Volume 23
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Hayden White, “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory," History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 1-33.
A discipline that produces narrative accounts of its subject matter as an end in itself seems methodologically unsound. The historians of the Annales group criticized narrative history for the nonscientific character of its emphasis on political history and human agents rather than upon longterm impersonal processes. Structuralists and post-structuralists view narratives as an invented product of a culture, serving that culture's purposes and desires, rather than as a representation of a found reality. This criticism is consistent with the objections raised by the Annales group. Both view narrative as ideological in character. Most defenders of narrative as a legitimate mode of historical representation conceive of a narrative as a message about the past containing facts and explanation. But a historical narrative cannot simply be a chronicle transmitting information. It imposes a discursive form on events by means that are poetic in nature. A historical narrative is properly assessed in terms of the truth-value of its factual statements and their logical conjunction, and the allegorical content provided by its narrative form. Most analytical philosophers ignore this literary aspect in their discussions of historical narrative. Paul Ricoeur argues that narrative is essential to the representation of historical events because this literary aspect is essential to historical understanding, which is something more than explanation. The ambiguity of 11 narrative" as both a mode of discourse and the product of that mode is what leads to much of the dispute about narrative in historiographical thought.
Peter Knapp, “Can Social Theory Escape from History? Views of History in Social Science," History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 34-52.
Social science can achieve falsifiable theory, but only if dependencies of regularities upon milieu and context are explicitly considered. Achieving falsifiable, general theory depends upon finding a set of relationships which is in fact relatively independent of context, and specifying the boundary conditions or domain of applicability to models. Contemporary sociologists such as Herbert Blalock and George Hornans believe theory is possible without recourse to history, but Raymond Aron and especially Max Weber suggest how and why history and theory are interdependent. Weber's image of the historical as inexhaustible concrete adds the insight that whenever theorists find a determined, lawful causal sequence, they will have to understand the situation at the start of the sequence as a set of rich, historical givens. Metatheoretical philosophy of explanation in social science best addresses the problem of infinite residue and bridges the gap between disciplines.
Wolfgang von Leyden, “Categories of Historical Understanding," History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 53-77.
The first category of historical understanding represents the thesis of historical realism - the existence and temporal priority of the actual past. The second constitutes the doctrine of constructionism -the logical priority of historical knowledge. The third stipulates that the difference between the real past and the historical construction of the past is one of a kind and in its turn logical. The fourth states that any given piece or whole body of historical evidence contains many potential meanings and functions. The fifth stipulates that an historian's standpoint is of utmost significance for the character and outcome of his work. The sixth category refers to the multilevel structure of the study of history - statements about the past in historical narratives occupy a level always beyond that of earlier generations and contemporaries of past events. The most significant implication of the advance of historical writing and the historian's higher-order status is that his work is circumscribed by his own time-bound perspective.
Ulysses Santamaria and Anne M. Bailey, “A Note on Braudel's Structure as Duration," History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 78-83.
Fernand Braudel's three time scales - the long term, the conjunctural, and that of events -do not fit together easily. Whereas the theoretical underpinnings of duration are clear, Braudel neither seeks nor finds Justification in the social sciences for the short term or event. Braudel's lack of theorization of the short term as a present moment and the relegation of its explanation to structures or conjunctures accounts for a number of failings or lacunae attributed to Annales over the past twenty years. What is absent in Braudel's historiography is the inquiry into the effects of action on the creation of structures. In his search for the structures that envelop the products of short durations, Braudel neither seeks contradictions within either the long-term structures or the outcomes of shorter durations, nor finds contradictions within the three temporalities which he superimposes on any present moment.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Peter Kemp on Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics by Hubert L. Dreyfus, Paul Rabinow, and Michel Foucault, History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 84-105.
V. H. H. Green on Historical Writing in England II. c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century by Antonia Gransden, History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 105-116.
Peter Skagestad on The Expression of Historical Knowledge by J. L. Gorman, History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 116-132.
Stephen Tyman on The Philosophy of History with Reflections and Aphorisms by John William Miller, History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 132-140.
