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What’s the point of history? / Daniel Woolf
Review Date: 06 November 2020
The sub-branch of history that is known by the ambiguous (and frightening to undergraduates, cats, and many mainstream academics) name “historiography” seems to be undergoing a Renaissance at the moment.
Frank Ankersmit’s Lost Historical Cause: A Journey from Language to Experience / Peter Icke
Review Date: 03 May 2012
A book-length examination of the work of Frank Ankersmit has been long overdue. Ankersmit occupies a curious position in regards to the various skirmishes taking place over the philosophy of history in the past 30 years or so. Theorists inclined towards postmodernism – one thinks of Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow – have been keen to co-opt Ankersmit into their camp.
Doing History / Claire Norton, Mark Donnelly
Review Date: 01 September 2011
Over the past few decades we have been invited to rethink history, pursue it, practise it, defend it, refigure it, and generally consider what it is, what it’s for, and whether we really need to bother with it. Now, just as we think it must all be done and dusted, if not done to death, we are offered more advice on ‘doing’ it.
History in the Discursive Condition: Reconsidering the Tools of Thought / Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth
Review Date: 01 September 2011
In History in the Discursive Condition (2011) – a follow up to her (for me) ground-breaking Realism and Consensus (1), and Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time (2) – Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, a student of interdisciplinary cultural history and theory, explores the practical implications for history of the discursive condition, the condition which in her view has been created (or at least…