History as Unfulfilled Promise. Hayden White and Figural Realism

Abstract

Hayden White offers an original way to understand the historicization of past events. Auerbach’s notion of “figural realism” allows us to understand the production of realist historical representations in terms of the presentation of a figure of the reality. These reflections explain why an ultimate version of past events cannot be obtained: history is always figured by agents immersed in their present and it will be unavoidably rewritten time and time again. In a pragmatist way, we may think that scientific practice is guided in several occasions by the assessment of alternative theoretical proposals not so much because of its conformity with the evidence (something not decidable), but bearing in mind which of them suggests new paths of inquiry. The concept of “heuristic evaluation” offers an adequate way of understanding the controversial and non-ultimate character of historical rewriting practice.