In Search of a New Perspective: The "Crisis of History" Through the Prism of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Contexts

The aim of the article is to revise the content of the "crisis of history" concept, which forms a stable stereotype in modern Western historiography and to offer a fundamentally different explanation for the regularities of historical science evolution. The specific objectives of the study are to comprehend the "crisis of history" notion and its related forecasts; to determine the connection of historiographic interpretations associated with the concept "crisis" and communicative strategies of social history inspired by the Annales movement; to reveal the humanitarian knowledge contexts external to historical science and the nature of their influence on history; to surpass the framework of the "crisis of history" through the searches of a fundamentally different typological foundation for historians. Sources and research materials used in the study are represented by scientific articles and monographs characterizing the situation of the "crisis of history", modern ways and problems of the social world theory, as well as humanitarian knowledge in general, written in French, English and Russian. The methodological basis of the article are the problem-chronological and typological approaches. The article is devoted to the problem of the "crisis of history", the theoretical framework of which determines all the controversies of historical science of the last quarter of the century. The author transfers the emphasis of the discussion from the characteristic cliches, catchphrases and communicative strategies of historical science that developed in the 20th century and have exhausted themselves in the description of countless "turns" of short-term intellectual fads to the consideration of other interdisciplinary contexts that determine the logic of modern humanitarian and, wider, general scientific knowledge development. The author's main conclusions are the following. (1) The "crisis of history" remains the main horizon of the theoretical reasoning of historians over the past thirty years. (2) Logically, the "crisis of history" is associated with the communicative strategies of social history, acting under the sign of innovation, interdisciplinarity, and overarching findings (Lucien Febvre's project). (3) A fundamentally different typological basis for the analysis of historical thought, legitimizing the multi-paradigmatic nature of its development, should be applied. (4) The basis of such an analysis, according to the author, is the approach of Inna Devyatko, who simulated the four main types of research explanation in sociological thought: interpretative, naturalistic, functionalist and structuralist. (5) It is shown, by the example of the French historiography of the late 19th - early 21st centuries, that the multi-paradigm approach embraces correctly its main trends and demonstrates a reciprocating rather than cumulative evolvement nature.

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