Syed Talha

On ‘What is History?’ - Jenkins

“Today we live within the general condition of postmodernity. We do not have a choice about this. For postmodernity is not an ‘ideology’ or a position we can choose to subscribe to or not; postmodernity is precisely our condition: it is our fate. And this condition has arguably been caused by the general failure—a general failure which can now be picked out very clearly as the dust settles over the twentieth century—of that experiment in social living which we call modernity. It is a general failure, as measured in its own terms, of the attempt, from around the eighteenth century in Europe, to bring about through the application of reason, science and technology, a level of personal and social wellbeing within social formations which, legislating for an increasingly generous emancipation of their citizens/subjects, we might characterise by saying that they were trying, at best, to become ‘human rights communities’.”

Islam has captured this empty space of future hopes.

“For, although we cannot pick and choose whether we want to live in postmodernity or not, we can (and many of us still do) exercise a bit of picking and choosing between the remaining residues of old ‘certaintist’ modernisms (objectivity, disinterestedness, the ‘facts’, unbiasedness, truth) and rhetorical, ‘postist’ discourses (readings, positionings, perspectives, constructions, verisimilitude) rather than going totally for one or the other. Consequently it is here, between old certainties and rhetorical postist discourses, that the current debates over what constitutes history and how historical knowledge is effectively constructed, live.”

A teleological history was essential to both the capitalist/liberal and Marxist wings of mordernity.

He argues dominant common sense so-called lower case history has also been undermined as a construct.

there is a radical distinction to be drawn between ‘the past’ and ‘history’

  1. In Section One the author examines textualist and “postist” approaches, beginning from a radical distinction between “the past” and “history,” and shows how Bennett, Ankersmit, and Hayden White employ that distinction to define contemporary history.
  2. In Section Two the author identifies four representative implications of the past/history distinction for traditional historiography—ideology, historicism, historical truth, and empiricism.
  3. In Section Three the author describes resistances from traditional historians and surveys current debates about the impact of textualist/postist discourses, and states his own position.
  4. In Section Four the author situates Carr, Elton, Rorty, and White within this framework and examines each of them in detail.

Contingency points to incontingency