Historians and Historical Writing in Modern Korea, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol 5. (Oxford University Press, 2011) (original) (raw)
Related papers
European Journal of Korean Studies, 2021
The heuristic starting point for this paper is a critical approach to the enterprise of modern historiography per se, based on the understanding of it as inherently bound by teleological epistemology. While "Korean nationalism" is the usual vantage point for the critique of modern Korean historiography, the current article attempts to reverse this analytical perspective and reassess a number of attempts to write on Korean history by US-based historians of Korea in the 1910s-1980s as reflections of inherently self-centric picture of the world. In this Eurocentric picture, traditional Korea was locked into a historical trajectory via which "modernity" was unachievable.
European Journal of Korean Studies, 2021
The heuristic starting point for this paper is a critical approach to the enterprise of modern historiography per se, based on the understanding of it as inherently bound by teleological epistemology. While “Korean nationalism” is the usual vantage point for the critique of modern Korean historiography, the current article attempts to reverse this analytical perspective and re-assess a number of attempts to write on Korean history by US-based historians of Korea in the 1910s–1980s as reflections of inherently self-centric picture of the world. In this Eurocentric picture, traditional Korea was locked into a historical trajectory via which “modernity” was unachievable.
MAIN TRENDS AND THEORETICAL INNOVATIONS IN CURRENT HISTORIOGRAPHY
The last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century have been marked by deep changes in the structure and content of social sciences and humanities and in the methodology of these fields of knowledge. In this rapidly transforming intellectual context a radical reorganization of historiography has taken place. Comparing some aspects of historiographical situation of the mid-twentieth century with that of the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century, one can see fundamental differences in the understanding of the subject and methods of historical cognition, the content and nature of historical knowledge, in the definition of its status and narrative style as well as the possibilities of the further interpretations of historical text. It was already at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s that serious theoretical discussions took place in which new conceptions were being shaped, formulations refined and the platform for the future consensus was being built. Numerous monographic studies and collections of essays not only reflected the challenges of the time, encountered by historians at the turn of the two centuries and eras, but demonstrated a whole range of reactions to these challenges.
HISTORIOGRAPHY S ince very early times, human beings have had some sense of the past, both their own and that of their community or people. This is something that has distinguished us from other species. Having said that, historiography in the narrower sense of " intentional attempts to recover knowledge of and represent in writing true descriptions or narratives of past events " has had a rather briefer career throughout the world, though one more complex and variegated than most accounts allow. It is not possible in the space of a brief essay such as this to convey the entire richness of the human effort to recapture the past, but an effort must be made to summarize the historio-graphical traditions of many different regions. At least three major (in terms of their international scope, longevity, and influence) and a variety of minor independent traditions of historical thought and writing can be identified. The major ones are the Western (descended jointly from the classical Greek and Roman and, via the Old Testament, from the Hebraic), the Islamic (originating in the seventh century C.E.), and the Chi-nese. Minor ones include the various indigenous traditions of thinking about the past (not all of which involved writing), including ancient Indian, precolonial Latin American, African, and those arising in certain parts of east and Southeast Asia. The Western form (which would include modern Marxist Chinese writing) has predominated for a century or more in most of the world, but it would be a mistake to see that as either inevitable or as based on an innate intellectual superiority of method. Its hegemony springs much more from the great influence of Western colonial powers in various parts of the world during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and perhaps even more from the profound effect in the last hundred years of Western, and especially North American, cultural, linguistic, and economic influences. A consequence of the global dominance of Western academic historical practices is that not just history, but historiography, has been " written by the victors. " None of the major histories of historical writing produced in the last century addresses other historiographical traditions, undoubtedly in part owing to linguistic difficulties. This has produced a thoroughly decontextual-ized and celebratory grand narrative of the rise of modern method that has only been challenged in recent years. It is thus critical that any new survey of historical writing not only pay serious attention to non-Western types of historical writing (and indeed to nonliterary ways in which the past was recorded and transmitted), but that it also steer clear of assuming that these were simply inferior forms awaiting the enlightenment of modern European-American methodology.
Two views of the history of historiography and the nature of history
History Australia, 2007
, where he taught both the history of Southeast Asia and theory and philosophy of history. The majority of his publications are on the history and politics of Laos, but he has also published on Cambodia, early Buddhism and the theory of history. He is currently writing an evolutionary theory of history.
Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography
Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography argues that narrativism has made important contributions to the theory and philosophy of historiography but that it is now time to move beyond it to postnarrativism. Much of the theorizing of historiography has focused on defending either absolutist historical realism or relativist postmodernism. Kuukkanen shows how it is possible to reject the truth-functional evaluation of interpretations and yet accept that historiography can be assessed by rational standards. The postnarrativist view maintains that studies of history are informal arguments for theses about the past and that they are always located somewhere between subjectivity and objectivity.
The Historiography of Korea in the United States
The American treatment of Korean history has undergone dramatic changes, beginning with the dispatch of Protestant missionaries in the 1870’s, through the Cold War, and up to today. Over the past 130-plus years, American historians of Korea have emphasized the complex interplay and influence of nationalism, modernization, and ideology in Korean historiography. Until very recently, histories of Korea produced in the United States sought largely to frame events on the peninsula as manifestations of larger global themes and trends. Unlike Korean historians in Korea, U.S. historians of Korea have been reluctant to frame their accounts as descriptive of a unique or extra-special narrative of Korean-ness. This is understandable; but, at the same time, it is worth considering whether U.S. historians of Korea may have something to learn from their Korean counterparts today. This paper will provide an overview of the historiography of Korea in the United States, past and present, and offer suggestions for the next era of Korean historical studies. As the intent is to provide a brief “overview,” this paper will discuss a handful of English-language histories of Korea that are well-known examples of U.S. historiography at different points in time.