Broca’s faculté du langage articulé: Language or Praxis?

De Oliveira-Souza, Moll, and Tovar-Moll (this issue) historically reevaluate that Paul Broca’s aphemia should be considered as a kind of apraxia rather than aphasia. I argue that such a claim is unwarranted, given the interpretation of the faculty of speech Broca derived from his predecessors, Jean-Baptiste Bouillaud and Franz Joseph Gall, and also with a view on the then generally held opinion that the terms aphémie and aphasie were synonyms. I will discuss evidence that patients such as Leborgne, producing only very few words or syllables, suffer from a global aphasia, affecting all modalities, despite Broca’s statement that Leborgne’s comprehension was intact. I also point to Broca’s claim that the faculty of speech, located in the left anterior hemisphere, is independent from hand preference because it is an intellectual and not a motor function, and to his statement that the cerebral convolutions are not motor organs. I finally contend that, in order to determine whether a given language problem should be labeled as aphasia or apraxia, it is crucial to first be clear on the components of old and new models of language production.     

The development and evolution of “cerebral thermometry”: Clinical applications of a nineteenth-century approach to cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Surface thermometers were developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1877, Broca, already famous for his contributions to the cerebral localization of nonfluent aphasia, presented his first clinical observations on cranial surface temperatures: In two cases, cranial surface temperatures were decreased over a middle cerebral artery infarction, and increased in surrounding areas, which Broca attributed to “compensatory hyperaemia.” As Broca made apparent in a later report in 1879, he had used a “thermometric crown,” an apparatus consisting of six to eight large-reservoir mercury thermometers strapped against the head. Following Broca’s report, American neurologists reported cases in which cranial surface temperatures were increased either locally over a superficial brain tumor or globally with a cerebral abscess. Despite promising anecdotal reports, contemporaries recognized that significant technical and practical problems limited its accuracy, reliability, and clinical utility. Advocates never demonstrated that this technology provided significant marginal benefit to the medical history and physical examination. The technique fell out of fashion before 1900, though some early advocates promoted it into the early twentieth century. It was ultimately replaced by more effective technologies for cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis.     

Authors’ Response

Broca’s first patient presented in support of a relationship between a lesion of the frontal lobe and aphasia was patient Tan. Although Pierre Marie refers to this case as “indisputably aphasia of Broca,’” the clinical diagnosis of Tan’s aphasia has not been re-examined in light of current clinical criteria. Superficially, the patient’s extremely limited verbal output and intact comprehension appear to fit with the diagnosis of Broca’s aphasia, but a more thorough examination of the onset, evolution and nature of the patient’s speech symptoms suggests alternate interpretations. Contemporary evidence in support of a robust relationship between stereotypical utterances and Global aphasia suggests that patient Tan may have suffered from a Global rather than Broca’s aphasia.     

Paul Broca’s search for Basque skulls: The full story

Paul Broca surmised that the short and broad—brachycephalic—skulls of the earliest European settlers had become longer and narrower—dolichocephalic—in modern populations due to the blending of different races. Swedish anatomist Anders Retzius had two brachycephalic skulls said to be from contemporary Basque individuals, a claim suited to test Broca’s hypothesis. Broca worked with fellow anatomist and surgeon Pedro González Velasco, the founding father of Spanish anthropology, to gather a large number of Basque skulls. In its time, this was the most fascinating collection owned by the Anthropological Society of Paris. This article explains how Broca and Velasco were able to gather such a sizeable array of specimens, which they had collected at a location known at first by the code name of “Z.” Although Broca finally concluded that the origin of the Retzius skulls could not be determined, his research was to spark anthropologists’ interest in the language and origins of the Basque people.     

Broca’s Aphemia: The Tortuous Story of a Nonaphasic Nonparalytic Disorder of Speech

Broca coined the neologism “aphemia” to describe a syndrome consisting of a loss of the ability to speak without impairment of language and paralysis of the faciolingual territories in actions unrelated to speech, such as protruding the tongue or pursing the lips. Upon examining the brains of patients with aphemia, Broca concluded that the minimum possible lesion responsible for aphemia localized to the posterior left inferior frontal gyrus and lower portion of the middle frontal gyrus. A review of Broca’s writings led us to conclude that (a) Broca localized speech, not language, to the left hemisphere, (b) Broca’s aphemia is a form of apraxia, (c) Broca’s aphemia is not, therefore, a terminological forerunner of aphasia, and (d) Broca was an outspoken equipotentialist concerning the cerebral localization of language. Broca’s claim about the role of the left hemisphere in the organization of speech places him as the legitimate forebear of the two most outstanding achievements of Liepmann’s work, namely, the concepts of apraxia and of a left hemisphere specialization for action.     

