A postmodern reply to Perez Zagorin (Historical theory)

This article engages with the arguments forwarded by Perez Zagorin against the possible consequences of postmodernism for history as it is currently conceived of particularly in its 'proper' professional/academic form ('History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now', History and Theory 38 [1999], 1-24). In an overtly positioned response which issues from a close reading of Zagorin's text, I argue that his all-too-typical misunderstandings of postmodernism need to be 'corrected'--not, however, to make postmodernism less of a threat to 'history as we have known it', or to facilitate the assimilation of its useful elements while exorcising its 'extremes'. My 'corrections' instead forward the claim that, understood positively and integrated into those conditions of postmodernity which postmodernism variously articulates at the level of theory, such theory signals the possible 'end of history', not only in its metanarrative styles (which are already becoming increasingly implausible) but also in that particular and peculiar professional genre Zagorin takes as equivalent to history per se. And I want to argue that if this theory is understood in ways which choose not to give up (as Derrida urges us not to give up) the 'discourse of emancipation' after the failure of its first attempt in the 'experiment of modernity', then this ending can be considered 'a good thing'.