The history of historiography and the challenge of the linguistic turn
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15848/hh.v0i17.926Keywords:
History of historiography, Linguistic turn, Historical knowledgeAbstract
This exposition examines the relationship between the history of historiography and the linguistic turn, the latter being considered a challenge to the former. At first we attempt to define the meaning of “the viewpoint of the general history of historiography” by taking the history of historiography in its entirety from the Greeks to the present, thereby undermining the credibility of self-proclaimed “ruptures”, “epistemological cuts”, “revolutions”, “mutations” and “new histories” in the recent developments of the general history of historiography, and thus questioning the “scientific” status of the discourse history. In the second section we try to depict the linguistic turn and the nature of the “challenge” it poses to the history of historiography. In the third section, with examples from Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Peter Englund, we qualify the role of Hayden White in the formulation of this challenge and its consequences for the practice of the discourse history. The conclusion resumes the arguments of Siegfried Kracauer, Arnaldo Momigliano, Johan Huizinga, Carlo Ginzburg and Hayden White (his in 2011), which combine to reinforce the importance of considering the entirety of the general history of historiography when dealing with the discourse history, conceived as part of an “intermediate domain” that aspires to a scientific status (the commitment to the truth), but which cannot break free from the construction of collective memory or the settling of accounts with the past, hence the approximate nature of historical knowledge.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Authors hold the copyrights to the manuscripts submitted. História da Historiografia: International Journal for Theory and History of Historiography is authorized to publish the aforementioned text. Authors are solely responsible for data, concepts and opinions presented in the papers, along with the accuracy of document and bibliographical references.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.