Table Of ContentP
a
r
t
n
This compendium of new essays on theory of history (rather than history’s theory) is the very model e
of what a scientific handbook (an honorable scholarly genre which has been much degraded of r The SAGE Handbook of
a
late by commercialization) ought to be. The problems which motivated the interest in theory of
n
history from the 1930s and 1940s down to just yesterday have now been pretty much assimilated dE Historical Theory
to a new lingua franca of metahistorical discourse. A new generation of scholars can now treat F dit
as what goes without saying many of the “undecidables” of the older generations’ discourses. oe
d
The essays display an openness to innovation and manifest a kind of authority which stand above o b
both polemics and apologetics. ty
All of the relevant topics, themes, debates, methodological issues, and images of the ‘theory
wars’ are taken account of – I counted 26 such, from “linguistic turn” through “gender” and
“postcolonial” to “fiction” and “causality”– even-handedly, insightfully, and responsibly. The
documentation is impressive, the footnotes pertinent, full, and informative, the bibliographies
comprehensive. The whole bears the imprint of the scholarly styles of its editors, Professors Partner
and Foot. Anyone who knows their scholarship will expect nothing but the highest standards
brought to anything they study. I was most impressed by the way in which the essays taken as a
whole extend the field of historical studies to include all of the other disciplines in the human,
social, and natural sciences which take ‘the past’ and not only “history” as objects of study. This
is an indispensable handbook for anyone who has a professional or even an “amateur” interest H
in the study of the past. T
i h
Hayden White, University Professor, Emeritus, of the History of Consciousness, in the University s e
t
of California and Sometime Consultant Professor of Comparative Literature and German o S
A
Studies, Stanford University
r G
i
c E
Nancy Partner is Professor of History at McGill University. a H Edited by
Sarah Foot is The Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Christ Church, University of Oxford. l a
n Nancy Partner
T
d
h
b
e o Sarah Foot
and
o
o
k
r
o
y
f
Cover image © iStockphoto
The SAGE Handbook of
Historical Theory
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 1 09/11/2012 10:48:06 AM
The editors have assembled a large and outstanding group of historians and
other theorists who examine and represent theories of historical knowledge
from every angle. The collection is comprehensive, scholarly, and full of new
insights.
David Carr, Professor Emeritus, Emory University, USA
The challenges of the use of theory in history is analysed and interrogated
in significant and exciting ways in this work. In drawing on the insights of
leading scholars, this indispensable volume broadens the parameters of our
investigation of the past and deepens our interpretation and understanding
of historical knowledge.
Joy Damousi, Professor of History, University of Melbourne, Australia
Nancy Partner and Sarah Foot have brought together a comprehensive and
up-to-date collection of essays on historical theory. The special feature is
that more than half the contributions are written by working historians with
their feet on the ground. The book will be invaluable both to students of
historiography and seasoned practitioners.
John Tosh, Professor of History, University of Roehampton, UK
This is an important overview and critical analysis of the present state of his-
tory writing. Starting with history’s modernist foundations in the 19th century,
the Handbook succinctly explains how the rise of postmodernism has brought
about our present-day post-postmodernist predicament with its broad variety
of historical genres.
Chris Lorenz, Professor of German Historical Culture and Historical Theory, VU
University Amsterdam and Amsterdam University College, The Netherlands
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 2 09/11/2012 10:48:06 AM
The SAGE Handbook of
Historical Theory
Edited by
Nancy Partner
and Sarah Foot
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 3 09/11/2012 10:48:10 AM
SAGE Publications Ltd Editorial arrangement © Nancy Partner and Sarah Foot 2013
1 Oliver’s Yard
Parts I, II, III introductions © Nancy Partner 2013
55 City Road
Chapter 1 © Michael Bentley 2013
London EC1Y 1SP
Chapter 2 © Lutz Raphael 2013
Chapter 3 © Jan van der Dussen 2013
SAGE Publications Inc.
