Historical culture: On the recoding of an academic discipline - Hardcover

Cohen, Sande

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520055659 ISBN 13: 9780520055650

Publisher: University of California Press, 1986

Synopsis

In a challenge to contemporary historians and cultural critics, this book proposes that the "autonomy" and "necessity" of history, and the concepts of "historicity" and "historicality," are academic myths which block critical access to the reality of the present. For Professor Cohen, narrative history promotes a false comparability of past and present, which renders the present unknowable.

About this title

About the Author

Sande Cohen is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and teaches at the California Institute of Arts.

From the Inside Flap

"It is the first thorough semiological analysis of historical discourse, and it is the most original contribution to historiographical theory since Paul Ricoeur's Time and Narrative. Moreover, its implications extend far beyond the confines of historical studies. Literary critics and theorists and social scientists as well will have to come to terms with the uncomfortable truths revealed in this book. A brilliant achievement."—Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz

"This book forces one to come to terms with its provocative claims and to seek a better formulation of the nature and value of historical inquiry."—Dominick Lacapra, American Historical Review

"No historian who reads and comprehends this book will write in the same way again. . . Historical Culture has the potential of becoming the major historiographical work of this decade."—Mark Poster, University of California, Irvine

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1986
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520055659
• ISBN 13: 9780520055650
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 354