From Narrative to Hypertext. Cultural History and the Hermeneutic of Otherness. Paper presented at the International Society for Cultural History 2010: "Cultural Histories. Close Readings, Critical Syntheses. Turku 26-30 May 2010

"From Narrative to Hypertext: Cultural History and the Hermeneutic of the Otherness" Session 7e New Openings (See p. 36) Historiographical developments of Historism, that have been generated from the apories of the Modern "Subjectivity" , have challanged the problem of "otherness" by applying the hermenutic prcedures: the reconstruction of the relation between text and context turned into a superior identification process between the investiagetd object and the investigating subject from the vantage point of the last. Cultural History generates from the same apories of the "Modernity". However it apporaches in a different way the problems concerning the relation between "Identity" and "Otherness" . By objectifying the research field, it investigates and aknowledges the many identities of the many research fields, which preserve their reciprocal "otherness". By analyzing some results of the cultural studies and some recent products of the Central European Historiography about the "West-European" categories of Modernity and State, the paper suggests that the cultural history approach deeply changes the role of Narratives in History and the function of the Hermenutic Methods. Today cultural historiography is characthraized by the plurality of the narrated "stories"and of the related "points of view": from the methodological perspective this implies that hermeneutic precedures, aiming at possible meaning-directions, don’t produce any more a superior identity, but rather are functionalized to unveil and reinforce the reciprocal otherness of the narrating subjects within the relational context of the values, considered as simple "relational operators". The resulting historiographical paradigm can be considered more as an hypertext than as a "metanararrative" and the suggested method can open not only differnt way of historical investigation but also a different way to challenge established narratives with new interpretations.