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CREATIVE DISINTEGRATION: THE PERPETUAL EMERGENCE OF MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 28

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Ian Hunter's review article titled "Creative Disintegration: The Perpetual Emergence of Modern Political Thought" discusses Michael Sonenscher's After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought.

Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Michael Sonenscher's After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought offers a rich overview of nineteenth-century French, Swiss, and German political thought....

DECOLONIZING THEORY AND CONCEPTS: PERSPECTIVES FROM THE GLOBAL SOUTH

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 27

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Margrit Pernau's review article titled "Decolonizing Theory and Concepts: Perspectives from the Global South" discusses the book Changing Theory: Concepts from the Global South, edited by Dilip M. Menon.

Read it #OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Until recently, most concepts and theories used in social sciences and the humanities were developed in the West. They were both provincial, as they were based on Western experience and designed to i...

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 23

Scott's first point "has to do with making sense of the present by bringing the past to bear on it"; "the second is what Foucault called a 'history of the present'"; and "the third calls for the avowal of our ethical investments in the history we write."

“A GUESSER IN THIS VALE OF TEARS”: ON THE POLITICS OF HISTORY WRITING

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 23

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Based on her keynote address at the 2024 INTH Conference, Joan W. Scott's "'A Guesser in This Vale of Tears': On the Politics of History Writing" "makes 3 points about historians’ responsibilities in the current moment."

Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

The essay makes three points about historians’ responsibilities in the current moment. The first has to do with making sense of the present by bringing the past to bear on it—that is, offering to the...

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 22

Contending that both approaches are essentialist, Hirayama "calls for a more reflective and vibrant perspective on historical China . . . that focuses on the lived historical experiences" of diverse groups of individuals.

“CIVILIZATION” OR “EMPIRE”? “CHINA” AS A HISTORICAL ENTITY IN CONTESTATION

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 22

Hirayama examines these approaches' "historiographical and political implications through different historical configurations of late-imperial China and the resubstantiation of national histories in Taiwan and Hong Kong."

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 22

#ArticleSnapshot📸: In "'Civilization' or 'Empire'? 'China' as a Historical Entity in Contestation," Nagatomi Hirayama discusses the "civilization-to-nation" and "empire-to-nation" approaches to modern Chinese historical studies.

Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Two distinct approaches have shaped the landscape of modern Chinese historical studies. One approach is the civilization-to-nation thesis, which examines modern China's difficult emergence out of its...

FROM ETERNITY TO APOCALYPSE: TIME, NEWS, AND HISTORY BETWEEN THE MUGHAL AND BRITISH EMPIRES, 1556–1785

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 21

According to Kaicker, "Mughal bureaucracy (particularly its intelligence infrastructure) spurred the elaboration and efflorescence of historical writing outside the traditional ambit of the imperial court in a period of political turbulence."

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 21

In this essay, Kaicker "proposes the existence of three discrete modes of historical writing" that emerged and circulated during the Mughal empire--the millenarian, the eternal, and the apocalyptic.

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 21

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Abhishek Kaicker's "From Eternity to Apocalypse" examines an "interstitial history" and "the origins of the pervasive misconception that Mughal historical thought had faded to insignificance in the eighteenth century."

Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

The eighteenth-century origins of colonial orientalism in India spurred not just the translation of Indian texts but the production of interstitial histories, works that were forged in the intellectu...

PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY AS A CRITIQUE OF VIOLENCE: HISTORY, THEOLOGY, AND POLITICS IN WALTER BENJAMIN'S EARLY WRITINGS

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 20

In so doing, Nollet traces "a more substantial philosophy of history in Benjamin's early writings than is usually assumed" and identifies, in the period between 1919 and 1922, "a concentration of anarchistic and nihilistic texts devoted to developing this philosophy of history."

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 20

#ArticleSnapshot📸: In "Philosophy of History as a Critique of Violence," Vinsent Nollet "develops a historical-philosophical rather than a political-theological interpretation of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence.'"

Read it here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Walter Benjamin's “Critique of Violence” became a classical work on revolutionary politics mainly due to influential political-theological expositions of its arguments. The main challenge with the po....

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 19

. . . and toward recognizing particular forms of logic as indicating ethically beneficent outcomes . . . may facilitate the detection and deterrence of histories shaped by logics that indicate ethically maleficent outcomes."

ETHICS FOR ARTIFICIAL HISTORIANS

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 19

This article "argues for the recognition of historiographical logic as broadly useful for AI and specifically useful for the discipline." According to Hughes-Warrington, "stepping beyond treating ethics as the generation of lists of principles . . .

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 19

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Marnie Hughes-Warrington's "Ethics for Artificial Historians" calls for "a revised approach to the ethics of history."

Read it #OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Artificial historians do not need to have intentions to complete actions or to solve problems. Consequently, a revised approach to the ethics of history is needed. An approach to ethics for artificia...

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · May 19

Our June 2025 issue is out now! 🎉

Read it here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14682303...

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History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · Mar 26

Lalu explains: "Fretwell effectively invites us to consider the endpoints of psychophysics in a hierarchy of the senses, for which an aesthetic education may yet be required to short-circuit and reroute the senses through intervals of synesthesia."

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · Mar 26

According to Lalu, "Erica Fretwell's Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling (2020) raises crucial questions about the making of a concept of difference through marshaling the senses to the ends of a sensory order in postbellum United States."

SENSORY EXPERIMENTS, SENSORY ORDERS, AND AESTHETIC EDUCATION

History and Theory @histandtheojrnl.bsky.social · Mar 26

#ArticleSnapshot📸: Premesh Lalu's review essay in our March 2025 issue focuses on Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling by Erica Fretwell.

Read it #OpenAccess here: doi.org/10.1111/hith...

Erica Fretwell's Sensory Experiments: Psychophysics, Race, and the Aesthetics of Feeling (2020) raises crucial questions about the making of a concept of difference through marshaling the senses to t...