Wesleyan University

Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations

Author(s): Perez Zagorin
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct., 1990), pp. 263-274
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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 HISTORIOGRAPHY AND POSTMODERNISM:
RECONSIDERATIONS

PEREZ ZAGORIN

Historiographytoday has become so pluralistic and subject to the play of fashion

that it need come as no surprise to find F. R. Ankersmit recommending in a re-
cent essay in History and Theory that historians should now adopt the perspec-
tive of postmodernism as the new, superior form of understanding of their dis-
cipline.1 Such a move was only to be expected, considering the current influence
of postmodernism in some of the arts as well as in literary theory and other fields
through its affiliation with deconstructionism. Ankersmit may not even be the
first to have extended an embrace to postmodernism on behalf of historiography,
though he is perhaps the first to do so explicitly. The same tendency is evident
among the disciples of Foucault. Some of the essays collected in a lately pub-
lished volume arguing for the predominantly rhetorical character of history and
the human sciences may also be taken as implying a similar position.2
Until now Ankersmit has been best known to readers of History and Theory
as a contributor to a recent collection of essays dealing with current issues in
Anglo-American discussions of the philosophy of history.3 In his own article in
this collection he appeared as an ardent advocate of the narrativist-rhetorical
conception of historiography which Hayden White put forward in his Metahis-
tory (1973) and subsequent writings. He has stressed the revolutionary import
of White's ideas ascribing primacy in historical thinking to literary tropes and
verbal structures, and has hailed his work as the wave of the future. It is therefore
noteworthy that in contrast to literary theorists, who have provided the majority
of supporters of White's view, most philosophers and philosophically-inclined
historians have been decidedly critical of it, when they have not simply ignored
it. Many historians in particular seem as resistant to it as they were previously
to the Hempelian positivist covering-law doctrine of historical explanation. Just
as they opposed Hempel's scientism as a damaging misconception of the character
of historical knowledge, so they have likewise tended to reject White's linguistic

1. F. R. Ankersmit, "Historiographyand Postmodernism,"History and Theory 28 (1989), 137-153.

2. John S. Nelson, Allan Megill, and Donald N. McCloskey, TheRhetoric of the Human Sciences
(Madison, Wisc., 1987).
3. F. R. Ankersmit, "The Dilemma of Contemporary Anglo-American Philosophy of History,"
Knowing& TellingHistory: TheAnglo-SaxonDebate,Historyand Theory,Beiheft 25 (1986).

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264 PEREZ ZAGORIN

turn and its rhetorical approach for its disregard and distortion of certain essen-
tial characteristics of historical inquiry and writing.4
In his espousal of postmodernism, Ankersmitacts as a philosophic trend-spotter
who has his eye out for the latest thing. No doubt some merit may be granted
to an author who strives to discern the newest fashion in his discipline and bring
out its implications. Ankersmit, however, is not only intent on recognizing what
is new, but also identifies with it. He does not want to resist it as fallacious or
harmful. Rather, like other historicists (although I know he would reject this
designation, I believe it is justifiable in this context), he greets its novelty as an
inevitable development and makes its cause his own.
Ankersmit's postmodernism may be regarded as an extension of his earlier
commitment to White's narrativist principles. It represents a further step in the
attempt to aestheticize history and sever it from its formerly accepted grounding
in conditions of truth and reality.Although he offersno definition of postmodern-
ism, he relates the latter to certain new situations and necessities that he believes
leave us no choice but to accept it. In the following remarks I want to examine
the validity of some of the claims and reasonshe advancesin behalf of his position.
At the outset, however, it is important for the sake of clarity to stress several
features generally associated with the theory or idea of postmodernism. First,
it must be recognizedas an essentiallyhistoricistconception. Those who announce
the advent of postmodernism regard it as an inevitable stage of present-day cul-
ture and a break with the past that, owing to the conditions of contemporary
society, cannot be withstood. Thus, a strong sense of fatality and the irresistible
hovers over the notion.
Second, the basic impulse of postmodernism lies in its repudiation of the values
and assumptions of the precedinghigh modernist movement which revolutionized
the arts of the twentieth century, along with an equal repudiation of the philos-
ophy it calls logocentrism -the belief in the referentiality of language, in the de-
terminacyof textual meaning, and in the presence of a meaningful world to which
language and knowledge are related. Yet it is striking that these postmodernist
themes are unsustained by any feeling of elan or conviction of advance or prog-
ress. On the contrary, postmodernism, as its name implies, carries with it strong
connotations of decline, exhaustion, and of being at the end ratherthan the com-
mencement of an era.
Finally, a central element in postmodernism is its hostility to humanism. Fore-
telling, as Foucault wishfully predicted, the end of man, it rejects humanism as

