From counterfactual history to counternarrative history

Abstract Counterfactual narratives are a refreshing development in the writing of history.They put contingency back into history, and serve as a necessary antidote to traditional deterministic tendencies. They accomplish the reintroduction of experimental elements into academic approaches to history. This experimental spirit animates the present article, which focuses on counter-narrative as an alternative strategy for writing history. If, as the counterfactualists claim, the past in itself is nonlinear and chaotic, but is constructed as linear and ordered only by the historian’s narratives, then we must study this construction at least as closely as ‘the facts’. Instead of asking, ‘What if something different had happened?’ I will ask, ‘What if other stories had been told?’ I discuss the implications of the counter-narrative method, arguing that it provides us with new insights into why some narratives attain hegemonic status, and how this can help us to understand the construction and function of historical consciousness.