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A Choice of Fictions: Historians, Memory, and Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

James Wilkinson
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Abstract

Contemporary historians' definition of what constitutes historical evidence has expanded dramatically since the mid-1970s, but so have their doubts about the interpretation of evidence, especially for difficult and evanescent sources such as collective memory. As the ambitions of historical practice have challenged the limits of interpretation, the use of novel sources has necessitated recourse to “foundationalist” assumptions, without which errors in historical witnesses cannot be detected or evaluated.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 111 , Issue 1: Special Topic The Status of Evidence , January 1996 , pp. 80 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1996

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