Theory and Practice of Historical Writing in Times of Globalization

In recent years, radical changes have taken place to the ways of thinking of historical writing, its methodology and its meaning as a specific field of knowledge. These changes are connected with the historical situation of which it is itself a part, and are also concerned both with a dispute within the discipline and with the current ethical-political debates that cannot accurately be removed from attempts to better understand today’s world. As part of these changes, we are faced with a radical review of historiographical paradigms. These changes concern not only the practice of historical writing, but also the role of history as a source of political legitimation and as a way in which individuals understand their belonging and commitment to the political-institutional frameworks within which they lead their lives. Like no other human science, history is an essentially interdisciplinary field whose boundaries are hard to define. Its repertoire of concepts not only has to do with the detailed and documented empirical reconstruction of what happened—it also has an interdependent relationship with other social disciplines concerning the topics involved in each case, so that any innovations in the theories of those disciplines have an impact on historical narratives (just as historical reconstructions can help to test and reconfigure them). On the other hand, historiography itself is also situated in a historical context, which it tries to understand simultaneously with shaping its concepts. The normative dimension of the historical account concerns not only the values a historian shares with her contemporaries, but also the secular role of history as a source of legitimation of power and of the identity policies for civic education. The changes in this role also entail modifications to the way individuals understand their belonging and commitment to the political-institutional frameworks within which they lead their lives. While recent debate in historical theory has revolved around two main themes —namely, the narrative structure of historical discourse and what we might call the ‘memory paradigm’—with globalization (and the thematization thereof in the context of the new ‘global history’), we enter a postnarrativist stage of the debate, in Daniel Brauer, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) / Centro de Investigaciones Filosóficas (CIF) OpenAccess. © 2018 Daniel Brauer, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110492415-029 Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/28/19 3:26 AM which, as regards the first theme, the empirical character of historical research is recovered. In this way, it becomes possible to exit the blind alley of historiography understood as a purely linguistic construction, consisting in a matrix of timeless rhetorical and narrative devices, independent of any cognitive claim. As regards the second theme, by placing history in the context of the debate concerning a better understanding of its own time, it is possible to account for its role in the exploration of the past as well as in the diagnosis of the present and the attempts to think of and act in future events. One of the consequences of the post-ethnocentric ‘global history’ project is a critical rehabilitation of key aspects of the vilified ‘speculative’ philosophy of history.

Like no other human science, history is an essentiallyi nterdisciplinary field whose boundaries are hard to define.Itsr epertoire of concepts not onlyh as to do with the detailed and documented empirical reconstruction of what happened-it also has an interdependent relationship with other social disciplines concerning the topics involved in each case, so that anyi nnovations in the theories of thosed isciplines have an impact on historical narratives(just as historical reconstructions can help to test and reconfigure them).Ont he otherh and, historiography itself is also situated in ah istorical context,which it tries to understand simultaneouslyw ith shapingi ts concepts.
The normative dimension of the historical account concerns not onlythe values ah istorian shares with her contemporaries, but also the secular role of history as asourceoflegitimation of power and of the identity policies for civic education.The changes in this role also entail modifications to the wayindividuals understand their belongingand commitment to the political-institutional frameworks within which they lead their lives.
Whilerecentdebate in historical theory hasrevolvedaroundtwo main themes -namely,the narrativestructure of historicaldiscourse andwhatwemight call the 'memory paradigm'-with globalization(andthe thematizationthereof in the context of then ew 'global history'), we enterapostnarrativist stageo ft he debate,i n which, as regardst he firstt heme,the empirical character of historical research is recovered.In this way, it becomespossibletoexitthe blindalley of historiography understood as ap urelyl inguisticc onstruction, consisting in am atrixo ft imeless rhetorical andn arrative devices, independento fa ny cognitivec laim.A sr egards thesecond theme, by placinghistory in thecontextofthe debate concerning abetterunderstanding of itsown time,itispossibletoaccount forits role in theexplorationo ft he past as well as in the diagnosiso ft he presenta nd thea ttemptst o thinkofand actinfuture events.One of theconsequences of thepost-ethnocentric 'global history' projectisacritical rehabilitation of keyaspects of thevilified 'speculative' philosophyo fh istory.

