The Killing of History

Interesting polemic denouncing the damage caused to history as a discipline by tendencies more interested in promoting a given discourse than in studying the facts (mainly postmodernism and poststructuralism). Windschuttle not only responds adequately to his arguments but also exposes them with the clarity that the refuted rarely practice. Although several years have passed since its initial publication, its validity only has increased (Specially with the aggravation of the problem in these post-truth times)

Keith Windschuttle takes a number of modern fads in history, most descended from literary theory, and attempts to show how incoherent and damaging they are to the discipline of history. Windschuttle takes on semiotics, structuralism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, relativism, and so on. He does this primarily by attacking the faulty research of these practitioners, their illogical conclusions, then he tries to trounce their philosophical underpinnings.

All in all, he does a fine job, though the relativists and postmodernists he attacks will state that the "logic" he uses is provincial and Western, thus, not to be trusted. I have to deal with such ideas all the time in pursuing my Ph.D. in history. People like Foucault and Said are show more worshiped mainly because they attack the establishment, which means anything Western, Christian, conservative, or capitalist (four things which define me). Windschuttle makes many arguments against these people, which I will not go into here.

To allay fears that this is not, as many on Amazon claim, just a "right-wing" screed or hit piece, he attacks one of the beloved figures in "right-wing" historiography: Fukuyama. Why? Fukuyama used Marx's beloved Hegel to attack Marx, but Windschuttle hates any grand over-arching theory, Hegel included, even when supportive of the West.

A problem, though, Windschuttle does not acknowledge that these theorists, however odious, do bring something to the table. Postmodernists and structuralists do make the valid point that everybody, no matter how hard they try, is biased. It is only when they use this point to attack everything that they hate that it becomes silly. It is when they attack the historical heroes of the past, say Washington, turning him from a demi-god to nothing but pure evil. It is when they, as an example J. B. Harley, "cartographic postmodernist," goes about highlighting the motes in other eyes and ignoring the beams in his own. (Ah, how oppressive and culturally biased of me, so typically Western, to allude to the Gospels!) But Windschuttle too does not offer any philosophy in exchange for the ones he attacks, and seems to intimate that an objective, factual history is possible. While I think, in some ways, it can be possible, he offers no philosophical reasoning behind it.

Thus, four stars. Still, I believe that this is an important book, and should be assigned in historical methods courses alongside books by the like of Keith Jenkins, and others. show less

Post-Modernism is once again the culprit in the destruction of standards as they apply to the study and writing of history. Highly critical of the whole enterprise of literary theory and how its incoherence has caused irreparable damage to western culture.

There are many excesses and absurdities in postmodern theory, as there are in any other academic movement or endeavor. However, Windshuttle in this book merely shows himself either disingenuous or incapable of reading. If you were to follow his prescriptions to their logical extent, no historian's work would ever be acceptable.

Gives a very clear explanation of all the post-modern theories of culture and history, and explains why their influence on historians has effectively destroyed objective historical research and writing.
Although written 20 years ago, the text is not dated; if anything, it is even more applicable.
Describes semiotics, structuralism, ethnohistory, poststructuralism, anti-humanism, post-history, postmodernism, relativism, hermeneutics, induction.
For those not inclined to wade through the weeds, chapter 7 is the most important.
Note to self: page 144 relates to a post on Neoneocon. com of 2017-11-06.

A critique of social and historical theory written from the right.

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