Hayden White's Appeal to the Historians

Historians rarely agree with Hayden White's account of theirdiscipline. To a certain extent their dissatisfaction can be explained by the fact that historianscustomarily distrust historical theory and always tend to look at the historical theorist with thegreatest suspicion. But historians find an extra argument for their dislike of White's ideasin his alleged cavalier disregard of how historical facts limit what the historian might wish to sayabout the past. And, admittedly, this criticism is not wholly unfounded.
Nevertheless, this essay attempts to show how misguided this traditional criticism ofWhite actually is. For it is historians who too easily take the truth of their accounts of the past forgranted, whereas White's theoretical writings can be shown to express a full awareness ofthe kind of problem encountered in the effort to tell the truth about historical reality. Hence,White's writing—rather than those by historians criticizing White—testify to therespect that we owe to historical reality itself.
That this is how we should read White becomes clear if we consider his intellectualevolution as a whole rather than the individual books or essays that he wrote.     

Hayden White: The Form of the Content

Hayden White's perhaps richest and most profoundly argued book, The Content of the Form, touches many nerves in the American historicalprofession. The entirety of the book, from its premises through its most thoughtful exegeses of historical writing, insists that linguistic form is the primary carrier of content in historical writing, indeed, in historical knowledge. This insistence on a respectful and careful attention tothe formal usages of nonfiction prose, truth-claiming language, goes well against the grain of American tastes. As de Tocqueville presciently and correctly predicted, when Americans take to literature in a serious way, they won't have much patience with precise matters of form.Hayden White's narrative theory has had uphill work to penetrate this pervasive indifference, especially among historians.
He has been joined in recent decades by Paul Ricoeur, whose Time andNarrative , beginning from different premises and a slightly different question, arrives at a sympathetic and complementary analysis of historical narrative. In spite of White's published hesitations about the political/philosophical tendencies of Ricoeur's work, I amconvinced that their books are mutually supporting and, in an important cultural sense, belong together.
Altogether, however, I do feel that the main import and justification of this presentessay must rest on my quite serious reading of Hayden White's best joke, a profound shaggy dog story about the historian monk of St. Gall.     

Can Histories Be True? Narrativism,Positivism, and the “MetaphoricalTurn”

Narrativism, as represented by Hayden White and Frank Ankersmit, can fruitfully be analyzed as an inversion of two brands of positivism. First, narrativist epistemology can be regarded as an inversion of empiricism. Its thesis that narratives function as metaphors which do not possess a cognitive content is built on an empiricist, "picture view" of knowledge. Moreover, all the non-cognitive aspects attributed as such are dependent on this picture theory of knowledge and a picture theory of representation. Most of the epistemological characteristics that White and Ankersmit attribute to historical narratives therefore share the problems of this picture theory.
The article's second thesis is that the theories of narrative explanation can also fruitfully be analyzed as inversions of positivist covering-law theory. Ankersmit's brand of narrativism is the most radical in this respect because it posits an opposition between narrative and causal modes of comprehension while simultaneously eliminating causality from narrativist historical understanding. White's brand of narrativism is more of a hybrid than is Ankersmit's as far as its theory of explanation is concerned; nevertheless, it can also be fruitfully interpreted as an inversion of covering-law theory, replacing it by an indefinite multitude of explanatory strategies.
Most of the striking characteristics of both White's and Ankersmit's narrativism pre-suppose positivism in these two senses, especially their claim that historical narratives have a metaphorical structure and therefore no truth-value. These claims are had to reconcile with the factual characteristics of debates by historians; this problem can be tracked down to the absence in "metaphorical” narrativism of a conceptual connection between historical narratives and historical research.     

History, Memory, and the Law: The Historian as Expert Witness

There has been a widespread recovery of public memory of the events of the Second World War since the end of the 1980s, with war crimes trials, restitution actions, monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism appearing in many countries. This has inevitably involved historians being called upon to act as expert witnesses in legal actions, yet there has been little discussion of the problems that this poses for them. The French historian Henry Rousso has argued that this confuses memory with history. In the aftermath of the Second World War, judicial investigations unearthed a mass of historical documentation. Historians used this, and further researches, from the 1960s onwards to develop their own ideas and interpretations. But since the early 1990s there has been a judicialization of history, in which historians and their work have been forced into the service of moral and legal forms of judgment which are alien to the historical enterprise and do violence to the subleties and nuances of the historian's search for truth. This reflects Rousso's perhaps rather simplistically scientistic view of the historian's enterprise; yet his arguments are powerful and should be taken seriously by any historian considering involvement in a law case; they also have a wider implication for the moralization of the history of the Second World War, which is now dominated by categories such as "perpetrator,""victim," and "bystander" that are legal rather than historical in origin. The article concludes by suggesting that while historians who testify in war crimes trials should confine themselves to elucidating the historical context, and not become involved in judging whether an individual was guilty or otherwise of a crime, it remains legitimate to offer expert opinion, as the author of the article has done, in a legal action that turns on the research and writing of history itself.     

