Organized by History and Theory and the Research Group on Theory and Philosophy of History at Adolfo Ibáñez University, “Phenomenology and Post-Structuralism for Theory of History: A Missed Conversation” will be held at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago and Viña, Chile, from 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026.

The rationale for the “missed conversation” motif is that historians did not take up the challenges and possibilities offered by post-structuralism or phenomenology in the 1970s and 80s but instead cast these approaches as a gateway to dangerous relativism or as simply inappropriate for the practice of history. Some historians (such as Hayden White, Joan Scott, and Dominick LaCapra) did accept the challenge, but these were decidedly outliers. What’s more, and as Kalle Pihlainen has demonstrated in The Work of History/La Obra de Historia, many of the thinkers associated with the linguistic turn (Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Natalie Zemon Davis, Carlo Ginzburg) who appeared to be attuned to the problems of this moment insofar as they took up the issue of language were interested in the possibilities of imaginative narrative rather than the foundational epistemological/ontological issues at the heart of the post-structuralist project. Thus, historians could point toward the outliers to claim that post-structuralism and phenomenology had been adequately considered. The domestication of Michel Foucault in the service of cultural history is but one example. The domestication or disavowal of the post-structural and phenomenological challenge enabled the discipline of history to continue unaltered in its commitment to methodological paradigms despite the innovations and alternative which developed in other fields because of the post-structuralist and phenomenological moment. To our minds, a serious conversation focusing on history, phenomenology and post-structuralism is long overdue.

This conference brings together scholars from South America, North America, and Europe to restart this conversation with the hope that revisiting these schools of thought will develop alternative modes of history for the twenty-first century.

DETAILS

30 November 2026 – 4 December 2026

Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago and Viña, Chile

COVER PHOTO

By Shubham Dhage on Unsplash‍