George Huppert on Artisans of Glory: Writers and Historical Thought in Seventeenth Century France by Orest Ranum, History and Theory 23, no. 1 (1984), 140-144.
ARTICLES
John P. Diggins, "The Oyster and the Pearl: The Problem of Contextualism in Intellectual History," History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 151-169.
The methodological trend of contextualism has almost come to dominate current discourse in intellectual history. But the genesis of a text may defy the immediate context of time and space. Insofar as authors of texts may reflect upon the complex act of their creation in the process of composing them, the texts' "meaning" may have as much to do with the internal demands of mind as the external pressures of the cultural or political environment. The status of ideas in history is more complex than a contextualist reduction of meaning to usage would imply, and the act of knowing on the part of a thinker is not necessarily determined by the available means of knowing, the paradigms of language and discourse. There are thinkers whose depths of knowledge surpass the ordinary range of words, in whom some truths we feel are introspectively discoverable.
Jan Goldstein, "Foucault among the Sociologists: The ‘Disciplines’ and the History of the Professions," History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 170-192.
Foucault's model ofthe disciplines undermines the sociological model of professions. Professionalism is the quintessentially modern way of exercising power. Bourgeois liberalism is sustained by a dark and unseen underside -the mechanisms of control or discipline operated by the disciplines. The total and totally vulnerable visibility of an individual under examination implements power relations and makes possible the extraction and constitution of knowledge. Hence the scientific method of induction appears to be a chance offshoot or byproduct of the project of domination. It has been thought that a prior knowledge base legitimated a profession; in fact, political-cum-"disciplinary" considerations were anterior to demonstrably superior knowledge.
David Boucher, "The Creation of the Past: British Idealism and Michael Oakeshott's Philosophy of History," History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 193-214.
Michael Oakeshott shared the general concerns of British idealists and leaned heavily upon their conclusions. As with any mode of understanding, historv creates its own object of inquiry. History is an activity built upon postulates and capable of generating conclusions appropriate to itself. The past in history is different from any other past. It can only be evoked by means of subscription to the historical present in which each artifact is recognized as the vestige of a performance which is transformed into circumstantial evidence of a past which has not survived. A great deal of what Oakeshott has to say, especially about coherence, continuity, and identity in difference, stands in sharp contrast to Collingwood's ideas on the reenactment of the past. A living past, relevant to the present or evocative of a future state of affairs, is modally irrelevant to history.
William H. Shaw, "Marx and Morgan," History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 215-228.
Marx (and Engels) found in the American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan's work a confirmation of and expansion upon his own materialist approach. Similarities he found included Morgan's division of mankind's early development into distinct stages, each the necessary forerunner of its successor; a theory of historical development; the importance of "productive forces"; and an awareness of the social contradictions of private property. Marx knew Morgan did not share his political sympathies, but he and Engels did not see or ignored evidence that Morgan was not an historical materialist. Marx and Engels through their enthusiasm for Morgan brought their materialist conception of history into contact with the important question of the nature of kinship bonds, even if they did not resolve it themselves.
REVIEW ESSAYS
William J. Bouwsma on Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives by Dominick LaCapra and Steven L. Kaplan, History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 229-236.
Philip Greven, Jr. on Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England by John Putnam Demos, History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 236-251.
Hunter R. Rawlings III on Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides by Virginia Hunter, History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 251-260.
Harry Liebersohn on Sociological Impressionism: A Reassessment of Georg Simmel's Social Theory by David Frisby, History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 261-267.
Hope Glidden on Love, Death and Money in the Pays D'Oc by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Alan Sheridan, History and Theory 23, no. 2 (1984), 267-272.
ARTICLES
Lelan McLemore, "Max Weber's Defense of Historical Inquiry,” History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 277-295.
