Some Random Thoughts on History's Recent Past

In these days of mixing genres and blurring boundaries between disciplines and concepts, when some words have changed their meaning and others have none left, it may not be superfluous to begin these reflections on history and the historian's craft by stating some basic assumptions ("biases") that inform them and this writer.

The first is that postmodernism and deconstructionism have run their course in the humanities and the social sciences. These are post-hoax times now and the "Sokal Affair" was not just an irritating embarrassment for some, but also a demonstration of the lack of substance behind an opaque, bombastic and at times incomprehensible jargon. ¹ To be sure, postmodernism and deconstructionism are still around, but theirs is a rearguard skirmish in a lost battle over the form and content of some major scholarly disciplines. However, in spite of their many eccentricities, excesses and much arrogance, in some of these disciplines their role has not been entirely useless and not as harmful as in others. History of literature and literary criticism have been the main losers and they are today a disaster area in terms of both research and teaching, having promoted literary illiteracy in cohorts of well-intentioned and naive college students. At the other pole, historians have been rather impervious to the siren song of postmodern "Theory," to the premature postmodern requiem for the modern fact and to the postmodern trap of "unmasking hidden agendas," while at the same time becoming more aware of the need for conceptualization and self-reflection. ² All in all, to paraphrase Frederick Crews' remark, history has remained a disciplinary community "that has thus far found no need to admit the Trojan horse of poststructuralism within its walls." ³

The second assumption is that truth exists and is attainable through a process of trial and error. In this respect I share Arnaldo Momigliano's prescient view on the pernicious effects of Hayden White's historiographic approach and his theory of tropes. "I fear the consequences of [White's] approach to historiography," wrote Momigliano twenty years ago, "because he has eliminated the research for truth as the main task of the historian." ⁴ Since then both historiographic and intellectual developments have proved him entirely right; indeed, the postmodern solipsistic challenge of metatheory and metanarrative to admit truth only as a discursive practice has ended as a complete failure and as a faddish cynicist posture which, although negating truth, believes in the absolute truth of relativism. As Jean Baudrillard squarely put it: "The secret of theory is, indeed, that truth doesn't exist." ⁵ But in such a case, is this theoretical statement of Baudrillard's true or false? And what is the validity of any theory which ab initio negates truth?

The third assumption is that objective reality exists "out there" (in the past); that we are part of objective reality today and that history was part of it in the past. More on this issue will be said below.

The fourth assumption is that the study of history is justified ontologically. The fact (denounced by some literati) that historians in the past may have believed in its purported predictive quality ("History holds the key to the future") or that its utility (instrumental or pedagogical) lay supposedly in its lessons for moral values and political decisions cannot invalidate the raison d'être of historical writing and its role for the human intellect and spirit. History does not have to justify its existence. Past historical theories (whether erroneous or superseded) do not disprove its ultimate raison d'être, and in any case no more than Newtonian physics can be used to argue that Einstein's theory of relativity is bunk.

Past revolutions and their aftermath

Four major revolutions have marked the history of historical thought in modern Europe. The first occurred in the seventeenth century under the influence of the principles of biblical criticism. The second occurred in the nineteenth century as...