ABSTRACT
The shores of modern British social history have recently been lapped by the tides of postmodernism. During the course of a fierce and extensive theoretical and historiographical debate about the foundational assumptions of social history, an invitation has been issued to shake off the conservative wrap of positivism and ‘engage with contemporary discourse on modernity’. The chapter explores the claims that postmodernism provides historians with a useful discourse. It contextualizes postmodernism historically because this has important implications for its posture towards history and its usefulness as a source of historical categorization. The chapter discusses its reasoning procedures as an essential way of evaluating the intellectual armoury and vocabulary of intellectual exchange that postmodernism seeks to deploy. It explores the implications for the writing of history that is implied by postmodernist lines of thought. The chapter addresses the strength of postmodernist epistemology and the persuasiveness of its theorization.
