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Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations Author(s): Perez Zagorin Source: History and Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Oct., 1990), pp. 263-274 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2505051 Accessed: 16/12/2010 12:12
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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 recent essay in History and Theory that historians should now adopt the perspective of postmodernism as the new, superior form of understanding of their discipline.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 published 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 Metahistory (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& Telling History: TheAnglo-SaxonDebate,Historyand Theory,Beiheft 25 (1986).

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turn and its rhetorical approach for its disregard and distortion of certain essential 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 postmodernism, 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 culture 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 philosophy it calls logocentrism -the belief in the referentiality of language, in the determinacyof 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 progress. On the contrary, postmodernism, as its name implies, carries with it strong connotations of decline, exhaustion, and of being at the end ratherthan the commencement of an era. Finally, a central element in postmodernism is its hostility to humanism. Foretelling, 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),

particularly Maurice Mandelbaum's of Metahistory," as wellas Frederick A. "ThePresuppositions "in Knowing& in his"Hermeneutics: Olafson's comments and'Dialectical,' 'Analytical' TellingHistory, 40-41. See,too, the criticalobservations andcautionsregarding White's viewsin Paul Ricoeur,The Realityof the HistoricalPast (Milwaukee, Wisc., 1984),33-34, and WilliamH. Dray,"Narrative in On Historyand Philosophyof History(Leiden,1989),chap.7. I have and HistoricalRealism," fromconversations withhistorians also observed anddiscussions in seminars withdoctoral students on the philosophyof historythat theirresponseto White's and Tropics Metahistory of Discourse is generally unfavorable.

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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 domain 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 wideranging survey entitled "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism." 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 attitude 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 advanced 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. Postmodernism 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 condemnation 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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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; disappearance 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 characteristics and thematics of the postmodern as the inevitablyascendant 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 metanarrative, 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 conception of historiography Ankersmit proposes. According to his postmodernist philosophy, 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 aesthetic 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 despondency. 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
New LeftReLogicof LateCapitalism," or the Cultural 5. Frederic Jameson,"Postmodernism, for further is by now considerable; on postmodernism view,no. 146(1984),53-92. The literature Eagleton, Literary to deconstructionism, seeTerry discussion of whatit standsforandits relationship (London,1986). in Postmodernism, ed. LisaAppignanesi Theory (Minneapolis, 1983),andtheessays

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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 interpretations. 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 a mass of stultifyingtrivia,the productof small it yieldedso enormousand suffocating matters mindsengagedin the congenialoccupationof writingbadlyabout insignificant to which they have given little or no thought and for which they feel small concern. andthoughtin thepasthavehistorians written so competently, vigorously, history 2. Never into domainshithertoneglectedor in an obscurantist fully as theydo today,penetrating whollyinto bearon the recordof the past disciplines wayshunned,bringingeffectively to theirpredecessors, treatingthe problemsthey confrontwith both a cathoaccessible of methodhithertowithoutprecedent amongpractilicityanda rigorand sophistication 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 historical work, there likewise exists in contrast a considerable body of work of exceptional originality, learning, and insight which has not only widened our intellectual 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 process 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.7Contrary to Ankersmit's assertion, even twenty years ago it would not have been

6. J. H. Hexter, "Some American Observations," Journalof Contemporary History2 (1967),5-6, citedin PeterNovick,ThatNobleDream:The"Objectivity Question" and theAmerican Historical Profession(Cambridge and New York,1988),377. 7. PerezZagorin, A Historyof PoliticalThought in theEnglishRevolution (London,1954), chap. andHobbes," 13;"Thomas Hobbes," International "Clarendon Encyclopedia of theSocialSciences; Journalof ModernHistory57 (1985),593-616;"Cudworth and Hobbeson Is and Ought," forthed. Richard Ashcomingin Philosophy,Religion,and Sciencein the LaterSeventeenth Century, craft,Richard Kroll,andPerez Zagorin, Cambridge University Press; "Hobbes on OurMind," Journal of the History of Ideas 51 (1990),317-335.

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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 introduction 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 interpretations remains extremely close. Far from being displaced or lost, the text is always scrutinized and discussed as the foundation for any profferedinterpretativeconclusion. 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, interpretation 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 considerations 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 subject. Instead, he concentrates some of his remarks on the claim that interpretation has acquired a new status in postmodern historiography. Observing that in contemporary society information and interpretations continually increase as if

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by a law of theirbeing, he stresseswhat he calls the paradoxthat powerfulnew interpretations do not put an end to writingbut only generatemore of it. This allegedlyparadoxical fact is supposedto be explicable only froma postmodernist perspective (140-141). But why shouldit be considered a paradox?Historical interpretations aresimilarin some respects to scientific theoriesandhypotheses. Likethem, any originalnew interpretation will haveboth adherents and opponents.The formerwill attemptto apply,strengthen, and extendit so as to demonstrateits superiorityover its competitors.The latterwill seek out its weaknesses and try to refute it. If an historicalinterpretation comes to be widely accepted,it may evencease to be the subjectof debateand take its place as an established partof our understanding of the past. Of course,this may not last. The subsequentemergenceof anotherinterpretation may force it to undergo renewed challengeswhichthrowit into questionand perhapsdisplaceit. There is nothing paradoxical, however, or unique to thepresent, in the factthatsignificant new interpretations stimulateratherthan close off discussion. Thelack of substance in Ankersmit's positionis furtherillustrated in his commentson postmodernist historiography's attitudeto science,whichhe describes as one of apartness anddetachment butnot opposition, hence"ascientistic" rather than"antiscientistic." Thisis scarcely consistent, though,withhisclaimthatpostmodernismhas succeededin destabilizing scienceand hittingit whereit hurts mostbydeconstructing theconceptof causality, one of themainpillars of scientific How thought. does it accomplish this remarkable feat?The ensuingdemonstration is the same as the one given in JonathanCuller'sOn Deconstructionand derivesfromthe latter's inspirer, Nietzsche.It runsas follows.Whenwe consider an effect,it makesus look for the cause;the effectthus precedes or becomesthe cause of the cause;hence the effectis the origin of the cause.This accordingly the traditionalhierarchy reverses of cause and effectand provesits artificiality (141-142). This verbaljugglingis a transparent confusion, 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 temporallyprioror that it producesor originates the cause.If my car stopsrunning for wantof gas, I look for the cause.It is the emptytank, however, not my curiosity 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's languagealwayssignifiesa reasonor motive on the part of historicalagents,or the subsumption of an event,action, or