4. See some of the papers in Metahistory: Six Critiques, History and Theory, Beiheft 19 (1980),
particularlyMauriceMandelbaum's "ThePresuppositionsof Metahistory,"as wellas FrederickA.
Olafson'scommentsin his"Hermeneutics: "in Knowing&TellingHistory,
and'Dialectical,'
'Analytical'
40-41. See,too, the criticalobservationsandcautionsregardingWhite'sviewsin Paul Ricoeur,The
Realityof the HistoricalPast (Milwaukee,Wisc., 1984),33-34, and WilliamH. Dray,"Narrative
and HistoricalRealism,"in On Historyand Philosophyof History(Leiden,1989),chap.7. I have
also observedfromconversationswithhistoriansanddiscussionswithdoctoralstudentsin seminars
on the philosophyof historythat theirresponseto White'sMetahistoryand Tropicsof Discourse
is generallyunfavorable.

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 RECONSIDERATIONS 265

an outmoded relic and illusion of bourgeois ideology: the illusion of individuals

creating their history through their free activity, which it sees as merely a cover
for bourgeois society's oppression of women, the working class, non-whites, sexual
deviants, and colonized natives. As a corollary, it also criticizes as elitist and
oppressive the idea of a canon, which both modernism and humanism hold
stronglyin common, with its necessary discrimination and hierarchizationamong
the creations of culture. The consequence is that postmodernism lends itself to
a marked relaxation of cultural standards and sanctions an extreme eclecticism
and heterogeneity without any critical or ordering principle. In the cultural do-
main as a whole it implies a total erasure of the distinction between high or elite
culture and mass popular culture largely shaped and dominated by advertising
and the commercial media, a distinction that both modernism and humanism
accepted as axiomatic.
Some of the features I have just noted are touched upon, albeit in a much
more favorable way, by Frederic Jameson, a Marxian literary theorist, in a wide-
ranging survey entitled "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capital-
ism." In considering the bearings of postmodernism upon historiography, it will
be useful to look briefly at his account in order to enlarge our understanding
of the concept of the postmodern.
The firstthing to observeabout his discussion is the typically historicistcharacter
it imputes to postmodernism as a periodizing category. Jameson asks himself
whether postmodernism is merely a passing fashion or only one of a number
of alternative styles or trends, and concludes that it is neither. Whether our atti-
tude toward it is one of celebration or moral revulsion, we must recognize it,
he contends, as a fundamental mutation in the sphere of culture reflecting the
new multinational phase of world capitalism and its concomitant level of ad-
vanced technology which others have describedin such terms as the post-industrial
or consumer society, media society, electronic society. Moreover, despite the fact
that capitalist society in its earliest appearance in the west is still less than two
hundred years old, and therefore much younger than other types of society that
have preceded or coexisted with it, Jameson simply takes it for granted that it
is in its late stage. But how does he know this? Needless to say, he does not.
Nevertheless, he believes it because his Marxist faith assures him of it, just as
it (falsely) assured Lenin before and after 1917 that imperialism was the final
stage of capitalism and that European socialist revolutions were imminent. Post-
modernism and late capitalism are thus alike, subject in Jameson's historicist logic
to the same inevitability. This causes him to argue that Marxists and radicals
who seek the transformation of society must abandon their moralizing condem-
nation of postmodernism and accommodate their theorizing and political strategy
to its presence as the dominant cultural force in today's world.
The most striking part of Jameson's treatment, however, is its analysis of the
postmodern as exemplified in a variety of contemporary cultural products drawn
from a spectrum of the arts. The fact that he ascribes to some of these, like Andy
Warhol's paintings or the architecture of John Portman's Bonaventure Hotel in
downtown Los Angeles, not only a representativeand symptomatic importance,

