What is the postmodern challenge to history, and how did the linguistic turn of White, Foucault and Jenkins question whether historical writing can reach the past at all?
Students examine postmodernism and the linguistic turn in historiography, the arguments of Hayden White, Michel Foucault and Keith Jenkins, and the empiricist reaction against them
A deep dive into the postmodern challenge to history and the linguistic turn. Hayden White on narrative emplotment, Foucault on power and discourse, Keith Jenkins on history as a discourse about the past, and the fierce empiricist reaction from Evans and Windschuttle.
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What this dot point is asking
This dot point asks you to explain the most radical challenge in modern historiography: the postmodern argument that historical writing cannot give straightforward, objective access to the past because it is shaped by language, narrative and power. The label for this challenge is the linguistic turn. You must be able to set out three positions, Hayden White on narrative, Michel Foucault on power and discourse, and Keith Jenkins on history as discourse, and then explain the angry empiricist reaction they provoked. The dot point rewards students who can take the postmodern case seriously as an argument rather than dismissing it, and who can then judge how far it goes.
The answer
The linguistic turn is the shift, from the 1970s, toward seeing language not as a transparent medium that simply describes reality but as something that shapes and constitutes our knowledge. Applied to history, it raises an unsettling question: if historical writing is made of language and narrative, how can it claim to represent a past that is gone and accessible only through texts? Postmodern historiography presses this question to the point of asking whether the distinction between history and fiction can be sustained at all. It is the radical end of the objectivity debate.
Hayden White and emplotment
Hayden White, in Metahistory, argued that historians do not find stories in the past; they impose them. The same set of facts can be emplotted, shaped into a narrative structure, as tragedy, comedy, romance or satire, and the choice of form is a literary and even ideological decision that the evidence does not dictate. The meaning of a history, on this view, comes as much from its narrative form as from the facts it contains. White did not deny that the past happened, but he denied that its meaning is simply read off the evidence; meaning is made in the writing.
Foucault on power and discourse
Michel Foucault approached the past as a study of discourse and power. In works such as Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization, he argued that what a society accepts as truth, including historical truth, is produced by relations of power and structures of knowledge, not discovered neutrally. Categories we treat as natural, the madman, the criminal, the normal, have histories and serve power. For Foucault the historian's task is to expose how knowledge and power constitute each other, which makes the claim to neutral, objective history itself an exercise of power.
Jenkins and the sceptical edge
Keith Jenkins pushed the case furthest. In Re-thinking History he argued bluntly that history is a discourse about the past, not the past itself, and that the past and history are different things: the past has gone, and history is the always-provisional, perspective-laden construction historians make of it. On this view claims to objectivity are illusions, and every history serves someone's present purposes.
The empiricist reaction
The challenge provoked fierce resistance. Richard Evans, in In Defence of History, conceded that historians select and narrate but insisted that evidence still genuinely constrains what can be truthfully said, so that not all interpretations are equal and some are simply false. Geoffrey Elton treated postmodernism as a threat to the discipline, and Keith Windschuttle, in The Killing of History, argued that relativism, if taken seriously, would make Holocaust denial as legitimate as any other reading, which he treated as a reductio that refutes it. The Holocaust became the standard test case: its denial is not an interpretation but a falsehood the evidence refutes.
Using this in an answer
The strong move is to present the postmodern argument at full strength, White's emplotment, Foucault's power, Jenkins's discourse, then weigh it against the empiricist reply rather than picking a side glibly. Most defensible historians absorb the insight, that narrative and perspective shape every history, while resisting the conclusion that evidence does not constrain truth. Use the Holocaust test case to show where you draw the line. Demonstrating that you can hold the radical challenge and its limits in tension is exactly the higher-order judgement the exam prizes.
Exam-style practice questions
Practice questions written in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, with worked answer explainers. The year tag is the paper they imitate, not the source.
2021 HSCTo what extent can historians be certain about the past? Integrate Sources A and B and at least ONE other source throughout your argument. (Source A: Katie Engelhart, 'History on Trial', BBC History Magazine, 2013. Source B: Richard J. Evans, in the Great Debate on History and Postmodernism, University of New South Wales, 2002.)Show worked answer →
This 25 mark Section I question is built on the postmodernism debate: Source B is Richard Evans speaking in the "Great Debate on History and Postmodernism", the empiricist reaction this dot point centres on. A band 6 answer (21 to 25) gives a critical, sustained judgement and integrates both sources plus at least one other.
- Use Evans as the anti-postmodernist
- Evans argues "if there is such a thing as historical untruth, there must also be such a thing as historical truth", and that the objective historian tests ideas "against the evidence". This is precisely his rebuttal to the postmodern claim that history cannot reach the past - the perfect source to frame the linguistic-turn debate.