I
History has undergone, at least for the lastf ifty years, ac risis and successive transformation of the traditionalc anons thatu sed to dominate its self-understanding as adiscipline and which had been established following its final 'professionalization' (Iggers 2008, p. 108) in eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuryE uropean universitys paces.T his current crisis can be compared to thato ft he foundations of mathematics in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries.Both in the caseo fh istoriography and in that of its epistemological theory,the reasons for this transformation are not purelyi nternal to the historian'sw orkshop, but have to do with changes in the structure of the contemporary world to which her interpretationo ft he past belongs.
These changes cannot,i nf act,bes eparated from the ongoingglobalization process, on which various factors convergeand whose consequences are not yet altogether clear.Itisanepochalprocess that challenges the premises of modern thoughtaswell as those of the so-called postmodern narrativism, insofar as the latter refuses-in its radical versions-to establish ac ognitive connection between historicale xperience and historiography.Concomitantlyw ith the questioning of traditional theoretical assumptions, there emerge paradoxicallyn ew forms of historical writing that implyu nconventional paradigms whose theory is onlyb eginning to arise.
The topics Iw ill address next involvet he historical situation of historiographical practice under globalization, the changes concerning the subject or theme of traditional history,and the changes brought about by all this regarding its conceptual repertoire, as well as keya spects of its methodologya nd postulates that usedt ob ec onsidered decidedlya historical.These changes, as we will see, alsoi nvolve historical metatheory and some rehabilitation, though with strong caveats from the long vilified 'speculative' philosophyofh istory.F i-nally, we should consider the consequences of the foregoing for the internal rearrangement of the discipline,the wayofo rganizinghow it is taught and, more importantly, its cognitive and normative contribution in the context of contemporary societies, with av iew to an extended publics phere at the global level.
First of all, we should start by specifying the realm of history against other fields of knowledge basedoni ts specific object of study.As is generallyknown, the term 'history' has manymeanings.Usuallyadistinction is drawnbetween its referencet ot he objective course of events, on the one hand,a nd its narrative manifestation, on the other-but the polysemyd oes not end here (Brauer 2009,pp. 19 -38).In anycase, it is significant thatt he word 'history' should always be accompanied by ag enitive-the 'history of…' -and it would seem that anyo bject or subject could take the place of these suspension points, from the 'history of the Peloponnesian War' to the 'history of Romanp ainting'.I ti st his flexibilityofthe term thathas triggered the view that history,rather than having aspecific object of studyissimplyone approach to anyobject,perceivedthrough its changes over time.While therei sc ertainlys ome truth in this, it is also true that we mainlya ssociate the word 'history' with as pecific theme (though it is usually taken for granted): the changes in collective life and its forms of social and political organization.
Ak ey example of this theme in the modern world (at least since the emergence of history chairs at universities) has been that of the 'nation state',fulfilling as imilar role to those previouslyp layedb ym onarchies or religions.This is shown by the fact that the need for constructinghistorical accounts and teaching them went hand in hand with the demands for ar etrospective legitimation for the establishment of states, and that it ranp arallel to the creation of archives, museumsa nd 'sites of memory ' (Nora2 001,.In the case of the histories of states-like in those of nations, religions and the more or less vague concept of 'peoples'-there is usually( besides anyt heoretical interest in how the events took place) ap olitical mandate concerning the justification of power,a sw ell as the development of criteria for citizens' belonginga nd identification (Berger/Donovan /P assmore1 999;B erger/Lorenz 2010).This can clearlybeseen in the role of history at school, beyond its claim of providing 'objective' knowledge of the past.Therefore, when we talk simplyabout 'history',we tend to think of nationalhistories or of human history in general, wherethe former would be protagonists in aw ider context.
