The Eastern West Meets the Far East
Dialogues on Historical Theory
A Conversation between Ewa Domańska and Zhang Zuocheng 张作成
EWA DOMAŃSKA & ZHANG ZUOCHENG 张作成 • JULY 2025
Abstract: This dialogue between Ewa Domańska and Zhang Zuocheng explores the evolving landscape of historical theory through the lens of Eastern West and Far East scholarly exchange. Conducted in March 2025, the conversation examines the legacy and limitations of postmodernist approaches to history, particularly the influence of Hayden White’s work on both Western and Chinese historiography. The scholars discuss the complex relationship between postmodernism and Marxism, the role of language and culture in shaping historical understanding, and the cultural specificity of historical concepts across different intellectual traditions. Key themes include the nature of historical objectivity versus subjectivity, the political dimensions of historical writing, and the challenges of decolonizing the process of building historical knowledge. The conversation concludes with reflections on contemporary trends in history and ongoing attempts to create more inclusive and democratic scholarly exchanges between different epistemic traditions. This cross-cultural dialogue illuminates the geopolitical dimensions of knowledge production and offers insights into the future directions of historical theory in a globalized, post-Western academic landscape.
Keywords: academic dialogue, decolonization of historical theory, post-Western academic landscape, cross-cultural epistemology, postmodernism, Marxism, Chinese historiography, Hayden White, Frank Ankersmit
Cover image by Clem Onojeghuo.
Ewa Domańska is Professor of Human Sciences and holds her permanent position at the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznań, Poland). She is also a visiting professor at Stanford University (Spring term) and a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Her teaching and research interests include history and the theory of historiography, comparative theory of the humanities and social sciences, the environmental humanities, and ecocide and genocide studies. She recently published “Revisiting Montaillou,” History and Theory 64, no. 1 (2025), 3–23; “Necroheritage,” Journal of Contemporary Archaeology 11, no. 2 (2024), 145–57; and “Humanistyka indygeniczna” [Indigenous Humanities], Teksty Drugie/Second Texts 6 (2024), 12–45.
Zhang Zuocheng, who holds a PhD in History, graduated from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2009; his doctoral supervisor is Professor Yu Pei. He is a professor in the Department of History at Northeast Normal University (Changchun, China). He was a visiting scholar in the Department of History at the University of Virginia (2016–2017) and history editor of the journal The Northern Forum (2019–2021). His research interests include Western historical theory and historiography and comparison of Chinese and foreign historiography. His publications include a 2015 academic monograph titled Kelinwude shixueilun yanjiu (柯林武德史学理论研究; Research on R. G. Collingwood’s Historical Theory) and academic articles on the Anthropocene and historical time.
Cite this post: Ewa Domańska and Zhang Zuocheng 张作成, “The Eastern West Meets the Far East: Dialogues on Historical Theory—A Conversation between Ewa Domańska and Zhang Zuocheng 张作成,” One More Thing . . . (blog), History and Theory, July 2025, https://historyandtheory.org/omt/2025-ewadomanskazhangzuocheng.
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Introduction: Mapping Cultural and Theoretical Territories
In March 2025, Zhang Zuocheng traveled to Poznań, Poland, for a position as a visiting scholar at the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University. While there, he gave a guest lecture, conducted a mini-course for students, and engaged in conversation with Polish students and scholars, including Ewa Domańska, who was inspired to organize the visit due to their shared interest in the current condition of the theory of history. Zhang Zuocheng’s mini-course, which was titled “New Approaches to History in a Changing World: A View from China,” explored the evolution of Chinese world history writing, its methodological transformations, and its engagement with contemporary theoretical debates in historiography. The aim of the course was to provide students with a deeper understanding of the intellectual development of world history studies in China and its relationship with both Chinese historical traditions and global historiographical discourse. This course challenged students to think beyond conventional Eurocentric or Sinocentric frameworks by engaging directly with Chinese historiographical sources, theories, and approaches. It encouraged students to reflect critically on how historiography is shaped by social, political, and intellectual contexts and how Chinese historians contribute to global historical discourse. Through a combination of theoretical reflection and comparative historiography, students gained a nuanced understanding of how history is written, debated, and conceptualized in China.
The following conversation, which was conducted in Poznań on 10 March 2025, explores the evolving landscape of historical theory through the lens of Eastern West and Far East scholarly exchange. This dialogue illuminates not only the theoretical questions that are at stake but also the geopolitical dimensions of knowledge production itself. As we navigate the aftermath of postmodernism, new questions emerge about how different cultural traditions approach the past and what it means to practice historically informed scholarship in a transdisciplinary, decolonizing context.
The Postmodernist Moment: Endings and Continuities
Zhang Zuocheng (ZZ): I would like to begin our conversation with a question that re-invites a reflection about postmodernism and history. If we take this problem as an object of examination, we may ask: How should we define postmodernism’s position in the overall development of historical theory? According to some Chinese scholars, the “postmodernist trend in history” constitutes a clear phase within the broader trajectory of Western philosophy of history. This phase may be dated from 1973 to the present, or from 1973 to 2014. We might call it the postmodernist phase. However, there are also scholars who do not fully accept this interpretation. They instead suggest that the dominant trend in the philosophy of history from the 1970s to the 2010s might better be described in terms of Marxist theory of history, or as the theory of modernization. These divergent views reflect the plurality of opinions within Chinese academia concerning the course of historical theory since the 1970s.
