This document outlines different approaches to historiography and proposes an "amodern" alternative. It describes modern historiography as seeking a single, objective history, while postmodernism sees multiple subjective histories. The author argues this leads to relativism or a lack of ontology. Amodern historiography views history as enacted in social practices, with multiple interconnected versions shaped by relations between actors. It emphasizes that enactments of the past in the present have real ontological consequences.

1. ANTi-History: Toward Amodern Histories
Gabrielle Durepos
Mount Saint Vincent University
x
gabrielle.durepos@msvu.ca
www.gabrielledurepos.com
August 5, 2014
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2. Objectives
1. Answer the call for a Critical Historic Turn in MOS
– Call for a critical historic turn was to draw on postmodernism
– But… postmodern historiographers forecast an end of history
2. Describe modern and postmodern historiography in
MOS & outline their limitations
3. Propose an alternative: amodern historiography
– Which emphasizes history as performed everyday actors’
practices

3. Critical Historic Turn in MOS
• The call is the outcome of the identification of a problem,
MOS is:
• Presentist & Universalist
• Ahistorical & Non-contextual
• Called for is:
– Critical and ethical reflection in the craft of MOS
– More contextualized & historicized research
– Engagement with postmodern historiography
– The need for alternative (critical) historical methods & styles
of writing

4. MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: ontology & epistemology
• Realist ontology
– Phenomena and the past exist outside of our mental appreciation of it
and await discovery
• Positivist epistemology
– It is possible and desirable to accurately represent the past as it
happened
– The past is the same as history

5. MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:
the nature of representations of the past as history
SINGULAR
– The objective is to move
toward one complete and
uncontested version of the
past or history by continually
seeking to uncover new
evidence and adding it to the
existing stock of knowledge
– We do history by verifying it
against the past and its traces

6. MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: relationship of past and history
• Real
– History is an accurate portrayal of the past

7. POSTMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: ontology & epistemology
• Emphasis on epistemology
– Our worldview (of the past) is mediated through our knowledge of it
• Ontology is collapsed into epistemology
– The past is an absent present
• It does not exist in an ontological-realist form
– Objects or events of the past are constructed in the mind of the
subject-knower
– All we have is knowledge of the past which is plural due to the various
epistemological choices of representation available to the historian
– History is knowledge of the past
• This is an outcome of the community and mind of the historian

8. POSTMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:
the nature of representations of the past as history
PLURAL
• Historians, by virtue of their
epistemological perspective create
different stories of the past
– Differences in histories are explained
due to the epistemological choice of the
historian
– Histories become what the historian
presents as such
– Emphasis is on the knowledge
constructed by the historian
(perspective) but not the object of
study itself (past-as-history)
• There are many – PLURAL - histories
• The historian is to be reflexive and
transparent as to how their
epistemological grounding influences
the nature of the (hi)story told

9. POSTMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:
relationship of past and history
• Relative
– One past, but plural histories
– Representations of the past-as-history are products of the
historian
• In this way they are detached from their constitutive practices
– There are many somewhat unrelated narratives of the past
that co-exist or compete
• There is little emphasis on evaluating the relationship between the
representations
– On what grounds do we stand to evaluate their merits?

10. The end of history?
• Past modern history?
– Production of single, truthful
history is hegemonic
– Practice teaches us that there are
always many versions of the past
• Past postmodern history?
– Problems of relativism &
perspectivalism
– History is understood as knowledge
of the past
• Too much emphasis on
epistemological dimension of history
• What about it’s ontological
consequences?
If reconstructions of the past-as-history are to occur in the
present, why do we need history at all?
Is it time to consider how the past is (re)assembed daily in
our practices and the consequences of doing so?

11. AMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY: ontology & epistemology
• The social past is performed as history in practices today
– These performances constitute reality & have ontological consequences
• Practices are enactive of the socio-past
– History is what actors perform (in practice) as they act or talk in light of it
• Enactments of the past-as-history occur at the site of relations of (in-
between) actors
– Enactments take different shapes in different sets of relations
• Knowledge situated in practices is enactive
– It shapes how we see the past-as-history
– This is to stress the ontological consequences of knowledge of the past
which reside in practice

12. AMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:
the nature of representations of the past as history
MULTIPLE
• The focus is on practice(s)
• One phenomenon may be enacted
differently in varyingly situated
practices and different sets of
relations
• Not singular: not one history
• Not plural: not different unrelated
stories of the past
• Multiple histories: different versions
of the same histories
– Which take their shape in practice
– And are inter-connected
– More than one but less than many!

13. AMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY:
relationship of past and history
• Relational
– Enactments of the past-as-history occur in the
relations of actors
• In-between actors… as they form networks to interpret
the past
– The site in-between actors is one where:
• The past can be translated (or take shape) as any
version of history
• Resides potentiality and liberation

14. Conclusions
• Objective was to review two conditions in which history may be
undertaken:
– Modern
– Postmodern
– And propose a third… Amodern
• Latour (2005) suggests that we should never start our analyses by
assuming as given what we wish for them to show
– Objective was to feature an amodern condition for doing history
– Instead of starting off by assuming ANTi-History, I end with it
– ANTi-History is the methodological approach associated with an
amodern condition
Contact me:
gabrielle.durepos@msvu.ca
www.gabrielledurepos.com