Postmodernism R.I.P. says AHA president

The Chronicle News Blog reports that Gabrielle M. Spiegel, President of the American Historical Association, declared postmodernism moribund.

Speigel, a professor of history at the Johns Hopkins University and “a well-known theorist who has written extensively about how language has shaped the writing of history, noted that ‘we all sense this profound change has run its course.'”

“The whole influence of poststructuralist and postmodernist historiography is receding,” she said. “What is worth saving?”

The Chronicle noted that: “Starting in the mid-1960s, scholars in history — and throughout the humanities — began to focus on how coded meanings in language affect the way that people experience, and understand, their lives. As the linguistic turn moved through semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, and deconstruction, scholars increasingly began to emphasize the multiple layers in language, and the instability of meaning. By the late 1980s, Ms. Spiegel noted, many historians were calling the impact of postmodernism “an epistemological crisis” that undermined traditional ideas of causation and action in history.”

So it’s back to the real world for historians, carrying a few insights from postmodernism…education scholars will likely discover the error of postmodern their pomo ways and return to the real world in the next decade or two.

Follow