At the same time, we can observe differing attitudes toward the postmodernist trend in the international academic world. A good example is Frank Ankersmit’s article titled “Why There Is No ‘Progress’ in Philosophy of History?,” which argues that, because of “Hayden White’s writings and his personality” (especially after the publication of Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe in 1973, or even earlier, after his 1966 article titled “The Burden of History”), the philosophy of history has experienced no real progress: “during the Whitean regime in philosophy of history no progress was, and could be made.”[1] In addition to Ankersmit, we can also consider other Western scholars, such as John Zammito, who do not completely accept the postmodernist approach to history as developed by White. In my opinion, neither Ankersmit nor Zammito is entirely objective in their evaluations of the postmodernist phase in historical theory as represented by White. I believe that a more appropriate and balanced way to assess White’s ideas is to situate them within a broader theoretical framework of history. This framework consists of four major dimensions: ontology, epistemology, historical writing, and the ethics of historical writing.
From the perspective of historical writing, White introduced many new ideas and theoretical reflections that have been particularly stimulating for Chinese professional historians. This is where I believe the strengths and practical value of White’s work can be found. Historical writing is different from historical knowledge, and both are distinct from historical ontology. White’s contributions are not concerned mainly with historical ontology. Therefore, in my view, Chinese scholars need not be overly concerned about the challenges that postmodernist theory poses to traditional historical research or to Marxist theory of history. These operate on different levels or aspects of historical theory.
Moreover, I think it is both possible and necessary to place postmodernist historical theory within the broader timeline of the last fifty years. As this timeline has unfolded, postmodernist theory itself has changed. The passing of time offers us a kind of distance, and with that distance comes the opportunity to evaluate more clearly the strengths and limitations of postmodernist theory/philosophy of history.
Ewa Domańska (ED): This is an extensive and multidimensional question. Let me comment first on Ankersmit’s article. I think that what Ankersmit had in mind is the dominant presence of White—both as a scholar defining the field of historical theory and as a master, a phenomenal teacher. White, on the one hand, liberated a generation of young scholars by opening new intellectual horizons, but that liberation came at a price. In freeing them from traditional constraints, he also created a certain kind of dependence—not by demanding dogmatic adherence but by shaping the very questions they felt compelled to ask and the ways in which they approached them. We all became Whitean in a way, and from this point of view, I understand Ankersmit’s claim: no other scholar in our field became more influential than White during the age of postmodernism, and although alternative approaches (such as analytical philosophy of history) were present, they were marginalized. I would not say, however, that the field was blocked. Like the humanities and social sciences at the time, it was simply dominated by trends operating under the umbrella of postmodernism.
However, more than twenty years ago, we witnessed an important shift of interest from representation to presence, and from language/discourse/text to experience, which was influenced by Ankersmit himself and culminated in his book titled Sublime Historical Experience (2005). For a long time, scholars were interested primarily in various forms of representing the past. Later, their focus shifted to how the past remains present, as demonstrated by History and Theory’s October 2006 “On Presence” forum (edited by Eelco Runia and Elizabeth J. Brouwer), and the influential volume by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht titled Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey (2004). Ankersmit’s ideas resonated with this turn toward experiencing the past, which was also connected to a “re-turn” to things and materiality. This is one reason why archaeology has become so significant and theoretically advanced, as reflected in the innovative works such as Bjørnar Olsen’s “Material Culture after Text: Re-membering Things” (2003) and Michael Shanks’s Experiencing the Past: On the Character of Archaeology (1992), among many others.
Based on my research on new and emerging trends in the humanities and social sciences, I would say the following: Some scholars argue that postmodernism ended around the year 2000, with the events of 9/11 often seen as a symbolic endpoint. Since then, ideas such as the critique of anthropocentrism and Eurocentrism, ideas that are rooted in various strands associated with postmodernist thought (constructivism, deconstruction, poststructuralism) and certain interdisciplinary fields (gender, postcolonial, race, area studies, and so on), have come to dominate discussions in the humanities. This critique challenges the foundations of (Western) historical thinking, which is inherently anthropocentric, Eurocentric, and based on Cartesian rationality, linear progress, teleology, and secularism. Theorists of history, especially those of the younger generation, have responded to these challenges, which reflect pressing global issues that demand attention, such as climate change, return of/to religion and spirituality, and escalating interhuman violence.
It is enough to follow the leading journals (in Western, English-speaking academia) in our field—journals such as History and Theory, Rethinking History, and the Journal of the Philosophy of History—to see how the field of historical theory is evolving. Ankersmit himself noted this in the article mentioned above, pointing to more recent publications by Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen, Chiel van den Akker, and Paul Roth. The revival of analytical philosophy of history is, for example, an important symptom of this change. So, I would not say that there is no progress in historical theory. However, I would say that historical theory is less dynamic than other fields—for instance, compared to the theory of anthropology or archaeology. Our field is less creative and rather reactive. It tends to respond to intellectual trends coming from outside disciplines, which then stimulate developments in areas such as animal history, digital history, the new environmental history, or new material history.
Because of sustained critiques of anthropocentrism, Eurocentrism, rationality, secularity, and progress that—let me repeat it—target the very foundations of (Western) historical thinking, recent discussions have become particularly important for the future of historical theory. Scholars are beginning to rediscover the hidden religious or metaphysical assumptions that have shaped our historical thinking. These trends are opening up our field to ideas, epistemologies, and approaches to the past emerging from non-Western and Indigenous thought. If these trends continue—and I believe they will—they will bring about a profound transformation in how we think about the past and how we study it. (You may have noticed that I intentionally avoid the word “history” here, as it represents a very particular approach to the past.)
