Indiciary paradigm and cultural history

Abstract

The article aims at drawing the resonances between two trends that lately arise in the field of historiography. The first one is well-known and comes up from the turbulences that the production of the historians undergoessince the end of 80’s; its main characters are the return to the synchronous approach and the individual case of historical event and a certain revival of the narrative as well. These characters sum up a certain variety of subjects ranked under the label of “new cultural history”. The second stream is more recent and it is not so evident, since it has a more theoretical profile. It holds as its main character the development of a “historical hermeneutics", which seeks to recover the historical sense and the validity concerninghistorical knowledge, as a reaction to the epistemological post-modernism. Both Ginzburg’s “cultural microhistory” and the alleged “indiciary paradigm” are taken as a field for hypothetical observation looking forwardfurther studies.