Postmodern historiographical theory and the Roman historians

Abstract

Since the mid 1970s, when “theory” became a powerful new force in the humanities, “history,” as a discipline, has been particularly resistant to the questions and challenges, the debates and aporias of “theory.” Only a few years ago in the journal History and Theory Keith Jenkins composed, in response to Peter Zagorin's attack on postmodernism, a call for “postmodernism sans histoire .” Zagorin, in his rejoinder, concluded that “postmodernist philosophy has little insight into historiography and nothing to contribute that clarifies or illuminates its character as an inquiry or a body of knowledge.” In this chapter, I would like to introduce some of the concerns of postmodern historiography and consider how they may affect the way we use and understand the Roman historians. Postmodernism is not a single theoretical perspective, nor is it easily defined and limited. It can be thought of as a response to the failure of the emancipatory project of modernity. As such, it is primarily a present condition and a prospective project, concerned with how we understand our own world in the context of late capital, American hegemony, mass reproduction of simulacra, modern heteroethnic communities, and a loss of faith in grand metanarratives.

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