Organizing the past

In his recent works on “the history question”, Jenkins (1991, 1995) has called for a more reflexive approach to the writing and reading of history. Such an approach would, he argues, serve to demystify the historical project, since histories are less mythological and mystifying to the extent that “they deliberately call overt attention to their own processes of production and explicitly indicate the constructed rather than the found nature of their referents” (1991: 68). ² This chapter is written as one partial attempt to respond to this call, drawing on the spirit of Hayden White's treatment of the textuality of history. ³