Which past? Whose transcendental presupposition?

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Seth, Sanjay. 2008. Which past? Whose transcendental presupposition? Postcolonial Studies, 11(2), pp. 215-226. ISSN 1368-8790 [Article]

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13688790802004729

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This paper starts from the presumption that historiography is not the objective retelling of a self-evident object?'the past'?but is rather a 'code', one that constitutes its object. The central element in this code, it suggests, is humanism/anthropology. It is not because man is a meaning producing being, who leaves behind traces of himself, that history-writing is possible; rather, it is historiography that helps secure this humanist/anthropological presumption. Moreover, the presumption that Man is a culture secreting and meaning producing being is not universally 'true', is not (pace Weber) a 'transcendental presupposition', but is rather a specifically modern and presumption. History-writing, the essay concludes, is not always adequate to non-Western pasts.

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Article

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https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790802004729