| Popis: |
This chapter emphasizes how the counterfactual approach and analysis of possible futures open a gap, wherein one can easily get lost. One may consider it too risky, detect a certain vacuity, or proceed with some precaution. It reviews counterfactual history and uchronia that have developed in response to a certain zeitgeist, whose characteristics were highlighted as the end of ideologies, modification of the relationship between reality and fiction, and a sense of uncertainty in a globalized world. The chapter discusses the emergence of a tremendous diversity in the variations of counterfactual history and uchronia, an inventiveness in the forms it has taken, a popular curiosity with regard to virtual history, and a vigorous debate that has animated the historical community. The counterfactual approach and the analysis of possible futures are a form of reasoning that may be added to a series of intellectual operations. |
