The Time of the Trace

Abstract

“History” is a term with two distinct, though intersecting, meanings. On the one hand, it is used to refer to events that happened in the past. And on the other, it designates the practice of history: the accounts we give of what we think happened in the past. The relation between these two different senses of history—the past event and the historical representation—is a vital area of debate within historiography and the philosophy of history. There are very few proponents of “naïve” historical realism within contemporary historiography: an epistemology premised upon the belief that historians can offer neutral, disinterested, objective accounts that reconstruct the past “as it really was.”¹ Due to various intellectual movements including feminist theory, it has become generally accepted that linguistic conventions, institutional contexts, and social positions inevitably inform the kinds of histories we search for and the kinds of histories we write.² The challenge to “naïve” or “objectivist” historical realism, therefore, is no longer a controversial issue. The point of debate concerns the implications of this challenge.