Histories Beyond History (original) (raw)

Reflecting on my motives for writing The Concept of History, I present three negative concerns that the book was directed against: namely, the notions that, firstly, history is teleological, secondly, that it is universal, and, thirdly, that a history so construed takes on a problematic role in political decision-making. The book thus looks for an alternative to the dominant mode of historical understanding in the modern West, and it finds several such alternatives by looking at the earliest Greek historians and the ancient tradition of catalogue poetry that predates them. By attending to these examples, I show that history is always multiple and intersecting, and that it is constituted by two elements: a fabula that briefly emplots (originally orally) the names and events, and the historical, which preserves (originally in written lists) the detailed names and events. The discussion of the book is further extended by responses to the thoughtful remarks of my critics.