Weber locates the differentiation between the social and natural sciences within a fundamental division between the sciences: those seeking knowledge of concrete events and those directed towards the development of causal law. The validity of a causal explanation of a concrete event depends upon the evidence available rather than upon the capacity to subsume that event under a law. The impossibility of explanation by subsumption, the role of value-relevance in conceptualizing the object domain, the use of categories of adequate causation and objective possibility in imputing causes, and the unlikelihood of dernonstrating causal necessity are characteristic of any effort to gain knowledge of concrete phenomena. Weber adds a distinction between natural and sociocultural sciences based on the subject matter of the sciences. The task of the sociocultural sciences, unlike that of the natural sciences, is that of "interpreting the meaning which men give to their actions and so understanding the actions themselves." Sociocultural explanations can and must demonstrate meaning adequacy as well as causal adequacy by making the dynamic bond between cause and effect intelligible.
Dominick LaCapra, "Is Everyone a Mentalité Case? Transference and the ‘Culture’ Concept,” History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 296-311.
The difficulty in historical research is to develop an exchange with the "other" that is both sensitive to transferential displacement and open to the challenge of the "other's" voice. Contemporary sociocultural history has often tended simply to reverse the assumptions of an abstracted history of ideas and replicate its documentary treatment of artifacts as symptoms of society and economy rather than of mind. Its populism replicates the scapegoating propensities of populism in society. Even the best historians, Carl Schorske and Robert Darnton, have tended to deny the contestatory dimensions of high culture and the challenge of forging new links between it and popular culture. Everyone is a mentalito~ case, but certain artifacts are exceptional products of cultural activity with critical power and an uncanny ability to play uncommon variations on commonplace things.
Arnaldo Momigliano, "Georges Dumézil and the Trifunctional Approach to Roman Civilization,” History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 312-330.
Dumézil's idea of a trifunctional mentality and maybe even partition of all Indo-European societies between priests, warriors, and producers has not been particularly fruitful. His mature work on Roman Religion confirms that he has not been able to overcome two basic difficulties in his system: the vagueness of what is the Indo-European heritage in Rome and the lack of relation between the Indo-European element and the mass of beliefs, ceremonies, and institutions which have nothing to do with castes and three functions. There is little evidence in Rome that priests, warriors, and peasants were three different social classes and even less that they were three different mental categories. There is no region of the IndoEuropean-speaking world where a common mentality -trifunctional or otherwise - is visible.
Horst Walter Blanke, Dirk Fleischer, and Jörn Rüsen, "Theory of History in Historical Lectures: The German Tradition of Historik, 1750-1900,” History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 331-356.
The German tradition of Historik is reflection on what historians do: on the writing of history, on historical research, on historiography. Four different traditions of Historik can be discerned by evaluating lectures on Historik between 1750 and 1900: the humanistic-rhetorical, the scientificauxiliary, the historico-philosophical, and the epistemological. Historik was pursued by many scholars as an integral part of their academic endeavor, and it serves didactic-preparatory purposes. Historik contributes to the systematization of historical knowledge; the specialization into distinct research methods and areas of work; the systematic foundation of the autonomy and function of historical studies in relation to other sciences and to the practical context of historians and their audiences; and the historical safeguarding of standards arrived at in the development of science.
REVIEW ESSAYS
David Carr on Temps et Récit: Tome I by Paul Ricoeur, History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 357-370.
G. W. Bowersock on Romische Geschichte und deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft by Karl Christ, History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 370-378.
Sigmund Diamond on Historical Sociology by Philip Abrams, History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 379-393.
C. Behan McCullagh on Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian's Language by F. R. Ankersmit, History and Theory 23, no. 3 (1984), 394-403.
Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History, 1978-1982
”Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History, 1978-1982,” History and Theory, Beiheft 23 (1984), 1-108.
”1975-1977: Addenda. A Supplement to Bibliography of Works in the Philosophy of History 1973-1977,” History and Theory, Beiheft 23 (1984), 108-110.
”Index of Names,” History and Theory, Beiheft 23 (1984), 111-131.
”Index of Subjects,” History and Theory, Beiheft 23 (1984), 132-135.
Cover image: Untitled, by Nastya Dulhiier (22 May 2018)
