“What is it that must precede the conveying of history? Must there not be the declaration of a double passion, an eros for the past and an ardor for the others in whose name there is a felt urgency to speak?” asks Edith Wyschogrod. She continues: “to be a historian . . . is to accept the destiny of the spurned lover—to write, photograph, film, televise, archive, and simulate the past not merely as its memory bank but as binding oneself by a promise to the dead to tell the truth about the past” (p. xi). By positing the responsibility of the historian peremptorily as a “promise,” thus implying a binding obligation to others, Wyschogrod tilts her discussion of the writing of history away from the cognitive realm and toward “postmodern” ethics. Her intricate reflections are marked by an overwhelming consciousness of the uniqueness of our age, in which the historian must breast the cumulative moral impact of the experiences of organized “scientific” murder and genocide and the staggering and disconcerting manipulation of information made possible by hyperreality; as well as the radical philosophical questioning of the communicative possibilities of language and skepticism about the nature of historical truth.