Objectivity

Hayden White

In the first half of the twentieth century the devastating effects of two world wars belied the claim that human reason would ultimately triumph.  Historians of this era came to believe that scientific rationalism was as unsound a scaffold upon which to build a narrative as the ancient theological platform that the gods beneficently governed human events.  Postmodern historians began to question the scientific methodologies employed by historians in the modern era, particularly with regard to their claim of scientific objectivity.

The prime value of objectivity that had been the backbone of history giving it its authenticity was exposed as an unreasonable assumption.  The boundary between fact and fiction became blurred as historians began to reconsider how much they had in common with writers of fiction.  Rather than trying to master the precise language of science, some postmodernist historians looked to the metaphorical language of poetry and myth to find new authenticity in the tone and diction of their writing style.  For postmodernists objectivity was unattainable because the selection and interpretation of facts depended on who was writing the story.  Objectivity was still important, but truth was relative.  

Hayden White pointed out that this approach was not new.  The distinction between history and fiction that became popular in the modern era had not always been a given. “Prior to the French Revolution, historiography was conventionally regarded as a literary art. More specifically, it was regarded as a branch of rhetoric and its ‘fictive’ nature generally recognized.”¹ His emerging position about the use of language in history was influenced by earlier French theorists as Tosh claimed. “His views on the artificiality of constructed narrative build heavily on the work of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and the deconstructionist school, which held that text and language itself is replete with the hidden assumptions and prejudices of the author and of his or her cultural background.”²

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[1] Hayden White, “The Fictions of Factual Representation,” in The Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 123.

[2] John Tosh, The Pursuit of History: Aims, Methods and New Directions in the Study of History, 6th edition. (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis, 2015), 132-3.