概念史笔谈

概念史是20世纪70年代由英国剑桥学派的代表人物昆廷·斯金纳和德国的考泽莱克所开创。经过几十年的发展,它已成为一种较为成熟的为世人所公认的研究方法。概念史的形成,一方面得益于社会史和文化史的推动;另一方面,也与人文科学向语言学转向有关。目前,在西方一些主要国家都有专功概念史的学者,在一些国际合作项目中,也有以特定概念为主题的跨文化研究。这里,我们特约请了我国这一领域的几位专业学者就什么是概念史、概念史在历史认识中的意义、如何选择概念史研究的概念、概念史的研究方法以及学界对概念史的批评等问题进行了笔谈。此外,他们还对德国、法国和美国概念史的发展状况、特点和主要成就,从理论与实践的结合上进行了较为系统的介绍。     

1999年日本史学界关于战国秦汉史的研究

不将“中国”这个概念视为解决问题的前提条件 ,而是力图解释或说明走向统一的具体的历史过程 ,这确实是近年来战国秦汉史学界的一个潮流。正值唐代史研究的报告集《东亚历史中的国家与地域》(唐代史研究会编《唐代史研究会报告》Ⅷ ,刀水书房 ,以下略称《国家与地域》)付梓 ,其中与战国秦汉史有关的论考有池田雄一的《长江文明与尹湾汉简、马王堆“小城图”》 ,松崎常子的《从楚、秦、汉墓看秦的统一》和古贺登的《蜀的开国传说和氐羌族》三篇。池田雄一论文在分析了新出土资料的基础上指出 :一直到战国时期 ,长江流域都保持了独自的文化 ,…     

重新认识晋国在中国古代史的地位

现在,晋文化得到空前的传播和弘扬。但从历史的、考古的、地域的、文化的几种不同的概念看,存在着含混。研究每一个问题都必须规范使用。晋国在中国古代史的地位从历史、考古两方面进行研究,这是研究晋文化的基础。距今五千二三百年,我国进入了方国时代。这是上个世纪80年代以来考古学研究的新成果,已得到学界公认,今天已深入人心。     

“秦汉魏晋时期江淮地域背景中的合肥史研究”研讨会综述

2013年9月15日至16日,“秦汉魏晋时期江淮地域背景中的合肥史研究”学术研讨会在合肥召开,此次会议的目的是推动秦汉魏晋时期江淮地区尤其是合肥地区历史文化的研究,为《合肥通史》的编纂提供学术支撑。会议共收到论文30篇,专家学者们围绕主题,分别从三个方面进行了热烈的讨论：一是关于合肥县设立及秦汉合肥之都会地位或输会地位的形成问题;二是江淮地域历史背景中早期合肥地区历史兴衰问题;三是关于周瑜历史、思想等问题的研究,可以说是一次规模小、讨论集中的地方史或区域史研究的高层论坛。     

岭海兼称之地域文化主概念考辨

地域文化主概念的形成有一个长期的历史积淀过程,其基本线索是:地域名称——地域文化概念——地域文化主概念。本地域名称包括三类:自然-人文名称、种族性名称、政制区划名称。自然-人文名称是以自然空间为表征,人文为内涵的命名,是生态系统与地域内人们的历史实践及其人文成果相结合的名称。其中能最终发展为地域文化主概念的名称都有着顽强的生命力,这来自其长期     

国际关系研究的“历史路径”:概念与体系笔谈(一)

重要概念构成了人们感知、理解、阐释历史和现实的方式。对于构建学术体系而言,重要概念不仅是内容,也是工具。本期笔谈试图探讨以下几个问题:重要概念在当代国际关系的历史叠加与观念重塑过程中扮演了怎样的"角色"?"遏制"概念如何影响了冷战史研究范式?"概念史"将会给国际关系史研究带来哪些借鉴?"羁縻"概念的内涵在中国古代边疆治理实践的宏观演进脉络中发生了哪些变化?"天下体系"理论与中国传统天下观的内涵存在着怎样的差异?探究重要概念与学术体系之间的关系,有利于为国际关系研究"历史路径"提供一种行之有效的思路,有助于避免对非西方和西方重要概念的误解甚至以讹传讹的现象,有益于从中国视角与西方学术界进行学术对话。     

