Jenkins, p. 2:

Logical, epistemological, methodological, and ideological/discursive manifestations, but that they should be especially aware of that theorizing that currently   lives under the rubric of postmodernism. As a Reader this book is therefore compiled primarily--though obviously not exclusively--for an introductory audience. This is not really a book for the initiated, the insider. It is for newcomers. It is a Reader compiled particularly for teachers of, say, undergraduate/postgraduate students and very obviously for the students themselves; teachers who are aware of the impact postmodernism is having or could be having on historiography and who will know some of the debates in some of the journals and books wherein they are contained, and who would like (at least) to introduce this writing to their classes. Indeed, such teachers might be considering or modifying a course on "the nature of history" and would therefore like to have a convenient collection of readings to provide the basis for such an offering: a course book. In that sense this is a very teacherly text. It pulls together a cross section of influential and/or representative works both advocating and criticizing postmodern approaches to historiography. This is not to say that the readings collected here are nicely balanced, however. For although this Reader presents extracts from works as engaged in a series of oppositional debates (and thus I suppose gives a further lease of life to "binary oppositions") I hope the weight of the readings come down in favour of postmodernism. [fn 1] In this Reader I am supporting postmodern approaches in general because I think that through them historiography can be studied in ways that are both challenged and challenging: in ways which may help students lose their "theoretical innocence" It is hoped, for example, that they question the doxa which states that the "proper" study of the past is a study "for its own stake"; that they only legitimate study of the past is one which disinterestedly and objectively understands it "on its own terms," and that "proper" historians should always attempt to get to "the truth of the pas." This Reader is thus dedicated to the idea that postmodern approaches are currently amongst the most stimulating and exciting available. Such approaches enable historians to be increasingly reflexive as to what they think history is, and to explicitly position themselves within and/or against traditional discourse. In its mainstream realist, empiricist, objectivist, documentarist, lower case, liberal/plural expressions, orthodox discourse still advocates working practices now seen in the light of the postmodern, as both extremely problematical and demonstrably ideological.

            So much for some indication of the purpose of this Reader. What I [page 3] want to do in the rest of this Introduction is to explain some of the assumptions and thus the position I bring to postmodernism and history--how I read postmodernism and history--and how these are "reflected" in the organization of the Reader and the selected extracts. I have divided the rest of this Introduction into three sections to achieve this. In Section 1, I sketch in what I think is meant by the term postmodernity (the term which is the arguably the best concept under which to signify our socio-economic, political and cultural condition) and the term postmodernism (as signifying the best way of making sense of various expressions at the level of theory. I then examine the general implication of these concepts for what passes under the signs of History/history. Thus, in Section 2 (On the Collapse of the Upper Case and Collateral damage) I look at what I shall by then have explained and termed "the collapse of the upper case," arguing that the impact of this collapse is felt not only on upper case history, but indirectly on lower case "proper" history too. In Section 3 (The Organization of the Readings) I then draw up--in the light of the discussion in Section 1 and 2--what I think "metaphorically" underlies postmodern attitudes toward history/historiography, and the way in which historians' reactions to these can be put into five different categories, which explain the way in which the readings in this volume have been organized. I conclude with brief remarks on some of the limits of this Reader.

SECTION 1: ON POSTMODERNITY, POSTMODERNISM, AND HISTORY

As I have argued on another occasion, I think that we live today within the general socio-economic and political condition of postmodernity. [fn 2} I don't think we have a choice about this. For postmodernity is not an ideology or position we can choose to subscribe to or not, postmodernity is precisely our condition; it is our historical fate to be living now. As to how we should read the details of the moment--as, say, a period of post-Fordist flexible accumulation as opposed to modernist Fordism; as a period of capitalist de-differentiation; as a period of late capital; as part of a general time-space compression involving spatial reorganizations or as a combination of all of these and other factors--is subject to much debate. [fn 3] But I would like to leave such details for now, important as they are, and argue more general than the condition of postmodernity and...