History and discourse: a Contribution to the Debate on Historic Realism

Abstract

The text examines in depth two axiomatic postulates of the theory of post-modern knowledge – if we can describe it as such: its theory of language and its vehement negation of realism. What follows is a conceptual discussion that comes closer to our own field of study, namely, the premises and developments fostered by those postulates in the production of a post-modern written history based upon historical anti-realism and on narrativism. After sketching out a general framework, always from a critical viewpoint, the essay suggests some theoretical directions that relate the anti-realist argument to the discourse that establishes, institutes and creates reality, the world and history.