BEYOND HISTORICISM AND UNIVERSALISM: EPIC, HISTORY, AND MEMORY

Review of The Concept of History, by Dmitri Nikulin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. Pp. xiii, 228)

Verónica Tozzi Thompson

Translated by Moira Pérez

In The Concept of History, Dmitri Nikulin rehearses an alternative philosophy of history, thus accompanying a certain revival of interest in this discipline since the end of the twentieth century. Conceptualizing an alternative philosophy of history is of fundamental relevance in the context of the global problems that deepen every day in our contemporary world. Undoubtedly, philosophy must be attentive to the present demands and interests of representing the past, whether by the sectors of power or by various dissident collectives, for failing to reflexively address questions of substantive philosophy of history surely leaves room for the (unacknowledged) validity of the teleological-universalist narrative. The historical trajectory delineated by the modern conception of history is centered on the uniqueness and unity of history and establishes a divide between historical and nonhistorical (or prehistoric) peoples. Nikulin, by contrast, seeks to produce a pluralistic conception of multiple histories, for which he elaborates a notion of “the historical” present in every time period and human culture (oral and written). A central distinction to be established from the beginning, according to Nikulin, is between “the historical” and “history.” The historical is nothing other than lists of names, things, actions, and facts to be preserved, and we can find these lists in any culture in any time and place. Such lists are governed by some organizing principle that determines what not to forget. Chapters 3 (“The Epic of History”), 4 (“The Homer Galaxy”), and 5 (“The Logos of History”) are, in my view, the most novel and stimulating parts of the book. There, “the historical” (those detailed and organized lists) comes with a narrative (fabula). The historical/fable dyad constitutes the structure of history, which is instantiated in multiple histories but which, in itself (as a structure), is not historical but invariant in each and every history. The seven chapters that make up The Concept of History run through various examples of reflections on and problems related to the subject in ancient history, a period in which Nikulin himself is a recognized specialist. The centrality of ancient Greek history in this study does not imply a commitment to the thesis that history emerged in Greek culture. According to Nikulin, where there are human beings, there is history.