ABSTRACT

"Why bother with history? Keith Jenkins has an answer. He helps us re-think the "end of history", as signalled by postmodernity. Readers may disagree with him, but he never fails to provoke debate about the future of the past."

Joanna Bourke, Professor of History, Birkbeck College

Keith Jenkins’ work on historical theory is renowned; this collection presents the essential elements of his work over the last fifteen years.

Here we see Jenkins address the difficult and complex question of defining the limits of history. The collection draws together the key pieces of his work in one handy volume, encompassing the ever controversial issue of postmodernism and history, questions on the end of history and radical history into the future. Exchanges with Perez Zagorin and Michael Coleman further illuminate the level of debate that has surrounded postmodernism, and which continues to do so. An extended introduction and abstracts which contextualize each piece, together with a foreword by Hayden White and an afterword by Alun Munslow, make this collection essential reading for all those interested in the theory and practice of history and its development over the last few decades.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

History limited

chapter |14 pages

Marxism and historical knowledge

Tony Bennett and the discursive turn

chapter |18 pages

Living in time but outside history, living in morality but outside ethics

Postmodernism and Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth

chapter |25 pages

History, the referent and narrative

Reflections on postmodernism now

chapter |14 pages

Response to a postmodernist

Or, a historian's critique of postmodernist critiques of history

chapter |17 pages

Against the historical ‘middle ground'

A reply to Michael Coleman

chapter |20 pages

Ethical responsibility and the historian

On the possible end of a history “of a certain kind”

chapter |22 pages

‘Once upon a time'

On history

chapter |10 pages

The end of the affair

On the irretrievable breakdown of history and ethics

chapter |15 pages

‘Nobody does it better'

Radical history and Hayden White

chapter |25 pages

Sande Cohen

On the verge of newness

chapter |7 pages

Afterword