Volume 39
Written By Elizabeth Boyle
ARTICLES
Michael Dintenfass, “Truth's Other: Ethics, the History of the Holocaust, and Historiographical Theory after the Linguistic Turn," History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 1-20.
This paper calls for an ethical turn in historiographical theorizing, for reconfiguring history as a discipline of the good as well as the true. It bases this call on the juxtaposition of two recent strands of historiographical discourse hitherto entirely separate: the invocation of the Holocaust, the most morally charged of all past events, as the limit case of historiographical theory in the polemics of Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Richard Evans, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and Omer Bartov against post-linguistic-turn historiographical thinking; and the profound unease about the adequacy-indeed the very possibility-of reconstructing Auschwitz accurately in the theoretical reflections to which the practice of Holocaust history has led Raul Hilberg, Saul Friedlander, and Dominick LaCapra. The embrace of right and wrong as the other of history's true and false will both enable a more robust condemnation of the Holocaust negationists and nurture a genre of historical representation that will speak more meaningfully to a manifestly history-hungry public than the historical writing of professional historians has done.
Jürgen Pieters, “New Historicism: Postmodern Historiography between Narrativism and Heterology," History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 21-38.
In recent discussions of the work of new historicist critics like Stephen Greenblatt and Louis Montrose, it has often been remarked that the theory of history underlying their reading practice closely resembles that of postmodern historiographers like Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit. Taking off from one such remark, the aim of the present article is twofold. First, I intend to provide a theoretical basis from which to substantiate the idea that new historicism can indeed be taken to be the literary-critical variant of what Frank Ankersmit has termed the "new historiography." In the second half of the article, this theoretical foundation will serve as the starting point of a further analysis of both the theory and practice of new historicism in terms of its distinctly postmodern historiographical project. I will argue that in order to fully characterize the new historicist reading method, we do well to distinguish between two variants of postmodern historicism: a narrativist one (best represented in the work of Michel Foucault) and a heterological one (of which Michel de Certeau's writings serve as a supreme example). A brief survey of the two methodological options associated with these variants (discursive versus psychoanalytical) is followed by an analysis of the work of the central representative of new historicism, Stephen Greenblatt. While the significant use of historical anecdotes in his work leaves unresolved the question to which of either approaches Greenblatt belongs, the distinction does serve a clear heuristic purpose. In both cases, it points to the dangerous spot where the new historicism threatens to fall prey to the evils of the traditional historicism against which it defined itself.
C. Behan McCullagh, “Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation," History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 39-66.
Debates between historians show that they expect descriptions of past people and events, and interpretations of historical subjects, and genetic explanations of historical changes, to be fair and not misleading. Sometimes unfair accounts of the past are the result of historians' bias, of their preferring one account over others because it accords with their interests. It is useful to distinguish history which is misleading by accident from that which is the result of personal bias; and to distinguish personal bias from cultural bias and general cultural relativity. This paper explains what fair descriptions, interpretations, and explanations are like in order to clarify the senses in which they can be biased. It then explains why bias is deplorable, and after noting those who regard it as more or less inevitable, considers how personal bias can be avoided. It argues that it is not detachment that is needed, but commitment to standards of rational inquiry. Some might think that rational standards of inquiry will not be enough to avoid bias if the evidence available to the historian is itself biased. In fact historians often allow for bias in evidence, and even explain it when reconstructing what happened in the past. The paper concludes by noting that although personal bias can be largely avoided, cultural bias is not so easy to detect or correct.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Dagmar Herzog on My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber's Secret History of Modernity by Eric L. Santner, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 67-76.
Richard T. Vann on Performances by Greg Dening, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 77-87.
Brian M. Downing on Analytic Narratives by Robert H. Bates, Avner Greif, Margaret Levi, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, and Barry R. Weingast, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 88-97.
Trygve R. Tholfsen on Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism by Carl E. Schorske, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 98-106.
Robert Anchor on Die Lineatur der Geschichte by Kurt Röttgers, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 107-116.
Jeremy Zwelling on The Mythic Past: Biblical Archaeology and the Myth of Israel by Thomas L. Thompson, History and Theory 39, no. 1 (2000), 117-141.
ARTICLES
Siep Stuurman, "The Canon of the History of Political Thought: Its Critique and a Proposed Alternative," History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 147-166.
