Date: Tue, 17 Oct 1995 08:15:38 -0500 From: H-GERMAN EDITOR Dan Rogers Reply to: H-NET List on German History To: Multiple recipients of list H-GERMAN Subject: Historicism Submitted by: Edward Dickinson Friends: Regarding Heikki Lempa's comments on historicism, I wanted to ask some questions and suggest some reading. First, what does it mean to say that historicism is "politically" unacceptable? Second, can someone explain to me why I shouldn't call myself a post-modernist historicist? I can't figure out why the two should be incompatible in practice, whatever the philosophical issues might be. In fact, for all the carry-on, I can't figure out what H-GERMAN discussants think a post-modernist historical method is, beyond an admirable degree of self-consciousness about what one is doing and an interest in language (broadly defined). Certainly I can't figure out what difference it makes whether "there is no past", which is the closest anyone has come to defining post-modernism since I've been reading the contributions. Could someone try again to explain what the difference is between a post-modernist historical method and other methods? In particular, I can't tell the difference between what several contributors have described as the guts of post-modernist historical method and what I would describe as good scientific method. Lastly, HISTORY AND THEORY 34:3 (1995) carries a number of articles on historicism that might be of interest to people following this discussion. Edward Ross Dickinson Victoria University of Wellington, NZ .