Historical Teleologies in the Modern World, ed. Henning Trüper, Dipesh Chakrabarty and Sanjay Subrahmanyam

Abstract

Everyone knows the sort of history book that is lionised in America, sanctified in Europe and ignored in Oxford. The process often costs British historiography dear. Were a study of teleologies to go the same way, then readers of the English Historical Review might reasonably sense such a cost because the subject is one of great importance, not only to historical theory but to various enquiries in the human sciences. Teleology (the imposition of a telos or guiding purpose into what Mandelbaum used to call ‘directional narratives’, so that the story bestows meaning on its events by placing them on a journey from a known past to an anticipated future), supplies a test-case in historical hygiene. Concerns about the whig understanding of history or Marxist dialectics often begin, for example, by identifying this contamination. A systematic and structured treatment of the phenomenon that silhouetted its presence and advanced possible alternatives would undoubtedly bear fruit. A pity, then, that this volume fails in both system and structure. By so doing, it misses a significant opportunity.