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From History to Theory describes major changes in the conceptual
language of the humanities, particularly in the discourse of
history. In seven beautifully written, closely related essays,
Kerwin Lee Klein traces the development of academic vocabularies
through the dynamically shifting cultural, political, and
linguistic landscapes of the twentieth century. He considers the
rise and fall of "philosophy of history" and discusses past
attempts to imbue historical discourse with scientific precision.
He explores the development of the "meta-narrative" and the
post-Marxist view of history and shows how the present resurgence
of old words--such as "memory"--in new contexts is providing a way
to address marginalized peoples. In analyzing linguistic changes in
the North American academy, From History to Theory innovatively
ties semantic shifts in academic discourse to key trends in
American society, culture, and politics.
The American frontier, a potent symbol since Europeans first
stepped ashore on North America, serves as the touchstone for
Kerwin Klein's analysis of the narrating of history. Klein explores
the traditions through which historians, philosophers,
anthropologists, and literary critics have understood the story of
America's origin and the way those understandings have shaped and
been shaped by changing conceptions of history. The American West
was once the frontier space where migrating Europe collided with
Native America, where the historical civilizations of the Old World
met the nonhistorical wilds of the New. It was not only the
cultural combat zone where American democracy was forged but also
the ragged edge of History itself, where historical and
nonhistorical defied and defined each other. Klein maintains that
the idea of a collision between people with and without history
still dominates public memory. But the collision, he believes,
resounds even more powerfully in the historical imagination, which
creates conflicts between narration and knowledge and carries them
into the language used to describe the American frontier. In
Klein's words, "We remain obscurely entangled in philosophies of
history we no longer profess, and the very idea of 'America'
balances on history's shifting frontiers."
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