Name Keith Jenkins | Role Author | |
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Books Re‑thinking history, On 'What Is History?': From Car, Why History?, Refiguring History, At the Limits of History: E | ||
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Keith Jenkins (1943) is a British historiographer. Jenkins studied medieval and modern history as well as political theory at The University of Nottingham. His PHD thesis indicates a supreme interest for a career in political theory, however, a shortage of jobs found him confined to working in the history department. Like Hayden White and "postmodern" historiographers, Jenkins believes that any historian's output should be seen as a story. A work of history is as much about the historian's own world view and ideological positions as it is about past events. This means that different historians will inevitably ascribe different meaning to the same historical events. Nevertheless, all historians are constrained by the common body of historical evidence (or "artifacts"). Jenkins consistently works to undercut and move readers beyond "traditional" and "moribund" histories. He believes that history is "promiscuous" and therefore lends itself to each historians interpretation.Therefore, history aught to end, and Jenkins desires "the era or the raising of consciousness of the aporia... of the undeniability of the decision and incredulity towards metanarrative". However, despite argueing for the end of history, Jenkins also accepts the posibility of experimental histories written "beyond the limits of the academic genre". He further acknowledges that history will neither be quick nor easy to let go.
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Jenkins retired from the position of professor of historical theory at the University of Chichester in 2008. He is the author of Re-thinking History (1991), On "What is History" : From Carr and Elton to Rorty and White (1995) and edited The Postmodern History Reader (1997), the author of Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (1999). With Alun Munslow he co-authored The Nature of History Reader (2004), in which key pieces of writing by leading historians are reproduced and evaluated, with an explanation and critique of their character and assumptions. "Re-Thinking History" is his simultaenously his first and best-known book. A theme issue of the journal Rethinking History was dedicated to his work and a critical account has been published by Dr Alexander Macfie in June 2012 in Reviews in History, a publication of the Institute of Historical Research.