Chapter 4 © Joseph Tendler 2013
2455 Teller Road
Chapter 5 © Donald R. Kelley 2013
Thousand Oaks, California 91320
Chapter 6 © Brian Lewis 2013
Chapter 7 © Robert Doran 2013
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd
Chapter 8 © Kalle Pihlainen 2013
B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area
Chapter 9 © Robert M. Stein 2013
Mathura Road
Chapter 10 © Hans Kellner 2013
New Delhi 110 044
Chapter 11 © Clare O’Farrell 2013
Chapter 12 © Ann Rigney 2013
SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd
Chapter 13 © Ann Curthoys and John Docker 2013
3 Church Street
Chapter 14 © Brian Lewis 2013
#10-04 Samsung Hub
Chapter 15 © Judith P. Zinsser 2013
Singapore 049483
Chapter 16 © Bonnie G. Smith 2013
Chapter 17 © Karen Harvey 2013
Chapter 18 © Amy Richlin 2013
Chapter 19 © Michael Roper 2013
Chapter 20 © Kevin Foster 2013
Chapter 21 © Gilbert B. Rodman 2013
Chapter 22 © Patrick H. Hutton 2013
Chapter 23 © Benjamin Zachariah 2013
Chapter 24 © John H. Zammito 2013
Editor: Katie Metzler Chapter 25 © Frank Ankersmit 2013
Editorial assistant: Anna Horvai Chapter 26 © Judith Keilbach 2013
Production editor: Vanessa Harwood Chapter 27 © Valerie Johnson and David Thomas 2013
Project manager: Jill Birch Chapter 28 © David Gary Shaw 2013
Copyeditor: David Hemsley Chapter 29 © Nancy Partner 2013
Proofreader: Jill Birch
Indexer: Gary Birch First published 2013
Marketing manager: Ben Griffin-Sherwood
Cover design: Wendy Scott Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study,
Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and
Printed by: MPG Books Group, Bodmin, Cornwall Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or
transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission
in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction,
in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright
Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those
terms should be sent to the publishers.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012935850
British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-4129-3114-4
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 4 09/11/2012 10:48:10 AM
Contents
List of contributors ix
PART I FOUNDATIONS: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS FOR
KNOWLEDGE OF THE PAST 1
Nancy Partner
MODERNITY AND HISTORY: THE PROFESSIONAL
DISCIPLINE 9
1 The Turn Towards ‘Science’: Historians Delivering Untheorized
Truth 10
Michael Bentley
2 The Implications of Empiricism for History 23
Lutz Raphael
3 The Case for Historical Imagination: Defending the Human Factor
and Narrative 41
Jan van der Dussen
4 The Annales School: Variations on Realism, Methods and Time 67
Joseph Tendler
5 Intellectual History: From Ideas to Meanings 81
Donald R. Kelley
6 Social History: a New Kind of History 93
Brian Lewis
POSTMODERNISM: THE LINGUISTIC TURN AND
HISTORICAL KNOWLEDGE 105
7 The Work of Hayden White I: Mimesis, Figuration, and the
Writing of History 106
Robert Doran
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 5 09/11/2012 10:48:10 AM
vi CONTENTS
8 The Work of Hayden White II: Defamiliarizing Narrative 119
Kalle Pihlainen
9 Derrida and Deconstruction: Challenges to the Transparency
of Language 136
Robert M. Stein
10 The Return of Rhetoric 148
Hans Kellner
11 Michel Foucault: The Unconscious of History and Culture 162
Clare O’Farrell
12 History as Text: Narrative Theory and History 183
Ann Rigney
13 The Boundaries of History and Fiction 202
Ann Curthoys and John Docker
PART II APPLICATIONS: THEORY-INTENSIVE
AREAS OF HISTORY 221
Nancy Partner
14 The Newest Social History: Crisis and Renewal 225
Brian Lewis
15 Women’s History/Feminist History 238
Judith P. Zinsser
16 Gender I: From Women’s History to Gender History 266
Bonnie G. Smith
17 Gender II: Masculinity Acquires a History 282
Karen Harvey
18 Sexuality and History 294
Amy Richlin
19 Psychoanalysis and the Making of History 311
Michael Roper
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 6 09/11/2012 10:48:11 AM
CONTENTS vii
20 New National Narratives 326
Kevin Foster
21 Cultural Studies and History 342
Gilbert B. Rodman
22 Memory: Witness, Experience, Collective Meaning 354
Patrick H. Hutton