While it is true thath istory is implicitly associated with the transformation of the collective life of nations and theirp olitical and social organizations, another one of its non-thematized assumptions is some idea of ac ommon framework integrating the most diverse human activities, as belongingtothe same 'period'.T hisa ssumption of totality mayb eabyproduct of the construction of History with acapital initial, but it should not necessarilybeinterpreted as suggesting ah ypostatized collective subject, but as ap ossibles pace for interaction among various factors This presupposition of ah istory common to humanity,s haped by the presence of multiple states organized around al imited territory with ah orizono f contemporaneity,r emains at the basis both of the historiographyo fn ations and of teachingc urricula,a nd is also shared by the view of history still held by the reader of ahistoriographical text.Preciselythis relationship with the public is also an undeniable aspect of historical discourse, which distinguishesi t from thato fo ther disciplines to the extent that understanding ah istoriographical text does not seem to require anyspecialized knowledge.Accordingly,history has privileged access to public opinion-and it is no coincidencet hat most disputes,particularlyabout recent history,h avet odow ith contemporary political struggles.However,o vert he last few years these assumptions have been moving away from the central stageo fh istoricaln arratives-which does not actuallym ean that they are no longer written.
This shift of the nation-state axis is due to several factors.These certainly include the fateful experiences of the role of totalitarian and dictatorial states, particularlya fter the Second World War, which have led us to question the scope and limitations of state power as such and, at the samet ime, the globalization processu nder which they have in fact lost some of their sovereignty in economic, military,communicational and political terms,given their growinginterdependence and international regulations.Simultaneously, academic history has not onlyi ncreasinglya bandoned its role as as ourceo fl egitimation of power but in manyc ases it has adopted ac ritical function thate rodes identity accounts, delegatingt oadiscredited popularh istorical literatureo ra n' official history' the various attempts to legitimize the present by the past.
If we now ask ourselvesa bout the subjects that are todayl ikelyt or eplace national secular exploits, we cannot avoid mentioningt hree-two of which have al ong tradition, though they appear with different features in contemporary historiography.Ia mr eferring to the notions of 'civilization' (Fisch 1992, pp. 679 -774), 'empire' (Walther 1992, pp. 171-236) and thirdly -the main topic Is eek to address-to the concept of 'global' (Brauer 2016,p p. 51-65).A multiplicity of subjects should be added, which go beyond traditionalh istories (insofar as they include concepts previouslyc onsidered ahistorical), such as: childhood; insanity;w omen; death; 'mentalities' (Duby 1961, pp. 937-966); and hencealsothe history of the very 'concepts' (Palti 2011, pp. 227-248) governing historical reconstructions, which werepreviouslytaken for granted.But also worthyofa ddition to the list are geographical areas such as the Mediterranean, the Caucasus, etc., or subjects such as bread, silk, wine, etc. However heteroge-neous these subjects mays eem, they have in common that their historicalp ath transcends changingn ationalb orders and that they do not focus on states.
Some of these subjects have givenrise to the development of new disciplines such as 'conceptual history', 'women'shistory' or later 'gender history',etc.;others, such as 'environmental history',transcend the traditionald ivision between human and natural sciences.Concerningthe first two subjects mentioned above, the notions of 'empire' and 'civilization',both retain features of what Koselleck calls 'asymmetrical' (Koselleck 1989,pp. 211-259) relational conceptsi nsofar as they inevitablyestablish acontrastregarding certain peoples or nations as inferior to others, even when historians seek to adopt an eutral perspective or write from the victim'sp oint of view.
