Volume 1 / Athens 1999 In the way of introduction The articles published in the first volume of Historein cover a wide range of topics and represent different contemporary methodological approaches to history. This multiplicity reflects in a sense the fluidity and vibrancy that characterise the field of critical historiography today. In "History and Semiotics" Luisa Passerini suggests an understanding of history as a communicative process and offers a stimulating framework of historiographical analysis by underlining the fact that historians need to study further representations and subjectivity in order to assume their role on the cultural scene of the present. The view that historiography has to be understood as a communicative process is procovative since it may have more general repercussions concerning a broad range of research methodologies, writing strategies and teaching methods. Wolfgang Weber's article constitutes a compelling approach to the history of representations of the body in the context of Nazi politics in interwar Austria. His analysis combines the study of representations with that of politics and cultural practices. Though the study of the ideological premises of both politics and gymnastics, Weber explores the gaps and ruptures in the post-WWII collective memory of Nazism in Austria. His study of Austrian body culture during the interwar period offers a fresh insight in the vivid dialogue over issues of collaboration, resistance, memory and oblivion of Nazism in Europe. The next four articles address in diverse ways issues related to the phenomenon of nationalism in the Central and Southeastern European contexts. In his article "The formation of early Hellenic nationalism and the special symbolic and material interests of the new radical republican intelligentsia (ca. 1790-1830)", Socrates Petmezas shifts the analysis of nationalism away from traditional historicist as well as strictly economic approaches. His position that nationalism gave coherence to the self-image of a broad range of social groups that managed gradually to identify in diverse and often conflictual ways with the image of the Hellenic nation brings him in dialogue with some of the most stimulating contemporary approaches to nationalism in the field of social sciences. In a similar vein, Haris Exertzoglou conducts a particular analysis of nationalist ideology by focusing on the ways in which non-Greek-speaking Greek subjects were represented by nationalist discourse during the 19th century. In his article "Shifting boundaries: language, community and the 'non-Greek-speaking Greeks'," he combines historical research and a committed engagement with conceptual analysis of the terms employed in historical interpretation and understanding. "The construction of Czech national history" by Miroslav Hroch and Jitka Malecková and the discussion of "national History: Construct or/and reality" offer a particular cartography of contemporary historical scholarship on nationalism in Europe and reflect some of the recent orientations of research in the field of Central and Eastern European studies. Theodore Kritikos offers an interesting insight in the history of science in Greece in his article "Science and religion in Greece at the end of the nineteenth century." Through discursive analysis and interpretation, Kritikos argues that the debate between Greek scientists and the Orthodox Church at the end of the nineteenth century was not concerned primarily with the content of scientific theories. The relationship between science and religion was not formed around disagreements of the definition of truth, but rather by the conflict between adversarial claims of who has the legitimate authority to define truth as such in society. Henriette Benveniste in her article "Ésquisse d'une histoire de la responsabilité dans les récits juifs de persécution" explores the notion of responsibility, a notion well situated within the Jewish tradition since the middle ages. She studies religious texts of the middle ages and analyses the narratives of disaster and responsibility as well as the role that these played in the articulation of Jewishness in the context of religious Jewish communities. She argues that the study of historical continuity of these narratives through the centuries can help us situate historically the post-WWII Jewish understandings of the Holocaust as the latter are related to long-term "memories" of what the author calls a "genealogical responsibility." Finally, Michael Mitterauer addresses the question "Warum feiern wir Geschichte" and stresses the connection between religious rituals and cultural practices related to public celebrations of history and anniversaries. We would risk generalising his provocative question in order to include a broader range of cultural enactments of history and their role in the contemporary cultural scene. If historical scholarship is one of the ways in which history is culturally enacted in the present, what is the role that historians could play in the contemporary cultural scene? As a means of cultural enactment of history, Historein wishes to open yet another space for the semiotisation of history as a communicative process and for further reflection on the act of historicising. The Editorial Committee Return to Top