Mechanisms of self-identification in M. Hrushevsky’s ego-narratives: E. Golubynsky’s “case study”

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to investigate the strategies of professional self-identification in the ego-narratives of M. Hrushevsky (on the example of the construction of the intellectual biography of E. Golubinsky). Research methods: «case study», comparative, structural and textological. Main results: M. Hrushevsky's «ego-narrative» was constructed according to a common model of self-identification with the «significant other» − the Russian historian E. Golubinsky. This strategy included such common structural components (that formed the image of the "ideal historian" in M. Hrushevsky's ego-narratives) as: origin (social); type of scholarship (ascetic); methodology (critical-skeptical); scholarship living project (creating the national historiographical metanarrative); mental crisis (disease) of 1904. The difference between the intellectual biographies of M. Hrushevsky and E. Golubinsky was reflected in the common point of the transformation of their «ego narratives» into the form of «illness narratives» precisely in 1904. If the Ukrainian historian managed to overcome the consequences of the mental crisis of 1904, the Russian one fell victim to the collapse of his health and was unable to realize his own «life project» − writing the historiographical metanarrative. Practical significance: recommended for using by specialists in the sphere of biography, personology, intellectual history, psychohistory. Scientific innovation: on the basis of textual analysis, the structural components of the intellectual biography of the «ideal historian» were identified for the first time. Type of article: analytical and empirical.