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Presents a wide range of emerging models of historical interpretations of culture, including the "open house" concept of cultural history, which defines culture as high art, literature, & music -- & the "cultural encounter" model. Drawing on the centrality of Peter Burke's (1991) demand for a broad understanding of culture, some important contributions to the new cultural history are discussed. It is argued that the state, social groups, gender, & society itself are culturally constructed. 8 References. Adapted from the source document.

The "integration of Europe" is, among other things, a huge ideological undertaking. Part of that undertaking entails the appropriation of history for the political project of building a "European Union." One aspect of that appropriation of history is the rooting of Europe as a political community in historical times & places where Europe as such did not exist. Popular among such ideological constructs is presentation of the Carolingian Empire as the predecessor of contemporary, united Europe. By analyzing early medieval usages of the word Europe, the author argues that it is unwarranted to speak of any clear "idea of Europe," in the Carolingian period or, in turn, to portray the Carolingian Empire as the "first Europe" & a potential model for today's "integration of Europe.". Adapted from the source document.

A review of Thomas S. Kuhn's arguments against the unification of the philosophy & history of science focuses on his definition & defense of the interdisciplinary dialogue between the two sciences. While they can explain a given problem for their particular points of view, their perspectives cannot be synthesized. Kuhn's work on the scientific revolutions gives rise to a new science of the development of sciences that could unify the historical analysis of scientific development with the rational reconstruction of scientific developments. 7 References. Adapted from the source document.

This article deals with the problems Foucault's work is faced with when entering its later phase. The analysis of discontinuities in history is replaced by an analysis of continuities in subjectifying sexuality. If in the first part of The History of Sexuality the subject was still the effect of power relations, the latter two parts introduce the possibility of the subject of mastery over pleasures, which can only affect politics through ethics. In analyzing the late Foucault & two contemporary authors inspired by his work, namely Judith Butler & Giorgio Agamben, we assert that Foucault's project encounters difficulties precisely at the point where it is supposed to be the strongest: thinking the ruptures & the excesses in both the flux of power relations as well as on the level of the singularity of enjoyment. Why can he not cope with this in a different manner than by animating the antique subject of "the care of the self," which searches for its consistency in self-control? Instead of resorting to the virtues of moderation, why does he not rather deal with the problems of the discontinued subject with the construction of a subject that would subjectify the discontinuity itself? Adapted from the source document.

The great restructuring of power in the Christian West at the beginning of the second millennium did not change the meaning of the notion of Europe as inherited from the previous two centuries. Rather, it brought forth new concepts to describe the unity of Western Christians, thus marginalizing "Europe" as a potential bearer of collective identity. Foremost among those new unitary concepts was Christendom -- a concept closely linked with the rise of the papal monarchy & the launching of the First Crusade as the pope's own war. By analyzing 11th-century sources & literature connected with the First Crusade, the author shows that the term Europe -- used merely in its geographical sense or in connection with the ancient myth of Europa & the legend of Japheth -- had little relevance for the practical & spiritual concerns of that age. Adapted from the source document.

In administrative history of the last six hundred years, different factors & influences had played their role in the formation of middle-level offices. The reason was in management. By dividing provinces into quarters, the provincial estates primarily wanted to protect their property from Turkish raids in the middle of the 15th century. In the middle of the 18th century, the provincial prince or national authority established kresije (state administrative units) that were a prolonged hand of the central state administration. It was supposed to control landowners, enforcement of rules & to protect serfs. By establishing kresije, the Kromeriz Constitution wanted to solve nationality problems in multilingual provinces. The district boards, established after 1868, were also a prolonged hand of the central authority & the result of the hundred-year development of the state administration. The history of middle-level offices shows interests of some groups or individuals that were in power during a certain period of time. Unlike other European countries where these offices were relatively autonomous, they were always a prolonged hand of the central state bodies or at least they served them in the Austrian Empire. The Registry Office plan reflects their competence that comprised all the matters of the population in a certain district from personal to municipal, military, education, ecclesiastical & taxation matters, the result of which was that the population identified itself with a district or quarter or kresija (state administrative unit). The middle-level government name was also one of the reasons for population identification. Figures, References. Adapted from the source document.

