¹ A fuller version of the arguments will be found in my forthcoming book, Historical Theory: Or, Talking Sense About History (London, 2000).

² I should emphasize that my purpose here is not to explore in any detail the varieties of postmodernist critique, nor to plot the twists and turns in the development of sometimes arcane debates in this area, but rather simply to note the more important challenges that have recently been mounted to notions of history as the pursuit of truth about a real past. This is, in short, not a brief excursion into intellectual history but rather a raising to consciousness of the key issues with which I am concerned in this essay.

³ Keith Jenkins, On "What Is History?" From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (London, 1995), 6. See also Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History (London, 1991).

⁴ For a particularly lucid survey of two-and-a-half millennia of skepticism, see Beverley Southgate, History: What and Why? Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern Perspectives (London, 1996).

⁵ For a sustained engagement with a range of theoretical positions, see particularly Robert Berkhofer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).

⁶ I am here, of course, glossing over the wide range of positions within the posited "traditional" camp, not all of which are as naive as some postmodernists would have us believe. Both labelspostmodernist and traditionalactually cover a wide range of approaches; the adequacy of the labeling is for present purposes less important than the questions addressed.

⁷ Jenkins, On"What Is History?" 6; F. R. Ankersmit, "Historiography and Postmodernism," History and Theory 28, no. 2 (1989): 137­53; and "Reply to Professor Zagorin," History and Theory 29, no. 3 (1990): 275­96; Patrick Joyce, "History and Postmodernism," Past and Present 133 (Nov. 1991): 204­9.

⁸ See particularly Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, 1987).

⁹ See, for a good recent overview, Georg Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Hanover, N. H., 1997). For a range of both early and more recent responses to perceived threats, see, e.g., Geoffrey Elton, The Practice of History (London, 1969) and Return to Essentials (Cambridge, 1991); Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History, 3d ed. (Houndmills, U.K., 1989), and Arthur Marwick"Two Approaches to Historical Study: The Metaphysical (including "Postmodernism") and the Historical," Journal of Contemporary History 30 (1995): 5-35 (where Marwick comments that Jenkins's work "will come to be regarded as the classic of postmodernist ineptitude and contempt for accepted scholarly practice," 26; see also Hayden White, "Response to Arthur Marwick," Journal of Contemporary History 30 [1995]: 233­46); Lawrence Stone, "Notes: History and Postmodernism," Past and Present 131 (May 1991): 217­18; see also Perez Zagorin, "Historiography and Postmodernism: Reconsiderations," History and Theory 29, no. 3 (1990): 263­74.

¹⁰ See John Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 2d ed. (London, 1991). Konrad H. Jarausch's notion of "post-postmodernism" also appears to state that one can combine a (renewed rather than sustained?) commitment to a relatively traditional version of "the historian's craft" and "accepted historical methods" with a heightened awareness of language or discourse as an element of the social construction of reality, achieved through exposure to postmodernism. This would then be less a new theoretical approach than a traditional approach to a (relatively) new area.

¹¹ Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York, 1994). I discuss this more fully in my forthcoming book (see note 1 to this essay); essentially, the problem is that these authors end up with a situation in which competing approaches are either deemed to be mutually compatible (see my discussion of "perspectival paradigms"), or their adequacy can only be adjudicated on the basis of extratheoretical, political, and moral criteria.

¹² Richard Evans, In Defence of History (London, 1997). Given Evans's acute sensitivity to any almost attempt to characterize his positionexpressed in, to date, around 24,000 words on a Web site of responses to his criticsI should hasten to add that he does not restrict his argument to this point.

¹³ I do not intend here to enter into the arcane debates stimulated by E. H. Carr's confused disquisition on what turns "something which happened in the past" into a full-blown "historical fact"; see E. H. Carr, What Is History? (New York, 1961), chap. 1. Nor do I follow Hayden White's somewhat idiosyncratic distinction between "fact" and "event"; I use the word "fact" in the generally accepted sense of a singular "true" statement about some aspect of the past (which need not be what we conventionally understand as an "event"). See also Chris Lorenz, Konstruktion der Vergangenheit (Cologne, 1997).

