ABSTRACT
The chapter starts with the theories of Frank Ankersmit and finishes with the most radical postmodern historical thinker, Keith Jenkins. Frank Ankersmit’s postmodern turn in the 1980s has followed White’s claims, enriching them with epistemological arguments adopted from debates about philosophy of science. These ideas were presented and became widely known during the 1989–1990 debate with Perez Zagorin through the journal History and Theory. While White’s and Ankersmit’s theories have largely initiated the dialogue about historical theory in the last forty years to the extent that they are now widely considered authorities (although they would definitely reject this notion), the last prominent representative of postmodernism was a rebel. Keith Jenkins, the historian who has associated his name more than anyone else with the most radical perception of postmodernism in history, has tried to reach the logical ends of White’s ideas using mainly the philosophical traditions of deconstruction, postmodernism, and poststructuralism. Jenkins and some of his postmodern colleagues adopted an exceptionally radical position towards history; the last part of this chapter concentrates on the 2007 volume Manifestos for History and examines the thought-provoking but sometimes impractical sides of what can be called radical postmodern arguments.
