ABSTRACT
This chapter shows deconstructionist history confronts each of the six principles of traditional empiricist hermeneutics under each of the four headings of epistemology, evidence, social theory and narrative form. The postmodern age of which deconstructionism is an attribute is keynoted by an enhanced and unwarranted sense of irony at the presumed disappearance of the certainties of objective knowledge, in which disciplines are viewed as historical cultural practices (meta-narratives) or canons intended not to generate truth and unbiased knowledge, but rather to sustain present or prospective dispensations of dominance and subordinance. The most rugged rebuttal of the deconstructive turn has undoubtedly come from the British Tudor historian Geoffrey Elton. The motivation behind the work of the historian is found in the questions they ask of the evidence, and it is not, as deconstructionists would have it, automatically to be associated with ideological self-indulgence.
