“Carlo Ginzburg, microhistoria y escala. El caso del vinatero calvinista / Carlo Ginzburg, Microhistory and Scale: the Case of the Calvinist Vintner

Over the past forty years historiography has been affected by typically postmodern epistemological crises, which have questioned two of its basic principles: the universality and the possibility to reach the truth in its narratives. In this article, we shall reflect on the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg’s answer to this crossroads. His works, from the first steps of microhistory to the most recent debates on literary fiction, combine a methodology, which may be considered in principle as postmodern, with rigorous historical investigations. We analyze how this methodology contributes however to the revaluation of the modern historiographical principles prior to postmodernityKey WordsCarlo Ginzburg, Eric J. Hobsbawm, postmodernity, historiography, story, fiction, proof.ResumenEn los últimos cuarenta años, la historiografía se ha visto afectada por crisis epistemológicas típicamente posmodernas que han cuestionado dos de sus principios básicos: la universalidad y la posibilidad de alcanzar la verdad en sus relatos. En este artículo se reflexiona sobre la respuesta del historiador italiano Carlo Ginzburg ante esta encrucijada. Sus trabajos, desde los primeros pasos de la microhistoria hasta los debates más recientes en torno a la ficción literaria, combinan una metodología que, en principio, se puede juzgar posmoderna con rigurosas investigaciones históricas. Se analiza en qué modo esta metodología contribuye, sin embargo, a revalorizar los principios de la historiografía moderna previos a la posmodernidad.Palabras claveCarlo Ginzburg, Eric J. Hobsbawm, posmodernidad, historiografía, relato, ficción, prueba

Bin Laden’s Ghost and the Epistemological Crises of Counterterrorism

This chapter argues that despite all the media attention, punditry, scholarly analysis, and official commentary, Osama bin Laden's death remains an essentially meaningless (non-)event. His death is meaningless or without consequence in two main senses of the word. First, it is meaningless in real-world strategic and material terms. For example, as a direct consequence of bin Laden's death, no counterterrorism programs have been scaled back or ended, counterterrorism laws repealed, military or security funding reduced, security agencies scaled down or closed, foreign training programs ended, overseas military forces withdrawn, or military bases closed. Instead, the global counterterrorism effort remains completely unchanged by his death and continues on as it has for the past ten years. Second, and perhaps more importantly, bin Laden's death has generated so many divergent meanings that it has been rendered ultimately meaningless in terms of its analytical consequences, symbolism, and epistemological significance.

Dramatic Developments and Epistemological Crises

John Thiel's development of the category of “dramatic development” in his stimulating and influential Senses of Tradition offers a valuable entry point into the current discussion of the continuity or discontinuity between Vatican II and traditional Roman Catholic thought. This article extends and modifies Thiel's arguments in light of criticisms by Kathryn Tanner and Alasdair MacIntyre's description of the different ways in which traditions make or fail to make progress. It tests this revised theory against an application to Dignitatis Humanae and its contested relation to traditional Roman Catholic thought.

Of Iron Cages, Double Binds, Epistemological Crises, and Environmental Destruction

The Western worldview, otherwise known as the modern worldview, has its origins in ancient Greek culture and its best known analyst and critic is Max Weber. Weber described the rationalization processes by which it came about as involving the disenchantment of the world, the disengagement of the autonomous self from the world in order to become its central agent, the objectification of the cosmos and the bureaucratization of all aspects of human life with the intention of mastery and control. This has led to what Weber called the Iron Cage in which modern human beings find themselves, unable to escape the alienation that such disengagement has brought about but equally unable to find an alternative. The exploitative nature of the western project is the basic cause of the contemporary destruction of the environment. Gregory Bateson probes more deeply into the alienating influences of the modern worldview which he says is based on its inability to understand the world holistically, which will inevitably lead to the world’s destruction. At the heart of this condition is his theory of the double bind. His advocacy for a more holistic understanding of the world resonates with postmodern critics in the fields of philosophy, anthropology, and theology, all of whom are advocating engagement, vulnerability, and participation as opposed to separation, prediction, and control.

Magical Thinking

How do we write about magic? Responding to a renewed interest in the history of the occult, this volume examines the role of magic in a series of methodological controversies in the humanities. In case studies ranging from the ‘necromancy’ of historiography to the strident rationalism of the ‘New Atheism,’ Magical Thinking sets out the surprising ways in which scholars and critics have imagined the occult. The volume argues that thinking and writing about magic has engendered multiple epistemological crises, profoundly unsettling the understanding of history and knowledge in Western culture. By examining how scholarly writing has contended and conspired with discourses of enchantment, the book reveals the implications of magic - and its scholarship - for intellectual history.