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In Defence of History

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This period, and the preceding ones, are also marked by a dominance of the belief that history is the history of politics and great men. Evans brings "a remarkable range, a nose for the archives, a taste for controversy, and a fluent pen" ( The New Republic ) to this splendid work. In fact, he welcomes many of the insights provided by postmodernism and other innovative approaches to history, including its subject-matter, its way of investigating and knowing the past, and how history is written.

For example his chapter headings are similar and his concluding paragraph is a homage to the concluding paragraph in Carr’s book. The edition of 2000 has an afterword added, as Evans wished to answer the many vitriolic reviews that came out at the first publishing.If history can become whatever your own political leanings and subjective feelings want it to be there is no longer any valid reason for opposing the works of people like David Irving. The most serious new movement in these four decades is the advent of post-modernism, which has gone so far as to deny the possibility of writing history at all (on the grounds that the past is a construct of the present). Antony Easthope has more to say about Evans's treatment of Derrida in his review of In Defence of History. Mõningaid juhtmõtteid korrutab Evans natuke tyytult palju (ning jääb mulje, et raamat võinuks seeläbi ka lyhem olla), ent pisut hämmastavalt näib, et sellest hoolimata pole mõned kriitikud suutnud neid tabada. Evans contends that the practice of historic study proves this is wrong: the truth, the facts of the past indeed ARE attainable, by applying the correct methodology and when always understood as a preliminary result.

Evans certainly does not fail to describe positive results of postmodernism’s influence on the practice of history. He has taught at the University of East Anglia, where he was Professor of European History, and Birkbeck, University of London, where he was Professor of History and Vice-Master. Pascamodenisme tiba di dalam bidang penulisan sejarah agak baharu sebenarnya iaitu sekitar penghujung tahun 60-an. Taken out of this context the book suffers from its lack of engagement with some of the most important thinkers in the wider postmodernist field and fails to fully lower the disciplinary drawbridge.That statement is pretty typical of the tone of the book, a robust, earthy common sense in which the word 'paranoia' would be less likely to appear than 'parakeet'. Namun penulis tetap sahaja berjaya mempermasalahkan isu-isu yang menarik dan tidak kurang penting: Apakah sejarah akan berhenti ditulis? Where Kansteiner sees inconsistency between Evans’ assertion that sources may allow a spectrum of interpretations and his rejection of the idea that contrary interpretations may be equally valid, one may instead see a discursive give and take between a professional and a school of thought that was, and still is, used to discredit his profession. They would not, however, fit in any obvious way with the neatly categorised (and well written) argument presented in the book, so that it is easy to see why they are left out.

Het is geen eenzijdige aanval op het postmodernisme, maar veeleer een brede overweging van de geschieddiscipline in haar geheel.

This book is a strong defence of the historical profession and that it's possible to attain historical truths. Evans discusses the cases of David Abraham and Paul de Man at relevant places in his narrative, but gives more space to the most serious, that of holocaust denial. There are serious consequences to postmodernist ideology, in which it gives a license to anybody who wants to suppress, distort, or cover up the past, and thus the truth. This is a howler, though a common one which gets regularly crossed out in undergraduate essays for courses in theory.

Evans places himself more or less in the middle between those two predecessors, he praises both their strengths but also attacks their weaknesses.Evans is remarkably fair to all, explaining everyone's positions at great length and quotation, and even defending Marxist readings of history, "moderate" postmodernism, and the identitarian subspecializations. The most extreme postmodernists argue that the past can be described in so many different ways and from so many different points of view that it's impossible to determine what really happened.

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