Historiography

The postmodern idea of history repudiates the humanist notion that it corresponds faithfully to reality and asserts that it is textual and mediated in order to validate power centres. Thus, while “history” deals with the past, “historiography” deals with the writings about the past. Historiography, the study of history and methodology of the discipline of history, denotes a body of historical work on a specialised topic. Historiography can be defined as “the study of the way history has been and is written — the history of historical writing;” it studies the interpretations of historical events in the works of individual historians.

Analysing various elements of the “text” of history, such as authorship, sourcing, interpretation, bias, style and audience, historiographers primarily study the development of history as an academic discipline over time and its development in different cultures and epochs, along with the study of academic tools, methods and approaches that have been and are being used in the reconstitution of history.