I would not draw a strict line between historical thinking and historical knowledge or between historical research and historical writing. These dimensions are deeply interrelated. When historical thinking shifts—under the influence of critiques of anthropocentrism and Eurocentrism—this inevitably affects the way we practice and represent the past. For instance, we now see a movement from global and world history to big and planetary history, reflecting a broader concern with ecological entanglement and scale.
This shift also manifests in methodological discussions: post-qualitative research, arts of noticing, and arts of attentiveness—concepts inspired by Indigenous methodologies—are increasingly shaping how we relate to the past. The so-called digital turn goes beyond the digitization of sources or the creation of digital archives. It now encompasses the epistemological transformations brought by artificial intelligence. AI is not just a tool; it has begun to influence how knowledge is created. I use it in my own work—it shapes how I research and write. For example, I can now translate material across multiple languages, enabling me to conduct a much broader, more inclusive literature review. In this sense, my knowledge has become more transcultural, a term that I believe will grow in importance in the coming years.
Developing the Postmodernism-Marxism Nexus
ED: But let me elaborate on the connections between postmodernism and Marxism. Many founding figures of postmodernism were Marxists. Fredric Jameson—who was so important for White—was a Marxist. White himself frequently identified as one. Moreover, many emancipatory fields that flourished under postmodernism’s umbrella—gender studies, postcolonial studies, critical race theory—have roots in Western Marxist and neo-Marxist thought. Think of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, which became central to postcolonial studies; Louis Althusser’s structural Marxism, which influenced poststructuralism; or Terry Eagleton’s Marxist literary criticism, which shaped how we understand ideology in cultural production.
Of course, Marxism and postmodernism differ. Some scholars even claim that they are mutually exclusive, especially as Marxism upholds the notion of grand narratives, objective truth, and universal values—things postmodernism has problematized. Yet both traditions have contributed significantly to emancipatory humanities, social justice struggles, and the study of marginalized groups. Rather than emphasizing their divisions, I prefer to highlight their convergences. Both traditions provide tools for analyzing power, oppression, and inequality. Both challenge dominant narratives, although from different angles—Marxism from class consciousness, postmodernism from epistemological plurality. This is always my approach: to seek connections rather than separations. Following this approach, I would not draw a hard line between postmodernism and Marxism; I would instead explore their shared concerns and mutual inspirations. That said, not all postmodernists are Marxists—Ankersmit, for example, is not.
ZZ: This perspective may not gain full agreement among Chinese historians. Perhaps it could be phrased this way: Many Western postmodernists are, in a certain sense, Marxists or shaped by Western-style Marxism. When White declared himself a Marxist at a conference in China with over five hundred attendees, my doctoral supervisor Yu Pei disagreed. A more appropriate formulation might have been: “I am a Marxist in the Western style.”
ED: Exactly. This highlights the importance of understanding how intellectual traditions translate across cultural contexts. Western Marxism—influenced by thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt School—developed very differently from Marxism in China. Western Marxism became more concerned with culture, consciousness, and ideological critique, while it maintained some distance from economic determinism. This difference becomes crucial when we consider how postmodernism was received in different contexts. In the West, postmodernism could build on this cultural Marxist foundation. In China, where Marxism has had a different historical trajectory and political significance, postmodernism necessarily appears differently.
According to the article by Dong Lihe and Jin Qianwen that you recommended to me, postmodernism no longer attracts much interest among Chinese scholars.[2] The general view seems to be that postmodernism has become part of the history of the theory of history, right? It’s no longer something current or particularly influential, is it?
ZZ: Yes, that is how I understand the situation. I agree with this assessment.
Language, Culture, and Ways of Knowing
ED: I observe that when I think, speak, and write in English, I become a different person. This idea connects to the work of botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Robin Wall Kimmerer, who observed that the English language contains many nouns that refer to things and that reflect a cultural attitude—a culture obsessed with objects. In contrast, her language, Potawatomi (an Anishinaabe language), is full of verbs. It’s more about doing. Whereas in Kimmerer’s language a sentence might include four verbs, in English you would find five nouns. This makes Potawatomi more agentive. It is governed by what she calls “the grammar of animacy”: it refers to all kinds of animated beings—humans, nonhuman animals, plants, and rocks—as persons.[3] According to Kimmerer, “the language reminds us, in every sentence, of our kinship with all of the animate world. English doesn’t give us many tools for incorporating respect for animacy. In English, you are either a human or a thing.”[4] I do believe that language plays a powerful role in creating the world—not just in representing it. I think I have always been interested in speech act theory and performative acts precisely because they preserve the agentive aspect of language.
But we can extend this reflection beyond the Indigenous-English comparison. How does Chinese, with its character-based writing system, create different possibilities for thinking about history and time?
ZZ: As a Chinese scholar, after learning about postmodernism, I came to realize the profound role that language plays in shaping not only my personal thinking but also the traditional Chinese culture to which I belong. In this sense, I agree with the idea that “language is the house of being. In its home human beings dwell” (to use Martin Heidegger’s phrasing).[5] This realization encouraged me to study linguistics and to learn Western languages beyond English. At the same time, I made a serious effort to deepen my knowledge of Chinese, especially classical Chinese.
Alongside this, some of us in Chinese academia have become aware of a phenomenon that has emerged under the influence of postmodernism and that now calls for critical reflection—namely, that many researchers have focused exclusively on analyzing an author’s use of language/narrative, or on how language shapes historical agents, while neglecting the historical events the author intended to explain. This trend has been gradually shifting in recent Chinese historiography.