William Rutherford Sanders (1828–1881) and his neurologically fertile years (1865–1868)

ABSTRACT

William Rutherford Sanders (1828–1881) was an Edinburgh physician who occupied the Chair of Pathology at the University of Edinburgh from 1869 to 1881. All of his published output between 1865 and 1868 was concerned with neurology. In arguing that a patient did not have paralysis agitans, Sanders (1865) employed the term “Parkinson’s disease” for the first time in the English-language literature to distinguish between the disorder that Parkinson (1817) termed “paralysis agitans” and other types of shaking palsies. He contributed a major chapter on the same topic to Russell Reynolds’s A System of Medicine (1868). Sanders also investigated the innervation of the palate and facial muscles (1865), and in 1866 recorded the autopsy findings in two cases of aphasia. Here, for the first time in the English-language literature, he described findings that supported Broca’s location of the representation of speech to a particular area of the left cerebral hemisphere.     

Broca and Charcot’s Research on Jacques Inaudi:The Psychological and Anthropological Study of a Mental Calculator

In the nineteenth century, French scientific institutions became interested in young “mental calculators,” arithmetical prodigies able to quickly and accurately perform complex mental calculations. The first scientists to study mental calculators were phrenologists who sought to prove the existence of a calculating organ in the frontal lobe. Paul Broca introduced one such mental calculator, Jacques Inaudi, to the Anthropological Society of Paris in 1880. Broca attributed extraordinary faculty for mental calculation to memory functioning (the psychological hypothesis) rather than physiological difference (the phrenological hypothesis). In 1892, prominent French Academy of Sciences member Jean-Martin Charcot produced a noteworthy study of Inaudi on the organization’s behalf. Charcot observed that Inaudi called upon auditory memory rather than visual memory in his mental calculations, unlike most mental calculators who preceded him. Like Broca, Charcot was skeptical of the phrenological hypothesis, though he noted that Inaudi’s skull was markedly plagiocephalic. Interestingly, anthropological examination of Inaudi is consistent with the themes of modern cognitive neuroscience. Thus, Charcot seems to have anticipated present research on the localization of mental calculation and memory for numbers.     

Explaining "Auschwitz" after the End of History: The Case of Italy

Everywhere the 1990s have been characterized by an odd mixture of ideological triumphalism—Fukuyama's “end of history” being only the crassest example—and of ideological uncertainty—can there be, should there be, a “third way”? For all its pretensions to universality, the “New World Order” has never lost a fragility in appearance. Students of historiography can scarcely be surprised to learn that an uneasiness over the present and future has in turn frequently entailed uncertainty about the past and particularly about those parts of the past which had seemed most able to give clear and significant “lessons.” One evident example is the history of what in my Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima (1993) I called the “long” Second World War, that is, that crisis in confidence in the relationship between political and economic liberalism and the nation-state which, by the end of 1938, had left only Britain, France, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia as in any sense preserving those “liberal” freedoms which had spread across Europe since 1789. In this article, I briefly review the most recent difficulties World War II combatant societies have had in locating a usable past in the history of those times. However, my major focus is on the specific case of Italy, very much a border state in the Cold War system, and today the political home of an “Olive Tree” and a “Liberty Pole” whose historical antecedents and whose philosophical base for the future are less than limpid. 1990s Italian historians thus give very mixed messages about the Fascist past; these are the messages I describe and decode.     

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。     

THE WORDS OF HISTORY

In From History to Theory, Kerwin Lee Klein writes a history of the central terms of the discipline of theory of history, such as “historiography,” “philosophy of history,” “theory of history,” and “memory.” Klein tells us when and how these terms were used, how the usage of some (“historiography” and “philosophy of history”) declined during the twentieth century, and how other terms (“theory” and “memory”) became increasingly popular. More important, Klein also shows that the use of these words is not innocent. Using words such as “theory” or “historiography” implies certain specific ideas about what the writing of history should be like, and how theoretical reflection on the nature of history and its writing relates to the practical issues of the discipline. In the second half of his book, Klein focuses more on the concept of memory and the memory boom since the later part of the 1980s. He observes that “memory” came to be seen as a kind of “counterhistory,” a postcolonial, fragmented, and personal alternative to the traditional mainstream discourse of history. Klein does not necessarily disagree with this view, but he does warn us about unwanted side effects. More specifically, he argues that the discourse of memory is surprisingly compatible with that of extremist right‐wing groups, and should be treated with suspicion. Although Klein certainly has a point, he presents it in a rather dogmatic fashion. However, a more nuanced version of Klein's criticism of memory can be developed by building on Klein's suggestion that there is an intimate connection between memory and identity.     

