Beiheft 19
Metahistory: Six Critiques
Cover image: cover of Hayden White’s Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973)
+ HANS KELLNER, A Bedrock of Order: Hayden White's Linguistic Humanism, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 1-29.
In Metahistory, White establishes a self-contained system of historical criticism which uses the nineteenth-century historical tradition as its direction and current cultural politics as its strategy. He argues that the flow of human events over time results from an interaction between the rules of tradition and the human mastery of that tradition through free will. After the spirit of Vico and Nietzsche, White considers the historical text a narrative representation which subsumes the logic of explanation. Rather than psychology and sociology, White chooses the trope as the basis of his linguistic system. Within his four-trope system, White identifies his own position as that of the ironic trope. Given tropology as the irreducible element, the four levels themselves become tropological. Metahistory is Metaphoric as it reaffirms human freedom through the creative use of language and Ironic because the rules of discourse place such affirmation "under erasure."
+ PHILIP POMPER, Typologies and Cycles in Intellectual History, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 30-38.
Hayden White, in Metahistory, rejects the psychological basis of language and, rather, emphasizes its formal characteristics. However, White assumes the existence of psychological phenomena such as "levels of consciousness" and imagination, which effectively undermines his synthetic principle. Another problem in White's theory is that he only describes the four phases of transition in public moods. His theory, then, suffers from the lack of a dynamic principle of change. In addition, his concept of "dialogical tension" appears a "catch-all" device for dealing with inconsistencies rather than a comprehensive analytical tool. The four typologies themselves assume a deep structure which provides heuristic value at the price of causal explanation. Finally, White attempts to use the trope of Irony as a dynamic principle. However, Irony has no formal restrictions and seems itself founded on disagreement rather than ultimate generative principles. His analysis would have been more convincing if it were limited to a description of literary subcultures rather than assuming theoretical coherence.
+ MAURICE MANDELBAUM, The Presuppositions of Metahistory, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 39-54.
Within his metahistorical thesis, White makes three assumptions about the nature of historical writing. First, he argues that "histories proper" and "philosophies of history" differ in emphasis and not in content because both share a common narrative strategy. However, White fails to acknowledge the vast differences in scope, principles of interpretation, and meaning between the two disciplines. Second, White assumes that the activity of ordering the historical text is a poetic act. This approach ignores the fact that events and the relationships of those events exist prior to and independent of the historical account. Moreover, his tropological structures are too inflexible to provide a useful understanding of historical discourse. Finally, he never questions the validity of viewing an historical work as a purely linguistic structure. In fact, whereas "histories proper" seem to have much in common to compare and to evaluate, "philosophies of history" almost never agree.
+ EUGENE O. GOLOB, The Irony of Nihilism, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 55-65.
Hayden White intends his Metahistory to be a contribution to the current discussion of the problem of historical knowledge. In the debate between the positivist and idealist schools, White disclaims both the positivist prescriptions for history as a science, and the idealist perspective of history as an autonomous discipline. Rather, he argues that historians cannot tell the truth about the past because of the limitations inherent in the linguistic structure of texts. White concludes then that the writing of history is aesthetic and moral rather than cognitive. Philosophers such as Collingwood disagree with this perspective and argue that content disciplines and limits the narrative imagination. By abandoning the positivist requirement of universal explanatory laws, one can view human action as infinitely complex and subject perpetually to disagreement and revision. By abandoning the criterion of truth White has destroyed personal responsibility and ultimately freedom itself.
+ NANCY STRUEVER, Topics in History, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 66-79.
In Metahistory, Hayden White chose literary style as that form of rhetoric with which he could better understand the relationship between what historians say and how they say it. By limiting his use of rhetoric to a theory of tropics, White has reduced rhetoric to poetics and rendered his construct antihistorical. Alternatively, one should consider history as both discipline and argument and by extension use a topics rather than a tropics of historical discourse. The rules which govern the narrative argument of history more closely resemble those of law rather than those of literature. Within the discipline of classical rhetoric, it is the lines (topoi) or places (loci) of argument which determine its conviction. Unlike White's poetical use of rhetoric, a topical approach can distinguish between sophisticated and naive argument, can illumine the complex relationship between history and genre, and can evaluate political discourse.
+ JOHN S. NELSON, Tropal History and the Social Sciences: Reflections on Struever's Remarks, History and Theory 19 (December 1980), Bei. 19, 80-101.
Struever argues ("Topics in History," Beiheft 19, 66-79) that White's emphasis on language, use of tropology, and adherence to formalism render his theory ahistorical. However, like White, she fails to define either her terms or her rationale for contrasting tropological with topological rhetoric, fails to take responsibility for our times, and fails to delineate clearly her views on the dynamics of history. What is required is further research and elaboration of White's tropal philosophy. A program for this study includes the clarification of a rhetoric for inquiry, of tropes, and of elective affinity. These concepts should then be applied systematically to the disciplines of social science and to philosophy of history. White's concept of irony must also be isolated, sorted, and examined for its resistance to isolation and sorting. Finally, one must address the principles of politics which underlie these concepts, this text, and ultimately texts in general.