Victorian Labour History: Experience, Identity and the Politics of Representation

Description

John Host addresses liberal, Marxist and post modernist historiography on Victorian working people to question the special status of historical knowledge. The central focus of this study is a debate about mid-Victorian social stability, a condition conventionally equated with popular acceptance of the prevailing social order. Host does not join the debate but takes it as his object of analysis, deconstructing the notion of stability and the analysis that purports to explain it. Host examines an extensive range of archival material to illustrate the ambiguity of the historical field, the rhetorical strategies through which the illusion of its unity is created, and the ultimately fictive quality of historical narrative.

"[This book is] strongly argued, impeccably written, sophisticated in its handling of evidence, and evenhanded in its judgements...steeped fully in the current literature concerning the epistemology and methodology of historical enquiry. It is hard to fault the courtesy, precision and conceptual sophistication of his arguments, his delicacy in his handling of documents, and his fairness in assessing the work of historians whom he credits even while criticizing. Polished and impressive....this is a really fine work."-Hayden White, University of California, Santa Cruz