Essay - Every Piece of Historical Description Actually Describes for the Reader...

Every piece of historical description actually describes for the reader two different sets of history. Each ***** text discloses to the reader something of what happened during the era under discussion. But it also reveals at least as much about ***** era in which the history w***** written. What is considered significant enough to mention, what events are seen as causative rather than incidental, who are the true villains - all of these things may change from one gen*****tion's h*****torical account to that of the next, and not because new facts have come to light.

The authors ***** consideration here ask us to reconsider the nature of history in general as well as to reexamine the particular places and times that ********** ***** writing *****. They seek ***** *****e substitute key theoretical concepts ***** the traditional chronological structure of history, asking us to consider not what came after what but who had power over whom, and how these social relationships are the causative elements of (each) history.

Central to ***** work of the five historians examine here is the category ***** gender. Scott writes most analytically about it but each of the o*****r four (even if more implic*****ly) incorporate ***** depend upon her definition of ***** as something that ***** almost entirely ***** but not quite entirely - divorced from biological sex. Gender is for each of these authors a shorthand way that "natives" ***** of dividing the world into categories of power. And while in most cases the gendered ***** ***** woman is analogous to the category of powerless, the worlds investigated here demonstrate that h**********ry is not quite so neat. Certainly the ***** categories of male and fe***** correlate with access to and denial of political power, but Caulfield and Guy especially demonstrate that women too have power.

While from our position in the postmodern West, we might be inclined to dismiss such *****-*****in-a-patriarchal-culture female power as ***** guardianship of honor as being realistically related to any type of "real" *****, Caulfield ***** Guy (and indeed all five historians) argue ***** this is ***** simplistic a reading of the *****s in which gender and power interact.

What is most compelling about these narratives is their simultaneous ability to ask us ***** question the complex ways in which gender identity ***** power relations based on ***** are c*****t*****ually renegotiated in these h*****torical milieux while at the same time asking ***** to re***** the entire enterprise ***** ***** his*****ry.

Moreover, it is perhaps necessarily ***** th***** all history is teleological; ***** all, ***** is always writing it ***** what ***** at that moment the end-point of *****. Thus historians, no matter how hard *****y may try not to be, ***** always in fact ***** the ***** story, a story ***** begins ********** different points in the past certainly ***** that still and ***** ends up with themselves, ***** us, with the here ***** now.

The entire practice ***** historiography would seem to ***** that people seek ***** understand the past