Deconstructing African History from Western Historicism

Restructuring Architecture’s History: Historicism in Karl Bötticher’s Theory of Tectonics

Historicism Blues

“Always historicize!” Fredric Jameson calls this opening salvo from 1981’s The Political Unconscious the book’s “transhistorical imperative” and its “moral” (9). Is this, indeed, the most sacred of all critical commandments? The “thou shalt not kill” of literary studies (above all, perhaps, of American literary studies)? (Nietzsche might have called it, rather, the “thou shalt kill”: in his wor...

On Defining African Philosophy: History, Challenges, and Perspectives

‘Limiting the Authority of Historical Knowledge’: Postmodern Critique of ‘Historicism’ and ‘History’

The postmodern discourse on the nature of knowledge is constructed on the authority and reliability which different forms of knowledge claim in various walks of life. This discourse has challenged the major formations of modernity, claiming a sort of objective, authentic and reliable knowledge in comparison with non-evidential forms of knowledge such as arts, literature and revelation. ‘Histori...

Linguistics, Historicism and the Humanities