But,b efore addressing these, we should mention ak ey subjectm atter that emergedf rom the beginning of historiographya nd thati mplies by its naturea ' transnational' approach.Ir efer to 'war' as the subject of historical accountseven when it has generallyb een narratedf rom the winners' point of view or by those who believet hey have been unjustlyd efeated.'War' will undoubtedly remain one of the main topics of historicaln arratives, but it is also possiblet o verify here am ajor changep reciselyi nt hati ti sn ol onger as ourceo fl egitimation in itself for states,e mpiresa nd civilizations-ac hangei nv alues that becomes apparent in the significant renamingi nm ost countries of the 'Ministry of War' as 'Ministry of Defense',a round the end of the Second World War.
While the notionof'empire' has recentlyundergone arevival because of its reformulation in postmodern Marxist social theory by Hardta nd Negri (2000), still it has not inspired meaningful historical reconstructions, while the concept of 'civilization' has, on the otherh and, been rehabilitated in contemporary historiography.We can notice ar ecent rebirth of the term 'civilization',which was alreadyp resent in Spengler and Toynbee'sm etanarratives, and extensively discredited by professional historians, from the points of view of both historiographya nd political theory in the 1990s (Conrad 2016,p p. 175 -179).It is as omewhat vaguen otion that,o nt he one hand, was alreadyd esigned by Herder to avoid the aporias and constraints of ac oncept of 'progress' thath eld Europe and the so-called 'Western and Christian world' as its main protagonists and sidelined other cultures-but that on the other hand, regardless of its alleged descriptive character,did not always expresslyinvolve normative aspects that both implyapositive assessment against opposing concepts( such as 'barbarism', 'primitivism', 'savagery',etc.)and grant its own 'civilization' ap rivileged status.In its updated versions, the aim is to overcome the distortions of Eurocentrism to the extent that 'civilizations' are portrayed as closed,incommensurable containers, with an untainted original identity-but at the sametime they run the risk of advocating the identity they consider their own as astandard,basedonwhich it is sufficient to interpret globald evelopments (e. g., Sinocentrism, Afrocentrism, Islamocentrism, Latin-American-centrism).Ithink it is with good reason that Sebastian Conrad considers these variants nothing but "ar esponse to current experiences of globalization" (Conrad 2016,pp. 175).As is generallyknown, global and 'glocal' are merelyt wo sides of the samep henomenon.

II
After around the second half of the twentieth century,besides (1) the shift of the nation-state axis towardother collective entities, such as the aforementioned notions of 'empire' and 'civilization',therehas occurred agradual but increasingly rapid (2)f ragmentation of the history field-like ac racked mirror into multiple topics and problems which are hard to classify-and subsequently, (3) the attempt to reunify thatd iversity around am ain theme and to establish as far as possibleageneral perspective,b asedo nw hich internal connections might be set up.It is preciselyi nt his context that,a long with other similar attempts, a new historiographical field has taken shape-namely, 'global history'.
To account for this phenomenon, we could start by contrasting two relatively new disciplines, 'global history' and 'microhistory' (Ginsburg1993, p. 10 -35-for av ery different view closer to postmodernism, see: Szijártó /M agnússon 2013).Despite first appearances,t hese are not diametricallyo pposed,b ut rather complementary,g enres.I nb oth cases there occurs a 'changei nt ime scale' vis-à-vis traditionalh istory.R egarding the former,i ti nvolvesr econstructing (based on short time fragments or portions of individuals' livesi ns pecific social and cultural contexts) the wayo fl ife in ag iven period that thus becomes iconic.The emergence of this type of approach converges with others, such as thato ft he 'history of privatel ife' or of 'dailyl ife', 'oral history', 'history from below',a nd all of them with the emergence of the 'memory paradigm',t he rise of which has been led at least since the 1990s (judging by its impact on public opinion, though its theoretical development began earlier)b yt he studies of the Shoah and studies of 'genocide' in general.
But the extensive debates about the scope and limitations of the opposition between the memory and the history paradigms (Tamm 2013,p p. 458 -473) should not lead us to ignoret he impact of the studies of memory in historiographical practice itself.What these new fieldsh avei nc ommon is precisely the increasingi nclusion in their narrativeso ft he first-person perspectiveboth that of the victim (or victimizer)a nd of the witness, which used to go unnoticed in traditional impersonal histories and even in social history.
