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Guha, R. (1983). Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency. Oxford, UK: Martin Heidegger (1889–1976),Theodor Adorno (1903–
Oxford University Press. 1969),Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), Max Horkheimer
Johnson-Odim, C., & Strobel, M. (Eds.). (1999). Restoring women to his-
tory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (1895–1973), Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), Roland
Loomba, A. (1998). Colonialism/postcolonialism. London: Routledge. Barthes (1915–1980), Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995),
Minh Ha, T. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and
feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Michel Foucault (1926–1984), Hayden White (b. 1928),
Moore-Gilbert, B. (1997). Postcolonial theory: Contexts, practices, poli- Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929), Jacques Derrida (b. 1930),
tics. London: Verso. Félix Guattari (1930–1992), Luce Irigaray (b. c.1932),
Nandy, A. (1995). History’s forgotten doubles. History and Theory,
34(2), 44–66. Frederic Jameson (b. 1934), and Julia Kristeva (b. 1941).
Ngugi,W.T. O. (1981). Decolonizing the mind:The politics of language. It is difficult to identify overlaps in these thinkers’ ideas,
London: James Curry.
O’Hanlon, R., & Washbrook, D. (1992).After Orientalism: Culture, crit- let alone any clear program or agenda.This is because they
icism, and politics in the Third World. Comparative Studies in Society are resistant to, and incredulous of, universal truths, ideas,
and History, 34(1), 141–167. activities, narratives, and definitions as well as notions of
Prakash, G. (1999). Another reason: Science and the imagination of mod-
ern India. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. rationality, authority, progress, clarity, and objectivity.
Said, E. (1978, 1991). Orientalism. London: Penguin. Postmodernism thus entails a questioning of the grounds
Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. London: Chatto & Windus.
Schwarz, H., & Ray, S. (Eds.). (2000). A companion to postcolonial stud- and forms of knowledge claims, including those made in
ies. London: Blackwell. histories and world histories. Postmodernism shares affini-
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Gross- ties with, but is not synonymous with, poststructuralism.
berg (Eds.), Marxism and the interpretation of culture (pp. 271–313).
Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Poststructuralism challenges the view that linguistic struc-
Thomas, N. (1994). Colonialism’s culture: Anthropology, travel and gov- tures such as signifiers (sounds or scriptive symbols or
ernment. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Trivedi, H., & Mukherjee, M. (Eds.). (1996). Interrogating post- words) are stable and reflective of the mind and reality.
colonialism:Theory, text, and context. Shimla, India: Indian Institute Postmodernism is known to most historians through
of Advanced Study. the strong reactions it provokes in those opposed to it.
Young, R. J. C. (2003). Postcolonialism: A very short introduction. New
York: Oxford University Press. The historians Gertrude Himmelfarb and Arthur Marwick
see postmodernism as incompatible with historical study;
Keith Windschuttle has connected it with the “killing” of
history, and Geoffrey Elton has concluded that it is the
Postmodernism “intellectual equivalent of crack” (1991, 41). While ex-
treme, these comments reveal an understanding of the
n The Postmodern Condition (1984), the philosopher extent to which postmodern claims undermine many of
IJean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) described post- the methods and ideas that give shape to historical re-
modernism as “incredulity towards metanarratives” search and writing.To postmodern theorists such as Keith
(Lyotard 1984, xxiv). While not aimed specifically at Jenkins, notions of truth and objectivity and indeed the
world historians, this observation—like many others by very activity of writing history are comforters that need to
postmodern thinkers—has serious implications for the be dispensed with. Others have struck a more conciliatory
field of world history. chord, suggesting, as Beverley Southgate has, that history
be reconstructed to “incorporate rather than repudiate
Origins and the Problem postmodernist ideas and ideals” (Southgate 2003, 29).
of Definition
Trying to define postmodernism is rather like trying to World History and
get a uniform and cohesive set of demands from global- Postmodernism
ization protestors.The adjective postmodern is applied to Postmodernism unmasks world histories as construc-
a varied assortment of nineteenth- and twentieth-century tions—not descriptions—of the world by and for partic-
thinkers, including Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), ular groups. They are “grand,” “master,” or “meta”