Abstract
Studying human history means studying the recoverable stock of past human experiences and the retrospective assessments of those experiences. But recent arguments about how and whether historians can study earlier times have not yet sufficiently highlighted the questions of periodisation. This essay urges that such a debate is long overdue. In practice, historians are eclectic and many invoke their own preferred timespans. Yet the collective 'default' system of the profession as currently institutionalised sticks with out-dated assumptions about the onset of the ancient world, medievalism, modernity and (perhaps) postmodernity. However, did history really change so schematically? The suggested binary 'breaks' between Modernity and Postmodernity at some stage in the later twentieth century are shown, upon close examination, to be subjective and inconsistent, as well as lacking in specific chronology. It also remains unclear whether this binary shift is/was applicable solely to western societies or to the entire world. Moreover, the uncertainty surrounding this supposed great transformation is as nothing in comparison with lack of clarity associated with the concept of Modernity and (not the same) Modernism. These confusions have been generated by historians and cultural critics who do believe that the past can be studied (here differing from theorists of Postmodernity); but who do not compare and contrast their own operating models. 'Modernity' is such a familiar term that its use seems unproblematic. The result is much repetition, but conceptual confusion. In fact, all the apparently 'established' chronologies have problems, including the Marxist variants of Feudalism, Capitalism and Communism. So it is time for historians, who do believe that the past can be studied, to allow for multiple dimensions - continuity, gradual change, and revolutionary upheaval - within one period. In that way, the analysis can move beyond Post-post to study multi-layered experiences in the past as in the present.