ABSTRACT
Hayden White is a professor of the History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the only postmodernist considered who works within the academic discipline of history. White wrote traditional works of intellectual history such as The Emergence of Liberal Humanism early in his career. White undertakes a critique similar to that of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. According to White, historians display an unfounded confidence in a conventional form of written expression—the narrative. White presents contemporary debates between postmodernism and traditional historiography which reflect the larger-scale epistemological crisis of “representation.” White divulges the pretense to neutrality of the ironic narrative, and through this endeavor, hopes to liberate history from the gilded cage of narrativity. White suggests that science has been more flexible in its approach to “normative” procedure, and more importantly, willing to reflect upon its own vocabulary.