After a brief review of the origins and the nature of the received canon of the history of political thought, this essay discusses the critiques that have been leveled at it over the past decades. Two major lines of critique are distinguished: 1. The democratic critique, focusing on the omission of "plebeian," non-Western, and female voices from the traditional canon, as well as the failure of the canon to discuss issues such as popular radicalism, patriarchal rule, and the politics of empire. 2. The methodological critique in which the canon is deconstructed as an anachronistic, "Whiggish" enterprise, and its validity as history is questioned against the background of "history after the linguistic turn." The essay examines the consequences of both lines of criticism for some key concepts in the history of political thought, as well as for the coherence and the structure of the traditional canon. It calls attention to the paradox that, while virtually all elements of the canon have been subjected to incisive critique, the canon itself has so far survived relatively unscathed in the major textbooks and in the way the subject is taught in universities the world over. In the final section the question is raised what a new, reconstructed overall history of political thought might look like, and some preliminary suggestions are offered towards a revision of the canon that would satisfy both the democratic and the methodological critique.
Thijs Pollmann, "Coherence and Ambiguity in History," History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 167-180.
This article is about the logic of the concept of "coherence" as used by historians to justify an argument. Despite its effectiveness in historical arguments, coherence is problematic for epistemologists and some theorists of history. The main purpose of this paper is to present some insights that bear upon the logical status of coherence. As will be demonstrated, this will also shed some light on the allegedly dubious epistemological position of coherence. In general I will argue that, logically seen, coherence is a property of a set of related beliefs which makes it possible to justify a choice out of different factually justifiable interpretations. Coherence disambiguates vague or ambiguous observations. As words lose their vagueness or ambiguity in contexts, so do contexts disambiguate historical facts. My argument will be based on some relatively recent findings about the cognitive processes underlying vision and reading. Research in the field of text linguistics is used to show what kinds of relationship exist between historical representations that might be considered to cohere.
Keith Jenkins, "A Postmodern Reply to Perez Zagorin," History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 181-200.
This article engages with the arguments forwarded by Perez Zagorin against the possible consequences of postmodernism for history as it is currently conceived of particularly in its "proper" professional/academic form ("History, the Referent, and Narrative: Reflections on Postmodernism Now," History and Theory 38, [1999], 1-24). In an overtly positioned response which issues from a close reading of Zagorin's text, I argue that his all-too-typical misunderstandings of postmodernism need to be "corrected"-not, however, to make postmodernism less of a threat to "history as we have known it," or to facilitate the assimilation of its useful elements while exorcising its "extremes." My "corrections" instead forward the claim that, understood positively and integrated into those conditions of postmodernity which postmodernism variously articulates at the level of theory, such theory signals the possible "end of history," not only in its metanarrative styles (which are already becoming increasingly implausible) but also in that particular and peculiar professional genre Zagorin takes as equivalent to history per se. And I want to argue that if this theory is understood in ways which choose not to give up (as Derrida urges us not to give up) the "discourse of emancipation" after the failure of its first attempt in the "experiment of modernity," then this ending can be considered "a good thing."
Perez Zagorin, "Rejoinder to a Postmodernist," History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 201-209.
This article, a defense of realism and representationalism in history against the postmodernist philosophy of language, is a critical rejoinder to Keith Jenkins's reply to my earlier essay in this journal in 1999 on postmodernism and historiography. Beginning with some remarks on the relationship between philosophy and historiography, this article goes on to note some of the weaknesses in postmodernist Jenkins's discussion of realism, representationalism, Richard Rorty, and Jacques Derrida's well-known dictum that there is nothing outside the text. It also considers Jenkins's talk about emancipation and the end of history and shows why it cannot be taken seriously. The article's conclusion is that postmodernism has nothing to contribute to the understanding of history as a form of thought or a body of knowledge.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Greg Dening on History in Three Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth by Paul A. Cohen, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 210-217.
Wulf Kansteiner on In Defence of History by Richard J. Evans, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 218-229.
Michael Kammen on The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life by Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 230-242.
Gabrielle M. Spiegel on The Shock of Medievalism by Kathleen Biddick, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 243-250.
J. L. Gorman on The Truth of History by C. Behan McCullagh, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 251-262.
R. J. Blackburn on Encounters: Philosophy of History after Postmodernism by Ewa Domanska, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 263-272.
Mark Bevir on The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction by Melvin Richter and History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives by Iain Hampsher-Monk, Karin Tilmans, and Frank van Vree, History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000), 273-284.
