THE IDEA OF DECONSTRUCTION AND MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY

Abstract

The idea of deconstruction was born in intellectual environment of postmodernism. Its main feature is related to the analysis of binary oppositions (e.g., masculinity–femininity, war–peace, creation–destruction), proving that they are, in fact, intermingled and that it is virtually impossible to fully separate them. According to the views of deconstructionists, any set of linguistic signs can result in different types of meanings, which are often in mutual conflict and opposition. For deconstructionists, historical sources are merely ordinary texts. They believed that sources do not testify to history, but to the various interpretations of texts remaining from the past. In this way, deconstructionists erased the boundaries between fabricated data and undeniable facts, between fictional literary events and real historical ones. For them, nothing in history had a definitive or permanent meaning. The idea of deconstruction imposed serious theoretical and methodological challenges on modern historiography. The stance that the foundations of knowledge about past reality are not historical sources and established historical facts, but rather contradictory sign, linguistic, and narrative constructions, questioned the very purpose of the scientific study of the past. Deconstructionists deconstructed the concept of objectivity, rejected the ideal of the quest for truth, and instead promoted a system of a kind of creative chaos. However, the majority of global historiography did not accept this. It remained faithful to the principles of the classical historical method.