Shifting Narratives: Modern Chinese History since the Economic Reform and a Critique of Popular Opinion

When discussing the trans-formative shifts having occurred in the field of Chinese modern history following the economic reforms, one cannot avoid mention of the “revolutionary history paradigm,” the “paradigm of modernization” as well as the “postmodern paradigm.” According to popular belief, the course of development taken by the academic world during the past forty years was marked by a series of transformations: First was the progressive replacement of the “revolutionary history paradigm” by that of the “paradigm of modernization”; following that was the rise of the “postmodern paradigm” and the challenging of its predecessor. This set of divisions, though logically clear and succinct, cannot possibly conform to the realities of history in all of its complexness. While academic circles in the 1980’s were largely concerned with the issues of “what exactly is the historical driving force of Marxism” and “who are the revolutionary class,” the notion of the “paradigm of modernization” was rather a product of the conservative historical viewpoint and its rise during the late 1990’s. In this sense, then, the latter cannot possibly embody the former. On the surface of things, though the “postmodern paradigm” appears to refuse the narrative of revolutionary history, it in fact shares deeper connections with Chinese revolutionary thought at its roots. In short, then, these trans-formative shifts in modern Chinese history are not a simple “exchange” whereby one paradigm transfers into the next, but are rather a process of incessant and interconnected change.     

明代年例银制度形成探论

明代年例银制度是经过长期演变逐渐形成的一项军事供给制度。宣德十年(1435)首先出现京运银,历经景泰、天顺时期,京运银两中有一笔银两开始向"岁例"发生制度性转变的趋势;成化、弘治之际,"常数"、"岁运"、"岁例"、"年例"、"年例银"等名称的出现是这笔京运银两制度化发展的结果,标志着明代年例银制度的初步形成;嘉靖十六年(1537)年例银一年一发的规定以及年例银会计预算制的出现,意味着明代年例银制度的完全确立。年例银制度的形成和确立,改变了明代国家的军事供给体制,是明代军事财政史上的一个重大变革。     

THE HISTORY OF EMOTIONS: AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM REDDY,BARBARA ROSENWEIN,AND PETER STEARNS

The history of emotions is a burgeoning field—so much so, that some are invoking an “emotional turn.” As a way of charting this development, I have interviewed three of the leading practitioners of the history of emotions: William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns. The interviews retrace each historian's intellectual‐biographical path to the history of emotions, recapitulate key concepts, and critically discuss the limitations of the available analytical tools. In doing so, they touch on Reddy's concepts of “emotive,”“emotional regime,” and “emotional navigation,” as well as on Rosenwein's “emotional community” and on Stearns's “emotionology” and offer glimpses of each historian's ongoing research. The interviews address the challenges presented to historians by research in the neurosciences and the like, highlighting the distinctive contributions offered by a historical approach. In closing, the interviewees appear to reach a consensus, envisioning the history of emotions not as a specialized field but as a means of integrating the category of emotion into social, cultural, and political history, emulating the rise of gender as an analytical category since its early beginnings as “women's history” in the 1970s.     

NE ME RACONTE PLUS D'HISTOIRES: DERRIDA AND THE PROBLEM OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

This essay reads Derrida's early work within the context of the history of philosophy as an academic field in France. Derrida was charged with instruction in the history of philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure, and much of his own training focused on this aspect of philosophical study. The influence of French history of philosophy can be seen in Derrida's work before Of Grammatology, especially in his unpublished lectures for a 1964 course entitled “History and Truth,” in which he analyzed the semantic richness of the word “history.” According to Derrida, “history” comprised both the ideas of change and of transmission, which allowed the writing of history at a later time. In the Western tradition, Derrida suggested, philosophers had consistently tried to reduce the idea of history as transmission, casting it simply as empirical development in order to preserve the idea that truth could be timeless. Derrida's account of the evolving opposition between history and truth within the history of philosophy led him to suggest a “history of truth” that transcended and structured the opposition. I argue that Derrida's strategies in these early lectures are critical for understanding his later and more famous deconstruction of speech and writing. Moreover, the impact of this early confrontation with the problem of history and truth helps explain the ambivalent response by historians to Derrida's analyses.     

