Relatív történelem

the long version

This new col­lec­tion of stud­ies by Gábor Gyáni, a most sig­nif­i­cant Hun­gar­i­an so­cial his­to­ri­an, in­cludes 15 of his writ­ings on di­verse mat­ters. Rel­a­tive His­to­ry is di­vid­ed into three sec­tions ti­tled Cul­tic Past, Col­lec­tive Mem­o­ry of the Past and His­to­ri­an’s Dis­course on the Past. Though the­mat­i­cal­ly di­verse, the stud­ies are uni­fied in their pur­pose of clar­i­fy­ing the cen­tral con­cept of rel­a­tive his­to­ry – a par­tic­u­lar­ly con­test­ed issue in post-com­mu­nist times when the newly gained free­doms and in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized plu­ral­ist en­vi­ron­ment makes var­i­ous forms of rel­a­tiviza­tions (of the Truth, of his­to­ri­an’s ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, of his­tor­i­cal progress, of var­i­ous con­ven­tion­al grand nar­ra­tives, etc.) the goal of some, while at the same time these rel­a­tiviza­tions are con­test­ed and even re­ject­ed by oth­ers. Gyáni aims to pre­sent his ideas on the mat­ter not only on a the­o­ret­i­cal level, but with the aim of pre­sent­ing em­pir­i­cal proofs and “tan­gi­ble” -fal­si­fi­able there­fore prop­er­ly sci­en­tif­ic- state­ments as well.