Regarding how Chinese historiography seeks to go beyond the limitations of language and explore the role of different forms of communication in shaping both historical and contemporary worlds, I have observed that new types of materials and evidence—such as archaeological findings, ancient paintings, and traditional music—are increasingly being used in historical research. Moreover, some scholars are now employing big data technologies to reconstruct the travel routes and academic networks of ancient Chinese scholars in order to better understand their intellectual worlds and scholarly contributions.
ED: Let’s push this further. Postmodernism was fixated on language, but, today, we’re increasingly aware of nonverbal forms of communication. With growing interest in communicating with nonhuman animals and even plants, we’re discovering chemical signals, sonic communication, and other forms of meaning-making that exceed human language. This raises a speculative but important question: If we develop meaningful communication with nonhuman beings, how will this change our knowledge and understanding of the past? What histories become possible when we can access nonhuman perspectives on environmental change, migration patterns, or ecological relationships? Your mention of new materials such as archaeological findings, ancient paintings, traditional music, and big data reconstructions of scholarly networks suggests that Chinese historiography is already moving beyond purely linguistic analysis toward multisensory and multimedia approaches to the past.
The Concept of History: Cultural Specificity and Universal Claims
ZZ: What is history? This question, addressed by postmodernist theorists such as White and Ankersmit, remains incompletely answered.
ED: As you might recall, White was skeptical of the kind of history produced by professional historians. He argued that history often creates more problems than it solves and that it “is less than helpful when it is a matter of seeking a meaning for an individual life or existence.”[6] This skepticism partly explains his turn—drawing on the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott—toward the idea of the practical past. White was also significantly influenced by Richard Rorty and American pragmatism, and his approach to history, especially in the later phase of his intellectual life, became explicitly pragmatist.
If you ask me how I define history, I would offer two complementary formulations. The first is a narrower, disciplinary definition: History is a narrative about the past, presented through various modes of representations (and presentations), based on facts established through source-based research, using source criticism and specific scholarly methods. This definition defends the ethos of historical craft and upholds the traditional principle that historical narratives must be grounded in primary sources, rigorously analyzed, and interpreted through recognized methodological frameworks. As a professional historian—and, I would say, a “disciplinary patriot”—I continue to affirm this position.
But there is also a broader understanding of history to which I feel equally committed. Here, history is understood as a particular way of approaching the past—one that emerged in Europe within the Greco-Judaic-Christian tradition and that claimed universal validity as it spread globally through the intertwined forces of colonialism and Christianity. From this perspective, I am interested in exploring non-European approaches to the past, alternative epistemologies, and various ways of knowing through which the past can be known.
China has its own approach to the past, its own understanding of what, in the West, is called “history.” Since the very term “history” originates in the European tradition, I find myself wondering: What does the concept of “history” mean within the Chinese intellectual and cultural context? I must confess, with some regret, that my knowledge of Chinese historiography is very basic, although I am aware of its long and sophisticated tradition.
ZZ: In China, there is a very long-standing tradition in which the recording of the past was already understood as “history,” even before the Western term “history” was introduced. Long before the concept was imported from Europe, ancient Chinese scholars had developed their own practices of historical inquiry and theoretical reflection. These traditions form the foundation of Chinese historiography and also relate to the broader history of Sino-foreign historiographical exchange.
As you know, China’s imperial past consisted of many dynasties, and each dynasty maintained its own official historical record. These records were compiled through formal institutions, and the role of the historian was well established. For example, during the Han dynasty, which began in the third century BCE, there existed a specialized bureaucratic system for historical documentation. The officials responsible were called historians, and their duty was to record the events of both previous and contemporary dynasties. This institutionalized role of the historian reveals the importance attributed to historical continuity and the political function of historical memory in Chinese civilization.
ED: What is the meaning of the term “history” in the Chinese tradition? How is it understood culturally? Does it carry the same kind of epistemological and moral weight as it does in the Western tradition, or does it function differently within Chinese thought?
ZZ: The Chinese character corresponding to “history” is 史 (shi). Each dynasty in China’s imperial past had its own official history: the Han Dynasty had the History of the Han Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty had the History of the Tang Dynasty, and so on. The great Han dynasty historian Sima Qian, for instance, wrote the Shiji (史记; Records of the Grand Historian), which primarily chronicles the history of the Han Dynasty. These works were part of an ongoing, formalized effort to record history.
But beyond these acts of documentation, ancient Chinese historians also developed their own historical research methods and engaged in theoretical reflection across different periods. For example, during the Tang Dynasty, the historian Liu Zhiji, in his work titled Shitong (史通; Generality of Historiography), argued that “history prioritizes narrative, . . . historical narrative should be concise.”[7] This reflects a concern not just with content but with form and style.
As for the concept of history itself, within the Chinese historiographical tradition, it carries two core attributes: truth-seeking and pragmatic usefulness. The notion of truth-seeking refers to the attention ancient Chinese historians paid to the evaluation and use of archival materials. They emphasized the importance of source criticism and aimed to maintain an objective stance in historical writing. The idea of usefulness reflects the view that history should serve a normative function—namely, to justify the legitimacy and rationality of a dynasty’s rule within the broader continuity of the past and present. In other words, history was also a political and moral resource. These two attributes—truth-seeking and pragmatic utility—do not always coexist harmoniously. In fact, they have long existed in a state of productive tension within Chinese historiography.
