Historiography as exorcism: Conjuring up "foreign" worlds and historicizing subjects in the context of the multiculturalism debate

Theory and Society

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 535-564

  Toews, John E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0032395299     PISSN: 03042421     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006809232286     Document Type: Review

References (53)

1. For interesting recent accounts of the production of history in cultural practises other than historiography see, David William Cohen, The Combing of History (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994), and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: The Power and the Production of History (Beacon Press, Boston, 1995).
2. For interesting recent accounts of the production of history in cultural practises other than historiography see, David William Cohen, The Combing of History (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994), and Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: The Power and the Production of History (Beacon Press, Boston, 1995).
3. Beloved, (N.Y.: Signet, 1991), especially 335-338. For Morrison's comments on how and why the narrative of slavery must be re-remembered and rewritten, see her "Site of Memory," in William Zinsser, editor, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), and "Unspeakable Things Unspoken," Michigan Quarterly Review 28/1 (1989). See also Mae G. Henderson, "Toni Morrison's Beloved: Re-membering the Body as Historical Text," in Hortense Spillers, editor, Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text (N.Y.: Routledge, 1991).
4. Beloved, (N.Y.: Signet, 1991), especially 335-338. For Morrison's comments on how and why the narrative of slavery must be re-remembered and rewritten, see her "Site of Memory," in William Zinsser, editor, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), and "Unspeakable Things Unspoken," Michigan Quarterly Review 28/1 (1989). See also Mae G. Henderson, "Toni Morrison's Beloved: Re-membering the Body as Historical Text," in Hortense Spillers, editor, Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text (N.Y.: Routledge, 1991).
5. Beloved, (N.Y.: Signet, 1991), especially 335-338. For Morrison's comments on how and why the narrative of slavery must be re-remembered and rewritten, see her "Site of Memory," in William Zinsser, editor, Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1987), and "Unspeakable Things Unspoken," Michigan Quarterly Review 28/1 (1989). See also Mae G. Henderson, "Toni Morrison's Beloved: Re-membering the Body as Historical Text," in Hortense Spillers, editor, Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and Nationality in the Modern Text (N.Y.: Routledge, 1991).
6. The late Michel de Certeau often returned to the role of historical writing as a way of coming to terms with the uncanny presence of the past in the present as a repressed memory. See his Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), and The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
7. The late Michel de Certeau often returned to the role of historical writing as a way of coming to terms with the uncanny presence of the past in the present as a repressed memory. See his Heterologies: Discourse on the Other, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), and The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988).
8. Carlo Ginzburg in his recent book, Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath (New York: Penguin Press, 1991), describes the archetypal historical narrative of journeying into the "world of the dead": and returning to report on it as "not one narrative among many, but the matrix of all possible narratives," 307.
9. The most interesting recent theoretical discussion of this issue is probably the collection of related papers by Charles Taylor, K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). For a prominent European historian's reflections, see Michael Geyer, "Multiculturalism and the Politics of General Education," Critical Inquiry 19/3 (1993): 499-533.
10. The most interesting recent theoretical discussion of this issue is probably the collection of related papers by Charles Taylor, K. Anthony Appiah, Jürgen Habermas, Steven C. Rockefeller, Michael Walzer, and Susan Wolf in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). For a prominent European historian's reflections, see Michael Geyer, "Multiculturalism and the Politics of General Education," Critical Inquiry 19/3 (1993): 499-533.
11. See for example the quite virulent comments by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in the anthology edited by H. Aram Veeser: The New Historicism (London, 1989). 213-224. On the concept of posthistoire - the historiographical version of the end of meaning - see especially the essays by Lutz Niethammer: Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso, 1992).
12. See for example the quite virulent comments by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese in the anthology edited by H. Aram Veeser: The New Historicism (London, 1989). 213-224. On the concept of posthistoire - the historiographical version of the end of meaning - see especially the essays by Lutz Niethammer: Posthistoire: Has History Come to an End? trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Verso, 1992).
13. Brooke Thomas, The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) is one of the few books that attempts to contextualize the new historicism in relation to older historicisms. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (N.Y.: Norton, 1994), displays a much more negative view of poststructuralist historicism as a form of relativism and nihilism than, for example, Hunt's introduction to an earlier collection: Lynn Hunt, editor, The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
