Keith Jenkins

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Keith Jenkins is a British proponent of postmodern history. Jenkins has attacked what he sees to be "traditional" approaches to history, suggesting that most writing about the past is nothing more than a literary construct. He states that history is a 'problematic discourse' and that facts and history float on separate spectrums. He also believes that historians are inevitably "ideologically positioned", and sees historians as group of workers who mutually convey messages to us about the past.

Jenkins is professor in history at the University of Chichester and author of Rethinking History (1993), On "What is History" : From Carr to Elton to Rorty and White (1995) and edited The Postmodern History Reader (1997), the author of Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (1999). With Alun Munslowe he co-authored The Nature of History Reader (2004), in which key pieces of writing by leading historians are reproduced and evaluated, with an explanation and critique of their character and assumptions.