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266 PEREZ ZAGORIN

but also an artistic value which is highly debatable need not concern us. What
is significant, rather, is the constellation of generic traits his scrutiny of these
works leads him to identify as synonymous with postmodernism. They include
the following: a new depthlessness and superficiality; a culture fixated upon the
image; the waning of affect and disappearance of or liberation from emotion;
abandonment of the concept of truth as useless metaphysical baggage; disap-
pearance of the autonomous individual and the death of the subject; loss of
historicity and the past; disintegration of the time sense into a series of pure,
unrelated presents; the prevalence of pastiche and imitation and cannibalization
of past styles. Such, according to Jameson's perceptive observation, are among
the leading characteristicsand thematics of the postmodern as the inevitablyascen-
dant style of the culture of late capitalism.5
Ankersmit would no doubt be unwilling to accept every one of these features
as indicative of what he advocates as postmodernism. Nevertheless, the affinity
between them and his own point of view is unmistakable. The historicist fatalism
implicit in the theory of the postmodern is reflected in his belief that "autumn
has come to Western historiography,"which no longer has a theme or metanar-
rative, now that Europe since the end of World War II has ceased to be identical
with world history and declined to an appendage of the Eurasian continent (150).
The turning away from the past is apparent in his rejection of the importance
of historical origin and context and in his conviction that evidence has nothing
to do with a past reality but points only to the interpretations given by historians
(145-146, 150). The similarity between the two is further manifest in the concep-
tion of historiography Ankersmit proposes. According to his postmodernist phi-
losophy, the historian would renounce the task of explanation and principle of
causality, along with the idea of truth, all of which are dismissed as part of a
superseded "essentialism."Instead, he would recognize historiography as an aes-
thetic pursuit in which style is all-important (141-142, 144, 148-149).
What stands out in Ankersmit's postmodernist concept of historiography is
its superficiality and remoteness from historical practice and the way historians
usually think about their work. It trivializes history and renders it void of any
intellectual responsibility. The logic and factual judgments which bring him to
this conclusion, morever, are far from convincing.
His point of departure is the present overproduction of historical writings,
which he tells us is spreading like a cancer and fills him with intense despon-
dency. Perhaps it is not very important that he fails to mention the reasons for
this condition, which are largely sociological in nature. They lie, as we all know,
in the great postwar expansion of higher education and university faculties, plus
the necessity of publication imposed on academics as a prerequisite of career
advancement. In any case, however, taking the literature on the philosopher

5. FredericJameson,"Postmodernism, or the CulturalLogicof LateCapitalism,"New LeftRe-

view,no. 146(1984),53-92. The literatureon postmodernismis by now considerable;for further
discussionof whatit standsforandits relationship seeTerryEagleton,Literary
to deconstructionism,
Theory(Minneapolis,1983),andtheessaysin Postmodernism, ed. LisaAppignanesi(London,1986).

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 RECONSIDERATIONS 267
Hobbes as an example, he notes that it has become so voluminous that Hobbes's
text no longer possesses any authority and vanishes before its many interpreta-
tions. From this instance he infers that "we no longer have any texts, any past,
but just interpretations of them" (137-138).
Many things might be said about the troubling problem of the ever-growing
quantity of historical publication without succumbing to the pessimistic opinion
to which Ankersmit's spectacular illogic has led him. For one thing, the situation
as J. H. Hexter pictured it in 1967 is even more the case today:
1. Neverin the past has the writingof historybeen so fatuousas it is today;neverhas
it yieldedso enormousand suffocatinga mass of stultifyingtrivia,the productof small
mindsengagedin the congenialoccupationof writingbadlyabout insignificantmatters
to which they have given little or no thought and for which they feel small concern.
2. Neverin thepasthavehistorianswrittenhistoryso competently, vigorously,andthought-
fully as theydo today,penetratinginto domainshithertoneglectedor in an obscurantist
wayshunned,bringingeffectivelyto bearon the recordof the past disciplineswhollyin-
accessibleto theirpredecessors,treatingthe problemsthey confrontwith both a catho-
licityanda rigorand sophisticationof methodhithertowithoutprecedentamongpracti-
tionersof the historicalcraft.6
I am sure most historians would agree with this appraisal. What it means is that
despite the burden of an increasing amount of mediocre and ephemeral histor-
ical work, there likewise exists in contrast a considerable body of work of excep-
tional originality, learning, and insight which has not only widened our intellec-
tual horizons but deepened and even transformed our knowledge of many areas
of the past.
For another thing, while the phenomenon of historical overproduction may
sometimes depress us and seem unmanageable, we may also take some comfort
from the fact that its effect is usually counteracted over time by a selective pro-
cess which relegates trivial publications to obscurity and insures that the more
significant contributions will in due course become known to specialists and,
if they merit it, to a large part of the historical profession.
But how, in any event, can the condition of historical overproduction deprive
us both of the text and the past, leaving us only with interpretations?As it happens,
like Ankersmit, I too have had Hobbes as one of my special interests on which
I have occasionally written. In a recent essay I have attempted to survey the
literatureconcerning Hobbes which has appeared in the last several years.7Con-
trary to Ankersmit's assertion, even twenty years ago it would not have been

