ABSTRACT
This paper is a reply to Michael Coleman’s recent article in American Studies in Scandinavia (‘Response to a Postmodernist: Or, a Historian’s Critique of Postmodernist Critiques of History’)1 which, because he’s raising in it both general arguments against the (apparent) claims of postmodern historians as well as specific instances of where I personally seem to have got things hopelessly wrong, is in two parts. In the first I want to address just a few of the more typical arguments which keep appearing against postmodern historians and ‘history theorists’ which, at this point, ought to come to a halt; they just don’t have any purchase any more (if they ever did!). This is not because the postmodernists targeted are no longer paying attention (though most have probably got better things to do than rebut generally ill-informed, swingeing critiques), nor is it because the exchanges which actually do take place have become repetitive, familiar and unproductive (though there may be an element of this as the two ‘sides’ are said to talk past each other), but because one ‘side’ of the debate – the postmodern – has won the day, is so convincing that the location and the terms of any remaining worthwhile discussion about the ‘nature of history today’ can only now take place within the framework(s) established by postmodernists and not between ‘modernists and postmodernists’. If only empirically and epistemologically minded historians, if only Coleman had noticed, they/he would have realised that the reason they may feel they’re talking to themselves is because the ‘debates’ have moved on, leaving them behind. And in the second part of this paper, as already suggested, I want to deal directly with Coleman’s specific complaints against me insofar as they are not effectively covered in the general response I will have made in the first.
