The problem of political, social, historical trends in the development of historical science

Of the new directions in the study of the history of ideas in the XXI century. "connected", "joint" or "integrated" histories and "cross-history", which fall within the realm of "history of relations" and transnational history, attract the most attention. The creators of the latter (D. Thelen, T. Bender, I. Tyrell, R. Kelly) contrasted the hegemonic ideal of universal history (primarily American) with the history of "bundles of relations", i.e. diverse, interconnected processes that unite societies, cultures, civilizations.

Transnational history seeks to understand ideas, phenomena, peoples, practices across national borders in the complex contexts created by this process. It tries to distance itself from the only "scientific" point of view, from the dominance of one conceptual apparatus over another. No wonder Australian adherents regard it as a revolution in understanding the past.

A related story fleshes out what is new in the 1970s. introduced an anthropological, cultural and pragmatic twist, a strategy of parallel historical study of two or more related objects belonging to different cultures. In essence, we are talking about a “saturated description”, as K. Girtz understood it, which includes not only the transmission of information, but also gaps in it, arising (and sometimes theoretically formed) misunderstanding or unwillingness to understand. But culture in this case is interpreted not in a structuralist way, but in an actionalist way, taking into account the activity of the subject of activity. The focus is on "complex societies", multicultural social formations studied by E. Wolfe, for example, colonies of European countries, metropolises or various forms of international communities that are in more or less close relationships. The related history immediately came to the idea of civilization, studying the development of the idea and practice of civilizing (culturing), primarily on the border with international history. A. Conklin, M. Koskenniemi, K. Hall and J. Pitts analyze the problem of the formation in the foreign policy of European powers of ideas about the civilizing mission of Western countries in the 19th century. True, it is not so much about the idea of civilization as such, but about manipulating the civilizing program in specific political circumstances. And studies on the history of ideas rather illuminate the linear processes of transfer and the growth of the cognitive possibilities of the theory of civilization.

The problem of the connectedness of stories in is posed in a variety of contexts. J. Assman and M. Rotberg are talking about ways to overcome conflictogenic forms of cultural memory, about the connectedness and productive interaction of multidirectional manifestations of the historical memory of members of the global community6 – not only initial phenomena in the past are connected, but also their images in the present. Bound at L.D. Gudkov, different aspects of the social life of one society appear, necessarily creating different modes of temporality and meanings of action, so that a socially significant task arises to analyze their “combination and sequential orders of coordination”.

The concepts of "productive interaction", "coordination", which are key to this approach, dialogic in nature, are associated not only with the intention of scientists, but often directly with the very situation of real connectedness of social actions. This situation explodes the traditional forms of historical consciousness and analysis from within. Of course, the cognitive potential of a connected story is realized to a different extent depending on whether it happens implicitly, under the influence of the very situation of connectedness in the past (under the conditions of focusing on the value of this particular connection or on the displacement of the Other under the dominance of thinking by the opposite) or explicitly, with the participation of the intention of a modern researcher. The real measure of connectedness also plays its role. The consequences of taking into account the connectedness of "beams of relations" are truly revolutionary. This is an inclusive model - within its framework, the researcher cannot single out the only “right” side in the dialogue, and, as is customary in the universalist philosophy of history, build a binary opposition, and even more so a dichotomy that turns one of the sides of the opposition into nothing, and thereby dehistoricizes her (with the help of the concepts of "savagery", "barbarism", "archaic"). It is impossible to find that “emptiness” into which the meanings transmitted during the transfer are “poured”, and to which the policy of “civilization” applies. As in J. Deleuze and J. Derrida, the norms of culture and the situation of interaction of cultures are endowed with equal meaning, various “modes of inscription” are actualized, distinction dominates opposition, as a result of which the only image of history is replaced by a plural one. This transforms the norms of perception of the past, the ideal of its optimal, “pregnant” image. It ceases to be integral, isolated and turns into a collection of images, like a mosaic or a kaleidoscope.

Kazakh National University of Al-Farabi
Faculty of Philosophy and Political Science
Department of Religious Studies and Cultural Studies
Cultural studies
Student: Aisulu Tokan 4th  course
Scientific adviser: Omirbekova Aliya

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