德国史研究理论和前沿问题学术研讨会综述

2005年11月19至21日,德国史研究理论和前沿问题学术研讨会在武汉召开。会议由中国德国史研究会和武汉大学历史学院联合主办,来自全国各地的30余名学者及武汉地区高校的部分博士、硕士研究生参加了会议,提交学术论文18篇,就德国史研究中的一些重要问题及研究的视角与方法等进行了交流和讨论。一、德国的战争历史反思问题2005年是世界反法西斯战争胜利60周年,学者们很自然地关注德国对战争历史的认识和德日的不同态度,从不同的角度分析其原因。朱忠武认为德国对战争历史的反思是实践历史反思的成功范例,德国之所以如此,是由于战后纳粹国家机器…     

全球史的空间和时间层次——通过将莱因哈特·科泽勒克的“时间层次”拓展到全球空间反思全球概念史北大核心CSSCI

近年来有关全球史的争论,不仅考验着超越民族国家的历史理解,同时也寻求非欧洲中心论的研究思路。这在历史解释和研究设计两个层面上影响着历史空间与历史时间的关系。本文通过将科泽勒克的时间层次理论拓展到全球空间,以此反思全球概念史的多种可能性。为此,本文将引入"空间层次"概念。首先详细探讨历史化及其与空间化和时间化的关系和互动;其次思考全球空间和时间的复杂性对比较史学和概念史的影响;再次引入一套全球史的三重张力框架——规范性张力、时间张力与空间张力,将其作为一种研究方式,通过全球概念史来具体展开历史研究问题。就时间和空间而言,以往的全球史所讨论的,要么是欧洲强国是否领先非欧洲国家的问题,要么是所谓西方的线性时间观与非西方循环时间观之间的对立问题。本文以时间层次为出发点,打破线性与循环的对立逻辑,转而强调一种基于(历史)人物的、多语言的、全球性的概念史,以此来更好地理解时空活动。     

区域史研究的考察——以中亚史为例

地区史或区域史的研究应是世界史研究的一部分。在全球化的今天,世界历史的研究,既应是跨区域跨文化的综合整体研究,同时又是各个地区或区域研究的深入。在地区史研究中,地理上的划分是否能够提供一个满意体系,一直存有疑窦,而中亚史研究中更突出地存在着地理划分的争议。事实上,每一部有关中亚的著作都有自己的地理界定,不同的界定又体现出作者对自己所研究的地区的理解和期望,划定地域界限,就是确定、分析、重建,从而选择和采纳某种历史哲学。国内中亚区域史的研究,起步较晚,很大程度地受语言因素的制约,因此,在一些具体研究领域上,与国际最高水准还有不同程度的差距。     

商帮史研究中商人身份的判定问题——以徽商研究为例

准确判定商人身份,是商帮史研究立论的前提和基础。在以往的徽商研究中,对徽商身份的判定存在三个值得注意的普遍性问题:一是将"徽商之子"视作"徽商",其结果是对明清士商关系和商人社会地位变化的讨论失去了应有的意义;二是"徽商"概念扩大化,即将历史上的宁国商人等其他地域商人纳入徽商研究范畴,或将非徽商资料误为徽商资料,从而模糊了徽商研究的学术边界;三是将"徽商"与"徽州籍商人"等同起来,从而忽视了商人的自我认同,或将"徽商"概念推及长期与徽州几无联系的徽商后裔,从而无助于揭示徽商问题的本质。在今后的商帮史研究中,研究者应高度重视对商人身份的判定,严格恪守史学的求真原则和历史原则,同时也应注意制度与"人"的结合。     

