ABSTRACT

In this article, I reconsider the reception of two widely divergent historical interpretations of the 20^th century with vastly different implications for contemporary political action: Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes (1994) and Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992). By asking how the narrative framing of each book – apart from its historical verdict – affected reactions of reviewers in the mid-90s, I hope to shed light on what it might look like for historians to take seriously the ‘postmodern challenges’ that swept the social sciences during the last quarter of the 20^th century. Specifically, I will argue that scholars who present their work as definitive, objective historical accounts are likely to be ‘provincialized’ by reviewers sooner or later, in part because their pretensions are at odds with the presuppositions of the academic enterprise as we know it but also because they threaten the ability of society to think and act politically in instituting the future. Drawing on historians and philosophers of the 1930s, I present political enunciation as a recurrent alternative to continuing pretensions of impersonal objectivity and show that its presence does not blight but can actually enhance and legitimize one’s work.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我重新考虑的20的两种截然不同的历史诠释接待^个世纪与当代政治行动截然不同的含义：霍布斯鲍姆的极端时代（1994年）和弗朗西斯·福山的历史和最后一个人的终结（1992 ）。通过询问每本书的叙事框架（除了其历史判断）如何影响了90年代中期的审阅者的反应，我希望阐明历史学家认真对待席卷全球的“后现代挑战”是什么样子20^世纪最后一个季度的社会科学世纪。具体来说，我将辩解说，将学者们作为权威，客观历史记录发表论文的学者或多或少会被评论家“以省为基础”，部分原因是他们的自称与我们所知道的学术事业的前提相矛盾。也因为它们威胁着社会思考和采取政治行动建立未来的能力。我借鉴1930年代的历史学家和哲学家的观点，提出政治主张作为对非个人客观性持续假装的一种反复出现的选择，并表明它的存在并没有削弱，但实际上可以使一个人的工作合法化。