Haunted City

Jonathan Gorman attempts 'to provide an understanding of historiography for those who are puzzled by it' (p.3); and he aims to do that, not by describing or prescribing from some external philosophical standpoint, but rather by recovering historians' self-understanding of their own discipline -that is, their understanding of the rules by which they actually operate in accordance with a professional consensus.He hopes thereby to keep historians themselves onside: well aware of their frequent reluctance to attend to 'theory', he actually enlists them in his enterprise, making them his primary sources in what becomes an historical as well as philosophical enquiry.For in a discipline 'shot through with choices ' (pp.7, 65, 135), it is, he believes, only by looking back with hindsight that we can see any possible alternatives by which earlier historians might have been confronted, and examine the presuppositions by which they were at the time (however unconsciously) constrained.One problem with this approach is, of course, immediately apparent: historians are not renowned for their self-conscious theoretical appraisals of their own practices; so despite appeals to examples from Herodotus to Richard Evans, there is much resort to brief pronouncements and 'secondary' (often dated) interpretations.The citation of Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book of 1966 as a theorizing historian in relation to ethics exemplifies this problem.Another is that, as we approach nearer to our own time, there seems a decreasing chance of finding a homogeneous, consensual profession.'History is what historians count it to be', we read (p.181); but that takes no account of the proliferation of histories and even methodologies that have lately been emerging, so giving greater choice in regard to history's potential.Gorman's own position is pragmatic: we need to share a 'reality' in order to talk meaningfully about the past and provide truthful accounts of that past; we need to be agreed about these things and abide by the 'consensus', for it is only thus that we can continue to make use of such terms as 'reality' and 'truth'terms that have become so problematic under postmodernist scrutiny.But we seem by implication to be stuck in a present that not only in these respects resembles the past but also is destined to be retained or replicated in the future.Gorman repeatedly emphasizes the centrality of choice in historiography, but

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