6. J. H. Hexter,"SomeAmericanObservations," Journalof Contemporary History2 (1967),5-6,

citedin PeterNovick,ThatNobleDream:The"Objectivity Question"and theAmericanHistorical
Profession(Cambridgeand New York,1988),377.
7. PerezZagorin,A Historyof PoliticalThoughtin theEnglishRevolution(London,1954),chap.
13;"ThomasHobbes,"International Encyclopediaof theSocialSciences;"Clarendon
andHobbes,"
Journalof ModernHistory57 (1985),593-616;"Cudworthand Hobbeson Is and Ought,"forth-
comingin Philosophy,Religion,and Sciencein the LaterSeventeenthCentury,ed. RichardAsh-
craft,RichardKroll,andPerezZagorin,Cambridge UniversityPress;"Hobbeson OurMind,"Journal
of the History of Ideas 51 (1990),317-335.

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268 PEREZ ZAGORIN

sufficient for someone desiring to orient himself in the discussion of Hobbes's

political philosophy to have read only Warrenderand Watkins. At the least he
would also have had to know the classic work by Leo Strauss, Oakeshott's in-
troduction to his edition of Leviathan, and MacPhersons's The Political Theory
of Possessive Individualism. For any claim to expertise, he would have needed
to be familiar as well with other important contributions such as A. E. Taylor's
article on Hobbe's ethical doctrine, and David Gauthier's study of Leviathan,
not to mention still other works that would be pertinent.
By now, of course, the literature on Hobbes has indeed become very large.
Yet, as is almost too obvious to state, in both previous and more recent writings,
the relationship between the text of Hobbes's political theory and its interpreta-
tions remains extremely close. Far from being displaced or lost, the text is always
scrutinized and discussed as the foundation for any profferedinterpretativecon-
clusion. Among the students of Hobbes, moreover, some, like Quentin Skinner,
in their aim of recovering Hobbes's meaning and intention, insist on a reading
fully grounded in the historical context, by which is meant an understanding of
the intellectual tradition, ideological and political situation, and conventions of
political language within which Hobbes wrote. For those in particular who see
the study of political philosophy as an essentially historical discipline, interpre-
tation does not eclipse the past; rather,the latter, comprehended as history, serves
as a crucial test of the former's validity.
It is also plain that interpretations may stand or fall on textual and historical
grounds. Two of the most widely discussed interpretations of Hobbes in the past
generation have been Warrender'sand Macpherson's. The first sought to explain
Hobbes's theory of moral and political obligation as ultimately founded on the
command of God; the second argued that Hobbes's conception of both the state
of nature and the political order was a reflection of the nascent capitalist market
society of competitive possessive individualism. Neither of these interpretations,
it is fair to say, has commended itself to the majority of Hobbes scholars, who
have judged them incompatible either with the meaning of Hobbes's text and
the character of his beliefs or with a proper understanding of his society.
What I have said about Hobbes is no less true of the other areas of early modern
British and European history with which I am familiar as part of my principal
field of study. Wherever in any. of these a revisionary interpretation has been
offered, textual evidence (in which I include not only literary sources and
philosophical texts, but archival documents of all kinds) and contextual con-
siderations are invariably central to the discussion. It would be superfluous to
emphasize this point were it not for Ankersmit's curious discovery that in our
postmodern age interpretation has abolished the text and the past.
Although the work of Gadamer, Ricoeur, and other thinkers has helped to
reinstatethe problem of interpretationand hermeneuticunderstandingas a major
issue in the philosophy of history, Ankersmit's essay throws no light on this sub-
ject. Instead, he concentrates some of his remarks on the claim that interpreta-
tion has acquired a new status in postmodern historiography. Observing that in
contemporary society information and interpretations continually increase as if