Of course, what is noticeable is the emergence of historical themess uch as those above, which establish new narration subjects such as 'women', 'childhood', 'the Mediterranean', 'death', 'madness',and 'sexuality' (not forgettingMichel Foucault'spioneering works,eventhough they cannot be considered strictly historiographical).Here, fragmentation has to do with historical subjects that cannot be detached from contemporary political struggles claiming for rights, or from certain nations, regionsorminorities whose histories have been silenced and are expresslyo ri mplicitlyw ritten from the standpoint of an emancipatory project.
The emergence of 'conceptual history' has been established as al arge,r ecent field of studies that shows the temporald imension of ar epertoireo fc ategories that werec onsidered ahistorical, 'natural kinds',w ith which historians used to read the past.S omething similar can be said of the 'history of the present' (Zeitgeschichte), whose emergencea sad iscipline is also recent.With its establishment as aresearch field of its own, the traditionalcanon of the necessary 'historicald istance' is broken (Bevernage/L orenz 2013,p p. 7-25).We should add to this as eries of historical narratives dealing with new historicalf ields, such as the birth of 'environmental-' or 'eco-history',which straddles the boundaries between human and natural sciences.
Concerning 'global history',weshould distinguish the emergenceofatleast two subject areas: on the one hand, 'globalization history',about which there is alreadyextensive literature, involving aseries of disputes over the criteria for establishingi ts periods and dates; and on the other,the birth of so-called 'global history' as agenre of its own, different from 'world history' and its close relatives, 'transnational history' and the so-called 'big history', 'interculturalhistory',etc.'Global history',asshownbythe bibliographic boom over the last years, has established itself as aspecific discipline representing anew point of view of 'world history' after the criticism of Eurocentrism and Poscolonilism.
However,unlike the notion of the nation-state, or thatofimperialism, 'globalization' means, rather than an entity,(1) aprocess, whose contours are difficult to establish and, simultaneously, (2)aspace for multicausal interaction.Unlike the notion of 'capitalism' (which is undoubtedlyone of its key aspectsand about which there have been manyt heories and discussions for at least twoh undred years), in the case of globalization, its theory-much likei ts objective development-is aw ork in progress,a nd it would be unilateral to consider it merelya phase of late capitalism.It seems to potentiallyh old forces leadingt on ew forms of dependence and marginalization, as well as to an ew erao fE nlightenment and emancipation of acitizens' network that covers the whole planet, with both thingsb eing probablyt rue at least at the current stage.
But from the point of view of historiographyand its theory,the aim is to establish ak ind of system of interconnections covering various aspects of the sociopolitical, military,t echnological, communicational and cultural scenarios, which mayinturn help to explain the increasinghomogenization at the international level, botho fc onsumption habits and of the mainstream representations of the ways of life considered appropriate for today'sw orld.
However,u nlike the conceptso f' universal history', 'world history' or the 'history of humanity',whose sense is highlyvaguea nd seldom defined, 'global' history refers to objective processes involving changes in economics, in the mass media and the means of transportation, in the available techniques for transforming nature, in healthsystems, and in institutionalized standards in national and international agencies, as well as in manyN GOs-but it alsoi nvolves the standards of scientific knowledge and,i nt his case, of what mayb ec onsidered by consensus an 'objective' historicaln arrative.What takes place in labelinga history as 'global' is not onlyalarger-scale, and hence more comprehensive,approach, but also asearch for the explanation of processes that cannot be understood solely from an endogenous perspective.This concept refers to as pace of interaction among manyfactors and differs from the notions of both 'dialectical totality' in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition and from the notion of 'world-system' suggested by Immanuel Wallerstein (Wallerstein 1974(Wallerstein -2011)), insofar as in this space there is room bothf or causality and for contingency,b oth for intentional action and for dysfunctionality.
