Volume 32
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Peter Kosso, “Historical Evidence and Epistemic Justification: Thucydides as a Case Study," History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 1-13.
Through both a conceptual analysis of historical evidence in general, and a specific study of Thucydides' evidence on the Peloponnesian war, the structure of justification of historical knowledge is described and evaluated. The justification is internal in the sense of being done entirely within a network of evidential and descriptive claims about the past. This forces a coherence form of justification in which the telling epistemic standards are eliminative, indicators of what is not likely to be true rather than what is. The epistemological contrast is between justification by coherence among historical claims, or by appeal to epistemic foundations. Any evidential claim in history that is informative and credible must itself be justified in the context of other things known about the past. Thus, the evidence used to support historical claims is neither foundational nor a direct report on the facts of the past, and an appeal to evidence is itself an appeal to coherence.
José C. Bermejo-Barrera, “Explicating the Past: In Praise of History," History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 14-24.
Since the very beginnings of Philosophy, the multifaceted problem of time has constituted one of the central concerns of philosophers and other thinkers. From pre-Socratic speculation to Platonic metaphysics, from St. Augustine to the medieval theologians, meditation upon time was unceasing, and the issue became yet more acute with the development of modern philosophy following Descartes (and the subsequent emphasis on the subject.) One might summarize the slow evolution of Western thought in this area as follows: time began in Greek philosophy as a property of the world, was later referred basically to human beings, and in the twentieth century has recovered its cosmic nature thanks to contemporary physics (notably the theory of relativity and its astrophysical and cosmological consequences). It is of course beyond the reach of a single article to tackle the problem of time in its entirety. Here, I shall concentrate on a single very specific aspect: the definition of the past and the question of whether the past has any explicative value. It is largely on the answer to this question that the possibility of maintaining the coherent identity of history as a branch of knowledge depends.
Raymond Martin, “Objectivity and Meaning in Historical Studies: Toward a Post-Analytic View" (A Review Essay of Objectivity, Method and Point of View: Essays in the Philosophy of History, ed. W. J. van der Dussen and Lionel Rubinoff), History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 25-50.
Many contemporary historians and philosophers are dissatisfied both with the accounts traditional analytic philosophers have given of the epistemological dimensions of historical studies and also with the ways many continental philosophers more recently have brushed aside the need for any such accounts. Yet no one has yet proposed a unified research program that could serve as the central focus for a better epistemologically-oriented approach. Such a research program would not only address epistemological problems from a perspective that would be of methodological interest to historians but would also be directly responsive to fundamental motivations people have for caring about historical studies in the first place. The main purpose of this review essay is to sketch and then illustrate the main outlines of such a research program. Basic to this research program is the recognition that the overwhelmingly central epistemological complication that arises in the attempt to say what happened in the past and what it means that it happened is that there are always competing ways to interpret evidence. The problem is to discover which among these competing interpretations is best, which involves, among other things, discovering which among them is most likely to be true. Strategies are suggested for solving this problem, which, at the limit, would result in the articulation of generally applicable criteria for assessing competing historical interpretations.
REVIEW OF REVIEWS
Jo-Ann Pilardi, “The Changing Critical Fortunes of The Second Sex, “ History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 51-73.
This article is a "review of reviews," a study of the critical response to Simone de Beauvoir's book, The Second Sex (Le Deuxième Sexe), published in 1949; it also reports the publishing history and provides some statistical information on the criticism and citations of the book. The claim here is that Beauvoir's work is a "classic" appreciated for its theoretical notion of "woman as absolute Other" and its accompanying description of patriarchal culture as a reflection of that notion. But it is a classic with a mercurial past. Though the book and its author were severely attacked following its French publication, the work received positive reviews four years later upon its translation into English. Yet until the onset of the feminist movement, Beauvoir's ideas were largely ignored. However, upon the development of feminist activism followed by feminist scholarship and feminist theory, the book's analysis quickly took on a foundational status. A survey of the criticism of the book provides insight into the history of contemporary feminist theory, for nearly all of the serious debates of contemporary feminism are reflected in the critical discussion of The Second Sex.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Laurie Nussdorfer on The New Cultural History by Lynn Hunt and Interpretation and Cultural History by Joan H. Pittock and Andrew Wear, History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 74-83.
Haskell Fain on Plausible Worlds: Possibility and Understanding in History and the Social Sciences by Geoffrey Hawthorn, History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 83-90.
Larry Shiner on Headless History: Nineteenth-Century French Historiography of the Revolution by Linda Orr, History and Theory 32, no. 1 (1993), 90-96.
ARTICLES
Annette Aronowicz, "The Secret of the Man of Forty," History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 101-118.