ARTICLES
FORUM ON CULTURE AND EXPLANATION IN HISTORICAL INQUIRY
Richard Biernacki, "Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Inquiry,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 289-310.A model of culture as a partially coherent system of signs comprised the most widely employed instrument for analyzing cultural meaning among the new cultural historians. However, the model failed to account for meanings that are produced by agents engaged in practices that are not guided by "reading" the contrasts among signs. It also encouraged some analysts to conceive the difference between sign system and concrete practice as that between what is graspable as an intellectual form and what remains inaccessibly material or corporeal. This essay introduces three exemplars of the ties between signs and practices to show how the pragmatics of using signs comprises a structure and a generator of meaning in its own right. In the three exemplars, which are based on the tropes of metonymy, metaphor, and irony, I employ the analytic tools of linguistics to appreciate the non-discursive organization of practice. Analysis of the diverse logics for organizing practice offers promising means for investigating how signs come to seem experientially real for their users. Finally, this view of culture in practice suggests new hypotheses about the possible interdependencies as well as the lack of connection among the elements of a cultural setting.
Anne Kane, "Reconstructing Culture in Historical Explanation: Narratives as Cultural Structure and Practice,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 311-330.The problem of how to access and deploy the explanatory power of culture in historical accounts has long remained vexing. A recent approach, combining and transcending the "culture as structure"/ "culture as practice" divide among social historians, puts explanatory focus on the recursivity of meaning, agency, and structure in historical transformation. This article argues that meaning construction is at the nexus of culture, social structure, and social action, and must be the explicit target of investigation into the cultural dimension of historical explanation. Through an empirical analysis of political alliance during the Irish Land War, 1879–1882, I demonstrate that historians can uncover meaning construction by analyzing the symbolic structures and practices of narrative discourse.
John R. Hall, "Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 331-347.One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined.
Chris Lorenz, "Some Afterthoughts on Culture and Explanation in Historical Inquiry,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 348-363.I argue here that the articles in this forum contain basic agreements. All three reject naturalism, reductionism, and monism while retaining causality as an explanatory category, and all three emphasize the role of time and argue for a view in which culture is regarded as both structured and contingent. The differences among the explanatory proposals of Hall, Biernacki, and Kane are as important as the similarities: while Hall favors a Weberian approach, Biernacki argues for a primarily pragmatic explanation of culture, and Kane for a primarily semiotic explanation. I argue that all three positions face immanent problems in elucidating the exact nature of cultural explanation. While Hall leaves the problem of "extrinsic" ideal-typical explanation unsolved, Biernacki simply presupposes the superiority of pragmatic over other types of cultural explanation, and Kane does the same for semiotic explanation. Hints at cultural explanation in the form of narrative remain underargued and are built on old ideas of an opposition between "analysis" and "narrative." This is also the case with the latest plea for "analytic narratves." I conclude that a renewed reflection on this opposition is called for in order to come to grips with cultural explanation and to get beyond the old stereotypes regarding the relationship between historical and social-scientific approaches to the past.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen, "Max Weber's ‘Grand Sociology’: The Origins and Composition of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Soziologie, “ History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 364-383.
Max Weber's magnum opus Economy and Society (Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Soziologie) was for the most part published only after his premature death in June 1920. Only the chapters on basic sociological terms, the categories of social action, and the Three Times of Legitimate Domination were sent to the publishers by Weber himself; the other manuscripts were found in a pile on his desk. The editions by Marianne Weber and Melchior Palyi and by Johannes F. Winckelmann are in many ways unsatisfactory, and the controversy about the correct composition of Economy and Society persists. This article reconstructs the origins of the various texts of Economy and Society on the basis of the available source material, notably the correspondence between Weber, Marianne Weber, and the publishers. It shows that in many ways the editions available at present do not live up to Max Weber's own intentions. Both the arrangement and the precise wording of the texts are unreliable, and the time sequence of the texts written from 1909 to 1914 and then in part rewritten and reorganized in 1919–1920 is uncertain. A segment of an earlier draft of parts of the chapter on Communities (Gemeinschaften) found among Weber's papers allows the conclusion that as early as 1905–1906, Weber had outlined a universal historical scheme of all known civilizations. This is to say that Economy and Society is not as closely linked to Weber's work on the Outline of Social Economics (Grundriss der Sozialökonomic) as has been previously assumed. This article offers a precise reconstruction of the complicated history of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Soziologie-the exact title agreed upon by Weber and his publisher Paul Siebeck shortly before his death. It shows the development of Weber's theoretical conceptions and the corresponding changes of his terminology much more clearly, and paves the way to a better understanding of his magnum opus.
François Hartog, "The Invention of History: The Pre-History of a Concept from Homer to Herodotus,” History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 384-395.
