EUROPEAN IDEAS AND PRACTICES OF EGO-HISTORY IN THE SCIENTIFIC AND EDUCATIONAL SPACE

Abstract

Relevance and problem statement. The article examines the phenomenon of increasing anthropocentrism in the study and teaching of history in European countries and the emergence of new ideas and practices that can be qualified as ego-history. Instead, it consists in defining the very subject of ego-history. Increasing attention to the individual is due to socio-political and socio-cultural circumstances, the development of the latest information technologies, and the establishment of historical anthropology in the scientific humanitarian discourse, which significantly updated historical knowledge and posed the question of finding new methods of learning about the past in the human dimension.

The purpose of the article is to determine the most effective methods of ego-history, and its place in the educational space based on the analysis of various European ideas and practices.

To achieve this goal, an analysis of various experiments and practices of European historians in search of cognitive possibilities of ego history was carried out. It is noted that under the influence of the experiments of the French historian P. Nore, ego history becomes one of the directions of intellectual history and historiographical discourse. The article also examines the project of the German historian L. Niethammer, who tried to bring ego history out of the intellectual sphere into the sphere of oral history, collective historical memory. The conclusions of the project gave him reason to believe that memories cannot be mechanically considered as personal ego-history, people often try not to reveal their identity.

New practices of studying personality and ego-history as a social practice were proposed by specialists in source studies. They began to define texts from the first person with the term «egodocument» (V. Schulze), in which a person himself discovers information about his society or reflects on his attitude to everything that happens around him. Contrary to V. Schulze, who advocated such an approach, B. Kruzenstern tried to prove that only «self-testimonies» can be considered ego-histories. A. Rutz concluded that ego-documents do not testify to a person in history, but represent only ego constructs.

Conclusions. Based on the analysis of the above-mentioned searches, the proposed article formulates the conclusion that what can be called the presentation of the personality prevails in the ego-history. The purpose of such a presentation is to ensure socialization, declare one's identity, and one's individuality, and leave one's memory behind. A person forms his self-constructions, self-models, and images with which he seeks to communicate with the environment. The spread of egocentrism in social practices actualizes the need to focus educational tasks on the formation of a culture of ego-history and presentation of personality.