As for wolfshadow's second paragraph: it is a very interesting question. Why is the interpretation of the Revolution so personalized in some historiography? One would say: why is it personalized AGAIN? I think it has very much to do with giving up or marginalizing certain approaches to history, like marxist or neo-marxist analysis, social and economic history that focus on 1) a macro-level 2) wider population. This has meant mainly two things: 1) return to an old-fashionned intentionalist interpretations (Schama), often flavoured with some fasionable psychoanalytic explanations 2) cultural history and postmodern discourse analysis approach to the FR - it has produced wonderful contributions precisely to the understanding of the diffuse dynamics of action, of the revolutionary violence, of the social imagery, etc. - on the other hand, many cultural historians are quite lazy as for the search for the sources, so what's the easiest thing to do? Analyze the texts produced by the "big fish" of the Revolution.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-26 04:10 pm (UTC)1) return to an old-fashionned intentionalist interpretations (Schama), often flavoured with some fasionable psychoanalytic explanations
2) cultural history and postmodern discourse analysis approach to the FR
- it has produced wonderful contributions precisely to the understanding of the diffuse dynamics of action, of the revolutionary violence, of the social imagery, etc.
- on the other hand, many cultural historians are quite lazy as for the search for the sources, so what's the easiest thing to do? Analyze the texts produced by the "big fish" of the Revolution.