Reconstructing Historicism: The Historiographical Interventions of White and Ankersmit

Renu Pandey

Reconstructing Historicism: The Historiographical Interventions of White and Ankersmit

Renu Pandey

Affiliations:

Assistant Professor, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, U.P., INDIA

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Historicism is an intellectual movement emphasizing the contextualization of historical texts and data. The term ‘Historicism’ has interacted with philosophical concepts such as naturalism, relativism, universalism, metaphysics, and hermeneutics. This term is closely linked to historiographical concepts such as the historian's role, contextualization, narrative, and historical representation. Though debates over the intersections of Historicism and history writing have continued since the age of Vico and Herder. However, during the last quarter of the twentieth century, two philosophers, Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, deliberated a lot on the various issues and intricacies of Historicism. This paper will discuss the ideas of the two philosophers and delve into their intellectual pursuit of Historicism, linking history to philosophy and, in turn, to philosophical history. This work will also critically analyze the thoughts of White and Ankersmit on topics such as the use of narratives and the past, Historicism and Postmodernism, and the role of the historian, among others, to establish the eternal relationship between Historicism and the philosophy of history.

Keywords:
Contextualism, Relativism, Narrativism, Philosophical inquiry, Postmodernism

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