CFP: Historical Narratives and Counternarratives

Narration and self-narration represent a fundamental need of human beings as historical and cultural subjects. This fact has been recognised and studied in the field of anthropological, cultural, historical, sociological and even psychological and philosophical research. According to various interpretative perspectives, personal identity is constructed narratively (Bruner, Ricoeur et al.), and is built at the crossroads between subjective experience and cultural transmission of a population.

Personal identity, therefore, is not determined solely by psychological-affective development, pure experience and knowledge of a more or less general and practical nature. A complex combination of elements nourishes the thoughts, choices, interests and behaviours of individuals, rooted in the cultural values, beliefs, memory and history of a population.

This, explains, on the one hand, the civilising and emancipatory function of studies and research in the humanities and historical-social sciences for individuals, peoples and communities; on the other hand, it explains the particular difficulty in achieving full and scientific knowledge of facts, events and experiences. On the one hand, the question of the objectivity of truth is dialectically linked both to the question of the representation of knowledge and to the question of the correspondence between statements and actual state of things. On the other hand, the same issue enters into dialectic with the question of persuasion and knowledge interests.

In particular, the relationship between truth and persuasion, between argumentative validity and communicative effectiveness, is a source of tension and controversy. The matrix is clearly Western and has its roots in ancient thought (one can consider Aristotle’s distinction between rhetoric and dialectic, or reconsider Socrates and Plato’s lessons or Sophists’ perspective, etc.). This is a critical area where the difference between convincing and persuading, between knowing and believing, between demonstrative discourse and discourse aimed at obtaining the consent of an audience generates, in various ways, tension and controversy that is as much scientific and cultural as it is political and social. On the one hand, the multiplication of communication channels, accessibility to social media, the strengthening of the so-called “infosphere” and the advent of generative AI; on the other, the proliferation of economic and political conflicts of interests behind scientific research, knowledge and communication – all this seems to have further dramatised and complicated the critical issues and problems in question.

However, as numerous studies in different disciplinary field have shown, the issue of persuasion cannot be addressed solely in the contexts of mass communication, economic interests and political manipulation: no discursive practice is free from presuppositions and more or less conscious exercises and effects of persuasion (Perelman, Habermas, Toulmin et al.). The structures of persuasive discourse are transversally present in all linguistic practices, including specialists’ ones, inspired by criteria of scientific rigour. The scientific-cultural universe cannot therefore be divided into two clearly separate areas: on the one hand, the area of certain, experimentally proven truth, the domain of analytical reason; on the other, the area of relative truth, the domain of the humanities and of a reason conditioned by pragmatic, historical motivations, i.e. anchored to a particular Lebensform.

This situation reinforces the need for clarification of the relationship between truth and persuasion in the humanities and historical-social sciences, and for rigorous analysis and discussion of the possibilities and limitations of persuasive practice, beliefs, cultural affiliations, interests and values reflected in them.

The conference aims to promote an interdisciplinary exchange – including a critical discussion of case studies – between philosophical and non-philosophical research areas, with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on the following issues, which are grouped around the main question “Narration and Renarration of Facts: How and When Is the Truth?”:

- the relationship between truth and persuasion

- the relationship between truth and communication

- the relationship between truth and the languages of politics

- the relationship between knowledge and representation

- the relationship between knowledge and interest

- the relationship between knowledge and cultural belonging

- the relationship between knowledge and ideology

- the relationship between identity and (re-)narration

- the relationship between factuality and communicative distortion

Organiser: Prof. Milenko Bodin (University of Belgrade)

Submissions of a long abstract (of no more than 1000 words) and a CV are due by 30 June 2026.

All applicants must indicate the following details: Name, presentation title, institutional affiliation, and contact information.

Please, send your abstract and CV to: [email protected]

Applicants will be notified by 15 July 2026.