5/10/2023 0 Comments White metahistory![]() ![]() The sole and partial exception is the concept of emplotment, which passes the reflexivity test, albeit with qualifications, but more particularly has the virtue of illuminating the traditional history of history against which Metahistory's own story was pitched and this result provides an ironic and unexpected vindication of Metahistory's underlying vision. This paper assesses Hayden White's Metahistory through the test of reflexivity that is, it asks whether the book's "general theory of the structure of that mode of thought which is called 'historical'" applies, as it should, to its own history of nineteenth-century "historical consciousness." Most components of the theoretical apparatus-the various concepts invoked in the "theory of the historical work" and in the "theory of tropes"-fail the reflexivity test further, it emerges that those same components are also seriously flawed on other grounds. ![]()
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