Genre and history/historying

Abstract

This article defines the historian's genre decision as an epistemological choice. I argue that this genre choice is between ‘reconstructionist’, ‘constructionist’, ‘deconstructionist’ or ‘postist’ orientations to the nature of history. The consequences of the historian's epistemic choice are then demonstrated in the forms of the history they produce. The conclusion is that historians do not discover the form and hence the meaning of the past. Rather they demonstrate how their epistemic assumption produces different forms of and meanings for (their) history.

Keywords::

• Hayden White
• historiography
• emplotment
• trope
• ‘the-past-as-history’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alun Munslow

Alun Munslow is UK Editor of Rethinking History. His most recent books are The Future of History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), A History of History (Routledge, 2012) and Authoring the Past (Routledge, 2012).