¹⁴ In the view of journalist Anne Karpfherself the daughter of a Holocaust survivorthe only real question remaining now is whether Wilkomirski/Grosjean is "mad" or "bad": whether this is someone who, out of some deep-seated psychological insecurity, has genuinely convinced himself of a different identity or whether this is a person who is knowingly engaging in a long-term game of massive public deceit, for whatever reasons. Karpf, interviewed on "Child of the Death Camps: Truth and Lies," BBC documentary, Nov. 3, 1999.

¹⁵ Ironically, this is not least the case with Keith Jenkins himself, who certainly makes a convincing pretense of seeking to expound the arguments of Carr, Elton, Rorty, and White, as though he really believes he is giving us an empirically faithful rendering of their texts.

¹⁶ This of course relates to Robert Berkhofer's notion of "Great Story," or Jean François Lyotard's notion of "metanarrative," both of which highlight the insertion of particular facts into broader, substantive narratives not given by the individual facts (such as the "rise of liberty," "progress," "human emancipation," and so onor even a great story of "ruptures," "absences," and "discontinuities," although postmodernists might not like to agree that their disjointed view also is in essence a metanarrative based on little more than presupposition). However, given the wider theoretical connotations of a concept such as metanarrative, I decided to stick with a less specific, less loaded term to intimate the rather multifaceted problem of Geschichtsbilder and "noise" around the edges of any historical account.

¹⁷ These are rooted to some extent in different substantive pictures rather than differences in theoretical approach (discussed further in the next section), although the two often overlap.

¹⁸ This interpretation had the double benefit of both proving anti-Nazi credentialsthrough the outright condemnation of the evil regime and the criminal acts committed in the name of the German peoplewhile at the same time providing an effective historical alibi for the vast majority of Germans. For further details, see Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity After the Holocaust (Cambridge, 1999).

¹⁹ This is obviously not an appropriate place to give full references on all these controversies. For the points made in this paragraph, see Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996); and Historikerstreit (Munich, 1987). On some of the older historiography discussed in previous paragraphs, see, e.g., Friedrich Meinecke, Die deutsche Katastrophe: Betrachtungen und Erinnnerungen (Wiesbaden, 1946); Gerhard Ritter, Europa und die deutsche Frage (Munich, 1948), eg. 193­4; and further discussion in Fulbrook, German National Identity.

²⁰ It might be noted in passing that even the postmodernist appeal to notions of "rupture" and "lack of order" have political implicationsbut in the case of postmodernist refusal to impose intellectual order or pattern on what appear to be chaotic and disordered events, the practical implication is one of willful abdication from any notion of political or moral responsibility or rational exercise of active citizenship.

²¹ This is, of course, reminiscent of the story that a bumblebee, if taught the laws of aerodynamics, would discover that it is technically unable to fly. A similar problem is faced by unpracticed bicyclists in their first attempts to balance on two wheels.

²² These issues are discussed more fully in my forthcoming book on these questions (again, see note 1 to this essay). It may be worth reminding ourselves, for the time being, that we, as human beings, communicate with each other on a daily basis - sometimes with greater clarity and mutual comprehension, sometimes with obfuscation and misunderstanding - and that there is no reason, in principle, why we cannot develop appropriate, if different, forms of communication with other humans elsewhere and at other times. These modes of communication will of course be somewhat different from those involved in face-to-face encounters.

²³ I should perhaps emphasize at the outset that I refer here to something rather more general and more abstract than the specific substantive accounts implied by notions of the "Great Story" or the "metanarrative." Whereas paradigm may not be a term welcomed by all, it serves my purposes very well here. ²⁴ See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, 1962; 2d ed., 1970).

²⁵ It might be added that with the development of quantum theory, the same currently appears to be true even of natural science pace Kuhn.