14. Brooke Thomas, The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) is one of the few books that attempts to contextualize the new historicism in relation to older historicisms. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (N.Y.: Norton, 1994), displays a much more negative view of poststructuralist historicism as a form of relativism and nihilism than, for example, Hunt's introduction to an earlier collection: Lynn Hunt, editor, The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
15. Brooke Thomas, The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991) is one of the few books that attempts to contextualize the new historicism in relation to older historicisms. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (N.Y.: Norton, 1994), displays a much more negative view of poststructuralist historicism as a form of relativism and nihilism than, for example, Hunt's introduction to an earlier collection: Lynn Hunt, editor, The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
16. In Telling the Truth About History, the authors represent this Cold War consensus on both scientific social-science methods of delivering "truth" and the viability of Eurocentric western narratives of modernization as the conventional unquestioned set of meanings that new historicism and deconstruction dismantled. Walter Benn Michael's recent attacks on the new cultural critics as just old metaphysicians and racists in new guise, also shows how difficult it is, and has been since the Left Hegelian critique of Hegel in the 1840s, to deflate the last God or shoot the last metaphysician. Cf. Benn Michael, "Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural Identity," Critical Inquiry 18 (Summer 1992): 655-685.
17. There is a good recent discussion of this assumption of radical historicity in recent historicism in David D. Roberts, Nothing but History: Reconstruction and Extremity after Metaphysics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
18. The convoluted story of Nietzsche's historical reputation, in which he appears as often as the prophet of the renovation of identities as a demystifier, should, however, encourage caution in citing him as a proof text for anything. Cf. Steven Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, 1890-1990 (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1992).
19. Learning to Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture. (London: 1988), 8.
20. Jonathan Kandell, "Was the World Made out of Cheese? Carlo Ginzburg is Fascinated by Questions that Others Ignore," New York Times Magazine, November 17, 1991, 47.
21. The Great Cat Massacre and other Episodes in French Cultural History (N.Y.: Basic Books, 1984), 4.
22. See Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) and Stephen Greenblatt, editor, New World Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The latter collection of essays from the new historicist journal Representations is dedicated to the memory of Michel de Certeau, whose lifelong project of writing the other (heterology) was closely tied to a fascination with travel literature and imperial and colonial encounters.
23. See Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) and Stephen Greenblatt, editor, New World Encounters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). The latter collection of essays from the new historicist journal Representations is dedicated to the memory of Michel de Certeau, whose lifelong project of writing the other (heterology) was closely tied to a fascination with travel literature and imperial and colonial encounters.
24. A citation that became the inspiration for the title of the fascinating book by David Lowenthal about historical nostalgia and restoration: The Past is a Foreign Country (N.Y.: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
25. For an historical novel that also reflects upon its own status as a historicizing narrative, see Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (New York: 1983)
26. and Postscript to The Name of the Rose (New York: 1984).
27. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," # XIII and XIV, in Benjamin, Illuminations ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 260-261.
28. Gerald Graff, "Co-optation" in Veeser, New Historicism, 168-181;
29. Greenblatt, "Invisible Bullets: Renaissance Authority and its Subversion, Henry IV and Henry V," Shakespearean Negotiations: The Circulation of Social Energy in Renaissance England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 21-65.
30. Ronald G. Walters, "Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians," Social Research 47 (1980): 537-557; Robert Darnton, "The Symbolic Element in History," Journal of Modern History 88 (1986): 218-234.
31. Ronald G. Walters, "Signs of the Times: Clifford Geertz and Historians," Social Research 47 (1980): 537-557; Robert Darnton, "The Symbolic Element in History," Journal of Modern History 88 (1986): 218-234.
32. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: 1970), xv, 319, xxiii. Certeau's review of this work immediately recognized its connection to ethnographically formulated reconstructions of past worlds. The review is reprinted in Heterologies, 171-184. The importance of early Foucault especially for the formation of New Historicism has been pointed out many times since as well. Cf especially Frank Lentricchia, "Foucault's Legacy: A New Historicism?" in Veeser, New Historicism, 231-242.
