"Hyping the Text": Hypertext, Postmodernism, and the Historian

In 1989 David Harlan warned historians in the American Historical Review 10 pay attention to the hurricane winds of postmodemi sm furiously threatening the shores of the historical profession. In "Intel lectual HislOry and the Return o f Literature," Harlan railed against what he considered the rather dogmatic insis­ tenceofhistorians on narrowly contextualis! practice, unexamined and simplistic assumptions about the role of narration, and dated notions about authorial intentionality_ For HarJan, " literature has returned to history, unfurling hereireus s ilks of metaphor and allegory, misprision and aporia, (race and sign, demanding that hiSlOrians accept her mocking presence." This hauntingly triumphal "return of literature," Harlan concl uded, " has plunged historical studies into an extended epistemological crisis. "I Harlan's jeremiad did not go unanswered at the time, and since publication it has become someth ing like a foundational text for citation as historians slowly stick their heads out of the sands of past historical practice to consider more fully the implicat ions ofJiterature and postmodemism. In response to Harlan, Dav id A. Hollinger called for a middle-ground approach while recognizing many of the important implications of postmodernism for traditional history. But Hollinger did nOi find that the return of literature orthe increased penetration of theory into historical discourse must necessarily banish from the historical kingdom tradi­ tional methods of historical analysis dependent upon context, authorial intention, or narration. Instead . Hollingerposited a plurality ofapproaches that would, in the