- Bring in the postmodern challenge
- For the top band add the other side: Hayden White on narrative emplotment, Keith Jenkins on history as "a discourse about the past", or Foucault on power and discourse. Set their scepticism about historical certainty against Engelhart's courtroom doubt and Evans's empiricism.
- Judgement
- Argue a defensible position: the linguistic turn rightly shows history is constructed and language-bound, yet Evans's reply holds that evidence still disciplines interpretation, so historians can be certain enough to reject demonstrable forgery even if not certain absolutely. Sustain this throughout.
Practice questions
Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.
foundation3 marksDefine the 'linguistic turn' in historiography, and name the decade from which it is usually dated.Show worked solution →
Definition (2 marks). The linguistic turn is the shift toward seeing language not as a transparent medium that simply describes reality but as something that shapes and constitutes our knowledge; applied to history, it questions whether historical writing, made of language and narrative, can give straightforward access to a past that is gone.
Decade (1 mark). From the 1970s.
Marking spine: an accurate definition naming language as constitutive rather than transparent (2), the correct decade (1). A definition that only says "postmodernism questioned history" without the language/narrative mechanism loses a mark.
foundation4 marksIdentify Hayden White's central claim about historical narrative, and name the text in which he made it.Show worked solution →
Claim (3 marks). Hayden White argued that historians do not find stories already present in the past; they impose them. The same set of facts can be emplotted, shaped into a narrative structure, as tragedy, comedy, romance or satire, and this choice of literary form is not dictated by the evidence itself.
Text (1 mark). Metahistory.
Marking spine: the emplotment mechanism stated correctly (2), at least one of the four narrative modes named (1), the text named (1). Saying only "White thought history is like literature" without emplotment loses marks.
core6 marksThe following ExamExplained-authored extract paraphrases a claim from the postmodern debate: 'Two historians can examine the identical body of surviving evidence and produce entirely different, and equally coherent, accounts, because the shape of a narrative is supplied by the historian's literary choices, not read directly off the documents.' Identify which historian's position this most closely paraphrases, and explain ONE aspect of his broader argument that this extract does not capture.Show worked solution →
A 6-mark stimulus question rewards correctly identifying the position (2 to 3 marks) and then showing depth of knowledge beyond the extract (3 to 4 marks).
Identification (about 3 marks). This paraphrases Hayden White's argument in Metahistory that historians emplot the same facts into different narrative structures, tragedy, comedy, romance or satire, and that this choice is a literary and ideological decision the evidence does not dictate.
What the extract omits (about 3 marks). The extract captures White's point that narrative form is not read directly off the evidence, but it does not capture that White still accepted the past really happened; his claim is about how MEANING is made in the writing, not that the underlying events are invented or that all four narrative modes are equally appropriate to any given evidence base. A full account of White's position needs this distinction to avoid the common misreading that postmodernism denies the past occurred.
Marking spine: White correctly identified with the concept of emplotment named (3), an accurate account of what the extract leaves out, specifically that White accepted the past's reality and was concerned with meaning-making, not event-denial (3).
core6 marksExplain Michel Foucault's argument that historical truth is produced by power and discourse, using ONE named work as evidence.Show worked solution →
A 6-mark 'explain' needs the mechanism (how power and discourse produce truth), not just a description of Foucault's topic.
The argument (about 4 marks). Foucault approached the past as a study of discourse and power, arguing that what a society accepts as truth, including historical truth, is produced by relations of power and structures of knowledge rather than discovered neutrally by an objective observer. Categories treated as natural, such as the madman or the criminal, have their own histories and serve the interests of power; the historian's task, on this view, is to expose how knowledge and power constitute each other, which makes the very claim to neutral, objective history an exercise of power rather than an escape from it.
Named work (2 marks). Discipline and Punish (on the history of the prison and disciplinary power) or Madness and Civilization (on the history of madness), either accepted.
Marking spine: the power/knowledge mechanism explained (3), the point that historical truth-claims are themselves an exercise of power (1), a correctly named Foucault text (2). Naming Foucault with no mechanism, or naming the wrong historian's work, caps the response low.
core5 marksDistinguish Keith Jenkins's distinction between 'the past' and 'history', and explain why he treats claims to historical objectivity as illusions.Show worked solution →
The distinction (about 3 marks). Jenkins, in Re-thinking History, argued that the past and history are different things: the past has already happened and is gone; history is the always-provisional, perspective-laden construction that historians make of it, described as "a discourse about the past" rather than the past itself.
Why objectivity is an illusion for Jenkins (about 2 marks). Because history is a discourse, a construction made in language from the historian's own present standpoint, it cannot be a neutral window onto the gone-and-unrecoverable past; every account, for Jenkins, therefore serves someone's present purposes rather than simply reporting what happened.