8. See Searle's reviewof JonathanCuller,OnDeconstruction: and Criticism Theory afterStructuralism(Ithaca,N.Y., 1983),in New YorkReviewof Books 27 (October,1983),74-79.

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phenomenonundera generalcausallaw,or perhapsneither,dependingon the subjectunderconsideration, continuesto be a disputedquestionin the philosIt is an illusion, nevertheless, ophy of history.9 to assumethat historiography can dispensewith the concept of causality.As long as it includesexplanation will remaina necessary of as one of its objectives,causalattribution ingredient 10 historical thinking. Postmodernism's revelation to the contrary is not only mistaken, but futile. One of the principalaims of Ankersmit's discussionis to bringout "therevolutionarynatureof postmodernism" whichenablesit to performits subversive function.As a manifestation of the latterhe adducesnot only its allegeddeconstructionof the principleof causality,but its viewthat all our scientificcertainties are logicallyimplicatedin the liar'sparadox.As a succinctversionof this paradox,he instancesthe statement,"thisstatementis false."By meansof this logical weapon, he imagines,postmodernism pulls the carpetout from under scienceand modernism.Historiography is 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 reflexivity in which a statementis logically includedin its own verdictof falsity on a class of statements of whichit is itself a member. But how does suchreflexivity apply to historiography or the theoriesof science?Ankersmitpresentsno reasonfor his contention thattheinterpretations or factualstatements of historians areparadoxicalin thisway.Apartfromthis failure, it is alsodoubtfulwhether the 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 proposition, it would need to entail a truth value or particulartruth conditions,and thisit is unableto do. It canhardly the subversive result Ankersmit yield,therefore, would like to assign to it. The most importantinsightAnkersmit creditsto postmodernism is its recognitionof the aestheticnatureof historiography. He relates this insightto the new in contemporary understanding thoughtthat the distinctionbetweenlanguage and realityhas lost its raisond'etre.Withthe disappearance of this distinction, he points out, aestheticismextendsits sway over all forms of representation. is therebyfinallyperceived Historiography to be a literary productin whichthe historiandoes not producea representation of reality(or we may also say, of
9. Seethe recentdiscussion in W.G. Runciman's A Treatise on Social Theory(Cambridge, Eng., 1983),I, chaps.1, 3, in whichthe authortriesto resolve the problem by firstdistinguishing reportage, description, evaluation,and explanation from one another,and then suggesting that historicalor sociologicalexplanation consistsof subsuming the explanandum as a case of some generalcausal law or connection. 10. I agree,however, withthose critics,including Ankersmit, who hold that in its virtually exclusivepreoccupation withthe problem of explanation, analytical of history philosophy neglected other featuresof historicalthinkingand practice. significant

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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 maintains 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 history 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 something 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, postmodernists like to put forward as proof of the revolutionary import of their ideas. Certainly it runs counter to some of the strongestconvictions and intuitions historians feel about their discipline. Their comment on it would most likely be that content derives from the critical study of sources and evidence, from the critical consideration of other writings dealing with their subject, and from their perception
11. Fora discussion, seeChristopher Norris, Deconstruction, Theory andPractice (London,1982),
and The Deconstructive Turn:Essays in the Rhetoric of Philosophy (London, 1983).

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of the interrelationships that exist among the indefinite multiplicity of facts pertaining 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 history. 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 probable statements about the past. Many of its sentences are propositions with truthconditions 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 entirely dependent on its claim to veridicality. Even though historical writing may contain many false or erroneous statements and propound debatable interpretations 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 evidence 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 pressure 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, interpretations, 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 practices 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 postmodernism take no account.

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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, despite 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 conception 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 almost 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 understanding 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 usefulness 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's approach thathe is willingto permitthe question of the usefulnessof sciencebecauseunlikehistoriography, sciencedoes not belongto culture. One maywonderhow any reflection on modernwestern in which,in contrastto other civilization, civilizationspast and present,sciencehas been a uniquelypowerfulforceand in which scientific influenceon philosophyand otherdisciplines, could possibly thoughthas exertedan incalculable excludesciencefrom the realmof culture.

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past of the world, our history is the first to be world-history."To this observation he added that of a historyadequateto our civilizationcan only be a scientifichistory.The instrument of theworldis critical science. fortheintellectual understanding civilization modern Western the demandfor scientificcertaintywithoutinjuryto the conscience Wecannotsacrifice of the pastmayhavea literary Mythicalandfictitiousrepresentations of our civilization. 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 severalpractical 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 comparison. 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 principal 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 remainsindispensable as the rapidly changing world moves faster into the future than ever before.

The Universityof Rochester

in Philosophyand History,ed. Ray13. J. Huizinga,"A Definitionof the Conceptof History," mond Klibansky and H. J. Paton [1936](New York,1963),8-9.