Hayden White's Narrative Reinterpretation Of Historical Materialism

Hayden White is the most important figure in the Western philosophy of history at present.In the 1960 s,when Western philosophy of history and history were caught in the epistemological crisis,the academics thought that his "meta-history" created the postmodern turn of philosophy of history,In the era of history to become a scientific,Through the structural analysis of historical works,Hayden White dissolving the boundary between history and literature,deconstructing the myth of “history is a science”,as a result,history is equivalent to literature or art.Because of this,White is also regarded as one of the postmodern representatives,aroused widespread concern and discussion.But White does not recognize such a position,and claim that he is a Marxist and socialists in many occasions,then his theory and Marx what kind of relationship? In what sense is he a Marxist?In this paper,through the comprehensive study of Hayden White's theory,We find that many of the criticisms of white come from the misunderstanding of white's theory.poetic prefigure which is his core of the theory of White's narration is not complete fiction.But also transcends the historical ontology that embodies history as an object or some objective process,and transcends the historical epistemology which pursuit the subject conform to object.,and the basis of this transcendence is that White's understanding of the essence of history is consistent with Marx's.In Marx's view,the starting point of human history is the material production of mankind and its own production.The essence of history is the creating process of human beings,society and nature through the perceptual practice.Therefore,for historical cognition,the mankind is not only the subject of historical cognition activities,but also the object of historical cognition activities,and the subject and object is not given,and no changing,but generati through practice,then the historical cognition can not be consistent with the subject and object,completely Objectively reflecting the process of historical events,but the process of re-understanding the historical events based on the reality of the living conditions,and constantly giving new signification of historical events.Historical knowledge is by no means a simple search for the past,it is looking at reality,pointing to the future.White is also starting from this foundation,beyond the traditional epistemology of history,opened up a new space for the theory of history.But White's poetic prefigure and narrative theory is not just an analysis of the historical understanding of the problem,he really want to explore is to influence the historian to make selection and judgment of the deep structure,this deep structure is culture,which as a human the objectification of practice activities.So in the completion of the deconstruction of historical science after the criticism of history,White did not stop,but turned to cultural criticism,and directly contributed to the cultural turn of history and the rise of new cultural history,And the fundamental purpose of his move is to pass the cultural criticism to complete the return of human nature,in this sense this is in the new period for the historical materialism inheritance and development.