Jenkins, Keith.  Re-thinking History.  Redwood Press
Limited.  Melksham, Wiltshire: 1992.

     Keith Jenkins' Re-thinking  History is  concerned with

professional history in the post-modern context.   Writing

for students confronted, perhaps for the first time, with

the question "what is history?," Jenkins provides

suggestions for methodology and topic matter that will help

the student historian develop and control his own discourse.

This  concept of history-as-discourse provides the

underpinning for this slim (though pithy) work.  Jenkins'

awareness of the reflexive and ironic nature of historical

discourse informs his writing without implying a nihilistic

logjam further down the river.

     Jenkins is careful to make a distinction between

"evidence" and "sources  (or traces)," a distinction with

interesting ramifications for his own use of sources.  Since

traces are always-present but evidence is constructed and

position to support an argument Jenkins can use traces as

what might ordinarily be called secondary sources.  For

example, Jenkins uses the Carr-Elton debate (itself

primarily concerned with the nature of historical sources)

as evidence (primary source) for his argument that sources

and evidence ought to be identified according to his

taxonomy.  In Jenkins' system both past and present

discourse between historians becomes (or revealed to be) the

actual topic of post-modern history.1  This may not be well

received (not viewed as reliable) by those on the Elton side

of the dispute.

     True to his own recommendations, Jenkins' work is self-

conscious and reflexive; he lays out his structure and

methodology not for na‹ve clarity, but to demonstrate how a

historian can reveal his position and positioning without

being overly egregious.2  Jenkins tells us his work into

three discrete sections and what each of these sections will

accomplish.  He leads off with an introductory text, "What

history is."   He delineates between "history" and "the

past", and demonstrates the highly relative (and

relativising) nature of historical labor (8).  Jenkins goes

on to demonstrate the "epistemological fragility" of

history, citing the irreproducible vastness of the past, and

the distance between events and accounts , and noting that

history is, of necessity,  a personal construct (11).3

Continuing the subversion of the naively-understood nature

of history, Jenkins claims that history cannot be objective

and uninterested;  it is (and should be) "always for someone

(17).  He then closes this section with a comforting bit of

real-world practical information on the complicated

mechanics of researching, writing, and publishing historical

work.4

     The second section is a discussion of some more complex

topics that come up after the previous chapter defines "what

history is."  He engages questions regarding truth,

objective history, bias, empathy, sources, and "couplets",

and the history as art or science.  He dethrones the concept

of truth, identifying it as a "linguistic sign, a concept

(29)." Facts are revealed to be intrinsically unimportant:

". it is never really a matter of the facts per se but the

weight, position, combination and significance they care vis-

…-vis each other in the construction of explanations that is

at issue (33)."5  The rug is pulled out from under bias when

it is demonstrated that bias is not a meaningful term when

there are no unbiased histories (37).  Empathy is rejected

as impossible and unnecessary to historical pursuit (47).

Jenkins warns against simplistic historical tropes such as

causation-result (51) and  closes the section with a

dismissal of the "passe (55)" debate over history's status

as an art or science.

     Jenkins' third section, "Doing history in the post-

modern world"6 begins with a primer on post-modernism as it

applies to history and gives a proposal detailing how the

shift occurred from certainty to irony and uncertainty. 7 He

offers a two-part plan to "develop a democritising critical

intelligence laced with irony ." The first is  a reflexive,

self-aware methodology and "a radical historicisation of

history (69)."  The former is begun when the student is made

aware of the positioned-ness of the history with which he is

confronted, and of the decision behind the presentation of

that positioned work.  The second part of the plan is to

choose an appropriate subject matter:  in the reflexive post-

modern world this topic is historical discourse itself, both

past and present.

     Jenkins' adoption of a post-modern stance puts him in

the  Joan Wallach Scott corner of the Himmelfarb-Scott

debate.  His acceptance of the centrality of discourse, the

attendant power relationships, and dominant and marginal

discourses indicate a similar reliance on semiotics and

Foucaultian theory.  As lucid and minimalist as it is, the

slim size of the work hides as massive iceberg of theory

right below the surface.  I cannot imagine an American high

school student8 or undergraduate surviving the confrontation

undamaged, though Jenkins' work is ideal for the American

graduate student's understanding of modern semiotics-

influenced theory.  Jenkins triumphs in presenting a post-

modern, centerless view of professional history that avoids

the slipperiest slope into dark cynicism.

                                                  jason carr

_______________________________
1 After using this method to build his own argument, Jenkins
goes on to explicitly recommend this reflexive topic matter
as a topic and methodology for post-modern historians (70)
2 Sometimes phrasings detract from the reading, parsing as
affectations or mannered behaviours rather than syntactic
elements.  ("To Summarise."  (15).  Perhaps this is an
evocation of a lecturial style intended to comfort the
reader?  Perhaps mannerisms are a joke ("deep play"), an
ironic admission of the authorial voice and position?
3 One wonders if the unsuspecting reader, properly
socialized by certain and factual histories, does not
already feel terrorized and disoriented at this early stage
of the reading.
4 Does he do this to convince readers that people really
write history, no matter how futile it might seem? ("Why
bother doing it?" 25)
5 Compare this to the relationship between sources and
evidence.
6 A re-reading of this chapter title using the vernacular
"doing"  (ie, "fucking") is not without resonance,
considering the latter implication of "tweaking, distorting,
overturning, disrupting."
7 The section on market forces is particularly interesting.
Post-modern choices, whether commercial, social, or
intellectual, are made in a bawdy marketplace.  Dawkins'
meme theory directly addresses this issue.  That author
maintains that ideas function like viruses which seek to
reproduce themselves by infecting others.  Good and Bad
ideas are those which, respectively, those who survive and
those who die off.
8 I assume this is what a "sixth year college"  means.

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