In one of his last essays, "Clio--Dialogue de l'histoire et de l'âme païenne," Charles Péguy (1873-1914) meditates at length on the human being's position in time, what he sometimes calls the secret of the man of forty. It is an inescapable secret to which all people are privy, provided they live to the requisite age. Once one knows the secret, it reshapes one's relationship to others and, as a result, what one notices about them, the evidence itself. Péguy provides several examples of what historiography might look like if the historian proceeded from the secret of the man of forty. It amounts to embodying a certain solidarity with those one is investigating, based not on party affiliation, religion, nationality, race or gender, but on a common defeat in time and yet a sort of triumph within that defeat. Péguy accuses the positivists of pretending they don't know the secret of the man of forty. That is, he accuses them of willfully ignoring their own frailty. As a result, they fail to establish a common bond with the people they are studying. For Péguy, the elaboration of that common bond is prerequisite to all historical investigation. There can be no sound epistemology without it.
Paula Rabinowitz, "Wreckage upon Wreckage: History, Documentary and the Ruins of Memory," History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 119-137.
Documentary cinema is intimately tied to historical memory. Not only does it seek to reconstruct historical narrative, but it often functions as an historical document itself. Moreover, the connection between the rhetoric of documentary film and historical truth pushes the documentary into overtly political alignments which influence its audience. This essay describes and dissects the history and rhetoric of documentary cinema, tracing its various modes of address from the earliest moments of cinematic representation through its uses for ethnographers, artists, governments, and marginal political organizations in the present. The different uses of documentary result in a wide variety of formal strategies to persuade the audience of a film's truth. These strategies are based on a desire to enlist the audience in the process of historical reconstruction. The documentary film differentiates itself from narrative cinema by claiming its status as a truth-telling mode. However, as a filmic construction, it relies on cinematic semiosis to convince its audience of its validity and truth. By looking at the history of documentary address, this essay outlines the rhetoric of persuasion and evaluates its effectiveness. The documentary calls upon its audience to participate in historical remembering by presenting an intimate view of reality. Through cinematic devices such as montage, voice-over, intertitles, and long takes, documentary provokes its audience to new understandings about social, economic, political, and cultural differences and struggles. The films actively engage with their world; however, often viewers respond to the same devices motivating classic Hollywood narratives. Thus the genre reinforces dominant patterns of vision. Recent challenges to the emotional manipulations of documentary deconstruct its forms and conventions so that the films interrogate not only historical memory but their own investment in its recreation. Imaginative documentaries, such as Claude Lanzmann's hoah, foreground their partial and contingent qualities, pushing viewers to question cinematic representation and its place in historical memory. Moreover, they ask audiences to think about their place in the films' meanings as well as their responsibility to the past and its interpretations.
Robert B. Pippin, "Being, Time, and Politics: The Strauss-Kojève Debate," History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 119-137.
The 1963 publication in English of Leo Strauss's study of Xenophon's dialogue, Hiero, or Tyrannicus, also contained a critical review of Strauss's interpretation by the French philosopher and civil servant, Alexandre Kojève, and a "Restatement" of his position by Strauss. This odd triptych, with a complex statement of the classical position on tyranny in the middle, Strauss's defense of classical philosophy on one side, and Kojève's defense of a radically historicist, revolutionary Hegel on the other, has now been re-edited and re-published. Victor Gourevitch and Michael Roth have added all the extant letters between Strauss and Kojève written between 1932 and 1965, many of which continue and deepen the exchanges on Xenophon first published in French in 1954. The editors have also reviewed and corrected the translation of Xenophon, and re-translated Kojève's review. The Strauss-Kojève exchange raises several fundamental questions: the relationship between political philosophy and underlying assumptions about time and history (especially the extent to which collective human time--history--is subject to human will and thought); the nature of our independence from, and dependence on, others in any satisfaction of desire; and the right way to understand the distinctive character of modern, as opposed to classical, political life and thought. I attempt to asses their respective positions on these and other issues, and argue that the nature of the debate between them is seriously and problematically constrained by the way Kojève's reading of Hegel frames much of the discussion.
REVIEW ESSAYS
J. D. Y. Peel, on Clio in Oceania: Toward a Historical Anthropology by Aletta Biersack and Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 162-178.
David Carr, on Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Historical Time by Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 179-187.
Michael S. Roth, on The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama, History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 188-196.
Daniel Gordon, on Ideologies and Mentalities by Michel Vovelle and Eamon O'Flaherty, History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 196-213.
Mary Gluck, on Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age by Anthony Giddens, History and Theory 32, no. 2 (1993), 214-220.
ARTICLES
James Elkins, "On Monstrously Ambiguous Paintings,” History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 227-247.