²⁶ Maybe, because deviance from the master seems to be frowned on in some quarters, to give this version an aura of theoretical respectability I should call it "post-Kuhnian."

²⁷ See, e.g., Appleby, Hunt, and Jacobs, Telling the Truth About History, which presents an essentially Whig view of the history of history.

²⁸ See G. M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London, 1944; reprint, 1948), vii: "Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out. . . . [But] without social history, economic history is barren and political history is unintelligible."

²⁹ See, e.g., the essays in Ian Kershaw, ed., Weimar: Why Did Democracy Fail? (London, 1990), where very different weights are given, e.g., to structural weaknesses or individual decisions, as in the perceived degree of "leeway for maneouvre" (Handlungsspielraum) in Heinrich Brüning's deflationary economic policy that had ultimately disastrous social and political consequences.

³⁰ Although there are serious debates in the philosophy of science, on which I am not qualified to comment, a simple example will illustrate the basic point: Two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen will, when combined, produce water - whether one drinks it as a Chinese Marxist or an American capitalist. Remember the old rhyme: "Peter was a little boy; Peter is no more; for what he thought was H₂O; was H₂SO₄." Cf. also Tom Lehrer's song about the Periodic Table, which ends, "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard; And there may be many others but they haven't been discovered."

³¹ On different definitions of "nation," see Fulbrook, German National Identity.

³² Let me give some examples of the acts of faith that may be required: I either believe in "deep structures determining surface appearances" or I do not. (For the record, I do not.) I either believe in the "decentered subject" or I do not. (For the record, I do not; and actually, I must confess to a singular distaste for the kind of pretentious and antihumanistic theorizing that tends to go on in such quarters on occasion.) I either believe that analysis of individual motives and actions constitutes a complete and satisfying explanation of a course of events through a rich historical narrative, or I do not. (For the record, I do not - or at least, I do not consider this to be in any way sufficient as an explanation.) And so on.

³³ Again, this is a massive question that cannot be pursued further in this context.

³⁴ See Mary Fulbrook, "Heroes, Victims and Villains," in Reinhard Alter and Peter Monteath, eds., Rewriting the German Past: History and Identity in the New Germany (Atlantic Highlands, N.J, 1997); and Mary Fulbrook, "Aufarbeitung der DDR-Vergangenheit und 'innere Einheit' - ein Widerspruch?" in Christoph Klessmann, Hans Misselwitz, and Günter Wichert, eds., Deutsche Vergangenheiten - eine gemeinsame Herausforderung: der schwierige Umgang mit der doppelten Nachkriegsgeschichte (Berlin, 1999).

³⁵ See, e.g., Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Untergang auf Raten: unbekannte Kapitel der DDR-Geschichte (Munich, 1993); and Gerhard Besier, Der SED-Staat und die Kirche 1983-1991: Hohenflug und Absturz (Munich, 1993).

³⁶ Some of the contributions to this debate are reprinted in Rainer Eckert, Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, and Isolde Stark, eds., Hure oder Muse? Klio in der DDR: Dokumente und Materialien des Unabhängigen Historiker-Verbandes (Berlin, 1994).

³⁷ Jens Hacker, Deutsche Irrtümer: Schönfärber und Helfershelfer der SED-Diktatur im Westen (Berlin, 1992); Klaus Schroeder and Jochen Staadt, "Die diskrete Charme des Status Quo," in Klaus Schroeder, ed., Geschichte und Transformation des SED-Staates: Beiträge und Analysen (Berlin, 1994); Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat: Partei, Staat und Gesellschaft 1949­1990 (Munich, 1998).

³⁸ See, e.g., Klaus-Dietmar Henke and the work carried out under the auspices of the Hannah-Arendt-Institut für Totalitarismusforschung, Dresden (note the name).

³⁹ See particularly Hartmut Kaelble, Jürgen Kocka, and Hartmut Zwahr, Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart, 1994) and related volumes; and Richard Bessel and Ralph Jessen, eds., Die Grenzen der Diktatur: Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Göttingen, 1996).