THE ENDURING POWER OF RACISM: A RECONSIDERATION OF WINTHROP JORDAN'S WHITE OVER BLACK

As a history of the origins and development of American racism, White over Black received great acclaim upon its publication in 1968. Deeply researched and covering some 650 pages, it eschewed professional jargon and offered a deft prose style and close attention to matters of sexuality in revealing the origins and lasting influence of racist attitudes arising from Englishmen's impressions of blacks before they became, preeminently, slaves in North America. Jordan's careful weighing of evidence and causation made readers appreciate what he believed his evidence repeatedly demonstrated about white Americans’ attitudes toward African‐Americans: “the power of irrationality in men.” Despite the initial acclaim and scholarly achievement, White over Black soon lost pace with the curve of politics and academic fashion. By the mid‐1970s, the post‐World War II liberal consensus on racial issues had disintegrated, and professional historians were writing principally for other professional historians. Within a decade after its publication, White over Black was relegated to the wasteland of the “suggested supplemental reading list.” However, the book's grasp of the fundamental historical issues requiring explanation has received recent affirmation from influential scholarly and political quarters. A dispassionate review of the literature leading up to and following White over Black's publication indicates that Jordan's emphasis on the causal contribution of racist attitudes to the rise of African slavery in British North America was on target. Moreover, Jordan's appreciation that academic historians should write for nonprofessionals is now widely held inside the academy. The historical accuracy and cogency of expression of Jordan's perspective on race and slavery make White over Black worth reexamining.     

EXCEPTIONAL HISTORY? THE ORIGINS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE UNITED STATES1

This essay examines how and why historiography—defined to mean the study of the history of historical writing—first emerged as a legitimate subject of historical inquiry in the United States during the period from 1890 to the 1930s by focusing on the practice of historiography by three of the most influential American historiographers whose work spans this period: J. Franklin Jameson, John Spencer Bassett, and Harry Elmer Barnes. Whereas the development of historiography as a field of study signified a recognition that historians and historical writing are themselves products of the historical process, American historiographers in this period at the same time used historiography to further a scientific ideal of objectivity that was premised on the belief in the ability of historians to separate themselves from that process. Modern scholars (notably, Peter Novick) have attributed to scientific historians like Jameson and Bassett a simplistic and naive positivism; but the ability of these historiographers to recognize the subjective character of historical writing and yet affirm a belief in objectivity reveals that their understanding of historical truth was more complex than modern scholars have acknowledged. In turn, by questioning the belief that the historical profession was originally founded on a naïve faith in the ideal of objective truth, I demonstrate that New Historians like Barnes were more similar to their predecessors, the scientific historians, than they (or later scholars) acknowledged. Thus, rather than portraying the shift from scientific history to the New History as a linear trajectory of development from objectivity to a more relativist viewpoint, I argue that New Historians like Barnes at once expressed a greater recognition than his scientific predecessors of how historical writing was the product of its context, while still insisting on his commitment to an ideal of objectivity that divorced the historian from that context.     

The personality of Guibert de Nogent reconsidered

Uncertainty over Guibert's reasons for writing his autobiography, the De vita sua, has prompted attempts at psycho-historical analyses of his personality. Such studies, in particular those of Benton and Kantor, have tended to rely overheavily on over-simplified psycho-analytical models and ignore cultural, historical and religious factors. An appreciation of such factors, however, does much to improve our understanding both of Guibert's personality and his reasons for writing. On the other hand, psycho-history is not to be dismissed as a worthless aid to the writing of history. With the application of suitable safeguards, as the work of Dom Jean Leclerq has demonstrated, it can form a most useful addition to the historian's armory.     