(At this point, following Ewa Domańska’s request, Zhang Zuocheng wrote the Chinese character “史” in her notebook.)
Figure 1. A page from Ewa Domańska’s notebook showing the Chinese character for “history” (史), written by Zhang Zuocheng during their conversation in Poznań, Poland, on 13 March 2025. Photo by Ewa Domańska.
ED: Does this character 史 carry any additional meanings beyond “history”?
ZZ: Yes, it does. The character 史 also refers to a person, specifically someone responsible for recording and writing history.
ED: A historian?
ZZ: Yes, but this character also refers to a political official. In ancient Chinese history, it denoted a member of the dynastic government. While it does carry the meaning of an academic historian, his true or perhaps primary identity was that of a state official responsible for recording history. In this sense, writing history was not only an intellectual activity but also a political duty embedded within the structure of governance.
ED: So, from the very beginning, this character also referred to a political official. History was always connected to the dynasty or the state, and the historian was, in fact, a government official. This was the case not only in China but also in Europe, where early historians (chroniclers) were closely tied to royal courts, religious institutions, or state administrations.
ZZ: In ancient China, there were two kinds of historical writing. One type was produced by political officials within the government—this is known as official history. But there was also another type, referred to as private history. This form of history was written by individuals who were not affiliated with the dynastic government. It may have been motivated purely by scholarly pursuits or personal interests rather than by official duty.
ED: Coming back to White’s understanding of history—you may recall his well-known article titled “The Burden of History.” For White, history was always closer to literature and the style of the novel than to science and the language of logical argument.
ZZ: According to the understanding of many Chinese scholars, White’s definition of history can be summarized as: “history is equivalent to literature.”
ED: Well, White did not claim that history is literature; rather, he claimed that historical writing shares fundamental features with literary writing, particularly in terms of structure and meaning-making. As he argued, historical meaning arises from narrative construction, not merely from empirical data. In “The Burden of History,” he criticized historians for relying on an outdated, rigid separation between art and science. Moreover, White was often referring to modernist literature—works by authors such as Virginia Woolf and Marcel Proust. In this context, he was pointing to a realistic, introspective style of literary writing. So, when he compared history to literature, he had in mind the conventions of realistic prose.
Objectivism, Standpoint Epistemology, and Situated Knowledge
ZZ: Some Chinese scholars’ understanding of postmodernism has led them to see thinkers such as White and Ankersmit as rejecting the objectivity and truthfulness of history. Based on this interpretation, they conclude that, if we follow the views of these postmodernist scholars, historical thinking becomes impossible.
ED: When White criticized objectivism, he was referring to a particular (positivistic) conception of objectivity—one based on the idea that a historian can detach from the past completely and observe it from a so-called God’s-eye view. In his view, such a position is untenable. White argued that all historical writing is mediated by narrative choices and ideological commitments. Subjectivity does not mean that historians can simply write whatever they wish. In his framework, subjectivity is not the opposite of scholarly rigor. Rather, it acknowledges the historian’s situatedness, positionality, perspective, and interpretive role in constructing historical interpretations. So, for White, embracing subjectivity is compatible with being a serious and responsible scholar.
So, for example, you are a Chinese historian writing about the history of China from a Chinese perspective. You may aim to write an objective account, but your cultural and intellectual contexts—as well as your age, gender, ethnicity, education, and beliefs—inevitably shape the way you conduct research and write about the past. This subjective position doesn’t mean that you are a bad historian. It simply reflects your epistemic standpoint. (By the way, this idea is related to Marxist thought and remains highly relevant.) This connects to feminist standpoint theory developed by scholars such as Sandra Harding and Donna J. Haraway. All knowledge is produced from particular positions; thus, it is partial and local. The goal isn’t to eliminate standpoint but to acknowledge and work with it critically.
Consider how this applies to our conversation. You bring insights from Chinese historiographical traditions; I bring perspectives from Polish and Western contexts. Neither of us is “objective” in the classical sense, but our different standpoints enable us to see aspects of historical theory that might remain invisible from a single perspective. This multiplicity of standpoints becomes especially important in decolonizing knowledge. When we only recognize certain standpoints—typically human, Western, white, male, secular—as legitimate, we impoverish our understanding. Opening space for diverse epistemic standpoints enriches rather than threatens scholarly rigor.
Thus, this “subjectivity” is not a weakness; it is a condition of knowledge production. And to be clear, this is not only a Marxist, feminist, or postmodernist idea. In my “Introduction to History” course for first-year history students, I always assign Henri-Irénée Marrou’s The Meaning of History (1966), in which one chapter is titled “History and the Historian Are Inseparable.”[8] I make sure they learn that phrase by heart. There’s no need to mention here that the idea of the historian’s “point of view” has been extensively discussed in the literature.
ZZ: In light of ongoing debates around the politicization of knowledge, how do you understand the relationship between history, truth, and political engagement today? Can we still think of history as a pursuit of truth—or has it become, inevitably, a discourse shaped by ideology, justice, and power?
ED: In the Western tradition, historical thinking is fundamentally about change. The idea of change—as well as the idea of progress—is central and often regarded as having intrinsic value. But, as you know, the idea (or, one might say, the ideology) of progress has been increasingly questioned. We now discuss, for example, concepts such as degrowth. If you tell a student, “you are not progressing,” meaning not developing, it’s often perceived as the worst possible judgment. But sometimes it’s actually good to be conservative, or even regressive—to serve as an arrière-garde rather than an avant-garde. Still, whether we’re talking about progressing forward or backward, we are still talking about change.