(Originally published in History and Theory, 1987, 26, 1-29.) It is postulated that, despite the best efforts of professional historians, there is no way of inventing a direct assessment of historical events. In fact, the professional standards of historians' honesty & professionalism are measured against the very conventions that include or exclude certain aspects of historical events. Even the thickest synchronic or quantified description must be understood by its readers as an excerpt from an explicit or implicit narrative. The desire for a source of an unprocessed story is a futile, frustrating effort, since all historical texts or materials are part of a society's cultural system. Adapted from the source document.

After explaining the difference between the notions of self-government & local autonomy, the applicability of both to the description of the political-administrative status of the Slovene city of Ljubljana in the 19th-century Austrian Empire is examined. The Austrian March Constitution of 1849, its abolishment by the emperor Franz Joseph in 1851, the municipalities law of 1849 & 1862, & December Constitution of 1867 are some of the legal acts examined in the outline of the chronology of the self-government & autonomy of Ljubljana as a provincial capital in the Austrian Empire. The powers & prerogatives contained in the city's municipal statues are discussed, considering the relationship & power sharing between the state & municipalities in the Austrian Empire & the Austria-Hungary dual monarchy. The study of the Ljubljana archive sources concludes that prior to 1895, the city's municipal council powers to issue normative legislation were limited, & an increased norm-giving activity resulted only from the need to rebuild the city after the 1895 earthquake. The council's municipal autonomy was largely responsible for regulating all reconstruction activities, including the organization & modernization of transport, electrification, & other infrastructure. Adapted from the source document.

The alleged domination of the visual in contemporary culture -- initially theorized by French thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Georges Bataille, & Michel Foucault, & artists such as Marcel Duchamp -- has influenced the self-evaluation of recent US art. The repudiation of the high modernist evaluation of the "pure optical" introduced by Clement Greenberg & Michael Frid is explained in terms of the post-WWII relocation of the center of modernist art from Paris (France) to New York City; Rosalind Krauss & Norman Bryson observe the conspicuous lack of interest in the later "revenge" of French art theorists. Their influence has helped undermine the achievements of abstract expressionism while promoting neo-Dadaism, conceptual art, & minimalism, & has diminished the primacy of the visual. Adapted from the source document.

Agamben's paradoxical treatments of potentiality seem to leave little room for any robust theory of the subject, political or otherwise. His Aristotelian conception of potentiality entails, in the highest instance, "that potentiality constitutively is the potentiality not to (do or be)," which suggests that even if potential is realized, it is realized only by its lack of activity. Agamben's Aristotelianism is a thread that runs throughout his work, and by looking back to The Man Without Content, particularly his discussion of Marx, it is clear that the framework of potentiality means that it is impossible for him to see in Marx anything other than an odd combination of a "metaphysics of will", and man simply as a kind of natural, living being. This in turn shapes his later discussion in Homo Sacer of the entry of zoe into the polis, which founds Agamben's entire claim vis-a-vis bare life. His wager, namely that the question "In what way does the living being have language?" corresponds exactly to the question "In what way does bare life dwell in the polis?", equates the living being with its political, linguistic, and natural potentialities so completely that there seems to be no room for any kind of historically anomalous or collectively unprecedented subject, one that would break with history or disrupt everyday order. Agamben's work could easily be criticized from the standpoint of a Marxism that would stress the constructed nature of human potential and the necessity to think through forms of organization from within shifts in the nature of work. However, in order to stay closer to Agamben's Aristotelianism, it is far more productive to compare him to a thinker for whom questions of linguistic capacity and politics are also central, and also stem from a certain complex relation to naturalism, namely Paolo Virno. This paper will thus, via a careful reading of Agamben's Aristotelian conception of praxis and potentiality alongside Virno's work on the relation between language and labor, demonstrate the constitutive reasons why Agamben cannot consider any kind of substantial notion of the subject, and why Virno's more nuanced conception of capacity, which draws upon both rationalist and naturalist theories of the subject might constitute a more relevant alternative. Adapted from the source document.