An Old Question Raised Again: Is Historiography Art or Science? (Response to Iggers) (original) (raw)
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“Concepts of the Discourse of Historiography: Paul Ricouer and Hayden White.”
Budai László emlékkönyv. Veszprém: Veszprém UP, 2004., 2004
In this paper my aim is to call attention to an issue of a frequently questioned field of historical studies, namely a contemporary interdisciplinary approach to the philosophy of history. The latter sets out from philosophy and investigates the so-called postmodern concepts of the relationship of the past and its historical representation: the gap between reality and its narration, as well as the question of the accessibility of truth(s) about the past. Present-day historians often argue that the philosophical aspect of history writing is not the main interest of their inquiries. However, without a firm theoretical basis they might easily run into difficulties. My purpose here is not to argue for or against the relevance of the philosophy of history but to show how its scope is extended with findings in other fields of knowledge, such as literary criticism and philosophy. Two major figures in the study of the relationship between these fields are Paul Ricouer and Hayden White. Both have made efforts to present the commonalities of writing history and fiction, focusing on the narrativisation of the human past.
Thus, it is our aim to think about the conditions of possibility of the linguistic turn, which took shape some centuries earlier, namely the broad perception of the “growing acceleration of transformations within time,” inherent to modernity, enabling the questioning of the traditional role of historiography” and, in a second moment, the radical consideration of the epistemological problem of “partiality” and point of view. Complementarily, we can bring forth and understand two specific traditions within the linguistic turn, finally aiming to reflect on the possible effects of this epistemological shift. Follow the link above to download the full text from the review website.
The History of Historiography as a Form of Disciplinary Self-Reflection
Michael Antolović, „The History of Historiography as a Form of Disciplinary Self-Reflection. In Memoriam: Georg G. Iggers (1926 - 2017)”, Moving the Social. Joural of Social History and the History of Social Movements, Vol. 66 (2021), 125 -142., 2021
This article addresses the theoretical and methodological conceptions of Georg G. Iggers (1926-2017) in the context of his work on the history of historiography. In addition to the autobiography written by Wilma and George Iggers, the present study focuses on the main subjects of his research: the emergence and development of German historical scholarship (Geschichtswissenschaft) from Leopold Ranke to the present, the role of the Enlightenment in the constitution of "scientific historiography," different forms of New History in the twentieth century, the relationship between Marxism and historiography, and the challenge to historical writing posed by postmodernism and globalization. Moreover, special attention is given to Iggers' ideas as one of the foremost engaged public intellectuals.
A New Philosophy of History? Reflections on Postmodern Historicizing
History and Theory, 1997
It may be just as unfair to judge a book by its title as by its cover, but A New Philosophy of History raises expectations which the editors of this collection of essays cannot, and perhaps never intended to fulfill. The editorial introduction by Hans Kellner ("Describing Redescriptions") modestly redefines the content and purpose of the volume as a taking stock of the "redescriptions" of reflection on history (historical theory) and writing about history (historiography), that have occurred in the past quarter century within the Anglo-American academic world. These redescriptions, he suggests, involved a wideranging shift in focus. Evaluations of historical writings according to scientific models which emphasized the empirical verifiability of specific statements and the logical viability of explanations (arguments of cause and effect), and in which language was perceived "as something to be looked through," were replaced by models drawn from rhetoric and poetics. The latter models emphasized the linguistic/textual density of historical works, in which language was "something to be looked at," and which presented issues of authority or credibility in terms of genre conventions and the subjective "expectations and be-
Bhuban Kumar sabar, 2019
Historiography is the art and science of writing history. For a deep understanding of history and the past, it is imperative to discover many aspects such as process, method, ideology, and intention-of history-writing of a given period. Thus, a historical trajectory of various ways of history-writing enables us to understand the past and history as textual artefacts. By examining the various historiographies of different periods of history, we can delve deep to uncover the nexus between history as the reconstruction of the past and history as it really happened. Moreover, the knowledge of various historiographical traditions can reveal the works of historians of different ages in a new perspective by penetrating many buried meanings of history and the past as well. A survey, comparison and contrastive analysis of various historiographical traditions will enrich our critical understanding of history and the past.
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.
Georg Iggers and Historiography (2010, 2014)
In this paper, I am one with Iggers in saying that microhistories have not put an end to history in that they themselves have not escaped from the larger structures and transformations of historical developments; that the historian argues only for the plausibility of historical reconstruction and recognizes the impossibility of an absolute version of history; and that we should not blame the Enlightenment for the misapplication of its bias for science and technology to something harmful to man and the environment.