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 RECONSIDERATIONS 269
by a law of theirbeing, he stresseswhat he calls the paradoxthat powerfulnew
interpretationsdo not put an end to writingbut only generatemore of it. This
allegedlyparadoxicalfact is supposedto be explicableonly froma postmodern-
ist perspective(140-141).But why shouldit be considereda paradox?Historical
interpretations aresimilarin some respectsto scientifictheoriesandhypotheses.
Likethem, any originalnew interpretationwill haveboth adherentsand oppo-
nents.The formerwill attemptto apply,strengthen,and extendit so as to dem-
onstrateits superiorityover its competitors.The latterwill seek out its weak-
nesses and try to refute it. If an historicalinterpretationcomes to be widely
accepted,it may evencease to be the subjectof debateand take its place as an
establishedpartof our understandingof the past. Of course,this may not last.
The subsequentemergenceof anotherinterpretationmay force it to undergo
renewedchallengeswhichthrowit into questionand perhapsdisplaceit. There
is nothingparadoxical, however,or uniqueto thepresent,in the factthatsignificant
new interpretationsstimulateratherthan close off discussion.
Thelack of substancein Ankersmit'spositionis furtherillustratedin his com-
mentson postmodernisthistoriography's attitudeto science,whichhe describes
as one of apartnessanddetachmentbutnot opposition,hence"ascientistic" rather
than"antiscientistic." Thisis scarcelyconsistent,though,withhisclaimthatpost-
modernismhas succeededin destabilizingscienceand hittingit whereit hurts
mostbydeconstructing theconceptof causality,one of themainpillarsof scientific
thought. How does it accomplishthis remarkablefeat?The ensuingdemonstra-
tion is the same as the one given in JonathanCuller'sOn Deconstructionand
derivesfromthe latter'sinspirer,Nietzsche.It runsas follows.Whenwe consider
an effect,it makesus look for the cause;the effectthus precedesor becomesthe
cause of the cause;hence the effectis the origin of the cause.This accordingly
reversesthe traditionalhierarchyof cause and effectand provesits artificiality
(141-142).
This verbaljugglingis a transparentconfusion, as John Searlehas already
pointedout in his criticalreviewof Culler'sbook.8While an effectmay be the
epistemicsourceof an inquiryinto its cause, this cannot mean that it is tem-
porallyprioror that it producesor originatesthe cause.If my car stopsrunning
for wantof gas, I look for the cause.It is the emptytank, however,not my curi-
osity about why it will not run, that caused it to stop. The effect,in short, is
the originof myinterest,butnot of the cause.Thereis no questionhere,moreover,
of conceivingcause and effectas a hierarchy,a point that is entirelyirrelevant.
The two are simply correlatives,each entailingthe other.
In making these criticisms,I have not committedmyself to any particular
meaningwhichthe historianshouldattachto the notion of causalityas he uses
it. Whether"cause"in the historian'slanguagealwayssignifiesa reasonor mo-
tive on the part of historicalagents,or the subsumptionof an event,action, or

8. See Searle'sreviewof JonathanCuller,OnDeconstruction:Theoryand CriticismafterStruc-

turalism(Ithaca,N.Y., 1983),in New YorkReviewof Books 27 (October,1983),74-79.

