Hayden WHITE “Postmodernism and Historiography”

Parerga: Postmodernist historical thought is present-oriented and is
primarily interested in the past only insofar as it can be used to serve
the present.
Thus, Lyotard is only half-right in finding the origin of postmodernism
in the rejection of the great schemata (‘grands recits’) of universal
history which purported to disclose history’s direction, aim, and
meaning.
Professional historians and philosophers of history had dismissed these
great schemata as myth and ideology long before Lyotard reported their
abandonment.
But postmodernism goes further and rejects, not only the “grands recits”
of providence, progress, the dialectic of the World Spirit (Hegel),
Marxism, etc., but also (les petits recits) of professional historians
as well; both kinds of historiography are deemed irrelevant to the
practical needs of our epoch.
Central among these needs is “coming to terms with” a past “that won’t
go away,” especially the past of the Nazi genocide, which belied the
myths of progress, enlightenment, and humanism sustained by professional
historians in the service of the state and bourgeois society since the
time of the French Revolution.