ABSTRACT
The idea of an "end" to oppositional history suggests a dominant, over-riding institutionalized way of thinking among historians and hence need no antihegemonic, "oppositional" or "alternative" history writing. Historians working in women's history and microhistory, for instance, have very diverse and quite particular social and political goals, but the wholesale embracing of all different viewpoints as equally valid relegates most of them to a powerless minority. The way such a continuous battle for difference can lead to privatization is perhaps simplest to illustrate by continuing to look at feminism. The "new" historians linked with the changing landscape of historical study can be seen as representing the best existing fit to the theoretical position elaborated by narrative constructivists. Constructivism or narrative constructivism has provided the main contemporary impetus for exploring issues of epistemological scepticism and of representational forms in history writing.
