Is History a Nightmare

The first 200 words of this essay...

'History' Stephen said, 'is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake' (James Joyce, Ulyssess). Is history a 'nightmare' and, if so, is it possible to awake?

History has been represented by some as a triumphal march. As a progressive, unlinear, emancipating process. Fukyama, for instance, has heralded liberal democracy as the 'end of history'; while orthodox Marxism also posits a liberating 'end goal' in the form of 'communism'. History is understood as teleological and determined; a dream. It will be argued that history is more accurately understood as a 'nightmare'; as contingent and determined by conflict or struggle within specific networks of power-relations. In this respect, crude, reductive, teleological understandings of history are rejected, in favour of those that analyse history as based on contingent inter-relationships between structure, agency and discourse. Paradigms such as historical materialism, post-structuralism and critical-discourse analysis will be drawn on to show how relations of power and domination are constructed through conflict. It is these relationships which are the 'nightmare' of history; the nightmare of 'power' and the 'conflict' over it.1 Historical scholarship in historicising social relationships, de-naturalises relationships of power and showing the agency of historical actors can act as a