Certain artworks appear to have multiple meanings that are also contradictory. In some instances they have attracted so much attention that they are effectively out of the reach of individual monographs. These artworks are monstrous. One reason paintings may become monstrous is that they make unexpected use of ambiguation. Modern and postmodern works of all sorts are understood to be potentially ambiguous ab ovo, but earlier--Renaissance and Baroque--works were constrained to declare relatively stable primary meanings. An older work may have many "layers" of meaning, but it is normally expected to declare its principal message or subject matter, together with its allegiance to one idea or theme. Contemporary historical interpretation expects those stable starting meanings, even as it relishes the exfoliating ambiguities that may come afterward. So when the interpretive apparatus of art history runs up against premodern paintings that intentionally work against unambiguous primary meanings, it can generate a potentially incoherent literature. Some of the most monstrous pictures are Leonardo's Last Supper, Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling, Watteau's fête galante paintings, Botticelli's Primavera, and Giorgione's Tempesta. The interpretive trichotomy of "Subject," "Not-Subject," and "Anti-Subject" is employed to talk about the (intentional) ambiguity and polysemy of these monstrous works. This interpretive trichotomy helps order unruly accounts of the most complex artworks. In so doing it illuminates not only some monstrous pictures but a general area of historical interpretation: how to speak of the meaning(s) of a created work in a way that does justice to its complexity and internal tensions.
Martyn P. Thompson, "Reception Theory and the Interpretation of Historical Meaning,” History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 248-272.
The paper examines the very different insights of theorists into the interpretation of historical meaning of literary reception (especially recent German theorists of Rezeptionsgeschichte) and Anglo-American theorists of the "new" history of political thought (especially Quentin Skinner and J. G. A. Pocock). Among the former, readers create meaning; among the latter, authorial intended meanings are fundamental. Both perspectives are valuable, but one-sided. The differences between them arise from different perspectives on the character of a text. But those perspectives are not as incompatible as has been supposed, especially by reception theorists. By examining the incoherences of literary reception theory when viewed from the perspective of the intentionalists, and by examining the one-sidedness of intentionalist theory in the light of a modified version of the reception perspective, it is shown that an understanding of historical meaning requires both insights. The argument is illustrated by reference to the history of political thought, a history which might more usefully be conceived as the history of political literature.
Wulf Kansteiner, "Hayden White's Critique of the Writing of History,” History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 273-295.
This essay analyzes the development of Hayden White's work from Metahistory to the present. It compares his approach to Roland Barthes's study of narrative and historical discourse in order to illustrate the differences between White's structuralist methods and poststructuralist forms of textual analysis. The author puts particular emphasis on the interdependence between the development of White's work and the criticism it has received during the last twenty years. Whereas historians have dismissed White's relativism, literary theorists and intellectual historians have criticized his formalist methods. White's attempts to counter these critiques have gone mostly unnoticed and have been unsuccessful in that they destabilized his original position without proposing a coherent alternative. The question about adequate representations of Nazism, which White has recently addressed, highlights the theoretical problems which have not received enough attention by White or his critics.
FORUM: MARTIN JAY AND JANE FLAX ON POSTMODERNISM
Martin Jay and Jane Flax, on Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 296-310.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Seymour Drescher, on The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation by Thomas Bender, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 311-329.
Donald Meyer, on Return to Essentials: Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study by G. R. Elton and The Powers of the Past: Reflections on the Crisis and the Promise of History by Harvey J. Kaye, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 330-339.
Liah Greenfeld, on Myth of the Nation and Vision of Revolution: Ideological Polarization in the Twentieth Century by Jacob L. Talmon, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 339-349.
Dan Thu Nguyen, on Time: An Essay by Norbert Elias and Edmund Jephcott, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 349-356.
Kevin J. Mumford, on City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London by Judith Walkowitz, History and Theory 32, no. 3 (1993), 356-363.
History Making in Africa
EDITED BY V. Y. MUDIMBE AND B. JEWSIEWICKI
B. Jewsiewicki and V. Y. Mudimbe, “Africans' Memories and Contemporary History of Africa," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 1-11.
Jean-Loup Amselle, “Anthropology and Historicity," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 12-31.
This article tries to assess the component of French anthropology influenced by the Marxist paradigm, while also showing the links of Marxism to functionalism. With the collapse of the Marxist problematic one must establish a new anthropology that gives greater attention to history in "primitive" societies. It is also necessary to rethink some of the central problems confronting anthropology: in particular, to reevaluate the links between anthropology and development; to locate constructivism in the discipline; to measure the extent of phenomena of reappropriation in exotic societies; and to examine the aptness of binary oppositions such as "state" versus "stateless societies," and "individual" versus "community." By thus questioning some of the central images of anthropology, one is led to pose the problem of "primordial syncretism," that is, the diffusion of institutions spreading from a common cultural ground or background, as well as the problem of the links between universalism and culturalism. At the end of this itinerary, and by taking the example of the pair "people of power" versus "people of the earth," it is argued that the prevalence of the phenomena of reappropriation in exotic societies is explained by the universality of certain values.
