The ‘Historical Turn’ and the Political Culture of Early Modern England: Towards a Postmodern History?

Summary

IN one influential formulation, postmodernism has been defined ‘as incredulity toward meta-narratives’. These words of Jean-FrancËois Lyotard have had considerable impact on those historians seeking to construct a postmodern history. The word ‘incredulity’ may be wisely chosen in preference to ‘abandonment’, but the words remain the expression of a forlorn hope. ‘Postmodernism’ itself is a word embodying a meta-narrative; and it can be argued that all history is reliant, if not exactly on meta-narratives, then on a ‘great story’, or on ‘meta-historical frameworks’. This is so because of the problematic nature of historical evidence. No historical account can validate itself by direct appeal to the past. At best attempts can be made to show compatibility with the evidence or surviving traces of the past. But, more than that, this evidence needs to be mobilised, and converted into facts. Historians use facts to provide the evidence needed to answer a question. Usually, those facts correspond unproblematically to a real state of affairs, an event; but they are bundled together into patterns, and those patterns are subject to constant revision. This contributes to what Berkhofer calls ‘the insufficiency of facts’, by which he means the looseness of fit pertaining between fact and interpretation. Historical works contain many (unproblematic) factual statements; but their overall interpretation is at best only loosely dependent on these facts. Historians are quite ready to argue that factual error does not always invalidate an interpretation. Interpretations do not simply flow from facts at all, and for two reasons. There is a circular process by which facts are constructed in the light of historical frameworks. They gain significance and meaning, and are explained, only when used for a purpose. At the highest level, all interpretation of the past will be in part shaped by meta-narratives, by an historian’s understanding of the largest historical processes. And secondly the truthfulness of historical writing is not closely related to its factuality, but to the way in which it structures and presents a narrative or analysis.