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270 PEREZ ZAGORIN

phenomenonundera generalcausallaw,or perhapsneither,dependingon the

subjectunderconsideration,continuesto be a disputedquestionin the philos-
ophy of history.9It is an illusion, nevertheless,to assumethat historiography
can dispensewith the concept of causality.As long as it includesexplanation
as one of its objectives,causalattributionwill remaina necessaryingredientof
historicalthinking.10Postmodernism's revelationto the contraryis not only mis-
taken, but futile.
One of the principalaims of Ankersmit'sdiscussionis to bringout "therevo-
lutionarynatureof postmodernism"whichenablesit to performits subversive
function.As a manifestationof the latterhe adducesnot only its allegeddecon-
structionof the principleof causality,but its viewthat all our scientificcertain-
ties are logicallyimplicatedin the liar'sparadox.As a succinctversionof this
paradox,he instancesthe statement,"thisstatementis false."By meansof this
logical weapon, he imagines,postmodernismpulls the carpetout from under
scienceand modernism.Historiographyis supposedto providean illustration
of this operationin the intrinsicallyparadoxicalcharacterof interpretation
(142-143).
The loosenessand absenceof clarityin these assertionsmakeit hardto deal
with them seriouslyas argument.One could say the following,however,about
their proposedconclusion.The liar'sparadoxposes a problemof reflexivityin
which a statementis logically includedin its own verdictof falsity on a class
of statementsof whichit is itself a member.But how does suchreflexivityapply
to historiographyor the theoriesof science?Ankersmitpresentsno reasonfor
his contentionthattheinterpretations or factualstatementsof historiansarepara-
doxicalin thisway.Apartfromthis failure,it is alsodoubtfulwhetherthe paradox
he has chosen as an exampleis reallya paradox.This is becausethe sentence
does not actuallystate anythingand is thus not a proposition.To be a proposi-
tion, it would need to entail a truth value or particulartruth conditions,and
thisit is unableto do. It canhardlyyield,therefore,the subversiveresultAnkersmit
would like to assign to it.
The most importantinsightAnkersmitcreditsto postmodernismis its recog-
nitionof the aestheticnatureof historiography. He relatesthis insightto the new
understandingin contemporarythoughtthat the distinctionbetweenlanguage
and realityhas lost its raisond'etre.Withthe disappearanceof this distinction,
he points out, aestheticismextendsits sway over all forms of representation.
Historiographyis therebyfinallyperceivedto be a literaryproductin whichthe
historiandoes not producea representationof reality(or we may also say, of

9. Seethe recentdiscussionin W.G. Runciman's A Treatiseon Social Theory(Cambridge,Eng.,

1983),I, chaps.1, 3, in whichthe authortriesto resolvethe problemby firstdistinguishing
reportage,
description,evaluation,and explanationfrom one another,and then suggestingthat historicalor
sociologicalexplanationconsistsof subsumingthe explanandumas a case of some generalcausal
law or connection.
10. I agree,however,withthose critics,includingAnkersmit,who hold that in its virtuallyexclu-
sivepreoccupation withthe problemof explanation,analyticalphilosophyof historyneglectedother
significantfeaturesof historicalthinkingand practice.

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 RECONSIDERATIONS 271
the past), but a replacement or substitute for it. Style is seen as prior to content
and content as a derivative of style. Historical differences likewise prove to be
due to differences of style (143-145).
One of the characteristicmoves of postmodernist and deconstructionist theory
has been to try to obliteratethe boundaries between literatureand other disciplines
by reducingall modes of thought to the common condition of writing. So it main-
tains that philosophy, like historiography, is merely another kind of writing and
subject to its laws, rather than a separate species of reflection concerned with
distinctively philosophical questions. II Putting aside, however, the identification
of language and reality, a thesis construable in differentways (which in any case
is well beyond the subject of my discussion), I venture to say that few historians
would agree with Ankersmit's consignment of historiography to the category of
the aesthetic. Nor would they be likely to approve a characterization that gives
preeminence to its literariness. As the Russian formalists and Roman Jakobson
have told us, the quality of literariness consists in the way it thrusts language
and expression into the foreground and grants them an independent value and
importance. Although Ankersmit holds that literary and historical works are
similar in this respect, this is surely not the case. In historiography, the attempt
by language to draw attention to itself would commonly be regarded as highly
inappropriate and an obtrusive breach of the rules of historical writing. In his-
tory language is very largely subservient to the historian's effort to convey in the
fullest, clearest, and most sensitive way an understanding or knowledge of some-
thing in the past.
To sustain the opinion that style is the predominant factor in historiography,
Ankersmit emphasizes the intensional character and context of the words and
statements in historical works, which entail that they cannot be replaced by other
equivalent statements. This opinion seems to me to be equally mistaken. If it
were true, it would be impossible to paraphrase or summarize a work of history
without altering its substance or meaning. But such summaries are possible; we
can very well give a description of something as distinctive in style as Gibbon's
narration of the origin and triumph of Christianity in the Roman Empire which
effectively conveys not only his understanding of how and why this development
occurred but also the irony that pervades his account of it.
Generally it must be said that Ankersmit fails to provide any explanation of
how style can determine or engender the content of historical works. Like the
notion that interpretation has eliminated the text and the past, this is another
of those extreme claims which, despite its inherent implausibility, postmodern-
ists like to put forward as proof of the revolutionary import of their ideas. Cer-
tainly it runs counter to some of the strongestconvictions and intuitions historians
feel about their discipline. Their comment on it would most likely be that con-
tent derives from the critical study of sources and evidence, from the critical con-
sideration of other writings dealing with their subject, and from their perception