The following pages, which deal with the pre-history of the concept of history from Homer to Herodotus, first propose to decenter and historicize the Greek experience. After briefly presenting earlier and different experiences, they focus on three figures: the soothsayer, the bard, and the historian. Starting from a series of Mesopotamian oracles (known as "historical oracles" because they make use in the apodosis of the perfect and not the future tense), they question the relations between divination and history, conceived as two, certainly different, sciences of the past, but which share the same intellectual space in the hands of the same specialists. The Greek choices were different. Their historiography presupposes the epic, which played the role of a generative matrix. Herodotus wished to rival Homer; what he ultimately became was Herodotus. Writing dominates; prose replaces verse; the Muse, who sees and knows everything, is no longer around. So I would suggest understanding the emblematic word "historia" as a subsititute, which operates as an analogue of the (previous) omnivision of the Muse. But before that, Herodotean "invention"- the meeting of Odysseus and the bard Demodocus, where for the first time the fall of Troy is told-can be seen as the beginning, poetically speaking at least, of the category of history.
REVIEW ESSAYS
Noël Carroll on Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect by Hayden White, History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 396-404.
Raymond Martin on The Degradation of American History by David Harlan, History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 405-416.
Peter Heehs on Creating Histories: Oral Narratives and the Politics of History-Making by Wendy Singer, History and Theory 39, no. 3 (2000), 417-428.
"Not Telling": Secrecy, Lies, and History
EDITED BY GARY MINKLEY AND MARTIN LEGASSICK
Gary Minkley and Martin Legassick, “’Not Telling’: Secrecy, Lies, and History," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 1-10.
Luise White, “Telling More: Lies, Secrets, and History," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 11-22.
This essay argues that secrets and lies are not forms of withholding information but forms by which information is valorized. Lies are constructed: what is to be lied about, what a lie is to consist of, how it is to be told, and whom it is to be told to, all reveal a social imaginary about who thinks what and what constitutes credibility. Secrets are negotiated: continual decisions about whom to tell, how much to tell, and whom not to tell describe social worlds, and the shape and weight of interactions therein. All of this makes lies and secrets extraordinarily rich historical sources. We might not see the truth distorted by a lie or the truth hidden by a secret, but we see the ideas and imaginings by which people disclose what should not be made public, and how they should carry out concealing one narrative with another. Such insights involve a step back from the project of social history, in which an inclusive social narrative is based on experience and individuals' ability to report it with some reliability, and suggests that historians need to look at social imaginings as ways to understand the ideas and concerns about which people lie and with which people construct new narratives that are not true. The study of secrets, however, links the study of social imaginings with the project of social history, as the valorization of information that results in the continual negotiation and renegotiation of secrets shows individuals and publics imagining the experiences labeled as secret because of the imagined power of a specific version of events.
Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, “’I Saw a Nightmare...’: Violence and the Construction of Memory (Soweto, June 16, 1976) ," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 23-44.
The protests on June 16, 1976 of black schoolchildren in Soweto against the imposition of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in their schools precipitated one of the most profound challenges to the South African apartheid state. These events were experienced in a context of violent social and political conflict. They were almost immediately drawn into a discourse that discredited and silenced them, manipulating meaning for ideological and political reasons with little regard for how language and its absence-silences-further violated those who had experienced the events. Violence, in its physical and discursive shape, forged individual memories that remain torn with pain, anger, distrust, and open questions; collective memories that left few spaces for ambiguity; and official or public histories tarnished by their political agendas or the very structures-and sources-that produced them. Based on oral histories and historical documents, this article discusses the collusion of violence and silence and its consequences. It argues that-while the collusion between violence and silence might appear to disrupt or, worse, destroy the ability of individuals to think historically-the individual historical actor can and does have the will to contest and engage with collective memory and official history.
Premesh Lalu, “The Grammar of Domination and the Subjection of Agency: Colonial Texts and Modes of Evidence," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 45-68.
This article focuses on colonial accounts of the killing of the Xhosa chief, Hintsa, in 1835 at the hands of British forces along what came to be known as the eastern Cape frontier. It explores the evidentiary procedures and protocols through which the event came to be narrated in colonial frames of intelligibility. In proposing a strategy for reading the colonial archive, the paper strategically interrupts the flow from an apartheid historiography to what is commonly referred to as "alternative history." The aim in effecting this interruption is to call attention to the enabling possibilities of critical history. This is achieved not by way of declaration but rather through a practice whereby the foundational category of evidence is problematized. The paper alludes to the limits of alternative history and its approaches to evidence on the one hand, and the conditions of complicity within which evidence is produced on the other. Whereas alternative history identifies its task as one of re-writing South African history, critical history, it is suggested, offers the opportunity to reconstitute the field of history by addressing the sites of its production and also its practices. In exploring the production of the colonial record on the killing of Hintsa, the paper seeks to complicate alternative history's slippage in and out of the evidentiary rules established by colonial domination even as it constitutes the category of evidence as an object for a politics of history of the present.
