Abstract
I argue that what is brilliant about historians' representations of the past is that they are always 'failed representations' and that this, rather than being regretted, is the 'best thing to be hoped for.' It is to be eagerly embraced because it allows new ways of historicizing/shaping/figuring the past, ways which, without being prescriptive, are essayed in the form of 'dispositions' in the final section.