History is supposed to be a pursuit of truth. Personally, however, I believe that intellectual honesty is even more important, since it is a precondition for truthfulness. When I am sincere and honest, my position becomes more credible than if I merely claim to be truthful and objective. I once asked a group of history students what they considered the most important principle of historical research. Their answer was not “truth.” They pointed instead to historical justice. But if the task of writing history is framed as a pursuit of historical justice, then it is inherently ideological, deeply political, and highly subjective. That raises another question: Is the pursuit of truth any less politicized? I would die for the possibility to liberate history from politics. I am frustrated by the idea of history understood solely as a discourse of power. “Forget Foucault!”—if I may borrow Jean Baudrillard’s provocation.[9] Of course, I know this is not possible and, given the current geopolitical climate, not even desirable.
Epistemic Justice, Global Academic Exchange, and the Condition of Historical Theory
ED: I would like to say something about epistemic injustice and the geography of knowledge. As a researcher and teacher, I see it as my responsibility to prepare PhD students to become equal participants in the global academic exchange. I’m most encouraged when I see how, thanks primarily to the International Network for Theory of History (INTH), but also through various initiatives of the International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography (ICHTH), our field has become increasingly democratic and inclusive. This was clearly visible during INTH’s 2024 “History and Responsibility” conference, which was held in Lisbon, Portugal.
From the very beginning of their careers (assuming they are interested in international engagement, of course), young scholars should be encouraged to attend conferences, apply for scholarships abroad, publish in peer-reviewed journals, and consult with specialists in their field about their projects. And they don’t necessarily need to go to the United States or to Western Europe. Depending on their research interests, they may be able to find relevant experts beyond the traditional “centers” of academic power, which, in many cases, are overestimated. What matters more than institutional prestige is the scholar themselves—the person who is recognized as a specialist in a particular area.
Being a supervisor or mentor is hard work—demanding in both time and energy. I see my role in this process as a form of academic activism and as a modest contribution to the ongoing project of decolonizing the humanities. As a scholar from an “epistemic province,” this is both my task and my struggle. I cannot and would not want to turn my university in Poznań into Stanford. But I can help students here become potential stars of international academia. I would imagine that colleagues from China share a similar ambition: the internationalization of Chinese scholarship and the empowerment of their students on a global stage.
There are various strategies for building more equitable forms of scholarly exchange, and these go far beyond the efforts of individual mentorship. What we need are structural changes: fostering multi-directional citation practices, actively engaging with scholarship from non-Western contexts, and developing collaborative research projects that establish genuine partnerships rather than extractive relationships. It also means supporting journals, publishers, organizations, and initiatives that amplify non-Western scholarship, ensuring diversity in conferences, and designing panels that bring together voices from multiple epistemic traditions. I must say, when I look at the dynamic development of our field today—reflected in its conferences, publications, and research initiatives—I feel genuinely optimistic about the future of the field. We are, I believe, moving steadily toward a more inclusive, epistemic pluralism of historical theory.
Much of this progress is due to institutions such as INTH and ICHTH, as well as the work done by our leading journals. The dynamic growth of INTH and the grassroots efforts of scholars such as Berber Bevernage and Kalle Pihlainen—along with the editorial leadership of figures such as Ethan Kleinberg and Gary Shaw—have been instrumental in reshaping our field. Equally important are the contributions of senior scholars who have served as mentors to young researchers from non-Western countries. Georg G. Iggers’s name must be mentioned here. We are both beneficiaries of the openness and generosity of those who introduced us to the global academic community—Allan Megill in your case, and Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit in mine. Now, we are passing that legacy on to our own students.
ZZ: That’s a very good statement, and I truly appreciate the experience you’ve shared. My next question is: What is the use of historical research? I ask this in light of postmodernist critiques but also in the context of our present times. In Chinese academia, there are many excellent historians who conduct high-quality research, publish in respected journals, and produce academic monographs with reputable publishers. However, in my view, one of the challenges is that their research topics tend to be overly specialized, their questions too narrowly framed, and there is often a lack of awareness or engagement in dialogue with the international academic community.
ED: I’ve made similar observations in Poland. However, not all historians want—or need—to write grand syntheses, offer panoramic views of the past, or follow recent trends, and not everyone feels compelled to engage with international academia. I don’t see this as a problem. What matters most is the diversity of perspectives, approaches, and ways of practicing history. It is also important to have academic freedom and an intellectually supportive environment that enables scholars to pursue the problems they find meaningful and to introduce approaches they consider significant—of course, in accordance with the principles of historical craft. As we all know, the discipline of history is constantly evolving, and new fields of study continue to emerge. For example, public history has become a particularly important area. It has a participatory dimension and is socially relevant, as it often involves historians working with and for their local communities and neighborhoods. The same can be said about oral history and the continuous significance of local history.
When I teach “Introduction to History,” I assign projects in which students conduct interviews with local witnesses to history—often family members—and document historical sites such as buildings, cemeteries, factories, or monuments that are in the process of ruination. Because these places are usually located in their hometowns or villages, students become genuinely engaged with and excited about the work. They gain firsthand experience in “producing” historical sources, not just analyzing existing ones. In this way, from the very beginning of their academic journeys, they learn how to create historical knowledge and not only to reproduce it. They have to follow the principles of the historian’s craft and write academic texts, but they are also encouraged to present their research results in varied formats such as podcasts, videos, comics, and even video games. I believe it is essential to make history more public, more social, and more accessible. But I also value academic history that is written for and directed toward fellow historians.
