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One grand narrative – the ‘Plato to Nato’ story of the West – has received severe criticism in these terms, not solely from radical or critical theorists.ĤIn detailing the means by which the continuous grand narrative has been ‘cut down’ by post-structuralist and critical theory, my intention is to lay the groundwork for a refigured history of ideas. Incredulity has become, in some quarters, disdain: any historical narrative spanning long tracts of time may be suspected of constructing a false trajectory, making dubious connections, claiming erroneous origins, imposing judgements of the present on the past. The grand narrative has been indicted as a distortion of history, in its construction of a continuous pathway leading to the present.ģJean-François Lyotard’s ‘incredulity’ towards metanarratives – his succinct definition of the postmodern condition – has been heartily welcomed into critical/cultural studies. I consider the theoretical critiques of grand narratives, critiques which bear on the teleological impulse driving such historical narratives. In this chapter I consider the significance of recent narrative theory for a reconstituted history of ideas, including the possibility of broken or discontinuous historical narratives. It is the suspicion of those long, continuous, confidently drawn ‘grand’ or ‘master’ narratives that once informed historiography, and, indeed, much Western thought. Theories of historical continuity pertinent to intellectual and cultural history will be considered in detail in Chapters Eight and Nine.ĢAny contemporary attempt to trace ideas over long time spans, however, faces another challenge, one related to discontinuity. My study of those theorists most associated with historical discontinuity has revealed, in some cases, a repression of continuity of thought which I take to be unacceptable and in others, a provision for continuities and gradual transformations which is compatible with my project. To this end, I have devoted the previous three chapters to the theme of discontinuity in intellectual history I have considered this necessary due to the challenges posed by the emphasis on discontinuity to my project.

1This book is concerned with a reconstruction of the history of ideas.

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