They argue that the biases that distort our picture of the past should be embraced since they cannot be overcome. The agreement about content, they say, will never bring a consensus of interpretation. For these relativist historians, no interpretation ranks as objectively right, so none is theoretically better than the others. In practice, left-wing tracts that supposedly reveal the inherent contradictions of modern life or tell about the way suffering peoples have fought oppression receive the lion's share of critical attention. This leads to concrete-bound empiricism and a disdain for abstraction.
Historians tend to shy away from broad historical judgments and abstractions about whole cultures.
Consequently, many reject sweeping synthetic works of history that attempt to come to definite conclusions about the past. In the study of history, the most theoretical and explicitly post-modern practitioners tend to be in third world history. Close behind them are the European historians, who have followed trends in French literary criticism and Post-modernist philosophy. The least theoretical overall and least post-modernist historians tend to study American history, although there are exceptions in each field. The post-modernist approach not only abandons objectivity, but also does away with all standards of evidence.