ZZ: I would like to return to a topic you mentioned earlier: After White—or after postmodernism more broadly—what do you see as the main trends in contemporary historical theory?
ED: Subfields such as new environmental history, animal history and multispecies history, history of things, digital history, sonic history, big history, Anthropocene history, new imperial history, postcolonial history, transnational history, transtemporal history, Indigenous history, and history of violence (genocide) are developing in fascinating ways, especially when practiced in the post-anthropocentric and post-Western theoretical framework. The problem of emotions in history is attracting considerable attention. Of course, migration studies are growing rapidly, particularly in relation to how people migrate or are forced to migrate as a result of climate change. The same with fields such as disability history, sports history, and new military history. Ukraine has recently served as a “laboratory” for military technologies, revealing how technology increasingly shapes both historical experience and its future study. In the realm of sports, disabled athletes enhanced by technology begin to embody “posthuman” capacities, performing beyond conventional human limits. Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, is transforming not only the tools of historical inquiry but also the very process of knowledge building.
However, these are primarily research subfields. Some of their concerns resonate with issues taken up by theorists of history, but to answer your question more directly, let’s look at the content of the June 2025 issue of History and Theory. In this issue, Marnie Hughes-Warrington, in her article “Ethics for Artificial Historians,” argues that traditional ethical frameworks are inadequate for dealing with artificial agents in historical writing. She introduces the concept of “historiographical logic,” a hybrid model that integrates modal, propositional, and erotetic reasoning to address new ethical and epistemological challenges posed by AI. Vinsent Nollet, in “Philosophy of History as a Critique of Violence: History, Theology, and Politics in Walter Benjamin’s Early Writings,” argues that Walter Benjamin’s early writings—especially Critique of Violence—contain an underappreciated speculative philosophy of history based on a dialectic between lawmaking and law-preserving violence. Abhishek Kaicker’s “From Eternity to Apocalypse: Time, News, and History Between the Mughal and British Empires, 1556–1785” examines Mughal historiography and its complex temporal imaginaries—millenarian, eternal, and apocalyptic—in relation to British colonialism. He challenges the dominant narrative of decline in eighteenth-century South Asian historiography. Nagatomi Hirayama, in “‘Civilization’ or ‘Empire’? ‘China’ as a Historical Entity in Contestation,” critiques both civilization-to-nation and empire-to-nation models in Chinese historiography. He calls for more pluralistic and experience-based frameworks to move beyond historiographical essentialism. In “‘A Guesser in This Vale of Tears’: On the Politics of History Writing,” which is a revised version of the keynote lecture she gave at the 2024 INTH conference in Lisbon, Joan W. Scott emphasizes the necessity of making historians’ ethical and political commitments explicit. She argues for history as a critical tool for dismantling hegemonic narratives and confronting modern temporalities. Margrit Pernau, in “Decolonizing Theory and Concepts: Perspectives from the Global South,” reviews Changing Theory: Concepts from the Global South (2022), edited by Dilip M. Menon, and reflects on how scholars from the Global South reshape dominant conceptual vocabularies. She stresses the urgency of epistemic plurality and linguistic reflexivity in global academic discourse. Ian Hunter, in “Creative Disintegration: The Perpetual Emergence of Modern Political Thought,” examines Michael Sonenscher’s After Kant: The Romans, the Germans, and the Moderns in the History of Political Thought (2023) and critiques the method of noncontextual intellectual history, which prioritizes metaphysical regeneration over historical embeddedness. He warns against ignoring the material and political consequences of abstract thought. Finally, Terence Renaud, in “Historical Antifascism and the Global Left,” evaluates Joseph Fronczak’s Everything Is Possible: Antifascism and the Left in the Age of Fascism (2023), analyzing the balance between structural and discursive approaches to antifascism. He emphasizes the influence of global capitalism and mass politics on leftist identity formation.
Taken together, these articles indicate that the field is undergoing a significant transformation. They signal a growing preoccupation with artificial intelligence, post-anthropocentric ethics, and the need to redefine scholarly responsibility in light of technological mediation. They also reflect renewed interest in the metaphysical and speculative dimensions of historical theory, a critique of Eurocentric temporal frameworks, and a call to recover and recognize non-Western narrative traditions. At the same time, there is strong resistance to historiographical essentialism and growing support for more pluralistic and experience-based approaches, particularly in East Asian and postcolonial contexts. A critical thread runs through the issue, emphasizing the political and ethical responsibilities of historians in times of democratic erosion and geopolitical upheaval. The articles also foreground efforts to decolonize concepts, translate epistemologies, and rethink the architecture of historical theory beyond Euro-American universals.
If one were to name the intellectual orientation that emerges from these discussions, it might be described as a post-Western theory of history—a field increasingly shaped by democratization, decolonization, and epistemic pluralism and deeply informed by both technological transformations and metaphysical reflection. Current discussions are closely synchronized with broader developments in the humanities and social sciences, yet they tend to be more measured, grounded in the tradition of historical criticism and structured argumentation. There are no revolutions in our field, but there are rebellions—manifested in various “turns,” deliberate acts of resistance and redirection. Theorists of history, rather than initiating radical change, contribute meaningfully and critically to ongoing transitions in how the past is conceptualized and narrated in the humanities and social sciences in general.
Now, I’d like to ask you a question: What is your opinion of Western scholarship?