1. INDIA IN A WORLD: DILEMMAS OF SOVEREIGNTY

Azfar Moin's The Millennial Sovereign: Sacred Kingship and Sainthood in Islam prompts a consideration not only of the histories of Islam and early modern connected histories of Central and South Asia, but also of current debates about local and global history‐writing. Moin's work intersects with a strand of comparative world history—following Victor Lieberman's Strange Parallels—but also engages strands of historical anthropology, bringing to light a range of compelling stakes for global historians, historians of South Asia, and scholars of nationalism alike. Though Moin's work pushes the boundaries of connected histories centered on South Asia, his focus on a trans‐regional millennial science avoids questions of the local within new global histories.     

HISTORY WRITING WITHOUT CLOSURE

In The Work of History: Constructivism and a Politics of the Past, Kalle Pihlainen pays tribute to Hayden White's work on narrative constructivism through a comprehensive and critical evaluation of his work. The book's seven chapters are based on previously published and reworked essays, starting with Pihlainen's 2013 essay on narrative truth and ending with his 2006 essay on the confines of the form. The Work of History is timely in light of some world political leaders’ apparent immunity to facts, their use of history, and the role of power, as Pihlainen also discusses the ethics and politics of historical constructivism (xiii). At the same time, the book is “a meta-critical enterprise,” as White states in his foreword (x): it scrutinizes and explains White's work and its reception, including the debates on the production of knowledge, the ontological status of historiography, the various representations of history, and the kinds of audiences historians envision. Although narrative constructivism seems a bit passé, Pihlainen wants to further elaborate this theoretical approach to disentangle and explain some fundamental misconceptions about it that still exist among historians. One misconception is that constructivism inherently neglects the ethical impulse and supposedly lacks the potential for political engagement. Pihlainen urges historians and theorists to find ways of becoming politically committed in their writings and to challenge their readers to do the same.     

Matthew Paris on the writing of history

Matthew Paris was one of the most prolific and influential historians of the central middle ages. Matthew's significance rests both on the range of his interests and the scope of his writing. Yet, even basic questions about his outlook on writing, his concept of history, or the relationship with his audience, have hardly been asked. These issues are central themes of this article, and will be used to consider wider questions about Matthew's concept of truth, his handling of information, and his view of the world around him. The article, furthermore, extends coverage beyond the Chronica majora or Matthew's vernacular writings to consider his concept of history as it emerges from the totality of his oeuvre.     

陈黻宸的史学“四独”“五史”论

在挖掘中国传统史学的精华和吸收消化西方史学思想的基础上,陈黻宸糅合中西,提出了自己的"四独""五史"的史学思想。这些史学思想中既有对史家的要求,也包括了对读史之人的要求,其中处处透露着陈黻宸对史学性质的认识和"新史学"的影像。     

HERBERT BUTTERFIELD AND THE ETHICS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

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Marc Bloch: Did he repudiate Annales history?

Since the summer of 1944 when Marc Bloch fell before a Nazi firing squad, no book dedicated to him and his historical writing has yet appeared. There is, however, an imposing corpus of publications in learned journals and collections of articles discussing his contributions to historical methodology and also his life, especially those acts of courage that led to his untimely death. The task here, then, is to probe into Bloch's writings and to ponder his life and what others have said about him in an attempt to ferret out his thoughts about the nature of history and historical methodology and to determine whether in the last few years of his life his view of history altered dramatically.     

章开沅教授与中国近现代史写作

选题是历史学论著写作成败的关键,要有创新并考虑研究的可持续发展。历史研究及写作需要史实的实证和史识的阐述来支撑。缺少史实的实证,历史就变成一个空架子,但要避免史料的堆砌。史料工作不是机械的工作,而是高层次的智力劳动。转引材料应该注明出处,以示尊重别人的劳动。至于史识,也即史学家的思辨,这有很高的甚至是很残酷的要求,真正的史学家(例如司马迁),能够达到历史哲学方面的理解,甚至是对宇宙生命的终极诉求,这也要求史学家应该有史学的参与意识。此外,文字表达是一件很重要而又很痛苦的事情,历史学家不应该原谅自己在文采方面的缺失,而应该提高文字表达能力,适当地强调史感,以达到设身处地地与古人对话、交流、沟通。总之,史料、史识、文采三者应该达到完美的统一。     

