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NSWHistory ExtensionQuick questions
Constructing History
Quick questions on Objectivity, truth and bias for HSC History Extension
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What Is History?Show answer
(1961) and are the canonical statement of the relativist, present-minded position. Pair them with Elton's empiricist reply for the core objectivity debate. :::
What is the postmodern challenge?Show answer
At the radical end stands the postmodern or linguistic challenge, which questions whether historical writing can refer to the past at all in any straightforward way. Hayden White, in Metahistory, argued that historians impose narrative forms, tragedy, comedy, romance, satire, on the chaos of the past, so that the meaning of a history comes as much from its literary emplotment as from the evidence. Michel Foucault treated historical knowledge as bound up with power and discourse rather than neutral truth. Keith Jenkins pushed the sceptical case furthest, arguing that history is a discourse about the past, not the past itself, and that claims to objectivity are illusory.
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