This chapter begins with a discussion of postmodernism and its suggestive gestures. It then turns to the post-structuralist posture of legal history, and concludes with a summary of its structuralist rival. It argues that if we imagine postmodernism as a family of suggestions for historicizing the legal world, we can also imagine post-structuralism and structuralism as two historical postures, two ways of practising the postmodern. The post-structuralist posture, sketched through the medium of the genealogy, embraces certain postmodern anxieties, and runs with them. The structuralist posture, sketched through the medium of archaeology, is similarly receptive to the postmodern. But rather than let postmodernism run riot in a flattened and hybridized present, the structuralist posture performs rather differently. The structuralist experiences the dizzying vertigo of the genealogy, and in the midst of the free-fall, erects grand, totalizing structures of legal thought.
This is an introduction to a forum on historiography, ideology, and law. The basic question weaving this forum together concerns the meaning of the term “critical” in the domain of critical legal history, a question that is deeply familiar to historians of all stripes. Ultimately, whether you are a lawyer doing historical work, a historian interested in law, or a historian of a different sort altogether, there is no hiding from the question of context and, critically, the ideological stakes in choosing an answer to that question.
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