33. Shakespearean Negotiations, 3. Similar statements can be found throughout the texts of Foucault, Richard Rorty, and other modern contemporary historicizers. Foucault: "Nothing in man - not even his body - is sufficiently stable to serve as a basis for self-recognition or for understanding other men," in "Nietzsche, Genealogy and History," Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977), 153.
34. Note the comment by Geertz in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: 1973), 30: "The essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions but to make available to us answers that others, guarding other sheep in other valleys, have given and thus to include them in the consultable record of what man has said." Cf. also the concluding comments of Natalie Davis in her path-breaking study of popular culture(s) in early Modern Europe: Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: 1975), 266. Although Greenblatt has been persistently and vehemently attacked for reproducing an assimilating, colonizing conception of otherness in his work (by Carolyn Porter, Donald Pease, Marguerite Waller, and others), he insists that recognition of the opacity of the other is precisely what differentiates New Historicism from older historicisms and their inclination toward full appropriation and control of the other: "What is missing is psychic, social and material resistance, a stubborn unassimilable otherness, a sense of distance and difference. New Historicism has attempted to restore this distance, hence its characteristic concerns have seemed to some critics off-center or strange." (Learning to Curse, 169).
35. See Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Gutmann, editor, Multiculturalism, 34-36.
36. Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language, (Bloomington: Indiana U. Press, 1984), 80-83.
37. A more detailed and systematic development of the argument of the following paragraphs, as well as supporting material, can be found in my "Historicizing Psychoanalysis: Freud in His Time and For Our Time," Journal Of Modern History 63 (September, 1991).
38. Shakespearean negotiations, 1.
39. "Preface to the English Edition," The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth Century Miller (Penguin Edition, 1982), xi.
40. The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1982), p.v.
41. See, for example, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). Roland Barthes's "The Discourse of History" (1967) might be seen as a founding text in this discourse. Aside from Hayden White, the history as a form of writing position has been developed especially by Lionel Gossmann, Linda Orr, Hans Kellner, Stephen Bann, and F. R. Ankersmit. The most recent positions among the members of this trend are conveniently collected in Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner, editors, A New Philosophy of History (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1995).
42. The focus on freedom and moral choice in the constructivist position is centered for White on the assumption that the historical record has no inherent meaning. Essential meaninglessness (the sublime) grounds our freedom to create. See his The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: 1987), 72.
43. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore: 1973) 31, 443.
44. The Content of the Form, 1 and passim.
45. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: 1978), 12.
46. Ibid., 3, 6-7.
47. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1993), especially 51-52. One might see an indication of the mainstreaming of such post-colonial critique in the December 1994 issue of The American Historical Review, which featured three articles by historians of India, Latin America, and Africa on the shift from reconstructive cultural histories of the "other" to "postcolonial" perspectives on reciprocal and hybrid identity constructions. Nicholas B. Dirks at the University of Michigan and Gyan Prakash at Princeton have been particularly active in the attempt to make the colonial relationship and the postcolonial criticism of theorists like Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha a central component of all and especially "first world" histories. See Nicholas B. Dirks, editor, Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1992); Gyan Prakash, "Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism," American Historical Review 99 (1994), 1475-1490.
48. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Joan Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 779-780.
49. Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); Joan Scott, "The Evidence of Experience," Critical Inquiry 17 (1991): 779-780.
50. Scott, as well as Spivak and Bhabha, for example, make very clear the primary role that the reading techniques of Jacques Derrida have played in the formation of their positions.
51. LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History, 26.
52. A more detailed development of the argument of this excursus can be found in my "Cultural History, the Construction of Subjectivity and Freudian Theory," The Psychohistory Review 18/3 (1990): 303-318, and especially, "Fashioning the Self in the Story of the 'Other': The Transformation of Freud's Masculine Identity between 'Elisabeth von R' and 'Dora'," Proof and Persuasion: Essays on Authority, Objectivity and Evidence, edited by Elizabeth Lunbeck and Suzanne Marchand (Amsterdam: Brepols Press, 1997), 199-221.
53. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," in Benjamin, Illuminations, 255.