In anycase, it is necessary to distinguish the discussion about the meaning of globalization (and of 'anti-globalization' movements) from what constitutes for historiographyasubject areai ni tself, for empiricallye xploring changes and events that are taking place in the world and which could subsidiarily help either to confirm or to test theoretical approaches.
In fact,the largert he scale, the biggerthe differencebetween historical discourse and literary narrative,s ince historicald iscourse involves anonymous processes (such as the increase in birthrates,t he increase in economic growth, the changes in institutionalf orms, etc.), whereas literary narrative seems to be associated with certain characters,t heira ctionsa nd their fate.While this happened alreadyw ith social history,i ti se speciallyt he case with global history.
While narrativism has contributed to the rediscovery of the narrativedimension of historicalt exts,i th as failed to set forth, in its more radical versions, a theory of the specific structure of historicalnarratives.In Hayden White'sschool, historiography is thereby deprivedo fi ts cognitive claim as an empirical discipline.While history thus comesc loser to literature( whichp roves, by some quirk of thought,m oreu seful in its more recent postmodernistv ersions-and particularlyi n' docudrama' (White2 014, p. 29)-for bringing us closer to 'real' events), historiographical theory moves further away from historiographical practice and its most recent developments.White'sm etahistory of the historical imagination in the nineteenth centurydoes not seem to be able to find its equivalent for twentieth-and twenty-first-century historiography, into which social and political theory has burst,just as new genres have emergedthatare increasingly difficult to reduce to literary narrative.It seems to be more concerned with establishing what history should be, rather than with accounting for its latest developments.

III
There have been attempts to characterize the historical situation of contemporary man, both as regards the most significant changes in society and mainstream ideas, using different terms such as postmodernism, postmetaphysics, 'postnationalc onstellation', 'post-traditionals ociety' or post-history.A ll these epithets seek to show the new contours of today'sw orld for the purpose of examining its causes and consequences.Instead, the 'globalization' concept has prevailed since the 1980s and exponentiallym ores os ince the 1990s (Mooney / Evans 2007).In fact,todaynobody hesitates to associate the notion of globalization with an objective historical phenomenon and not with aspecific theory that maya nd must be discussed.Furthermore, we could still sayt hat the aforementioned terms represent-along with others,s uch as,f or instance, the 'environmental' movement,t he revival of 'cosmopolitanism' or 'multiculturalism',a nd the rise of ac ulture of 'human rights'-different attempts to understand and redefine political alternativesi nt he context of a 'globalized' world.What appears as controversial are the different ways of understandingg lobalization as such, but not the fact that it designatesaseries of phenomena characterizingt oday's world and the irreversible scenario in which future generations will live.
From the perspective of historicalt heory,the ongoing globalization process has manyc onsequences.The first of these is (1) ar eturn to topics belonging to the classical philosophyo fh istory as ac oncern for the objectivep ath of worldwide events.Of course, the aim here is not to advocate a 'speculative' philosophy of history that used to interpret the past as aone waystreet towardapromising (or eschatological) future, but simplytoaccount for an increasinglyinterdependent world in which historical events cannot be explained in the limited context of autonomous nation-statesa nd in which (albeitf or different reasons from those Kant or Hegel had in mind) the globea ssumesacommon 'destiny'.I nf act, the so-called ecological crisis, the destructive power of nuclear weapons, the proliferation of social media (partlybeyond governmental control), the homoge-nization of consumption habits and of forms of industrial organization and collective institutions, as well as the advent of para-and supra-governmental institutions, etc., but also (and not least) the emergence of an extended public opinion that is not indifferent to the process of critical review of the ways of organizings ocial and political life, all portray ac hanged scenario thatt heory cannot ignore.Incidentally, in fact,t he idea of the nation-state had already been as uccessfulg lobal export product from the West at an earlier stage, and wherestate structures did not exist or wereonlypartially present,the rebellions against colonialism and imperialism wereparadoxicallyp art of its introduction.
