‘A refutation of (post-) narrativism, or: why postmodernists love Austro-Hungary’: Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, Postnarrativist philosophy of historiography, Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen’s book Postnarrativist philosophy of historiography presents a new variation of the postmodernist, social-constructivist and anti-realist philosophy of historiography. Kuukkanen articulates a position that significantly differs from some other postmodernist perspectives on history writing, such as Frank Ankersmit’s. In this review I analyse the implications of Kuukkanen’s programme, as well as the application of its tenets in Christopher Clark’s book Sleepwalkers. How Europe went to war in 1914 (London: Penguin, 2012) which Kuukkanen strongly endorses.

Keywords

• Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen
• Post-narrativist philosophy of historiography
• narrativism
• postmodernist historiography
• anti-realist historiography
• Christopher Clark
• Sleepwalkers