David L. Schoenbrun, “A Past Whose Time Has Come: Historical Context and History in Eastern Africa's Great Lakes," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 32-56.
The essay examines precolonial, colonial, academic, and post-independence African voices that describe and promote special versions of the past in one part of eastern Africa. By studying the connections among African intellectuals, local discursive and political constraints, and overseas discursive and political constraints which emerged between 1890 and the present, the article outlines many of the themes that constitute academic African history. With this critical historiography at hand, we may see how struggles for control of discourse on the African past are breaking free of an essentially European-derived conceptual framework by attending to local and regional forms of historical action. Both male and female competent speakers participate, often in radically different ways. Studying them, and those who listen to them and support them, will historians of Africa a sense of African actors' historical creativity as well as their arts of resistance.
Jocelyne Dakhlia, “Collective Memory and the Story of History: Lineage and Nation in a North African Oasis," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 57-79.
Collective memory is not always synonymous with tradition on the one hand or with the recollection of collective history on the other. The example of a South Tunisian oasis, located in a region with a strong tradition of literacy, shows a process of rupture with autochthonous (non-Arab and pre-Islamic) history, a rupture based on the reappropriation of scholarly works of colonial administrators. Local memory is essentially based on the history of family and lineage origins, ideally founded on Shereefian ancestry, a genealogy going back to the prophet Mohammed. This lineage memory, which a long sociological tradition has described as scheduled to merge into the nation, has in fact been constantly built up, activated largely by colonial and contemporary ethnography. The forgetting that affects other dimensions of the past, and in particular the integration into the nation, should not be interpreted as a mere vanishing but as a form of mute claim.
David B. Coplan, “History is Eaten Whole: Consuming Tropes in Sesotho Auriture," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 80-104.
For some time, historians and anthropologists have been collaborating on the excavation of Africa's history through the analysis of transcriptions of unwritten sources. A major obstacle has been the forms, the generic structures of African historical discourse, which constitute a style of historiography culturally contrasting with our own. This paper examines two central vehicles of this historiography: the temporal, situational, and generic elaboration of historical "master metaphors," and the performative contexts and processes in which they are necessarily expressed. Here, the formal and semantic resources and procedures of African historical narrative are analyzed in certain performance genres of the Basotho of southern Africa (Lesotho). In revealing how Africans' experience of events is rhetorically encoded and interpreted, the discussion emphasizes the importance of performance as the constitutive context of African historical discourse, militating against the separation of history from the aesthetic of its representation. More important, it demonstrates how historians working in an empirical, positivist narrative framework can go beyond attempts to glean isolated "facts" and referential content from African texts, and use what I have termed "auriture"--performative realizations--to draw out the ideological and structural context that informs African constructions of history.
Patrick Harries, “Imagery, Symbolism and Tradition in a South African Bantustan: Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Inkatha, and Zulu History," History and Theory, Beiheft 32 (1993), 105-125.
During the precolonial period Zulu identity was based on a set of cultural markers defined by the royal family. But European linguists extended the borders of Zulu, as a written language, to include the peoples living to the south of the Tugela river in the colony of Natal. Folklorists, anthropologists, historians, and other social scientists, as well as European employers, adopted this view of the Zulu as a people or Volk. Following the defeat of the Zulu kingdom in 1879, and the decline of the royal family, migrant workers increasingly returned home with this new notion of what it meant to be Zulu. This essentially European interpretation of the word was embraced and spread by Christian converts who, in the twentieth century, sought to mobilize an ethnic political following. Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi has continued with this tradition. In his speeches he represents the Zulu in primordial terms as a bounded group that historically has occupied both Natal and the old precolonial kingdom. The bantustan of KwaZulu, delineated and defined by the policy of apartheid, is presented as the natural heir to the Zulu kingdom and the Inkatha Freedom Party is portrayed as the guardian of the essence of Zuluness. An attractive historical self-imagery encourages people to define themselves in an exclusive manner as Zulu. Firm values and standards provide an ontological security and a network of assistance for sons abroad. Through a martial imagery, Buthelezi has represented the seven million Zulu as historically the most powerful obstacle to white supremacy. But since the resurgence of nationalist politics in the mid-1980s, and especially since the democratization started in 1990, Inkatha has attempted to attract the Zulu as a people in opposition to the ANC and their allies. This has most visibly resulted in a violent struggle for power; but it has also led to a virulent struggle over what it means to be Zulu.
Cover image: Textile magnate mansion in Satkhira, Bangladesh, by David Baker (2 June 2019)
