A possible (common-sense) defence of (my) history: A response to Keith Jenkins

Abstract

In this article, by way of a critique of the arguments advanced by Keith Jenkins in his article, ‘“Nobody does it better”: Radical history and Hayden White’, I attempt a (common-sense) defence of conventional (closed, empirical/epistemologically striving) history, as traditionally practised. Where Jenkins suggests a number of necessary conditions for the production of a radical (non-)history, I suggest a number of necessary conditions for the possibility of a conventional history; and where Jenkins lists a number of reasons why the conditions of possibility of a conventional history cannot ever be met, I list a number of reasons why they can be met. My conclusion is that history, seen mainly as a subject involved with the recovery of meaning from dead text, is possible; although the possibility of a recovery of meaning from dead text will inevitably be limited by the constraints imposed by the use of language.