Cultural and Intellectual History Society (CIHIS) The Cultural and Intellectual History Society (CIHIS) was founded in 1998 by the Group for the Study of Historiography and Theory of History. The group first came together in 1991 and was made up of graduate and undergraduate then students in the Department of History at Athens University in Greece. The group started working together on the basis of a common interest in issues and questions around the history of historical thinking and writing, the history of academic historiography (national and nationalist historiography in particular), the importance of narrative forms in the conceptualisation of the past, as well as the importance of these conceptualisations in reference to contemporary forms of collective subjectivity and sociopolitical consciousness. The roots of this interest can be traced back in the ongoing debates over issues that concern the curriculum of historical studies in academia and the social and political implications of the historians' craft. From this point of view, our engagement in these issues was marked by questions that grew out of the impossibilities, coersions, and restrictions that had characterised our education inside and outside of the national universities. Thus, the group's work took the form of a continuous unlearning through teaching each other and oneself. In the years that followed new members were integrated, while all of us continued graduate studies either in Greece or abroad, some concluded their studies and some acquired academic and other professional positions. Thus different members of the original group embarked on individual projects and research activities and the range of the themes in which we were engaged was broadened. The main line of exploration remained focused on the research in issues around subjectivity and consciousness in their intellectual, social and cultural contextualisation. This project was implemented in diverse research projects that include a range of themes in the fields of intellectual history, contemporary cultural theory, history of memory, genealogical study of contemporary political culture. The thematic scope of the group -a scope which determines our overall activities and initiatives- includes the study of the formation of social collectivities and representations of class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race and nation; the operation of social institutions (such as the university, the prison, psychiatric institutions etc.); the ideological discourses that support, produce or negate these operations; disciplinary as well as popular discourses of the self, the body, the social/public sphere. Emphasis is put on the national, transnational and global structures that have determined these phenomena and processes in the modern era. This scope does not intend to be restrictive or exclusive; it represents an indication of the discussions with which this journal aims to engage. Although the character of these explorations is historical, the broad thematic is situated in the wider field of critical social, cultural, literary studies. The conditions under which this group has been formed and developed determine the nature of the initiatives and activities that we seek to promote. The work of the group has always involved an engagement with theoretical discussions, trends and debates articulated and conducted in the so-called metropolis of intellectual production. This engagement constitutes a particularity that marks decisively the nature of the intellectual activity in areas that lie outside geo-cultural territories of metropolitan theorising. This particularity concerns mainly the fact that our work has always taken shape within a process of literary as well as conceptual and analytical translation and hybridisation of intellectual traditions and schools of thought. As participants in the intellectual traffic (always multi-directional) that involves studying in western academic environments, engaging in theoretical debates and political agendas often foreign to one's own background and experience we are forcefully put in the position of the translator. In the particular history of this group this has been probably the most challenging period of our working together (and apart). Studying in diverse academic environments (mainly British, German, American) brought into our discussions questions of translation, (in)compatibility of diverse methodological, conceptual, analytical tools and frameworks; discussions marked by the attempt to deal with the indigenous problems and the particularities of the particular geopolitical and cultural territory by means of intellectual tools derived from diverse and sometimes incompatible academic environments and intellectual traditions. This attempt has always been accompanied with a struggle to avoid the losses effected by the epistemic violence that such a process may involve. This process of translation and resistance to epistemic violence constitutes our starting point and so is our commitment to generate strategies of intellectual hybridisation, conceptual translation, and analytical fusion, especially in the context of the contemporary formation of supranational elites and centers of decision and policy making. The activities of CIHIS aim at the creation of spaces for critical reflection on and discussion over the political economy and the anatomy of late twentieth century mechanisms, institutions and systems of production of knowledge. For further information on who we are, click here. Return to Top