23 Postcolonial Theory and History 378
Benjamin Zachariah
PART III CODA. POST-POSTMODERNISM: DIRECTIONS
AND INTERROGATIONS 397
Nancy Partner
24 Post-positivist Realism: Regrounding Representation 401
John H. Zammito
25 Historical Experience Beyond the Linguistic Turn 424
Frank Ankersmit
26 Photographs: Reading the Image for History 439
Judith Keilbach
27 Digital Information: ‘Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom …’
Is Digital a Cultural Revolution? 458
Valerie Johnson and David Thomas
28 Recovering the Self: Agency after Deconstruction 474
David Gary Shaw
29 The Fundamental Things Apply: Aristotle’s Narrative Theory
and the Classical Origins of Postmodern History 495
Nancy Partner
Index 509
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 7 09/11/2012 10:48:11 AM
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 8 09/11/2012 10:48:11 AM
List of contributors
Frank Ankersmit was Professor for Intellectual History and Philosophy of History at Groningen
University from 1992 until his retirement in 2010. He has published some 15 books and more
than 200 articles in the fields of philosophy of history, political philosophy and aesthetics. His
next book, entitled Meaning, Truth and Reference in Historical Representation, will be published
in Spring 2012. His writings have been translated into many languages. He is founder and chief
editor of the Journal of the Philosophy of History and has an honorary degree in the humanities
of the University of Ghent.
Michael Bentley is Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews. His major
research interests are in the political and intellectual history of Britain in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, and in the philosophy of history, and historiography. His publications
include The Liberal Mind, 1914–1929 (1977); Politics without Democracy, 1815–1914 (1984,
1996); The Climax of Liberal Politics (1987); A Companion to Historiography (1997); Modern
Historiography (1999); Lord Salisbury’s World (2001); and The Life and Thought of Herbert
Butterfield: History, Science and God (2011). He is currently writing a comparative analysis of
Western historiography since the Enlightenment.
Ann Curthoys is Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow at the University of Sydney,
and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and the Australian Academy of the
Humanities. Her research is in Australian history, as well as history and theory, and historical
writing. Major publications include Freedom Ride: A Freedomrider Remembers (2002); How
to Write History that People Want to Read (2009), with Ann McGrath; Rights and Redemption:
History; Law, and Indigenous People, with Ann Genovese and Alexander Reilly (2008); and
Is History Fiction?, with John Docker (2005, rev. edn 2010). She is currently working on a
project titled: ‘The British Empire, Indigenous Peoples, and Self-government for the Australian
Colonies’.
John Docker is Honorary Professor in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the
University of Sydney, where his research is in the field of intellectual and cultural history. His
publications include The Origins of Violence: Religion, History and Genocide (2008); 1492: The
Poetics of Diaspora (2001); Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History (1994);
and, with Ann Curthoys, Is History Fiction? (2005, rev. edn 2010). He is currently working on
a book titled Sheer Folly and Derangement: Disorienting Europe and the West, as well as other
projects.
Robert Doran is James P. Wilmot Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature
at the University of Rochester (USA). His main areas of specialization are aesthetics, literary
theory, continental philosophy, intellectual history and nineteenth-century French literature.
He is the editor of the collected essays of Hayden White, The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on
History, Literature and Theory, 1957–2007 (2010), and of the anthology, Philosophy of History
after Hayden White (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). He is also the editor of Mimesis and Theory:
00-Partner_Foot-Prelims.indd 9 09/11/2012 10:48:11 AM
