Beiheft 26
The Representation of Historical Events
Cover image: The Execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico, by Édouard Manet (1867), from Bildindeks Danmark
+ HANS KELLNER, Narrativity in History: Post-Structuralism and Since, History and Theory 26 (December 1987), Bei. 26, 1-29.
Two new ways of looking at forms of knowledge were practiced in France roughly between 1965 and 1985. The postwar Annales school of history broke from "narrative" historical accounts to "nonnarrative" accountssynchronic, quantitative accounts not in story form. At the same time, the structuralists (eventually replaced by the poststructuralists) made history a special target as they began questioning the primacy and security of meaning and the strategies for constructing meaning in narratives. If structuralism and its aftermath is to be said to have had an effect on history, it would be the reinvention of reading, conceiving reading as a more complex and elusive process than it formerly had been, and exposing more and more of the accepted, fundamental components of human life as constructions. Three writers, Paul Ricoeur, F. R. Ankersmit, and Hayden White, recognize narrativity as a worldview, rejecting the Annales school distinction between narrative and nonnarrative history. These three see story history as a genre. They agree with the poststructuralists on the allegorical nature of history, but their arguments are, unconventionally, morally based. Their discussions of the constructions of narratives serve less to undermine history than to reground it as a humane discourse.
+ C. BEHAN MCCULLAGH, The Truth of Historical Narratives, History and Theory 26 (December 1987), Bei. 26, 30-46.
Recent studies of historical synthesis have denied the possibility of "truth" in historical narratives, which they state impose meaning on a series of events. An historian is, however, capable of writing a true history, true in the sense that his or her narrative provides a fair representation of its central subject. Descriptions represent the world when they give us an idea that resembles part of the world itself. A subject can be said to be fairly represented if an author follows certain procedures: events must be presented chronologically; the main changes that occurred in the subject must be described; there must not be descriptions or omissions which might give a misleading impression of the subject; and the subject should be explained at a consistent level of generality and with a consistent level of detail. An historian motivated by preconceptions rather than the desire to represent a subject fairly, will not write a true history. Preconceptions are not incompatible with writing true histories, however, as long as they are discarded when an historian learns that they are incompatible with a fair representation. Analysis can be supplementary to, but is never a substitute for, accurate historical representation of a subject.
+ STEPHEN BANN, The Odd Man Out: Historical Narrative and the Cinematic Image, History and Theory 26, Beiheft (December 1987), 47-67.
Goya's and Manet's painted images, and Jean Renoir's cinematic image of historical executions have the power under the ideology of the image to reveal the truth of a moment outside of historical narrative. At the same time, these images are pulled back into the narrative from which they have been removed. The works of these three artists can be used to trace changes in the relationship of the image to historical narrative and its connection to photography and cinema. Goya, working in the early nineteenth century, uses the power of the scopic drive in a strategy which can be called the "witness effect." He deploys the traditional codes of post- Renaissance art in his composition, leading to a detemporalization of his image. Fifty years later, Manet's scene of execution includes an element outside the domain of codes, an element not symbolic, but indexical-the smoke coming out of the soldiers' gun barrels. The conception of the smoke as a sign of actuality is made possible by the invention of photography, which asks of the historical narrative, "Could such a fact, as it is narrated, have been photographed?" The third scene of execution, a still from a history film, is in a state of narrative nonexistence. The execution will be thwarted as the film continues. Renoir accommodates the historical imagination through allowing the image to assert both its presence and its absence. He articulates the gap between the reality and theatricality of visual representations of history.
+ JOHN PASSMORE, Narratives and Events, History and Theory 26 (December 1987), Bei. 26, 68-74.
Every human being is born into a world of stories. Western society has tended to differentiate types of stories, distinguishing, for example, between history and fiction. Recently, the major intellectual task undertaken by many influential thinkers has been that of destroying these distinctions, and insisting on resemblances rather than differences. According to this train of thought, history is as much "imaginative literature" as is fictional writing. Argument in favor of this view is often begun by reducing the description of an historian's data to "scattered events." But, being born into a world of stories, an historian actually works with events only in story-form. It is misleading to compare the concept "event," which belongs to the ontological mode, to "narrative," which belongs to the linguistic mode. "Event" is further ambiguous because "events" can be distinguished ontologically or evaluatively. Historians deal with "event-descriptions," not events, and these descriptions can be correct or incorrect.
+ JERZY TOPOLSKI, Historical Narrative: Towards a Coherent Structure, History and Theory 26 (December 1987), Bei. 26, 75-86.
In attempting to establish a correspondence between the content of historical narrative and that of past facts, F. R. Ankersmit identifies a "mechanism" which enables one to arrive at a narrative representation of the past. He asserts that the mechanism cannot be called a "translation," since the correspondence is indirect. Narrative is, however, closer to the truth than he has stated. Historical narratives can be evaluated on their proximity to the truth by the degree of their coherence. Coherence can be judged on two criteria: the kind of temporal content and the kind of conceptual organization of the worldview of the annalist. The chronicle emerged in the late Middle Ages. Temporally, the chronicler uses retrospection to introduce causal links in a chain of events. The worldview of the chronicler provides the conceptual organization. Strictly historical narratives took form in the nineteenth century and have a temporal organization which is both retrospective and prospective. The control of the theoretical organization of a narrative by an historian can be said to be one of the fundamental rules whereby historiography becomes a more and more coherent and integrated presentation of the past.
+ JÖRN RÜSEN, Historical Narration: Foundation, Types, Reason, History and Theory 26 (December 1987), Bei. 26, 87-97.
Historical narration is a system of mental operations defining the field of historical consciousness. It is poetic in that it is the performance of creative activity by the human mind in the process of historical thinking. The purpose of historical narration is to make sense of the experience of time in order to orient practical life in the course of time. Three elements distinguish an historical narration from other forms of narration: an historical narration is tied to the medium of memory; it organizes the three dimensions of time (past, present, future) in a concept of continuity; and it establishes the identity of its authors and listeners. In order to develop the concepts of continuity and the stability of identity, an historical narration must fulfill four functions: affirmation, regularity, negation, and transformation. Four types of historical narration correspond to these four functions: traditional, exemplary, critical, and genetical. There is a natural progression through these four types of narration, with critical narration serving as a catalyst. The four types are present in all historical texts, one dominating, the others secondary. Modern historical studies are unique in being informed by theoretically and methodologically organized empirical research. The articulation of theories in history means a progress in reasoning. This affects the role of the concept of continuity of time, which is no longer a given and has become a subject of discussion.