Historiography in the Focus of Postmodernist Criticism

Abstract

The paper elaborates on some of the ways historians attempt to preserve distinctions from academics in other disciplines by reviewing the changing methodological orientations within the historical profession. lt particularly illurninates the rhetorical strategies designed to uphold and reinforce the divisions within the intellectual field, which serve to enhance symbolic capital at the expense of an ,other', and to reproduce existing hierarchies. Discourse strategies, such as insults and binary oppositions, which many scholars have employed in the recent debates over postmodernism in North America, reflect powerstruggles within the field of cultural production over the control of a specific category of signs (or meanings) regarding the preservation or overthrow of dominant definitions of ,reality'. The most common strategy to enhance distinctions and discredit the ,other' in the contest over textual approaches has been the posturing of the protagonists around paired concepts, especially the ideological dichotomies of ,conservative/radical' and of ,new/old'.