Marking spine: the past/history distinction stated accurately (3), the reasoning linking discourse to the impossibility of neutral objectivity (2). Confusing 'the past' and 'history' as synonyms misses the entire basis of Jenkins's argument.
exam8 marksEvaluate the empiricist reaction to postmodern historiography. Integrate reference to Richard Evans and Keith Windschuttle.Show worked solution →
An 8-mark 'evaluate' needs a sustained judgement on how effective the empiricist reply is, with both named historians and specific evidence, not a description of who said what.
Band-6 plan.
Thesis: The empiricist reaction, led by Evans and Windschuttle, does not refute the postmodern insight that history is written and perspective-laden, but it successfully establishes that evidence still constrains which accounts can be truthfully sustained, which is enough to preserve a meaningful distinction between history and fabrication.
Argument 1, Evans and the evidentiary constraint. In In Defence of History, Evans concedes that historians select and narrate, absorbing part of the linguistic-turn insight, but insists that evidence genuinely disciplines interpretation, so that not all readings of the past are equally valid and some are simply false; his position in the 2002 "Great Debate on History and Postmodernism" that "if there is such a thing as historical untruth, there must also be such a thing as historical truth" makes this a logical as well as an empirical claim.
Argument 2, Windschuttle's reductio via Holocaust denial. In The Killing of History, Windschuttle argued that if relativism were taken to its logical conclusion, Holocaust denial would have to be treated as merely one interpretation among others equal to any historian's account, which he presents as an unacceptable consequence that refutes the relativist premise; the Holocaust functions across the debate as the standard limit case precisely because its denial is not a rival interpretation but a claim the evidence demonstrably refutes.
Counter-weight and judgement. The empiricist reaction is less successful at refuting White's and Foucault's subtler claims, that narrative FORM and the categories historians use are shaped by literary and power-laden choices the evidence alone cannot dictate, since Evans and Windschuttle focus mainly on defending factual accuracy rather than engaging fully with how meaning is constructed in the writing. On balance, the empiricist reaction succeeds in preserving a workable line between demonstrable falsehood and legitimate interpretive disagreement, without fully answering the linguistic turn's point about the construction of narrative meaning.
Marker's note: reward Evans and Windschuttle each used with specific, named evidence (the Evans quotation/debate, the Holocaust reductio), an explicit judgement on how FAR the empiricist reply succeeds, and a concession of what it does not fully answer (the narrative-construction point). A response that only summarises both sides without a judgement stays mid-band.
exam10 marksTo what extent does the linguistic turn undermine the possibility of objective historical knowledge? Integrate Hayden White, Michel Foucault and Keith Jenkins throughout your response.Show worked solution →
A 10-mark extended response needs sustained integration of all three postmodern figures with a clear extent-judgement, weighed against the empiricist reply, not three separate mini-summaries.
Band-6 plan.
Thesis: The linguistic turn undermines the strong, naive version of objectivity, the idea that a historian can simply read meaning and narrative form directly off the evidence, but it does not undermine the weaker, defensible claim that evidence still constrains which accounts can be truthfully sustained.
Argument 1, White and the construction of narrative meaning. White's Metahistory shows that the same facts can be emplotted as tragedy, comedy, romance or satire, and that this choice of form, not the evidence, supplies much of a history's meaning, which undermines the idea that a historian's narrative is simply "found" in the sources.
Argument 2, Foucault and the power behind truth-claims. Foucault's account of discourse and power, developed across Discipline and Punish and Madness and Civilization, extends the challenge further, arguing that even the categories historians use (the criminal, the mad, the normal) are produced by power/knowledge relations rather than discovered neutrally, so that the claim to objective historical truth is itself an exercise of power.
Argument 3, Jenkins and the radical conclusion. Jenkins, in Re-thinking History, pushes furthest, distinguishing the past (gone, unrecoverable) from history (a present-day discourse about the past), concluding that claims to historical objectivity are illusions and that every history serves present purposes.
Counter-weight and judgement. Evans's reply, that "if there is such a thing as historical untruth, there must also be such a thing as historical truth", and Windschuttle's Holocaust-denial reductio, show that evidence still disciplines what can be truthfully claimed, so total scepticism about historical knowledge is not sustainable; taken together, the linguistic turn undermines naive objectivity (the idea of a transparent window onto the past) to a significant extent, but it does not undermine the weaker, defensible claim that evidence still rules out demonstrably false accounts, which is enough for history to remain a distinct discipline from fiction.
Marker's note: at the top band expect all three postmodern figures integrated with a named text/concept each (White's emplotment/Metahistory, Foucault's power-knowledge/Discipline and Punish, Jenkins's past-versus-history/Re-thinking History), the empiricist reply used as a genuine counter-weight rather than an afterthought, and an explicit extent-judgement (undermines naive but not defensible objectivity) stated in the introduction and conclusion.