Currents of History 3/2018

Michael ANTOLOVIĆ
Faculty of Education
University of Novi Sad
mihael.antolovic@pef.uns.ac.rs

Biljana ŠIMUNOVIĆ-BEŠLIN
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Novi Sad
simunovic@ff.uns.ac.rs

History as Vallis Aurea. Đorđe Stanković and the Modernization of Serbian Historiography

Summary

At the turn of the century, Đorđe Stanković was one of the few historians of his generation who were committed to working on the theoretical and methodological aspects of historical research. Drawing on the concept of new history, which left its mark on the main streams of development in world historiography in the 1960s and 1970s, Stanković opted for social history, which employs theoretical and methodological concepts of the social sciences in order to overcome the inherent shortcomings of traditional political history and comes close to the ideal of total history. With his broadly conceived program of new history, Stanković contributed significantly to the theoretical and methodological development of Serbian historiography, the pluralization of topics it covered, and the establishment of the long and unduly neglected social history and its subdisciplines, such as quantitative and demographic history, the history of everyday (private) life, and gender history. A firm believer in the emancipatory power of scholarly (historical) knowledge, Stanković considered that the deconstruction of stereotypical notions about the past was the most important function of historical research, with which it contributed to man's liberation and to the creation of a more humane and more just society. That is precisely why, in a time of social and political crisis fuelled by the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia and followed by a spread of historical stereotypes and the strengthening of false historiography in public discourse, Stanković persistently highlighted that securing rational insights about the past was the first and foremost goal of historical research. It is in this same sense that one should understand the fact that Stanković advocated the theoretical and methodological development of scholarly historiography, so that it could, with its extent and comprehensiveness, analyticity and nuanced interpretations, respond to its primary social role. With his new history program, Đorđe Stanković has played one of the key roles in the process of modernizing Serbian historiography from the mid-1980s until the early 21st century.  This fact alone makes him one of the most significant figures in Serbian historiography of that period. In addition to greatly advancing the (national) field of history with his theoretical works, Đorđe Stanković's historiographical writings have provided a permanent incentive for both the critical evaluation of Serbian and Yugoslav historiographical heritage and the necessary strengthening of self-reflection within historical research. In that sense, the academic oeuvre of Đorđe Stanković is not just a valuable legacy, but also provides reliable guidance to future generations of historians in the organized “dialogue of the past and the present.”