Secondly (2), with thee mergence of then ew historical genres,anewf ormo f universalism also appears.On theone hand,whatoccursinhistoriographical theory,a si nm anyo ther areas, is as tandardization of thef orms of discourse-what SebastianC onrad callst he 'formatting' (Conrad 2016,p .203)-ofwhat is deemed an acceptable historical narrative,asshown in the guidelines forthe submission of papers fori nternationalc onferences and 'publications'.Ont he otherh and, disciplines such as global history, contemporary historyorw omen'sh istory transcend thes chemeo fn ationalh istories becauseo ft heir very subject.This brings about thegradual dismissalofaparticularistic, endogenous perspective.It is significant that, even in theh istories of certainp eoples,t he fact that theira uthoro rr eader should be af oreignerm ay provei rrelevant or make them even more interesting, to thee xtentt hatt heir point of view does nots eemc onditioned by prejudices of belonging.Thew ell-knownprecept aboutthe necessary 'distance' as ar equirement forthe objectivityofthe historical account(Salber Philipps 2013)isbased on twogrounds that need distinction:the firsthas to do with thepossibledistortionof thefacts accordingtothe narrator'sinvolvement;and thesecond is that events are considered to be stillinprogress, so it is notyet possible to assess theirconsequences.(Ofcourse,concerning this latter point, boundaries arer eallyhardtodefine.)But, as regardsthe former,the criterionof'distance' canbeapplied notonlychronologically, buta lsos imultaneouslyb ased on the 'foreigner's' view,t ot he extent that comparative historywritten from aglobalperspective relativizesthe localrepresentations of them eaning of events.
Thirdly( 3), the establishment of these new historical genres makes explicit not onlyt he link between theory of history and political theory and, hence, the normative dimensiono ft he historical discourse, but also of its cognitivea nd explanatory claim.'Global history' does not seek to be something like as ynthesis or point of convergence of different historical approaches, but proposes as pace for interaction and 'integration' (Conrad 2016,pp. 67-68) that expands the synchronicity and diachronicity spectrum to explorep ossible causal relationships among past events and helps to place them on aw ider horizon.
In conclusion,w ec an distinguish five levels for anchoring the process of transformation of the field of historical studies.The first has to do with the historical situation of the contemporaryworld in the context of the ongoing globalization process.The impact of this situation is directlys hown by the emergence of 'global history' as well as by the different attempts to establish the 'history of globalization' or 'globalization in history'.A lso, we should mention the 'global' perspective of historical studies concerning the most varied subjects.The second level involvest he changes within the discipline of history itself-the emergence of new subjects and fieldst hat transcend nation-states,a swell as the review of basic concepts that usedtodominate the canon of the professionalization of historical studies.
The third level refers to ar ehabilitation of ap hilosophyo fh istory from a planetary point of view,t ot he extent that the question arises again (based on various developments, such as climate change, the nuclear threat,t he emergence of para-and supra-national organizations( about the global meaning of events, withoutf alling for this reason into as peculative or teleological theory about an inescapable fatef or humanity.Thinking from ag lobal perspective has become amust,given today'schallenges, as is an ethical commitment to future generations.The fourth involves the recovery and redefinition of the notion of 'historical totality',u nderstood not as as ubstantive subject independent of collective actions and institutions or as a 'system',but rather as aspace for multiple possiblec ausalities and interactions to be empiricallye xamined. The fifth and lastlevel refers to the role of history in the ethical-political debate vis-à-vis an enlarged, worldwide public sphere.As the discussion about the so-called Holocaust (mentioned here because of its iconic 'global' role, as anegative 'historical sign' [Kant] of times that accompanythe contemporary world as as hadow) shows, the historian'sh istorical description of what happened not onlyputs 'the limits of our representation' (Friedländer 1992) to the test,but preciselyfor thatreason, it is part of acontemporary debate thatleads to areview of the normative assumptions that mayg ob eyond theirm ere application.