11. Fora discussion,seeChristopher

Norris,Deconstruction,TheoryandPractice(London,1982),
and The Deconstructive Turn:Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy (London, 1983).

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272 PEREZ ZAGORIN

of the interrelationships that exist among the indefinite multiplicity of facts per-
taining to the object of their inquiry.
Ankersmit's postmodernist attempt to absorb historiography into the literary
and aesthetic domain ignores features that are central to the very concept of his-
tory. One of these is the difference history presumes between fact or truth and
fictionality, for which the aesthetic perspective makes no provision. Unlike the
work of literature,the historical work does not contain an invented or imaginary
world. It presents itself as consisting, to a great degree, of facts and true or prob-
able statements about the past. Many of its sentences are propositions with truth-
conditions attached to them. If this were not so, the readerwould take no interest
in it. The distinctive significance that history asserts for itself, therefore, is en-
tirely dependent on its claim to veridicality. Even though historical writing may
contain many false or erroneous statements and propound debatable interpreta-
tions resting on very complex evidential considerations, veridicality in the widest
sense is generally taken to be among its basic regulatory principles.
Another feature, for which the aesthetic domain contains no place, is the role
occupied by evidence. Historians operate within definite constraints, of which
they are fully conscious, arising from the nature and limitations of their evidence.
While it is for them to determine that something is evidence and what it is evi-
dence for, when they have done so the evidence exerts a continuous force upon
them. They are not free to ignore it or make of it whatever they please. Its pres-
sure acts as a major determinant in giving shape to the historical work.
Connected with the preceding is yet another intrinsic feature of historiography,
the necessity for justification of its specific knowledge-claims, a requirement it
shares with other types of inquiry. Historians know that they may be called upon
to justify the veridicality, adequacy, and reliability of particular statements, in-
terpretations, and even of their entire account. Their form of writing is apt to
incorporate many justifications for the judgments they make, the opinions they
express, and the descriptions and analyses they present in their treatment of the
past. Even the purest narrative history is unable to dispense with the necessity
of justification if it is to be acceptable to critical readers and students.
The aestheticizing of historiography which Ankersmit conceives as a major
postmodernist insight inevitably results in the trivialization of history through
its failure to acknowledge features that both define history as a form of thought
and give it its significance. The same effect is apparent in the prescriptions for
historiography which form the conclusion of his article. One of them is that
historians should concentrate,as psychoanalysis does, on the unconscious aspects
of the past that have been repressedand come to light only involuntarily through
"slips of the tongue" (147-148). Although I do not deny that this aim may possess
a certain value, it is of much less consequence than the attempt to discover and
understand the values, beliefs, assumptions, conventions, rules, and social prac-
tices that constitute a large part of the conscious life of past societies. The study
of these is not only a task of extreme difficulty, requiring exceptional insight and
imagination, but one of fundamental importance of which the priorities of post-
modernism take no account.

