Comments on: This is my truth

By: Early Modern Notes » More historiographical conversations

Early Modern Notes » More historiographical conversations — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 10:34:38 +0000

[...] post this link, which refers to an email conversation she and I had last week following my exercise in emotional rhetoric and the foregoing and ongoing de [...]

By: detrimental postulation » history carnival #3

detrimental postulation » history carnival #3 — Fri, 25 Feb 2005 10:06:26 +0000

[...] dievalist. Then Paul replied once more, and most recently (as far as I’m aware), EMN responded with a subtle and personal post about “ [...]

By: Sharon

Sharon — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 10:24:43 +0000

Please do email me with some of your thoughts if you get a chance, Elya (sharon {at} earlymodernweb.org(.)uk). The most important thing for me personally about these discussions is that they’ve got me thinking much more intensely about these issues than I have done for quite some time, and I don’t pretend that this post has been rigorously thought out. But the conversations shouldn’t stop. (And now you’ve given me more things to go on my To Read list!)

By: Elya Gelb

Elya Gelb — Wed, 23 Feb 2005 05:25:31 +0000

Hi Jonathan, You could try “Postmodernism, Economics and Knowledge” 2001 edited by S. Cullenberg, J. Amariglio, & D.F. Ruccio; and “Anthropology, Development & the Post-modern Challenge” 1996 by Katy Gardner and David Lewis. They are useful starting points, particularly the first which questions agent-structure problems, choice, and so on (method, but not epistemology necessarily though). The former is probably more useful than the latter.

Nice piece Sharon. I was going to argue with your stance from the history-as-dialogue POV but I don’t have the time to do it justice.

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 21:01:02 +0000

“Hugo”: I know postmodernism has addressed itself to the social sciences…. since it came out of linguistics and anthropology. Though self-referential anthropological theory is pretty much a subfield unto itself, there are huge swaths of social science — political science, quantitative sociology, economics — where such theory (particularly epistemology) seems to have had no effect on method or practice and I’m not sure to what extent it should.

By: Hugo Holbling

Hugo Holbling — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:57:23 +0000

In answer to your question, Jonathan, so-called postmodernist critiques have indeed hit the social sciences. If you’re interested, I could suggest some references. Other philosophers have been spending more time looking at them, too.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 14:12:14 +0000

Sharon, this is a great post. I’ll have to link to it when I start posting again in a few days. Glad my post was helpful!

By: Caleb

Caleb — Tue, 22 Feb 2005 12:58:58 +0000

I really like the concept of “honesty” as the highest epistemic virtue of the historian. Thanks for the very nice post!

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 23:19:20 +0000

I've often said that the fundamental truth to postmodernism is the realization that how we think and express ourselves is sometimes as important (and worthy of study) as what we think and say. The human subject of history is so central that I'm surprised it took us this long to get to it, but we got so caught up in what we do that we lost sight of what we do. History's humanistic nature makes it much more akin to the social sciences than to the natural sciences; I wonder if the philosophers have addressed their attention to those fields?

By: Hugo Holbling

Hugo Holbling — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:31:28 +0000

Very nice. It’s interesting to see responsibility to the subjects of our histories given priority.