DIGITALIZING HISTORICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

What is a “historical” video game, let alone a successful one? It is difficult to answer this question because all our definitions of history have been constructed in a linear‐narrative cultural context that is currently being challenged and in large part displaced by digital media, especially video games. I therefore consider this question from the point of view of historical semantics and in relation to the impact of digital technology on all aspects of the historiographical operation, from the establishment of digital archives, to the production of e‐texts, to the digital remediation of visual modes of historical representation. Seen from this dual perspective, video games appear to participate in a process of spatialization and virtualization of historical semantics. In the first place, video games have begun to detach the notion of history from its double reference to the past and to the real—“what essentially happened”—that it had acquired at the end of the eighteenth century. Second, they also challenge the semiotic production of “historic events” that has characterized the construction of modern historical consciousness. Historical video games, in other words, replace representation with simulation and presence with virtuality, thereby marginalizing the oscillation of the modern historical imagination between historical facts and historic events, transcendence and immanence, representation and presence. Although digital reworkings of historical semantics have not produced any grammatical transformation of the signifier, history—nor does this essay propose one—I do argue that the impact of video games on our contemporary historic(al) culture is of paradigmatic proportions similar to those described by Reinhart Koselleck for the dawn of the modern age. Focusing on one of the most successful contemporary video games, Sid Meier's Civilization, I show how the remediation of cinematic genres by video games is pushing the processes of de‐temporalization and de‐referentialization of history toward the formation of a new notion of the historical that may be conceptualized as the inversion of the classic Aristotelian paradigm: history has replaced poetry and philosophy as the realm of the possible.     

历史、文化与民族:20世纪前期中国文化史的兴起

20世纪初,西方“文化”概念成为整理传统中国历史遗产的重要概念工具。国人编纂文化史有意展现传统中国的文化成就,反映出中西文化竞争下,国人隐秘的文化争胜意识。“文化”与“历史”结合,逐渐成为历史叙事的核心概念。文化史在史学研究的对象、价值判断、时代分期、研究方法等方面发展出自身特征,亦反映出西方文明史、文化史在理论和实践方面对中国“新史学”的影响。文化史在实践中注重对民族历史生活的呈现,表现出民族史的特征,其叙述特定群体或民族社会生活的方方面面,揭示群体的精神内核。历史、文化与民族融会一体,在西学东渐、传统文化权威失坠的情况下,文化史构建了一种彰显社会凝聚力的叙事。     

历史记忆、历史-记忆或历史与记忆?——记忆史研究中的概念使用问题北大核心CSSCI

“历史记忆”“历史-记忆”“历史与记忆”以及“记忆史”等概念或议题看似相近,实则有着不同的意涵。“历史记忆”最初是莫里斯•阿布瓦赫在《集体记忆》中提到的概念,意在强调历史带有记忆的性质。随着后人对此术语的发展,“历史记忆”的含义被拓宽为“人们对过去的记忆与表述”。“历史-记忆”是皮埃尔•诺拉提出的术语,用于指称现代之前“历史与记忆”的联合体。“历史与记忆”是西方历史学家辩证地看待历史与记忆之间关系时所讨论的核心议题。面对记忆研究的挑战,西方历史学家之所以讨论历史与记忆的关系,其目的是为历史学正名。“记忆史”则是将记忆作为历史研究对象的领域,研究记忆随着社会历史发展的历时性变化。因此,在涉及这些概念的时候应认真加以区分,避免误用。特别是在翻译、引用西方学者的观点时应力求准确,以免造成误解。     

On the New Trends in Recent Chinese Historiography—An Appraisal Based on Views from Social History

The development of historiography in the new era has manifested in the discourse of “new historiography.” One of its achievements is the rise of “social history” or “new social history.” Over the course of the past four decades, the study of social history has prospered, as it has continuously broadened the research field by embracing interdisciplinary methods. As a result, its development has shaped the prospects of Chinese historiography in the new era. Admittedly, if we were to follow a stricter standard of evaluation, then it becomes evident that some problems worthy of reflection are present in the development of new historiography, such as sociologization, the localization of historical research, and the pursuit of new trends in research. For these reasons, we must be aware of these problems in academia in the new era.     