折中的“重估”

“重新估定一切价值”(Transvaluation of all Values),在1919年被胡适用以概括“新思潮的根本意义”,成为新文化运动的重要口号。该口号的提出本有特殊语境。一战后的中国思想界有了新的趋向,尊西趋新、反传统已不再具有类似“政治正确”的独尊地位,原本被尊崇的“欧化”、被否定的“国故”都面临重估。在此背景下,《新青年》派与《时事新报》同人关于“外国偶像”与“固有文化”的争论,成为傅斯年、胡适调整表述的契机,促使他们使用更折中、开放的口号——“重新估定一切价值”“整理国故”来回应对方质疑,并容纳多元的新派。在这一情境中提出及流行的“重新估定一切价值”具有多重属性:胡适在表述上统合种种不一致的新思潮,又暗藏其对中西文化的主张,并针对新兴的“主义”;因其开放性,它在流传中更被不同地理解与使用。这一口号的多重性体现出历史上的五四新文化运动比以往认知的更为丰富。     

7. SPACES,PLACES, AND THE HISTORIANS: A COMMENT FROM A GERMAN PERSPECTIVE

This article discusses from a specifically German point of view the “spatial turn” in history and the approaches of this forum. Many recent interventions have suggested that “space” (as opposed to “time”) was for many years a marginalized category in the German historiographical debate because of the ideological contamination of the category “space” by the Nazis. In the context of the vivid, lively “provincial” or “regional” history practiced in Germany, however, “space” has always played an important role. The debates around the spatial turn nevertheless provide the opportunity for deliberate reconceptualization. This comment proposes a relational understanding of “space” as the core of the new approach and identifies some central elements and terms for it: the differentiation of “spaces,”“places,” and “locations”; movement in space; the division of space in the form of boundaries; finally, the ordering and classification of space in the form of written or visual representations.     

The evolution of the concept of synesthesia in the nineteenth century as revealed through the history of its name

ABSTRACT

Synesthesia is a rare perceptual condition causing unusual sensations, which are triggered by the stimulation of otherwise unrelated modalities (e.g., the sensation of colors triggered when listening to music). In addition to the name it takes today, the condition has had a wide variety of designations throughout its scientific history. These different names have also been accompanied by shifting boundaries in its definition, and the literature has undergone a considerable process of change in the development of a term for synesthesia, starting with “obscure feeling” in 1772, and ending with the first emergence of the true term “synesthesia” or “synæsthesiæ” in 1892. In this article, we will unpack the complex history of this nomenclature; provide key excerpts from central texts, in often hard-to-locate sources; and translate these early passages and terminologies into English.     

TOWARD A MULTIDIRECTIONAL FUTURE OF HISTORIOGRAPHY: GLOBALITY,INTERDISCIPLINARITY, AND POSTHUMANITY

Compared with the survey offered in the New Perspectives on Historical Writing nearly three decades earlier, historical practices around the world today have witnessed a remarkable change on several fronts. First, marked expansions occurred in such fields as gender history, history of memory, history of knowledge, and visual history, resulting in their noticeable transformation (for example, “gender history” to “history of sexuality” and “visual history” to “history of things”). Second, by exploring and presenting the “other(s)” in modern historiography, new areas are opened up in postcolonial history, global history, emotions history, and so on, which have prompted historians to reconceptualize their notions of time and space. Third, menacing global climate change and notable breakthroughs in various areas of modern technology have exerted an unprecedented impact on historical writing, exemplified by the new developments in environmental history, neurohistory, digital history, and animal history. Science and technology help historians to rejuvenate their research methodology and teaching pedagogy, but they have also demanded that historians acquire a better understanding of the interaction and co-evolution of humans and nonhumans in history, or to take the nonanthropocentric and nonanthropomorphic approach. In sum, what lies ahead for historians and history students today is a multidirectional future, which is at once an opportunity and a challenge.     

中国社会文化史研究:25年反省与进路

我国史学界社会文化史学科兴起25年来,经过了前十年"兴起奠基期"、继十年"发展兴盛期"、近五年"深化扩散期"三个阶段。学术贡献有:理论方法创新,开辟史学新生长点;推动中国近代史研究超越"革命史范式"及"现代化范式",走向"本土现代性";关注民间社会,挖掘内在社会文化资源。存在问题与瓶颈:学科意识模糊,研究"碎片化",平面描述性、意义稀薄及理论缺失。当今社会转型呼唤社会文化史的理论创新成果,未来将会引起关注的"关键论题"有:民间社会、社会治理、生活方式、价值系统。这几个"关键论题",可能会成为社会文化史学者为中国社会发展理论创新作出贡献的生长点。