Two Approaches to Historical Study
The Metaphysical (Including 'Postmodemism') and the Historical
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5774977 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Arthur Marwick (0000-0002-0837-6999, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1995 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 5-35 |
| Publication date | 1995-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/002200949503000101 |
| OpenAlex | W2020478273 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 22 |
| References cited | 5 |
Postmodernist' epistemology and ontology are inescapable, though highly contestable, components of the intellectual world of today, and everyone involved in intellectual and educational activity should have some understanding of their basic contentions. These contentions are now being encountered by history students, particularly if they are also involved in literary or cultural studies; such students may then be faced by a potentially disorienting disjunction between theories of discourse analysis, deconstruction, and the 'historicizing' of texts, and the methods and principles taught, or at least assumed, in most history departments, and may even be persuaded that the history of the historians is worthless, merely ideology, 'the stories we tell', and must be replaced by a history shaped to the needs of contemporary radical politics. The basic theme of this article is that the presumptuous and illinformed criticisms which the 'postmodernists' (a useful, though unsatisfactory label, taken to include post-structuralists, cultural materialists, new historicists, etc.) make of history are best rebutted through a careful restatement of what it is historians actually do, and why they do it. I start with two central problems: (I) that of language (which historians must grapple with both in their research among often intractable primary sources, and in writing up that research); (II) that of history as a social, and indeed, career activity (in which the coveted prizes may be best-sellerdom and literary awards, rather than research grants and professorships). I then, (III), identify the crucial distinction between, on the one side, the study of carefully delimited aspects of the human past, as conducted, through systematic research in
Comparative historical research · Deconstruction (building · Historiography · Intellectual history · Theme (computing · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
Memory, Metafiction and Modernity
Accounting for the dark side of corporate history
‘Trying to Live Without History Would Be Like Suffering from Amnesia or Dementia, It Would Be Very Unhealthy’
The Singularization of History
Phenomenal differences
Flattened Visions From Timeless Machines1
Above, about and beyond the writing of history
Waving goodbye to history? A response to Keith Jenkins
Beyond irony and relativism
Hayden White and Joan W. Scott’s feminist history
Darth Vader or Don Quixote? Keith Jenkins in review
Far-reaching microhistory
The rise and fall of ‘critical’ historiography? Some reflections on the historiographical agenda of the left in Britain, France and Germany at the end of the twentieth century
Views into the Fragments
The ‘Born‐Modern’ Self
Stories we tell them? Teaching adults history in a postmodern world
First Things First
Narrative History as a Way of Life
Ngugi's Concept of History and the Post-Colonial Discourses in Kenya
Historical IR and the promise of renewed dialogue between IR and history
Holocaust topologies
The limits of Anthropocene narratives
| Unique citing works | 22 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,71 |
| Citation span | 1995 - 2026 (32) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |