Thank you for your answer. Great debate. What I have been trying to point out is that more un-ideological a historical explanation seems, more closer to the reigning paradigm of the moment it generally is. The ideological hegemony is actually achieved when the ideas are not viewed as a part of an "-ism", but as "common sense". And a critical intellectual, esp. a historian, should be able to see behind that. You have actually described the problem with the descriptive, erudite history yourself. The sources do not have to be "fake" to be a testimony of a particular way of approaching reality. I am not in favour of elaborating a theory and then trying to adjust the data to it. On the other hand, the conviction that one is not writing a particular ideological interpretation of history is, IMHO, an illusion which generally leads to a conservative "common sense" historiography, which is very ideological in its consequences.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-07-24 07:14 pm (UTC)What I have been trying to point out is that more un-ideological a historical explanation seems, more closer to the reigning paradigm of the moment it generally is. The ideological hegemony is actually achieved when the ideas are not viewed as a part of an "-ism", but as "common sense". And a critical intellectual, esp. a historian, should be able to see behind that.
You have actually described the problem with the descriptive, erudite history yourself. The sources do not have to be "fake" to be a testimony of a particular way of approaching reality.
I am not in favour of elaborating a theory and then trying to adjust the data to it. On the other hand, the conviction that one is not writing a particular ideological interpretation of history is, IMHO, an illusion which generally leads to a conservative "common sense" historiography, which is very ideological in its consequences.