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 RECONSIDERATIONS 273
Another of Ankersmit's prescriptions tells historians that they can no longer
deal with big problems or seek to reconstruct or discover patterns in the past,
as modern scientific historiography once aspired and pretended to do. All that
now remains for them to be concerned with are micro-subjects and "historical
scraps,"as exemplified in the work of some contemporary social historians, de-
spite the fact that writings such as the latter produce may seem to have little point.
In the postmodernist view, he states, "the goal is no longer integration, synthesis,
and totality," and small topics now come to occupy the center of attention
(149-150).
Needless to say, few historians would look with favor on this formula for a
new antiquarianism which springs from a trivialized, tired, and defeatist con-
ception of historical inquiry. Contrary to Ankersmit's belief, the expansion and
fragmentation of historiography in our time through the simultaneous growth
of specialization and extension of our historical horizons has made the need for
integration and synthesis greater and more important than ever before. It is a
need, moreover, that is widely recognized. The point is not whether it is possible
to attain a total conception of world history or the historical process, for it al-
most certainly is not. This does not preclude the feasibility, nevertheless, of
focusing on large-scale subjects at a quite general level and on questions that
transcend specialist and disciplinary boundaries in order to provide an under-
standing of whole societies and civilizations and of broad areas and aspects of
the past. Not only does modern historical literaturecontain numerous examples
of works of this kind, but there will always be historians with the intellectual
ambition to tackle subjects of exceptional breadth and significance.
In the course of his article Ankersmit touches on the question of the useful-
ness of historiography, only to dismiss it as impertinent and a category mistake.
As historiography is a part of culture, he explains, the question of its usefulness
cannot meaningfully arise any more than it can about culture itself (139).12While
we may concede this point, we can nevertheless ask what the function of history
is and what purpose it serves or should serve in culture and society. Although
Western society is sometimes said to be fast losing its connection to its past, that
it still values history and believes it important is apparent from the considerable
resources it provides to support historical research and teaching. Why does it
or should it do so?
An indirect answer to this question was once given by Ankersmit's compatriot,
Huizinga, a scholar humanist of distinctive mind and sensibility, who defined
history as "the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself
of its past." This definition also implies a description of history's function.
Huizinga went on to say that "our civilization is the first to have for its past the

12. It is typicalof the superficiality

of Ankersmit'sapproachthathe is willingto permitthe ques-
tion of the usefulnessof sciencebecauseunlikehistoriography, sciencedoes not belongto culture.
One maywonderhow any reflectionon modernwesterncivilization,in which,in contrastto other
civilizationspast and present,sciencehas been a uniquelypowerfulforceand in which scientific
thoughthas exertedan incalculableinfluenceon philosophyand otherdisciplines,could possibly
excludesciencefrom the realmof culture.

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274 PEREZ ZAGORIN

past of the world, our history is the first to be world-history."To this observation
he added that
a historyadequateto our civilizationcan only be a scientifichistory.The instrumentof
modernWesterncivilizationfortheintellectual understandingof theworldis criticalscience.
Wecannotsacrificethe demandfor scientificcertaintywithoutinjuryto the conscience
of our civilization.Mythicalandfictitiousrepresentations of the pastmayhavea literary
value as forms of play, but for us they are not history."3
In this statement Huizinga was not speaking of science as a positivist. By
scientific history he understood precisely what Collingwood did by the term,
namely, the rigorous cognitive standards, exigent critical methods, and global
sense of the past that became characteristicof westernhistoriographyin the course
of its development during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Of course, historiography serves a number of functions, including severalprac-
tical ones, but Huizinga was looking at the question from the general standpoint
of society as a whole. Whether we agree entirely with him or not, his vision of
historiographyis probably not far differentfrom the way many Westernhistorians
today would conceive their craft. Ankersmit disparages this vision as modernist,
but his alternative postmodernist view seems woefully impoverished by compar-
ison. If it were to prevail -though there is little likelihood of this happening -
history would no longer have a real function. It could no longer perform its prin-
cipal intellectual obligation in education and culture, which must be to give to
each living generation the broadest and best possible knowledge of the past of
its own society and civilization as well as of the larger human past of which it
is part. Postmodernism representsthe abnegation of this obligation which is the
ultimate cultural responsibility of historiographyand one that remainsindispens-
able as the rapidly changing world moves faster into the future than ever before.

The Universityof Rochester

13. J. Huizinga,"A Definitionof the Conceptof History,"in Philosophyand History,ed. Ray-

mond Klibanskyand H. J. Paton [1936](New York,1963),8-9.

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