Changing the Subject

Abstract

Source criticism has been a pivotal method of historical research, routinely evoked as the necessary (if not sufficient) foundation of professional history in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. This article explores the epistemological context of source criticism, outlining a continuous if versatile focus on subjective agency as a motivating and formative problem of historical methods in Scandinavia throughout the 20th century. Towards the turn of the millennium, however, theories about discursive formation of identities and about entangled agencies of humans and non-humans have configured the nature of subjects, past reality, and historical knowledge differently. In a state of methodological multiplicity, rather than being foundational, source criticism has become one among other methods.