursive processes which serve to break down historical content into units and then discusses their role in the establishment of the linguistic and cultural status of historiography. In consequence, Barthes sees historical discourse as narration generating realistic effect in its signifying process.

The article discusses the role of history in the Western culture and delineates the conditions of possibility for its discursive effects. De Certeau sees history as a discourse constituted by a radical gesture of separating the present from the past and of generating its Other(s) for representation or silent ignorance. This gesture can only be possible in alliance with its contemporary sovereign political power whose role is to validate history and to designate its place in society. In return history serves the state and aims to represent and justify it. Such a relationship between history and power determines the processes of historiography, which De Certeau understands in terms of work and production. In this respect the discourse of history reveals two complimentary yet opposing senses of reality in its scientific methodology: on the one hand, reality is the effect of history, on the other, it constitutes the very premise of history. Nonetheless, in order to pass for the discourse of reality, history needs to function in culture like myth , that is like self-reflexive praxis sustaining social identity in opposition to its Other(s).

This is a review of Hayden White's collected essays which have been translated into Polish, edited by Ewa Domańska and Marek Wilczyński, and published by Universitas in 2000.

In her review, Borkowska discusses Thomas Carl Wall's book Radical Passivity: Levinas, Blanchot, Agamben.

Andrzej Skrendo – “A New Philosophy of Trust”

In his review of Agata Bielik-Robson’s book “Inna Nowoczesność” (“Other Modernity”), the Authors provides a critical evaluation of the book in the context of contemporary cultural debates.

This review essay offers an in-depth discussion of Aleksandra Czermińska's work Autobiograficzny trójkąt. Świadectwo, wyznanie i wyzwanie.

This review is concerned with Christian Joppke and Steven Lukes's book Multicultural Questions published by Oxford University Press in 2000.

This review discusses Joan Stambaugh's book of the same title which revolves round the issues of identity, mind, time, being and reality.

List of books received.

Summaries of the feature texts of the issue.

Colophon