Jabulani Sithole and Sibongiseni Mkhize, “Truth or Lies? Selective Memories, Imagings, and Representations of Chief Albert John Luthuli in Recent Political Discourses," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 69-85.
Individuals, organizations, and institutions adopt prominent people as political symbols for a variety of reasons. They then produce conflicting memories and images of their chosen symbols. In this article we argue that multiple representations of celebrated public figures should not only be viewed in terms of a choice between "truths" and "lies." Using the case of Chief Albert Luthuli, the president of the African National Congress from 1952 to 1967, we show that secrets and silences about aspects of his political life would make it difficult for anyone to establish the veracity of competing memories which have been produced around his name since his death in 1967. We argue that many "Luthulis" were produced for different purposes and at different times during this period. We therefore suggest that to understand the motives for the making of the various images of Luthuli we need to explore in some depth the contexts in which they were made.
Helen Bradford, “Peasants, Historians, and Gender: A South African Case Study Revisited, 1850-1886," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 86-110.
A gender revolution allegedly occurred in the British Cape Colony (and South Africa at large) in the nineteenth century. African patriarchs, traditionally pastoralists, took over women's agricultural work, adopted Victorian gender attributes, and became prosperous peasants (nicknamed "black English"). Scholars have accepted the plausibility of these seismic shifts in masculinity, postulated in Colin Bundy's classic, The Rise & Fall of the South African Peasantry. I re-examine them, for Bundy's "Case Study" of Herschel, acclaimed as one of the regions that best fits his thesis. This Case Study omits women, who were the typical peasant producers. It marginalizes men failing to conform to bourgeois Victorian gender norms. It misrepresents class formation, causation, periodization, and peasant well-being. It misdates proletarianization by at least three decades. The zenith of commodity production is misdated by at least half a century. A labor reservoir characterized by severe subsistence problems is represented as a prosperous peasantry. Bundy postulates that patriarchs "rose" into women's work and colonial masculine scripts in response to favorable conditions; I argue instead that younger men "fell" into these domains in response to disasters. A silent gender bias-towards black Englishmen, against African women-had a marked impact on Bundy's analysis of class formation. The purpose of this article is to interrogate this silence and to show how it has warped a classic text.
Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, “Johannes Nkosi and the Communist Party of South Africa: Images of ‘Blood River’ and King Dingane in the Late 1920s-1930," History and Theory, Theme Issue 39 (2000), 111-132.
In divided societies like South Africa, history, among other things, serves ideological purposes. The colonial encounter between King Dingane, the second Zulu king, who ruled from 1828 to 1840, and white settlers highlights this fact. The core of Afrikaner Nationalist historiography regarded the king as a treacherous, uncivilized barbarian. He was perceived to be an anti-white demagogue who was beyond redemption. But elsewhere, African nationalists and workers viewed the king as one of the original freedom fighters who resisted the tyranny of the land-grabbing white settlers and voortrekkers of the nineteenth century. Their interpretations of King Dingane's relationship with white settlers depict the latter as disrespectful imperialists and unscrupulous men, attempting to enrich themselves at the expense of the indigenous population. Accordingly, their interpretation of this encounter revolves around the land question in South Africa. This article discusses a case study regarding these issues. It is about the challenge mounted by African workers in the late 1920s and 1930 against the official celebration of December 16. This celebration honored the victory of the voortrekkers at the so-called battle of "Blood River" on December 16, 1838-hence the public holiday was once referred to as "Dingaan's Day." As a counter-commemoration of this day, African workers regarded the official celebrations as symbolizing the loss of their land and the passing of their freedom. As a result African workers aligned with the Communist Party of South Africa, and through the leadership skills of Johannes Nkosi, mounted vigorous protests and challenges against these celebrations by white South Africans. They staged protest marches and defiant anti-pass campaigns that emphasized the centrality of the land question in South Africa. They also paid tribute to their past, include King Dingane. Through their actions they imbued conscience in African workers throughout the country, hence the response of the state was brutal and culminated with the death of Johannes Nkosi in 1930.
Cover image: Aerial photograph of the Turpan Depression at the foot of China's Bogda Mountains, by USGS (9 January 2020)
