Beverley Southgate
Biographic Data
| ID | 445223 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Beverley Southgate |
| GIVEN NAMES | Beverley |
| FAMILY NAME | Southgate |
| SIGNATURE | SOUTHGATE B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Hertfordshire |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 22 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1981 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Getting away with it
I argue here that ‘history’, though vilified by certain theorists, remains a practice of ethical importance. I focus on Anna Bikont’s research of the 1941 massacre of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne, but I also look more briefly at other investigations of past injustices, and conclude that there is some (ethical) point in attempting to approach more nearly to a ‘truth’ about those various past events. There may also be an ethical imperativ…
Macaulay 1828
I look here at Macaulay’s 1828 essay on ‘History’ as introducing issues that seem to me to be of continuing historiographical interest. These importantly include history’s relationship with fiction and art – and more particularly biography and portraiture. Also considered are historians’ use of reason and imagination, and possible practical uses for history in relation to the future. Macaulay is shown to connect with Hayden White and his recent d…
Historians
Sweet caress
Autobiographical, fictional, historical, untheoretical. A character in William Boyd’s book plays a game that involves defining people with four adjectives, and that game becomes something of a recu
The fiction of history; a new type of history
Beverley Southgate: It’s interesting that both of us – at roughly the same age – have focused in our latest books on the theme of history and fiction. There is of course a good reason for that: bot
History and art
I present here a brief reassessment of T. E. Hulme’s essays and notes posthumously published as Speculations (1924), with particular regard to ongoing discussion of the relationship between history and art. I argue that, despite comparative neglect through the twentieth century, Hulme’s treatment of that relationship may be of continuing interest to theorists – especially inasmuch as it is concerned with such matters as history’s role in investig…
'A New Type of History'
Linking fiction with history and historical theory, 'A New Type of History': Fictional Proposals for dealing with the Past focuses on a selection of nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists – Tolstoy, Proust, John Cowper Powys, Virginia Woolf, Wyndham Lewis, Penelope Lively, and James Hamilton-Paterson – who have criticized scientifically based history and proposed alternative ways of approaching the past: more subjective and personal, colourf…
History, memory, trauma in contemporary British and Irish fiction
This book examines ‘various forms in which contemporary British and Irish writers engage with the past’, and ‘how the literary explorations of the past lead to the examination of wounds, whether pe
Replacing the past with disobedience
This essay consists of what I term a ‘living obituary’. As such it contains some thoughts about Keith Jenkins himself, inasmuch as he has affected me personally, and then a brief consideration of two (of what I consider) defining characteristics of his thought: first, his total repudiation of the typically ‘modernist’ conception of ‘history’ and ‘historical consciousness’, and thence of ‘the past’ itself; and second, his advocacy of ‘disobedience…
The master and his emissary
History and art
The extensive borderlands between history and fiction have been well mapped by theorists of late, but there have been few explorations of the territory that lies between history and the visual arts. This essay is intended to provoke further interest in that potentially fertile terrain. Some of the most obvious areas of mutual concern include: perspective, narration and representation; perception and interpretation; clarity and indefiniteness; cha…
The Fiction of Narrative
Historical Judgement – By Jonathan Gorman
Tolstoy and ethical history
This essay is concerned with Tolstoy's attitude to history – both its nature and its purpose – as that is revealed in War and peace. Tolstoy is critical of historians who, he believes, exaggerate the role of ‘great men’: exemplified in particular by Napoleon, such men are far less in control of events – are far less free – than they themselves might claim and than appears from such reports as constitute historical evidence. Vivid descriptions of …
Resisting History
My racket is History’
This article introduces one example of a ‘literary’ representation of an historian. Wyndham Lewis (1884–1957) is best known for his advocacy of avant-garde art in the earlier twentieth century, and is virtually unknown as an historical theorist; but as a wide-ranging cultural critic he was well aware of historiographical controversies, and most interestingly makes René Harding, the central character in his autobiographically based novel Self Cond…
Memories into something new
In this essay the author proposes that one possible function for historians in the future might be to reorganize public memories in positive and helpful ways. While accepting the need for identity-confirming narratives, there remains a choice of what and how elements of our pasts are incorporated and so made meaningful; and in the interest of a more hopeful future, it is recommended here that, utilizing a dialogic rather than dogmatic form, histo…
A pair of white gloves’
For historians, ethical involvement is not an optional extra: it lies as an essential core of their work. It's easy to see how, for Julien Benda in the 1920s, the conscious adoption of any ideological standpoint seemed nothing less than a betrayal of all that intellectuals had stood for. Great War historians had been deliberately partisan in their claims to truth, renouncing any aspiration to detachment or to any absolutes, and conscripting their…
In Search of Ariadne's Thread 1
This autobiographical sketch is intended to indicate a path by which I arrived at my current position in relation to history and the past. That position is essentially a belief that the past is there to be used by us for present purposes and in relation to our future hopes; and it implies a belief that historians cannot remain disengaged from social, political and moral issues. It is not immediately obvious how that position derives from my own e…
Postmodernism in History
This original and thought-provoking study looks at the context of postmodernist thought in general cultural terms as well as in relation to history. Postmodernism in History traces philosophical precursors of postmodernism and identifies the roots of current concerns. Beverley Southgate describes the core constituents of postmodernism and provides a lucid and profound analysis of the current state of the debate. His main concern is to counter 'po…
Short Reviews
Short Reviews
History: What and Why?
