Challenges and a New Narrative Style in History

Modern historiography has fundamentally sought to negate the practical aspects that history once possessed―that is, the ways of remembering and understanding the past in response to the present concerns of the remembering and understanding subject―by replacing them with an objective and general past or excluding any parts that could not be replaced by it. However, as the realization that we cannot know the past exactly and that historical narratives are influenced by the historian’s subjectivity has become more evident, there is a growing need to allow a variety of people to narrate history according to their own needs, without conferring special authority only to professional historians. This awareness of the issue, combined with neoliberal tendencies, has given rise to first-person historiography. First-person historiography aims to uncover the multi-layered aspects of the past that are not visible in third-person narratives and attempts to approach historical truth by incorporating the historian's subjectivity. However, if this approach remains subjective, it is also undeniable that the perception of both past and present may become individualized and fragmented.