Livsviktig historia?

With a voluminous newspaper material from the 1930s and contemporary life story interviews as starting-point the article discusses how ethnology can handle existential issues. The discussion especially concerns parallels between societal crisis of today and of the 1930s. By making a distinction between “the history we are living and a part of ” (die Geschichte) and “the history we are writing” (die Historie), the aim is to point out a possibility to develop a criticism of historiography, and an “unhistorical” methodology “for life”. These concepts originate from Nietzsche’s (1874/1998) statement that historicism is a threat to life itself. To make it possible to found a method that deals with existential issues raised by traces and heritages from the past, and that also is able to maintain conditions for life, the article argues for an analysis paying attention to the variability, openness and dialogic nature of historical material. Furthermore, this kind of attention is regarded as a crucial political and democratic task for ethnology.