Ambiguities of History

This book argues that history may, by definition, be an imperialist science or a quintessentially Western form of discourse. Finn Fuglestad thinks there is something profoundly ambiguous about the science or academic discipline we call history. It is the only science that is the product of its own object of study, the past, an object outside of which it cannot exist. It is also the only science that can study itself. The author argues that history has a relationship with one of the so-called civilisations of the world that borders on the incestuous. That civilisation is Western Civilisation: history has both emerged from it and helped to shape it in such a way that they are inextricably linked. History, with its Western conceptual framework, has become a defining part of Western Civilisation to the extent that the West cannot even conceive of itself being without history. But what happens when history is removed from its natural habitat? Can it be done, and has it been done, other than on the terms of the West? The real issue therefore concerns all those societies and peoples outside the West who, in accordance with the Hegelian tradition, have traditionally been labelled as 'without history'. What does it mean exactly 'not to have history?' The reconstruction of the pasts of 'peoples without history' poses a tremendous challenge to the science of history, especially at the conceptual level. Finn Fuglestad not only believes that there has been a failure to confront this challenge properly, but he also questions whether anything can really be done.