Historians continue to believe in the fundamental objectivity and rationality of their academic work and that historiography has an inextricable link to a real, existing past. Since neither of these has been satisfactorily proven to date, an attempt is made here to recast the problem of the genesis of historical knowledge on the basis of current sociological and radical constructivist theories. I assume that - unless the distinction between present and past is itself a construction - there is an impenetrable wall towards the past, and that historians operate exclusively in and for the present. This draws attention to social processes, to the question of what historians do. Characterised by dispositions: Discourses (M. Foucault), thinking styles (L. Fleck) and habitus (P. Bourdieu), they generate historical knowledge in everyday social practices and implement it in painstaking strategic work as "happened history" in the discussion contexts of academia and the public alike. Historiography is therefore not a construction that depicts the past, but a construction that arises from the present and depicts it - in the form of "history".

Publication:

• Etzemüller, Thomas: "Ich sehe das, was Du nicht siehst". On the theoretical foundations of historiographical work, in: Eckel, Jan / Etzemüller, Thomas (eds.): Neue Zugänge zur Geschichte der Geschichtswissenschaft, Göttingen 2007, pp. 27-68