What's your take on Postmodernism?

I think not many Historians will argue that history has no relation to a reality (however you want to define the latter). But - at least in German historiography - it is widely accepted that "History" is a construct: Bits and pieces (facts and sources) are put together (re-constructed, if you will) to give meaning and structure to the past. This construct gets more complete the more sources of differing views you use (multiperspectivity), but even using the same sources and data, two people can reasonably and justifiably come to different conclusions, different constructions (controversity).

This, of course, has something to do with the "death of the author" paradigm of history, as well as with human psychology: Even if a source (e.g. a letter of a historical person) tells us that the writer did certain things because of certain reasons, we can neither trust this person to tell the truth to whoever the letter was sent to (or at least not without further research into the relationship between these people), nor can we assume that the writer was even aware of all the facctors influencing his/her decision. You can take nothing for granted and accept nothing at face value; and motivation and intentions are the hardest things to discern.

What a laugh, though. To think that one human being could ever really know another. You could get used to each other, get so habituated that you could speak their words right along with them, but you never knew why other people said what they said or did what they did, because they never even knew themselves. Nobody understands anybody.

And yet somehow we live together, mostly in peace, and get things done with a high enough success rate that people keep trying. Human beings get married and a lot of the marriages work, and they have children and most of them grow up to be decent people, and they have schools and businesses and factories and farms that have results at some level of acceptability -- all without having a clue what was going on inside anybody's head.

Muddling through, that's what human beings do.

• Orson Scott Card (hate the man, love the books)

I would argue that postmodernist critique has incredibly important ramifications for the study of history. Postmodernists ask difficult questions of sources and the practice of history. Their skeptical outlook forced historians to defend the foundations of the craft.

Derrida challenged the stability of facts, and forced historians to question how their perspective changed according to different situations. Foucault focused on the importance of discourse, especially the idea that history is mediated by the subject and the historian.

And speaking of German historiography, I think that the best defense of theory in the practice of history is in 'The Practice of Conceptual History' by Reinhart Koselleck. Like most Germans he approaches history in a Hegelian fashion (a contemporary digest of his work is a more efficient way of understanding Hegel, but he is a central figure in the philosophy of history). But a basic summary of Koselleck is that he draws the important distinction between history as a past lived experience and history as an academic discipline. Ultimately, what we study is not history per se, but interpret mediated sources to access a glimpse of the lived experience. As Gramsci said just because you can't create a totality doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

As regards the complete disengagement of the text from the reality, Koselleck says that it is vital to remember that those texts are created in a social world, and the imprint of the social world is inextricably contained within that source, but we as historians must view it obliquely to access it. So if I could respond to Richard Evans, I would argue that the discipline he advocates is critical, but to disregard postmodernism and its awkward questions is the ultimate corruption of the strict historical discipline that Evans advances.

1980s Postmodernism seems a little silly now, but its legacy has meant that history has become more rigorous in its research and narrative methodology. Don't be scared of theory, but remember that it must be contextualized properly with lived experiences.

Well, you are not necessarily preparing for reading the postmodernist critiques by their enthusiasts (even though EH Carr is a straight up baller, love that last chapter on progress). I love postmodernist thought, though I believe it should be used reflectively and critically, rather than placed front and centre in the construction of a historical narrative. We should, as producers of knowledge, seek to understand the discourses we live through by unsettling them through examination of the past. It's a contradictory position, one which seeks to recreate the past in a fashion which is a unsettling of the present, and vis versa.

Or, with less gobbledegook, postmodernism is a useful way to critically doubt the automatic suppositions we make about people and the societies they inhabit, past or present.

On the hardest edge, supporters and detractors point out that there is a rejection of true representation. This is largely a criticism that is beside the point. It's not that true knowledge is being created in the production of history (a largely discredited paradigm to all but the most stodgy social historians), but that we must be aware of a the ways in which we structure meaning, and the lineage (usually called the geneology) of these structures. This applies to both the organization of knowledge (causational formulas, fact claims, etc) and the transmission of knowledge (the archive, the library, narrative forms, etc). Theirs are lessons that I believe all historians should be aware of, whether they deploy the postmodernist's tactics in a obvious manner or not. Speaking as a historian in a Marxist tradition, I find very little that conflicts with my creation of history on a deep level. Though I admit I find much more philosophically appealing in the critical tradition of postmodernism, the practical organization of history according to Marxist methodology is my chosen mode of representation.

For recommended reading, I am going to suggest three authors which represent (not make, important distinction) the most important contributions to my take on modern Postmodernist historiography:

1. Michel Foucault, the most hated Frenchman since Pétain. He's not as hard to understand as you've been led to believe. Read Truth/Power, which is a collection of conversations with him on his worldview. Read the first part of the History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punishment (paying special attention to panopticism) to see this type of philosophy in action.

2. Hayden White, who draws attention to the form and function of narrative storytelling and analyzes it's tropes in a deep (albeit unsettling) manner. Consult Metahistory first, and then The Content of the Form. You will find a lot of convergence with White's thinking and Marshall McLuhan's.

3. Frank Ankersmit, loopy dutchman who takes much of what White says and runs with it, applying what we have learned about the construction of historical knowledge and more or less turns it into useful advice on what to do with it. In a nutshell, what he suggests is that a plurality of representation is preferable to weighting one perspective over another. There is much in common with gender/identity theory, from what I recall. While I'm not as familiar with Ankersmit as the other two, remember he was the most proscriptive of the bunch. I also read Historical Representation (2001) a long while back, so forgive me if I'm a little hazy on 'ol Frank.

Famous detractors of postmodernism are abound, but if you want some hilarious (and not altogether unwarranted) criticism of the PoMos, check out Brian Palmer's Descent into Discourse. Not all Canadians are friendly people. For something a little more constructive, I would suggest consulting Alan Megill's Historical Knowledge, Historical Error, particularly his chapter on causation. After reading it, you will be hyper-aware of the philosophical tradition that the 'sloppy historians' he criticises come from.

In addition to the other works mentioned here, I found this book an excellent summary of the study of history and the influence of postmodernism.

It's nonsense. There is some objective sequence of events that happened for specific reasons. The fact that it is difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct does not make the quest for it meaningless anymore than Heisenberg implies all physics is meaningless.

During my first year at university we were encouraged to explore many different disciplines of history, most of which were alien to me before hand. Postmodernism was one of the harder disciplines I looked into, and remembering E. H. Carr not to be terribly helpful in clearing the matter up. I would greatly recommend 'Studying History' by Jeremy Black and Donald M. Macraild. This book was part of the suggested reading and very simply covers the majority of historical trends e.g. Whig, Marxist, Revisionist etc.

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