Jan Ifversen:
Texts are documents and documents are texts, criticism ans textual analysis in history

Postmodernist theories challenge traditionel methods within the historical practice. This article examines the treatment of historical evidence in standard text books on historical method and shows some of the inbuild weaknesses concerning the question of representation. Following the French philosopher Paul Ricœur, the article proposes to treat evidence as texts. Different textual approaches are discussed in order to overcome the traditional view of evidence as relying on a purely contextual interpretation which is based on the referential dimension of texts. It is argued that an approach which sees historical sources as representing the past is necessary to understand the work of language. Historical sources, thus, have to be regarded as texts within a textual analysis. On the other hand, texts must also be seen as witnessing the past. Texts, therefore, has to trated as historical evidence without which there will be no truely historical science.