Shorter notice. Refiguring Revolutions
The Autonomy of History
Journal Article The Autonomy of History: Truth and Method from Erasmus to Gibbon Joesph M. Levine Get access Beverley Southgate Beverley Southgate University of Hertfordshire Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 115, Issue 464, November 2000, Page 1308, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/115.464.1308 Published: 01 November 2000
A pair of white gloves’
For historians, ethical involvement is not an optional extra: it lies as an essential core of their work. It's easy to see how, for Julien Benda in the 1920s, the conscious adoption of any ideological standpoint seemed nothing less than a betrayal of all that intellectuals had stood for. Great War historians had been deliberately partisan in their claims to truth, renouncing any aspiration to detachment or to any absolutes, and conscripting their…
In Search of Ariadne's Thread 1
This autobiographical sketch is intended to indicate a path by which I arrived at my current position in relation to history and the past. That position is essentially a belief that the past is there to be used by us for present purposes and in relation to our future hopes; and it implies a belief that historians cannot remain disengaged from social, political and moral issues. It is not immediately obvious how that position derives from my own e…
Postmodernism in History
This original and thought-provoking study looks at the context of postmodernist thought in general cultural terms as well as in relation to history. Postmodernism in History traces philosophical precursors of postmodernism and identifies the roots of current concerns. Beverley Southgate describes the core constituents of postmodernism and provides a lucid and profound analysis of the current state of the debate. His main concern is to counter 'po…
A philosophical divinity’
(1987). ‘A philosophical divinity’: Thomas White and an aspect of mid-seventeenth century science and religion. History of European Ideas: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 45-59
Getting away with it
I argue here that ‘history’, though vilified by certain theorists, remains a practice of ethical importance. I focus on Anna Bikont’s research of the 1941 massacre of Jews in the Polish village of Jedwabne, but I also look more briefly at other investigations of past injustices, and conclude that there is some (ethical) point in attempting to approach more nearly to a ‘truth’ about those various past events. There may also be an ethical imperativ…
Historians
Sweet caress
Autobiographical, fictional, historical, untheoretical. A character in William Boyd’s book plays a game that involves defining people with four adjectives, and that game becomes something of a recu
History, memory, trauma in contemporary British and Irish fiction
This book examines ‘various forms in which contemporary British and Irish writers engage with the past’, and ‘how the literary explorations of the past lead to the examination of wounds, whether pe
The master and his emissary
History and art
The extensive borderlands between history and fiction have been well mapped by theorists of late, but there have been few explorations of the territory that lies between history and the visual arts. This essay is intended to provoke further interest in that potentially fertile terrain. Some of the most obvious areas of mutual concern include: perspective, narration and representation; perception and interpretation; clarity and indefiniteness; cha…
Tolstoy and ethical history
This essay is concerned with Tolstoy's attitude to history – both its nature and its purpose – as that is revealed in War and peace. Tolstoy is critical of historians who, he believes, exaggerate the role of ‘great men’: exemplified in particular by Napoleon, such men are far less in control of events – are far less free – than they themselves might claim and than appears from such reports as constitute historical evidence. Vivid descriptions of …
History and Metahistory
To Speak Truth’
No Other Wisdom’? Humanist Reactions to Science and Scientism in the Seventeenth Century
The high road to Pyrrhonism
The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza
(1981). The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza. History of European Ideas: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 75-77
William Whiston
(1986). William Whiston: Honest Newtonian. History of European Ideas: Vol. 7, No. 5, pp. 543-544
Religion, science and worldview
(1987). Religion, science and worldview: essays in honor of Richard S. Westfall. History of European Ideas: Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 389-390
A philosophical divinity’
(1987). ‘A philosophical divinity’: Thomas White and an aspect of mid-seventeenth century science and religion. History of European Ideas: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 45-59
Death of the soul. Philosophical thought from Descartes to the computer
Removing epidemick ignorance’
Forgotten and Lost
The rationalists. A history of western philosophy, vol. 4
No Other Wisdom’? Humanist Reactions to Science and Scientism in the Seventeenth Century
Locke and the Scriblerians. Identity and consciousness in early eighteenth-century Britain
The Power of Imagination
Cauterising the Tumour of Pyrrhonism
In 1663 English Catholic priest Thomas White (1593-1676) proclaimed a need for some cauterisation to be apply'd to that Tumour of Glanvill's, which has rag'd now full two years.' The tumour, as physically manifested, can be identified as The Vanity of Dogmatizing,2 and underlying malaise as philosophical position expounded in that work-namely, skeptical philosophy of Pyrrhonism, which confirmed (in words of Glanvill's subtitle) the Shortness and …
Scattered over Europe’
(1993). ‘Scattered over Europe’: Transcending national frontiers in the seventeenth century. History of European Ideas: Vol. 16, No. 1-3, pp. 131-137
The politics of skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume and Kant
(1994). The politics of skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume and Kant. History of European Ideas: Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 778-779
Francis Bacon, the state, and the reform of natural philosophy
Francis Bacon, the state, and the reform of natural philosophy." History of European Ideas, 18(6), pp. 995–996
Sensus communis
Sensus communis: Vvico, Rhetoric and the limits of relativism." History of European Ideas, 18(3), pp. 443–444
A medley of both’
Latitudinarianism in the seventeenth-century church of England
Public duty and private conscience in Seventeenth-Century England. Essays presented to G.E. Aylmer
To Speak Truth’
Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness. Moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England
Shaftesbury and the culture of politeness. Moral discourse and cultural politics in early eighteenth-century England." History of European Ideas, 22(2), pp. 181–182
History and Metahistory
Conspiracy to the common good
Shorter notice. Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge. MC Horowitz
Journal Article Shorter notice. Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge. MC Horowitz Get access B Southgate B Southgate University of Hertfordshire, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, Volume 114, Issue 456, April 1999, Pages 425–426, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/114.456.425 Published: 01 April 1999
History (34 works) · Philosophy (33 works) · Epistemology (28 works) · History (28 works) · Philosophy (27 works) · Political science (23 works) · Art (17 works) · Law (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Philosophy, History, and Historiography (15 works)