⁴⁰ See my overview of the longer historiography in Mary Fulbrook, Interpretations of the Two Germanies (Basingstoke, U.K., 2000). A new twist to old West German battle lines has in fact been given by the East German dimension, in which those who were victims of the SED regimeor who at least wanted to represent themselves in this light to some degreealso adopted the condemnatory mode, often eclectically intermixed with overtones of social history and the history of everyday life. The work of Stefan Wolle is a case in point: See particularly Die heile Welt der Diktatur: Alltag und Herrschaft in der DDR 1971­1989 (Berlin, 1998).

⁴¹ Schroeder, SED-Staat, 632 ff.

⁴² I elaborate on these ideas in a book I am currently working on, titled Perfectly Ordinary Lives? A Social History of the GDR (forthcoming).

⁴³ It should perhaps be remembered that principles of rationing operate in all healthcare systems: It matters little, for those who are excluded or disadvantaged, whether it is because of the primacy of political privilege under communism (members of the SED always had access to the best health care, the best-equipped hospitals and sanatoria in the GDR) or for economic reasons under capitalism (private health insurance schemes, private health care in a country with an overstretched national healthcare system, etc.). From the perspective of the disadvantaged under either system, it would be quite reasonable to quote Shakespeare: "A plague on both your houses."

⁴⁴ While I was ruminating on these ideas, a young East German colleague told me that she would never be able to present such an interpretation because the predictable response would be along the lines of "well, you would say that, wouldn't you"in other words, such an analysis could be written off as yet another symptom of Ostalgie. It is also potentially open to denunciation as a tainted attempt to rescue "something good" from the GDR. It seems to me that we should take an emphatic stand against such politicized modes of evaluation, which are not relevant criteria for determining the intellectual adequacy of these approaches.

⁴⁵ At the time of writing, Konrad H. Jarausch's recent edited volume, Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York, 1999), was not available to me.

⁴⁶ Logically, if competing explanations of the same events are mutually incompatible, we must either develop shared criteria for making a choice between them or we must take refuge in pretending to celebrate "a diversity of voices"for which read a rejection of Western traditions of rationality. It may be, of course, that the latter is precisely what some postmodernists - with their explicit rejection of what they term the "modernist" or "Enlightenment project" - want us to do. But, oddly, they simultaneously engage in what on the face (usually) appears to be rational debate grounded in the evidence of what others have said on the same issues and questions.

⁴⁷ There seems little point, e.g., in seeking to resolve the theoretical issue of grand narratives by proposing the imposition of what amounts to a new substantive grand narrative of disorder, incoherence, and incomprehension as being supposedly more apposite to (or accounting better for) the realities (or evidence) of twentieth-century history.

⁴⁸ Contrary to the impression given in some quarters, it did not take the impulses of postmodernism to raise questions of "self-reflexivity" and personal bias to explicit attention: Even Geoffrey Elton had some comparatively wise words to utter on this topic more than thirty years ago (see, e.g., The Practice of History, 131ff). And it was of course Elton's chief intellectual protagonist, E. H. Carr, who said: "Before you study the history, study the historian" - rapidly followed by the arguably much more crucial injunction: "Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment" (What Is History? 54). Similarly, before postmodernists lay too much claim to coining the notion of history as a "dialogic enterprise," we should remember that it was of course E. H. Carr who defined history as "a continuing process of interaction between the historian and his facts, an unending dialog between the present and the past" (What Is History? 35), a view with which - despite the vast gulf that separated them - Elton to some extent implied agreement.

⁴⁹ Metaphors I rather like in the context of widespread discussions of history are "transparent window on," "reflection of," or "picture substituting for" the past. At least one can discuss degrees of shading and distortion in different types of glass through which one can still discern the shapes of something real, however darkly.

⁵⁰ I have, in passing, made comments in respect to both of these areas, but I do not intend to explore them any more systematically in this context.