Why Historical Distance Is Not a Problem
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4496519 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark Bevir (0000-0001-9666-3113, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 24-37 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History and Theory (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-2656 • E-ISSN: 1468-2303 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1468-2303.2011.00601.x |
| OpenAlex | W2055021780 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 7 |
| References cited | 5 |
This essay argues that concerns about historical distance arose along with modernist historicism, and they disappear with postfoundationalism. The developmental historicism of the nineteenth century appealed to narrative principles to establish continuity between past and present and to guide selections among facts. In the twentieth century, modernist historicists rejected such principles, thereby raising the specter of historical distance: that is, the distorting effects of the present on accounts of the past, the chasm between facts and narrative. The modernist problem became: how can historians avoid anachronism and develop accurate representations of the past? Instead of using narrative principles to select facts, modernist historicists appealed to atomized facts to validate narratives. However, in the late twentieth century, postmodernists (Frank Ankersmit and Hayden White) argued that there was no way to close the distance between facts and narratives. The postmodern problem became: how should historians conceive of their writing given the ineluctable distance between facts and narratives? Today, postfoundationalism dispels both modernist and postmodernist concerns with historical distance; it implies that all concepts (not just historical ones) fuse fact and theory, and it dissolves issues of conceptual relativism, textual meaning, and re-enactment
Aesthetics · Anachronism · Archaeology · Art · Epistemology · Historicism · Historiography · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Narrative · Narrative history · New Historicism · Politics · Postmodernism · Relativism · Sociology · White (mutation) · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · History · Law · Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography
| Unique citing works | 7 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2023 (12) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |