Methodology versus theory: historical approaches and the problematic field of the humanities in postmodernism

Among the diverse methodological approaches that are currently represented in the postmodern studies, the one, which dominates nowadays, is the statement that there cannot be any methodology in postmodernism per se otherwise it would be a “relapse” into constructing one more “universalizing method”. Evidently, this assertion is stipulated by the highly pluralized context of the postmodern “normalization of change”, the transformations of the socio- cultural order in accordance with the postparadigmatic shift of the theory. Postmodern researchers both implicitly and explicitly state that the only way to “manage” the increasing pluralism and diversity is unmasking prior modernist ideas and ideals in the individual and general meanings of the human experience. On the other hand, the postmodern methodological “openness” encourages academic ambivalence, which results in the denial of the universal notions and absolute moral values. With the apparent postmodernist accent on the interdisciplinary approaches, the “scientific conditions” have become even more complicated: nowadays philosophy, history, theology, gender studies, arts are being connected with biology, genetics, cybernetics, economics, etc. As one of the main components of the postmodern intertextual analysis the historical method is vividly represented both in the western feminist theory and in the eastern post-colonial criticism, poetics of fiction and cultural studies. All mentioned above, appearing in the pluralized modes, occasion the turn into considering interdisciplinary techniques more scrupulously. The objective of this research is to reconstruct conceptually the comparative-historical methodology in the theoretical field of the postmodern humanities with the focus on the specific character of the interpretation of history in the cultural texts. The main thesis of the research reflects the reconstruction of the historical methods as an important systematic and meaning-conscious component in postmodern theoretical studies. The research proves that nowadays historical approaches are significant and valid because they locate certain techniques into the contemporary scholarly work in order to properly utilize the sources and pieces of evidence in writing “history”. The value of the comparative-historical method is also based on the fact that it proposes some models and patterns in dealing with the analysis of the particular theory in interdisciplinary studies. The historical narrative with its objective to tell the “truth” cannot be reflected according to some simple schemes, without taking into account the “hardcore” role of the context in the hermeneutic reading of history. Though there is a view that historiography is located “between” modernity and postmodernity, the articulated point of view is that postmodernism, being a theoretical cluster of historical disruption and “brokenness”, in fact, cannot reject the tradition of historicism in the humanitarian studies.