SCHOLARSHIP AND PERIODIZATION

Davis argues that the familiar periodization dividing European history into medieval and modern phases disguises a claim to power as a historical fact. It justifies slavery and subjugation by projecting them onto the “feudal” Middle Ages and non‐European present, while hiding forms of slavery and subjugation practiced by “secular” modernity. Periodization thus furnishes one of the most durable conceptual foundations for the usurpation of liberty and the abuse of power. In part I, devoted to “feudalism,” Davis traces the legal, political, and colonial struggles behind the development of the concept of “feudal law” in early modern France and England and unravels just how that concept hides colonial oppression while justifying European sovereignty. In part II, devoted to “secularization,” she demonstrates the failure of twentieth‐century critics of “secularization” like Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, and Reinhart Koselleck to break out of the limits imposed by the medieval/modern periodization. Part II concludes with a look at conceptual alternatives in the writings of Amitav Ghosh and the Venerable Bede. Three limitations of this book are worth mentioning. It traces the political history hidden by the concept of “feudalism,” but does not trace the political history hidden by the concept of “religion.” It offers no answer to the question of how to break the link between scholarship and politics without ending up in a logical impasse or reinforcing the link. It does not address the possibility that answering this question may require breaking with the terms of professional historical inquiry. Perhaps the question could be answered in terms like those that led Wittgenstein to characterize his Philosophical Investigations as remarks on the natural history of human beings.     

POSTMODERNISM,SOCIAL SCIENCE,AND HISTORY: RETURNING TO AN UNFINISHED AGENDA

Recognizing that the vogue of postmodernism has passed, Simon Susen seeks to assess whatever enduring impact it may have had on the social sciences, including historiography. Indeed, the postmodern turn, as he sees it, seems to have had particular implications for our understanding of the human relationship with history. After five exegetical chapters, in which he seems mostly sympathetic to postmodernism, Susen turns to often biting criticism in a subsequent chapter. He charges, most basically, that postmodernists miss the self‐critical side of modernity and tend to overreact against aspects of modernism. That overreaction is evident especially in the postmodern preoccupation with textuality and discourse, which transforms sociology into cultural studies and historiography into a form of literature. But as Susen sees it, a comparable overreaction has been at work in the postmodern emphasis on new, “little” politics, concerned with identity and difference, at the expense of more traditional large‐scale politics and attendant forms of radicalism. His assessment reflects the “emancipatory” political agenda he assigns to the social sciences. Partly because that agenda inevitably affects what he finds to embrace and what to criticize, aspects of his discussion prove one‐sided. And he does not follow through on his suggestions that postmodernist insights entail a sort of inflation of history or historicity. Partly as a result, his treatment of “reason,” universal rights, and reality (including historiographical realism) betrays an inadequate grasp of the postmodern challenge—and opportunity. In the last analysis, Susen's understanding of the historical sources of postmodernism is simply too limited, but he usefully makes it clear that we have not put the postmodernist challenge behind us.     