ZZ: This is a question that invites much discussion. I would like to answer it from three perspectives, reflecting what I see as my threefold identity within the international academic community.
First, as a scholar from China, I feel the need to be both critical of and responsive to the strong influence of Western scholarship and the power dynamics involved in its transmission to the East. I recall Dipesh Chakrabarty’s observation in his 1992 article titled “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?” that a Western scholar can become well-known without ever engaging with Eastern scholarship, while no Eastern scholar can gain international recognition without referencing Western academic achievements.[10] I basically agree with Chakrabarty’s assessment. His postcolonial approach has, from the perspective of a Bengali/Indian scholar, partially redressed the academic imbalance between East and West. However, it is not enough simply to complain about inequality in the international academic sphere—we must act. In China today, one direction in the humanities and social sciences is to excavate and reinterpret traditional Chinese cultural resources in dialogue with Western academia. I have recently made some attempts to conduct comparative studies between Chinese and Western historiography in order to foster such dialogue.
Second, as a learner of Western academic traditions—as a young Chinese historian eager to innovate—I have become aware of the mechanisms that enable Western academia to sustain its creativity. Two aspects strike me as particularly important. On the one hand, there is the humanistic sensitivity of Western scholars in the natural sciences and the importation of scientific terminology into the humanities. The field of Anthropocene studies, which has attracted much attention recently, emerged through this interdisciplinary mechanism. On the other hand, Western philosophical discourse often demonstrates a strong sense of innovation and acute engagement with the issues of our time. I know that many contemporary Western philosophers have proposed new ways of thinking about time and the future in response to the turbulence of the present era. These developments are both inspiring and instructive for myself and other young Chinese historians.
Third, as someone who evaluates Western scholarship, I see two notable shortcomings. One is that Western scholars are often extremely critical of their academic predecessors and colleagues. A striking example is R. G. Collingwood’s harsh critique of Benedetto Croce in The Idea of History. Of course, there are also many examples of deep academic friendships and respectful intellectual lineages—such as White’s expressions of gratitude to his teacher William J. Bossenbrook in The Practical Past. So, my assessment here may be debatable, but it is nonetheless a general impression I hold.
The second shortcoming, in my view, is a lack of dialectical thinking in some Western academic traditions, which can lead to intellectual extremes. By dialectical thinking, I mean the capacity to consider opposing positions within one’s own argument. For example, if one emphasizes the importance of human thought or subjective values in historical understanding, one should also take into account the objective historical conditions and prevailing ethical standards of the time. Arguments gain strength when developed in dialogue with their opposites—not when based only on one-sided affirmations. This, then, is my answer to your question.
Conclusion: Toward Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Futures
While transcribing and editing this conversation, we came to realize that, as with any cross-cultural dialogue, it has its limitations. While our aim was to foster a balanced and mutually enriching exchange, we are aware that certain asymmetries remain—both in the structure of the conversation and in the conceptual frameworks employed. The dialogue leans heavily on Western theoretical idioms and lacks deeper engagement with concrete examples from non-Western historiographies. Concepts such as “post-Western” and “transcultural knowledge” are offered as openings rather than fully defined categories, inviting future clarification and development. We also acknowledge that more critical attention could have been paid to our own institutional locations and to broader structures of epistemic power. This interview is therefore best read as a preliminary gesture—a work in progress—toward more plural, dialogical, and methodologically innovative conversations in the theory of history.
As we reflected on our exchange, we also realized that historical theory stands at a crossroads. The postmodernist moment challenged foundational assumptions about objectivity, truth, and progress. Yet, rather than leading to relativism or nihilism, these challenges opened space for more inclusive and collaborative approaches to understanding history and its many traditions. The future of historical theory resides not in choosing between Western and non-Western approaches but in deepening dialogue between different forms of knowledge, different ways of knowing—between distinct epistemologies and ontologies. This requires humility about our own limitations, curiosity about alternative perspectives, and commitment to epistemic justice. Perhaps, in the future, we will be able to create knowledge of the past that transcends the limitations of history as an approach to the past and as a discipline—drawing on diverse traditions of human knowledge and wisdom while remaining open to nonhuman perspectives.
Notes
[1] Frank Ankersmit, “Why Is There No ‘Progress’ in Philosophy of History?,” Geschichtstheorie am Werk, 19 July 2022, https://gtw.hypotheses.org/7111.
[2] Dong Lihe and Jin Qianwen, “The Study of Western Postmodern Philosophy of History in China in the Four Decades of Reform and Opening Up,” Frontiers of Philosophy in China 13, no. 2 (2018), 254–64.
[3] Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2013), 56.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Martin Heidegger, “Letter on ‘Humanism,’” trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 239.
[6] Hayden White, The Practical Past (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2014), 6. See also ibid., 43.
[7] Liu Zhiji, Shitong 史通 [Generality of Historiography] (Beijing: Zhonghua Book Company, 2014), 278: “Fu shi zhi chengmei zhe, yi xushi weixian . . . wen er buli” (夫史之称美者，以叙事为先 . . . 文而不丽).
[8] Henri-Irénée Marrou, The Meaning of History, trans. Robert J. Olsen (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966). For the French edition, see De la connaissance historique (Paris: Seuil, 1954).
[9] Jean Baudrillard, Forget Foucault, trans. Nicole Dufresne (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2007). For the French edition, see Oublier Foucault (Paris: Édition Galilée, 1977).
[10] Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘Indian’ Pasts?,” Representations 37 (Winter 1992), 1–2.