PoMo, History, and the Venerable Bede

A few posts back Elliot (aka The Claw) suggested I check out some posts by James Hannam, who blogs under the name of Bede, a venerable name in Anglo-Saxon church history. The subject was a book on Biblical archaeology written by William Dever, What Did the Biblical Writers Know?.

On the whole a good review. There is one part though that I don't think is quite right, though I've heard it from others in regard to the lessons historians have learned, or should learn, from Post Modernism.

While historians have had to learn lessons from postmodernism, what is left that makes it distinctive is much less useful. I think that you can precisely identify when someone has gone to far. If they say �history contains fictive elements�, �complete objectivity is impossible� or �writers have an agenda� then you are dealing with sensible mainstream historians who have taken on board the important lessons of postmodernism. But when someone says �all history is fiction�, �objectively is completely impossible� or �texts have no meaning beyond what they are given� then you have found yourself a bona fide literary critic who should not be let loose in a history department. [my emphasis]

Now I received my BA in History in 1971, my MA in 1975, and started on the PhD in '77 ( no need to go into when I completed the PhD). That was well before postmodernism. I was taught by the even older historians who were my professors that 1) history contains fictive elements 2) complete objectivity is impossible and 3) all writers, even historians, have an agenda. These were not new fangled ideas, even back then. If you go through even a bit of Ed Gibbons' late eighteenth century Decline and Fall you will see that he operated on much the same assumptions.

So what exactly are the important lessons of postmodernism for the historian?