The Narrative Turn in Theory of History: From Danto to White and Beyond

In retrospect, Arthur C. Danto’s Analytical Philosophy of History (1965) marks the pivotal transition from the analytical to the narrative period. While operating within the analytical agenda, Danto pioneered the analysis of narrative explanation as an autonomous and legitimate form of historical understanding. He crucially emphasized the inherently retrospective nature of historical explanation, thereby introducing a serious temporal dimension. However, Danto still viewed narrative as a variety of causal explanation and a composite of singular statements, a stance that maintained his connection to positivism and its methodological framework.

This direct link was decisively severed by Hayden White in his seminal work, Metahistory (1973), widely regarded as inaugurating a new phase in theory of history. While White also argued for narrative’s autonomous explanatory power, he did not defend this claim against positivism with formal proofs. He radically departed from the analytical view of narrative as a composite of statements. Instead, White introduced the concept of emplotment, arguing historians choose between archetypal narrative structures—romance, tragedy, comedy, satire—shaping explanations through aesthetic and political grounds more than epistemological ones. He famously questioned the transparency of narrative, suggesting we face "the fictions of factual representation."

White's work, influenced by Paul Feyerabend's anarchistic methodology, cleared the ground for representationalism. This shifted focus from objectively reconstructing the past to analyzing its modes of representation. The central question became narrative itself, sparking intensive discussions intersecting with hermeneutics (Hans-Georg Gadamer), deconstruction (Jacques Derrida), thick description (Clifford Geertz), and Critical Theory (Jürgen Habermas).

Following White, other philosophers developed distinct narrative theories. Frank R. Ankersmit, in his Narrative Logic (1981), provided a philosophical foundation for narrative as a holistic linguistic entity generating a specific viewpoint, rather than a sum of statements. Paul Ricoeur integrated phenomenology and analytical philosophy, presenting temporality as the hallmark of both narrative and socially structured human life, thereby reintroducing ontology into theoretical discourse. Jörn Rüsen similarly blended phenomenological narrative philosophy with Enlightenment ideals.

This period fostered greater dialogue between philosophers and historians. However, the strong linguistic predilections of White and Ankersmit—who viewed narratives as linguistic constructs without direct referential strings to reality—collided with the realistic presuppositions of practicing historians. Scholars like Allan Megill and Anthony Grafton defended the discipline, arguing that doing history inextricably combines narrative construction and empirical research, with evidence anchoring narratives to the past. Thus, the epistemological questions dismissed by narrativists re-emerged.

This viewpoint gained momentum from an unexpected source: the surge of memory after the political transformations of 1989/1990. The "return of the past" in this guise catalyzed the third major phase in theory of history, characterized by explicit self-reflexivity and theoretical self-consciousness in new historical approaches, moving beyond the narrative paradigm to grapple with presence, trauma, and the persistent claims of the real.