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Postmodernist Theory and Practice of History Also Found Its Way to High Schools and Universities in the Design of the History Curriculum

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Postmodernist Theory and Practice of History Also Found Its Way to High Schools and Universities in the Design of the History Curriculum Kocaeli Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi (14) 2007 / 2 : 176-188 Postmodernist Approach to the Discipline of History Kaya Yılmaz∗ Abstract: The postmodernist approach to history is one of the least known modes of historical writing among historians and history educators. Aiming to enhance his- torians’ and history educators’ understanding of the postmodern challenge to the discipline of history, this article first presents an overview of the basic features of history and its historical trajectory as a discipline. It then explains postmodernist historiography’s conceptual underpinnings, methods, principal concepts, and ideologi- cal positions. It also maps out the key debates, criticisms, and arguments that histo- rians of different historical orientations engaged in. Key Words: Historiography, Philosophy of History, History Education, Postmodernism. 1. Introduction Historians and history educators need to know the nature of history to effectively plan, implement and assess historical research. The importance of an adequate un- derstanding of the nature of a given discipline in the teaching and learning process has been recognized in science education. A sophisticated understanding of the na- ture of science is deemed to be a major goal in science education and a central com- ponent of scientific literacy. Science education organizations and science educators stress the role that a nuanced understanding of the nature of science plays in foster- ing higher levels of scientific literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1993; Bell, Lederman, and Abd-El-Khalick, 2000; National Re- search Council (NRC), 1996). The same emphasis on the importance of the nature of subject matter has not been realized in history education yet. However, as Lee (1983) argues, drawing on the in- sights that historical frameworks provide for studying the past is crucial not only to develop a rational way of teaching history but also to adequately address the funda- mental issues in history education. Likewise, Seixas (2002) stresses that being ∗ Dr. Kaya Yılmaz, Marmara Üniversitesi Atatürk Eğitim Fakültesi Sosyal Bilimler Anabilim Dalı İlköğre- tim Bölümü’nde öğretim üyesidir. Postmodernist Approach to the Discipline of History 177 familiar with the different ways through which the past is made accessible, meaningful, and comprehensible is a must for advancing historical consciousness at schools and confronting the complexity of the past. Seixas also stresses that unless models in the discipline of history are identified and used in the teaching and learn- ing of history, any framework for exploring students’ thoughts about history is des- tined to remain murky (Seixas, 2001: 546). Being aware of how historians of different historical orientations construct differ- ing interpretations of the past is one of the preconditions for students of history de- partments to understand the complexity of the past and to develop an increasingly fine-grained understanding of the past events, people, institutions and processes. Un- fortunately, historiographies of different sorts or diverse historical approaches to the past are not sufficiently emphasized in history departments whose students lack ade- quate training in historiography. What is more, there is an inchoate understanding, on historians’ and history educators’ part, of how the past is made understandable through postmodernist approach. The purpose of this paper is to bring a recent but rather contested historical orienta- tion, postmodernist historiography, to the attention of both historians and history edu- cators in order to contribute to the effort to bring about a more sophisticated and mean- ingful history education. The assumption underlying this paper is that if historians, his- tory educators, and history teachers become familiar with and appreciate the multiplic- ity of historical explanations, along with the assumptions and ideologies that lie behind each orientation, they can help students not only enjoy a more freedom of choice in constructing their own historical understanding, but also come up with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the past. Aimed at enhancing historians’ and history educators’ understanding of postmodernist historiography, this article first provides an overview of the basic features of history as a discipline or domain of knowledge and how history came to be recognized as an academic discipline. It then presents post- modernist movement in historiography, its characteristic features, epistemological and conceptual underpinnings, mode of historical explanations, and the key debates re- volving around the movement. 2. What is History? History is a unique interpretive enterprise among social sciences because of the fact that it is both the subject and the object of its own discipline. In other words, the dis- cipline of history refers not only to what happened in the past but also to the act of writing about the past. The nature and function of historical writing is shaped by the 178 Kaya Yılmaz theoretical presuppositions, by means of which the historian reflects on and writes about the past. Frameworks serve as conceptual tools for scholarly historical thinking and writing by enabling the historian to “winnow the infinite number of possible inter- pretations to a limited number of probable ones” (Christianson, 1991: 47). Downplay- ing other historical orientations, the historian operating under the banner of a given historical framework singles out particular hypotheses, problems, and questions as sig- nificant or legitimate objects of historical study (Christianson, 1991). That is, it is the philosophy of history that provides the building blocks for the study of the past. Philosophy of history is divided into two basic branches, speculative and analytic, in terms of its substantive (i.e., propositional) and syntactic (i.e., procedural) fea- tures. The speculative branch (a) focuses on the actual content of history to find meaning or at least pattern in it, (b) is interested in predicting the future, (c) and aims to shed lights on the following sorts of questions: Does history demonstrate a simple giant unfolding history? Do laws govern history? Has human nature re- mained the same throughout history (Lemon, 2003, p. 9)? On the other hand, analytical philosophy of history (a) concentrates on the nature and methods of history as discipline, (b) deals with such topics as objectivity, ideol- ogy, and historical explanations (i.e., how historians practice their methods and how they think about what they are doing), (c) aims to illuminate the following types of questions: What conditions must be met for a statement about the past to be true? Is there an exclusively historical way of explaining the past as distinct? Is narrative a satisfactory vehicle for historical knowledge? Can the historian reach objective truth (Lemon, 2003, p. 281)? On what grounds can historians reasonably demonstrate that they know what they claim (Gilderhus, 1987: 70)? 2.1. Professionalization of History: the Rankean School The professionalization of historical studies along with the redefinition of their theo- retical and methodological foundations was entrenched in the process of moderniza- tion and nationalism in Europe (Fuchs, 2002). The works of German historians had an enormous international impact on the professionalization of history and the de- velopment of rigorous methods of historical research. The belief in the scientific status of history which stressed the non-rhetorical character of historical writing was central to the process of professionalization (Iggers, 1997). Leopold von Ranke, celebrated German historian, was a pioneer in assigning academic status to the study of the past. Just as Herodotus is deemed to be the father of history, Ranke can be re- garded as the father of the new objective school of history. Many modern historians Postmodernist Approach to the Discipline of History 179 attribute the intellectual foundations of their discipline to this development of the nineteenth century German universities, which influenced historical scholarship throughout Europe and America (Tosh, 2004). What was new in Ranke’s approach to history was his attempt to explain the past in terms of “how it actually was,” without making a judgment on it. He established the rules of critical historical methods. “Ranke’s elaborate methodology was based on classical philology with its maxim: check the source for trustworthiness and against its own context” (Breisach, 1994: 233). He combined a critical reading of the surviving documents of the past with a careful reconstruction of the historical cir- cumstances in which it was composed. It is only by these means, Ranke asserted, could unreliable historical sources be identified to be used as evidence and the core meaning of the text be recovered (Tosh, 2004). If history was to be written in a dis- passionate, objective way, Ranke claimed, “historians should not take sides, nor should they seek to make propaganda out of the past; their task was essentially one of reconstruction” (Tosh, 2004). It is the strength of these claims that made history become an academic discipline in its own right. The term “historicism” refers to this rigorous approach to the past. “Historicism with all its variations is the key term that symbolizes the genesis of modern historical scholarship” (Fuchs, 2002: 148). The ma- jor shortcomings of the historicist Rankean school were (1) its lack of attention to economic and social
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