Objectivity and the writing of history

How do historians approach objectivity? This is addressed by Mark Bevir in his book The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999) by his argument for an anthropological epistemology with objectivity in the historical narrative resting on the explanation of human actions/agent intentionality equating with meaning. The criticism of this position is at several levels. As sophisticated constructionists historians do not usually ask ‘Can history be objective?’ Rather, they work from the balance of evidence reflecting the intersubjectivity of truth and they acknowledge the problematic nature of inferring agent intentionality and the difficulties in equating this with ‘what it means’. Why Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 emancipation proclamation is a case in point. No historian would claim to have located its true meaning objectively in effect doubting Mark Bevir's claim that ‘objective knowledge arises from a human practice in which we criticise and compare rival webs of theories in terms of agreed facts’ (The Logic of the History of Ideas, 1999, p. 98). There are also further challenges to an over-reliance on rational action theory and the problems associated with the selection of evidence. Equally, most historians in practice doubt objectivity emerges from an accurate knowledge of the motives that can be matched to weak authorial intentions and that this leads to action via decisions. Few historians today accept that their narrative mimics past intentionality and that this provides true meaning. The article offers four reasons for rejecting Bevir's position and concludes with a defence of the narrative-linguistic determination of meaning. This suggests that history is subject to the same narrative and imaginative constraints as other forms of realist writing, rather than being privileged by an access to knowable intentionality and that this constitutes objective historical knowledge.     

关于《新唐书》的书法问题

北宋中期,《新唐书》在宋祁、欧阳修的主持下,历十七年终于修成。然而人们对《新唐书》的批评很多,集中在书法问题上,包括史料的取舍、语言的采用、褒贬体例等。《新唐书》之所以在书法上出现这些问题,主要原因是修书组织存在重大缺陷,而且修史官员对春秋笔法理解方面有较大的差异,文人修史存在着如修史者的态度、主观好恶、修史风格等许多弊病。     

刘知几史学批评的特点

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THE CONTINUING MODESTY OF HISTORY

The critique of conventional historical writing has been emergent for a century—it is not the work of a few—and it has immense practical implications for Western society, perhaps especially in English‐speaking countries. Involved are such issues as the decline of representation, the nature of causality, the definitions of identity or time or system, to name only a few. Conventional historians are quite right to consider this a challenge to everything they assume in order to do their work. The challenge is, why do that particular work at all? Understandably, historians have consolidated, especially in North America where empiricism and the English language prevail. But even there, and certainly elsewhere, and given the changes in knowledge and social order during the past century at least, the critique of conventional historical method is unavoidable. Too bad historians aren't doing more to help this effort, and by historians I don't mean the most of us who think constantly in terms of historical causality as we learned it from the nineteenth century and our teachers; by “historians” I mean the experts who continue to teach the young. A major roadblock to creative discussion is the fact that problems such as those just mentioned all exceed disciplinary boundaries, so investigation that does not follow suit cannot grasp the problem, much less respond to it creatively. Of course everyone is “for” interdisciplinary work, but most professional organizations, publications, and institutions do not encourage it, despite lip service to the contrary. Interdisciplinary work involves more than the splicing activity that is all too familiar in academic curricula. Crossing out of one's realm of “expertise” requires a kind of humility that does not always sort well with the kind of expertise fostered by professional organizations, publications, and institutions. And even the willing have trouble with the heady atmosphere outside the professional bubble. In such conditions key terms (“language,”“discourse,”“relativism,”“modernity,”“postmodernity,”“time,”“difference”) are pushed here and pushed there without gaining the focus that would lead to currency until finally the ostensible field of play resembles a gigantic traffic jam like the one that opens the film Fellini Roma. Discussion of these issues leads in the end to Borges and his story, ‘The Modesty of History,” from which the title of this essay is borrowed.     

Ankersmit's Postmodernist Historiography: The Hyperbole of "Opacity"

Ankersmit's articulation of a postmodern theory of history takes seriously both the strengths of traditional historicism and the right of historians to decide what makes sense for disciplinary practice. That makes him an exemplary interlocutor. Ankersmit proposes a theory of historical "representation" which radicalizes the narrative approach to historiography along the lines of poststructuralist textualism. Against this postmodernism but invoking some of his own arguments, I defend the traditional historicist position. I formulate criticisms of the theory of reference entailed in his notion of "narrative substance," of his master analogy of historiography with modern painting, and finally of his characterization of historical hermeneutics. In each case I find him guilty of the hyperbole which he himself cautions against. While it is true that historical narratives cannot be taken to be transparent, in taking them to be opaque Ankersmit puts himself in an untenable position. Finally, Ankersmit seeks to buttress his theoretical case by an interpretation of the new cultural historical texts of authors like Davis and Ginzburg. While this is a concreteness heartily to be welcomed in philosophers of history, I cannot find his construction of this new school's work plausible.     

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