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4 - Evolution, rupture, and periodization

from Part I - Historiography, method, and themes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
Michael Lang
Edited by
David Christian
David Christian
Affiliation:
Macquarie University, Sydney
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Summary

This chapter sets world historical study within a larger history of periodization, showing the relation between its methodological difficulties and its immense historiographical significance. It starts with the systemization of disciplinary practice in Ranke, who inherited from the eighteenth century a paradox concerning global time. Starting with Heidegger through postmodernism and to the present, the critique of historical thought has sought a basis in distinct horizons of meaning, and therefore rupture. The limits of both return to us today the antinomy of history. The nineteenth-century institutionalization of historical thought included as a matter of course Ranke's critique of philosophical generalization. For nearly a century, world history has commonly examined its topics with methods derived from evolutionary theory. Postcolonial history jolted powerfully at the discipline's nationalist, Eurocentric, and teleological defaults. As universal chronology, historiography dislodges the idealization of "primordial" community. Contrary to Heidegger's characterization, however, historiography also simultaneously localizes and differentiates.

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The Cambridge World History , pp. 84 - 109
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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