To demonstrate the flexibility of moral positioning and the associated transference of energies, the concept of dominance reversal is introduced, illustrated by James’s description of “falling out of love” and Bakhtin’s exposé of carnival. The carnival ritual provides a basis for the conceptualization of a moral middle ground or grey area beween moral good and bad. The main practical implication of this chapter is the significance of recognizing that, via this middle ground, sharp distinctions between good and bad can be transcended as a buffer to toxic polarization.

When we think in terms of the durability of historical texts, some works instantly come to mind: Herodotus’, Thucydides’, and Polybius’ war narratives, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Jules Michelet’s History of France, Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Johan Huizinga’s The Waning of the Middle Ages, Fernand Braudel’s Mediterranean, and Edward Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, among many others. Historians instantly perceive them as durable texts, part of a canon of history and historiography. I examine in this chapter the conditions that might be considered necessary for historical writing to achieve durability, justify why some historical texts have the potential for durability, propose what conditions of creation and reception enabled this longevity, and discuss what practical lessons we obtain from this inquiry. I begin making some distinctions among the three related concepts of durability, the classic, and the canon. I then try to establish the specific conditions of durability of historical texts, focusing on the concepts of Chronotope (Mikhail Bakhtin), the effect of contemporaneity (Gadamer and Koselleck), temporalization (Heidegger, Ricoeur), timelessness (Hartog), and the connections between the concepts of durability and the practical past (Oakeshott, Hayden White).

This chapter starts by arguing that traditionally the writing of history has a strong connection to the construction of identities, be they national, class, ethnic, gender or spatial identities. The theory of history has also re-inforced that link until a range of diverse thinkers came to question this. I am discussing in particular Hayden White, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Chris Lorenz, Chantal Mouffe, Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. The collective impact of these authors has been to produce a greater self-reflexivity about the relationship between history and identity formation in many historians. The book, however, is not about a whiggish story of progress towards self-reflexivity, but it highlights that work which, in the author’s view, has been successful in being self-reflective about the historians’ part in the construction of identities.

This chapter looks at the cultural turn in historical writing since the 1980s and how it changed the established traditions of cultural history writing which had existed since the beginnings of professional history writing. The strong influence of poststructuralist theories led to a growing attention to questions of representations and constructions as well as to hidden meanings. It also traces the increasing desire to embed discourses in social practices. The chapter argues that an emphasis on the situational and relational processes in which humans acted remained often linked to an emancipatory agenda. A concern for human agency united with an interest in forms of creolisation and hybridity. Theories of alterity and studies of cultural transfer moved to the fore in many sub-fields of history, e.g. in LGBT history. The chapter explores in particular a range of promising new avenues in the new cultural history: the history of the senses, the history of emotions, the history of the body, the history of violence, nationalism studies. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the new cultural history contributed to greater self-reflexivity about the role of historical writing in collective identity formation. In particular Stuart Hall’s theory of ‘identification’ is used to describe the way in which a commitment to an engaged history writing can be squared with reflexivity about identity formation through historical writing.

This Chapter is concerned with axioms and concepts of dialogical epistemology derived from the Ego-Alter interdependence. This interdependence is always about something, i.e. about objects or events, or about reflections on the Self’s and the Other(s)’ thoughts, imaginations and actions. I have referred to triangular relations between the Ego-Alter-Object in two ways. First, following Serge Moscovici’s ideas, there is a triangular relation between the Ego-Alter-Object of knowledge. Second, following the ideas of the anthropologist Louis Dumont, I have introduced the consumerist triadic relation the Ego-Alter-Thing of desire. Ethics in these two kinds of triangle follows different routes. In the former case, ethical relations between the Ego-Alter stem directly from intersubjectivity and the search for social recognition as the primary ontological relations. In the latter case, the ethical relations between the Ego-Alter are masked by the apparent priority given to the relation between the Self and the Thing of desire. In this case, the Ego’s search for social recognition, which superficially appears as craving for the Thing of desire, is in fact the desire for the desire of the Other’s desire. In other words, obtaining Objects of Others provides the Self with a social status and thus, with illusory social recognition.

Epistemic responsibility is derived from the ethical nature of the Ego-Alter relations and is one of the axioms of dialogical epistemology of daily living. Like other dialogical axioms, it is relational. This is exemplified by Rommetveit’s and Arendt’s cases, which show that both the assumed epistemic equality and inequality between the Self and Other can entail epistemic responsibility or its denial.

Examples of Bakhtin and Levinas illustrate that epistemic responsibility takes on different forms. According to Bakhtin’s perspective the Ego cannot escape responsibility uniqueness and integrity. In Levinas’s perspective the Self’s responsibility for the Other is unlimited and unquestionable: it is the primary principle of human existence. Responsibility for the Other takes the form of action in the face of injustice. If my neighbour commits an evil act against Others, then I am responsible if I do not act on behalf of Justice.

Among contemporary challenges to epistemic responsibility is bureaucratization that penetrates institutions like health services and universities. An assault on sciences by bureaucratization, Patočka noted, is also an assault on the principle of scientific conscience, which must be resisted by establishing scientific solidarity among practicing scientists. Patočka calls for conscience and epistemic responsibility of scientists and professionals.