History And Imagination

In the western intellectual history, until about the beginning of the nineteenth century historiography was seen as a department of literature. Since the middle of the century, with the natural sciences making great advances, the professionalization and disciplinization of historiography occurred. Generally speaking, in the last two centuries, all historians make efforts to configure the historiography into science, except for some modern writers sometimes emphasizing the literary dimension of historiography. Moreover, in this period, there remains some continuity between literary tradition and scientific tradition in historiography in that they both recognize the realism.But after the seventies of the twentieth century, with the appearance of postmodernism, there arose the"linguistic turn"and postmodernist views in the western historiography. Postmodernist philosophy of history is usually labeled as narrativist or linguistic theory of history. Through the postmodernist analysis of historical writing, its textual, narrative and rhetorical nature has been revealed, and historical writing is therefore regarded as literary invention. As the opposite of the scientific history, postmodernist history undermines the truth and objectivity of traditional history and challenges Marxism especially its historical materialism.Postmodernist philosophy of history has its advantage in that it has raised some new problems, whose being discussed will further both the historical study and Marxism. But postmodernism can also be a danger to Marxism as well as the discipline of history, and it has caused much confusion. So it is very urgent to criticize the postmodernist philosophy of history in defense of the rational history and Marxist views of history. Against the"language determinism"of postmodernism, the author advocates the Marxist language theory that will believe in the adequacy of historical writing in representing the past. In spite of the postmodernist theory of historical narrative, the author contends that historical narrative is different from fictional narrative and it can truly represent the past. In the author's opinion, historical materialism is by no means a false story and it has narrated a true story about human history. Confronted with the challenge from the postmodernist view of metaphor, the author holds that metaphor can adequately convey information from the historical reality. From the author's point of view, the famous base/upper building metaphor, which is usually considered as the foundation of historical materialism, can truly describe the dialectical relationship between economical structure and ideological structure.In the conclusion, the author maintains that history should be a combination of science and art, and a multi-disciplined historical research method should be established by transcending the narrow perspectives of literature and science. Although the postmodernist philosophy of history will deepen the historical study by displaying the subjectivity of language, it fails to provide the correct guide for the rational historical research. At the end, a Marxist language cognitive theory based on practical activity is advocated.