Toward a Received History of the Holocaust

In this article, I examine both the problem of so-called postmodern history as it relates to the Holocaust and suggest the ways that Saul Friedlander's recent work successfully mediates between the somewhat overly polemicized positions of “relativist” and “positivist” history. In this context, I find that in his search for an adequately self-reflexive historical narrative for the Holocaust, Hayden White's proposed notion of “middle-voicedness” may recommend itself more as a process for eyewitness writers than as a style for historians after the fact. From here, I look at the ways Saul Friedlander's reflections on the historian's voice not only mediate between White's notions of the ironic mode and middle-voicedness, but also suggest the basis for an uncanny history in its own right: an anti-redemptory narrative that works through, yet never actually bridges, the gap between a survivor's “deep memory” and historical narrative. For finally, it may be the very idea of “deep memory” and its incompatibility to narrative that constitutes one of the central challenges to Holocaust historiography. What can be done with what Friedlander has termed “deep memory” of the survivor, that which remains essentially unrepresentable? Is it possible to write a history that includes some oblique reference to such deep memory, but which leaves it essentially intact, untouched and thereby deep? In this section, I suggest, after Patrick Hutton, that “What is at issue here is not how history can recover memory, but, rather, what memory will bequeath to history.” That is, what shall we do with the living memory of survivors? How will it enter (or not enter) the historical record? Or to paraphrase Hutton again, “How will the past be remembered as it passes from living memory to history?” Will it always be regarded as so overly laden with pathos as to make it unreliable as documentary evidence? Or is there a place for the understanding of the witness, as subjective and skewed as it may be, for our larger historical understanding of events? In partial answer to these questions, I attempt to extend Friedlander's insights toward a narrow kind of history-telling I call “received history”—a double-stranded narrative that tells a survivor-historian's story and my own relationship to it. Such a narrative would chart not just the life of the survivor-historian itself but also the measurable effect of the tellings—both his telling and mine—on my own life's story. Together, they would compose a received history of the Holocaust and its afterlife in the author's mind—my “vicarious past.”     

POTENTIAL HISTORY: READING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FROM INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES*

Until the beginning of the twentieth century, history, as a core concept of the political project of modernity, was highly concerned with the future. The many crimes, genocides, and wars perpetuated in the name of historical progress eventually caused unavoidable fractures in the way Western philosophies of history have understood change over time, leading to a depoliticization of the future and a greater emphasis on matters of the present. However, the main claim of the “Historical Futures” project is that the future has not completely disappeared from the focus of historical thinking, and some modalities of the future that have been brought to the attention of historical thought relate to a more-than-human reality. This article aims to confront the prospects of a technological singularity through the eyes of peoples who already live in a world of more-than-human agency. The aim of this confrontation is to create not just an alternative way to think about the future but a stance from which we can explore ways to inhabit and therefore repoliticize historical futures. This article contains a comparative study that has been designed to challenge our technologized imaginations of the future and, at the same time, to infuse the theoretical experiment with contingent historical experiences. Could we consider artificial intelligence as a new historical subject? What about as an agent in a “more-than-human” history? To what extent can we read this new condition through ancient Amerindian notions of time? Traditionally, the relationship between Western anthropocentrism and Amerindian anthropomorphism has been framed in terms of an opposition. We intend to prefigure a less hierarchical and more horizontal relation between systems of thought, one devoid of a fixed center or parameter of reference. Granting the same degree of intellectual dignity to the works of Google engineers and the views of Amazonian shamans, we nevertheless foster an intercultural dialogue (between these two “traditions of reasoning”) about a future in which history can become more-than-human. We introduce potential history as the framework not only to conceptualize Amerindian experiences of time but also to start building an intercultural dialogue that is designed to discuss AI as a historical subject.     

Russia,China, and the universalism of modernity: the “Account of the Reforms of Peter the Great” by Kang Youwei

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes a short essay by Kang Youwei (1858–1927) – one of the intellectual and political protagonists of late imperial and early Republican China. In it, he interpreted the historical experience of Russian modernization under Peter the Great (1672–1725) and used it as a “success story” for the renewal of Chinese monarchical institutions. It was written in 1898 and presented to the Manchu throne under the title “Account of the Reforms of Peter the Great”, and for our purposes will be the departing point for a “global intellectual circuit” through which the following questions will be addressed: Why was seventeenth and eighteenth century Russia considered as a model for China by the author? How did he manage to adapt the historical experience of Russia into a social and political conceptual framework for China? What was Kang’s historiographical method, and what kind of philosophy of history framed his reflections? What does this short essay tell us about Kang’s view on “Westernization”, on the concept of “modernity” itself, and on its use for historiographical purposes?