Today, the great wave of postmodernist and poststructuralist academic writing, with its epistemological relativism and obfuscating rhetoric, has largely subsided. It may never disappear, as few things do, and it may have become so thoroughly embedded in certain disciplines as to color them for the foreseeable future. However, the vogue for “discourses” and “hermeneutics” has largely passed its prime, and disciplines which once felt themselves to be engaged in a life-or-death struggle with the new wave of academics (anthropology, history, e.g.) now seem to be regaining their footing and reclaiming a scientific basis.
History cannot be written if we do not believe that any one narrative of the past is more “true” than another, or that it is possible, despite … Read the rest
