Turns to the Present
Varieties of social History comprised the most successful initial challenge to political History, especially from the middle of the twentieth century. From the 1980s social History was gradually supplanted in prominence by a cluster of related historiographical developments concerned with language a...
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croxfordunivpr:10.1093/oso/9780198858720.003.0008 2023-05-15T17:34:40+02:00 Turns to the Present Bloxham, Donald 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198858720.003.0008 unknown Oxford University Press Why History? page 246-303 book-chapter 2020 croxfordunivpr https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198858720.003.0008 2022-08-05T10:30:56Z Varieties of social History comprised the most successful initial challenge to political History, especially from the middle of the twentieth century. From the 1980s social History was gradually supplanted in prominence by a cluster of related historiographical developments concerned with language and culture. In the last fifteen years or so newer fashions have waxed, and to those too this chapter will attend, but, in terms of justifications for History, social History and the linguistic and cultural ‘turns’ remain especially important. Social-scientific social historians were more apt to assert History’s predictive value or at least its pragmatic contemporary importance at a time of industrialization beyond the north Atlantic—this was an update of History as Practical Lesson. Other social historians were to be found revising prevailing conceptions of the past with a view to altering politics in the present—disturbing ‘whiggish’ narratives, or inserting the marginalized into the historical record to fortify their voices now. This was History as Identity fused with History as Emancipation. ‘New cultural historians’ specialized in a version of History as Travel as they invoked exotic worlds past. They, like historians under the influence of Michel Foucault, who addressed culture through the prism of power, might adapt the Travel rationale, contrasting past ways of doing things with present ways in order to unmask the conventional, made and remade, character of social relations and of human-being, and thus the possibility of changing them. This was a Marxist agenda of History as Emancipation adapted for a post-Marxist philosophy. Book Part North Atlantic Oxford University Press (via Crossref) 246 303 |
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Oxford University Press (via Crossref) |
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Varieties of social History comprised the most successful initial challenge to political History, especially from the middle of the twentieth century. From the 1980s social History was gradually supplanted in prominence by a cluster of related historiographical developments concerned with language and culture. In the last fifteen years or so newer fashions have waxed, and to those too this chapter will attend, but, in terms of justifications for History, social History and the linguistic and cultural ‘turns’ remain especially important. Social-scientific social historians were more apt to assert History’s predictive value or at least its pragmatic contemporary importance at a time of industrialization beyond the north Atlantic—this was an update of History as Practical Lesson. Other social historians were to be found revising prevailing conceptions of the past with a view to altering politics in the present—disturbing ‘whiggish’ narratives, or inserting the marginalized into the historical record to fortify their voices now. This was History as Identity fused with History as Emancipation. ‘New cultural historians’ specialized in a version of History as Travel as they invoked exotic worlds past. They, like historians under the influence of Michel Foucault, who addressed culture through the prism of power, might adapt the Travel rationale, contrasting past ways of doing things with present ways in order to unmask the conventional, made and remade, character of social relations and of human-being, and thus the possibility of changing them. This was a Marxist agenda of History as Emancipation adapted for a post-Marxist philosophy. |
format |
Book Part |
author |
Bloxham, Donald |
spellingShingle |
Bloxham, Donald Turns to the Present |
author_facet |
Bloxham, Donald |
author_sort |
Bloxham, Donald |
title |
Turns to the Present |
title_short |
Turns to the Present |
title_full |
Turns to the Present |
title_fullStr |
Turns to the Present |
title_full_unstemmed |
Turns to the Present |
title_sort |
turns to the present |
publisher |
Oxford University Press |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198858720.003.0008 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Why History? page 246-303 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198858720.003.0008 |
container_start_page |
246 |
op_container_end_page |
303 |
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