ABSTRACT
A theory which holds that an historical analysis of human beliefs, concepts, moralities and ways of living is the only tenable means of explaining such phenomena. Thus, an historicist rejects the belief that, for example, there are any a-historical, necessary truths concerning the construction of human identity (see also essentialism), on the grounds that such concepts are the result of historical processes particular to specific cultures and cultural forms. Historicism therefore extols a cultural relativism. Thinkers associated with the historicist approach include sociologist Karl Mannheim, who (combining an epistemological relativism and a cultural relativism) argued that all knowledge of history is a matter of relations, and that the perspective of the observer cannot be excised from historical analysis. Michel Foucault’s work, in turn, argues for the belief that the self is historically constructed, rather than a naturally produced and universal structure common to all times and cultures. This position has led to arguments about the construction of aspects of identity in relation to issues of race and gender. In the United States, Foucault’s work (as well as that of Raymond
Williams) has had an influence in initiating New Historicism, which takes as its point of departure a cross-fertilisation between theories associated with post-structuralism and Marxism. New Historicists are interested in the social and ideological effects of meaning and its construction. They offer readings of primarily literary texts which, in contrast to the non-historical, text-based approach of traditional criticism, seek to interpret them in the cultural context of their production by way of an historical methodology, and yet spurn the development of grand narratives of history or knowledge. Writers who have adopted this approach include Stephen Greenblatt, who provided a first elaboration of New Historicism in his The Forms of Power and the Power of Forms in the Renaissance (1980).
