Showing papers in "History and Theory in 2011"
TL;DR: The 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway as mentioned in this paper was the first one to recognize the importance of "decentering" history in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and subaltern classes; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of non-Western histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models.
Abstract: This essay was first presented at the 2010 Ludwig Holberg Prize Symposium in Bergen, Norway, where I, as the prize recipient, was asked to describe my work and its import for our period of globalization. The essay first traces the interconnected processes of "decentering" history in Western historiography in the half century after World War II: the move to working people and "subaltern classes"; to women and gender; to communities defined by ethnicity and race; to the study of non-Western histories and world or global history, in which the European trajectory is only one of several models. Can the historian hold onto the subjects of "decentered" social and cultural history, often local and full of concrete detail, and still address the perspectives of global history? To suggest an answer to this question, I describe my own decentering path from work on sixteenth-century artisans in the 1950s to recent research on non-European figures such as the Muslim "Leo Africanus" (Hasan al-Wazzan). I then offer two examples in which concrete cases can serve a global perspective. One is a comparison of the literary careers of Ibn Khaldun and Christine de Pizan in the scribal cultures on either side of the Mediterranean in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The other is the transmission and transformation of practices of divination, healing, and detection from Africa to the slave communities of Suriname in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
110 citations
TL;DR: The most common definitions of popular culture suffer from a presentist bias and cannot be applied to pre-industrial and pre-capitalist societies as discussed by the authors, and a survey reveals serious conceptual difficulties as well.
Abstract: The most common definitions of popular culture suffer from a presentist bias and cannot be applied to pre-industrial and pre-capitalist societies. A survey reveals serious conceptual difficulties as well. We may, however, gain insight in two ways. 1) By moving from a Marxist model (economic/class/production) to a more Weberian approach (societal/status/consumption). 2) By looking to Bourdieu's "cultural capital" and Danto's and Dickie's "Institutional Theory of Art," and defining popular culture as "unauthorized culture.".
68 citations
TL;DR: The authors argue that historical scholarship is embedded in "practices" or "epistemic cultures, in which knowledge is created and warranted by means of such virtues as honesty, carefulness, accuracy, and balance, which are not etched in stone: historians may highlight some of them, exchange one for another, or reinterpret their meaning.
Abstract: Philosophers of history in the past few decades have been predominantly interested in issues of explanation and narrative discourse. Consequently, they have focused consistently and almost exclusively on the historian's (published) output, thereby ignoring that historical scholarship is a practice of reading, thinking, discussing, and writing, in which successful performance requires active cultivation of certain skills, attitudes, and virtues. This paper, then, suggests a new agenda for philosophy of history. Inspired by a “performative turn” in the history and philosophy of science, it focuses on the historian's “doings” and proposes to analyze these performances in terms of epistemic virtue. It argues that historical scholarship is embedded in “practices” or “epistemic cultures,” in which knowledge is created and warranted by means of such virtues as honesty, carefulness, accuracy, and balance. These epistemic virtues, however, are not etched in stone: historians may highlight some of them, exchange one for another, or reinterpret their meaning. On the one hand, this suggests a rich area of research for historians of historiography. To what extent can consensus, conflict, continuity, and change in historical scholarship be explained in terms of epistemic virtue? On the other hand, the proposal outlined in this article raises a couple of philosophical questions. For example, on what grounds can historians choose among epistemic virtues? And what concept of the self comes with the notion of virtue? In addressing these questions, philosophy of history may expand its current scope so as to encompass not only “writings” but also “doings,” that is, the virtuous performances historians recognize as professional conduct.
42 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that distance needs to be re-conceived in terms of the wider set of engagements that mediate our relations to the past, as well as the full spectrum of distance-positions from near to far.
Abstract: In common usage, historical distance refers to a position of detached observation made possible by the passage of time. Understood in these terms, distance has long been regarded as essential to modern historical practice, but this conception narrows the idea of distance and burdens it with a regulatory purpose. I argue that distance needs to be re-conceived in terms of the wider set of engagements that mediate our relations to the past, as well as the full spectrum of distance-positions from near to far. Re-imagined in these terms, distance sheds its prescriptiveness and becomes a valuable heuristic for examining the history of historical representation. When distance is studied in relation to the range of mediations entailed in historical representation, it becomes evident that the plasticities of distance/proximity are by no means limited to gradients of time; rather, temporality is bound up with other distances that come from our need to engage with the historical past as (simultaneously) a realm of making, of feeling, of doing, and of understanding. Thus for every historical work, we need to consider at least four basic dimensions of representation as they relate to the problem of mediating distance: 1. the genres, media, and vocabularies that shape the history's formal structures of representation; 2. the affective claims made by the historical account, including the emotional experiences it promises or withholds; 3. the work's implications for action, whether of a political or moral nature; and 4. the modes of understanding on which the history's intelligibility depends. These overlapping, but distinctive, distancesa-formal, affective, ideological, and conceptuala-provide an analytic framework for examining changing modes of historical representation.
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that postfoundationalism dispels both modernist and postmodernist concerns with historical distance; it implies that all concepts (not just historical ones) fuse fact and theory, and it dissolves issues of conceptual relativism, textual meaning, and reenactment.
Abstract: This essay argues that concerns about historical distance arose along with modernist historicism, and they disappear with postfoundationalism. The developmental historicism of the nineteenth century appealed to narrative principles to establish continuity between past and present and to guide selections among facts. In the twentieth century, modernist historicists rejected such principles, thereby raising the specter of historical distance: that is, the distorting effects of the present on accounts of the past, the chasm between facts and narrative. The modernist problem became: how can historians avoid anachronism and develop accurate representations of the past? Instead of using narrative principles to select facts, modernist historicists appealed to atomized facts to validate narratives. However, in the late twentieth century, postmodernists (Frank Ankersmit and Hayden White) argued that there was no way to close the distance between facts and narratives. The postmodern problem became: how should historians conceive of their writing given the ineluctable distance between facts and narratives? Today, postfoundationalism dispels both modernist and postmodernist concerns with historical distance; it implies that all concepts (not just historical ones) fuse fact and theory, and it dissolves issues of conceptual relativism, textual meaning, and re-enactment.
23 citations
TL;DR: In a broad survey of nineteenth-and twentieth-century historical theory, this paper showed that distance has been a major, if seldom explicitly articulated, theme in European and American philosophy of history.
Abstract: What does "historical distance" mean? Starting with Johan Huizinga, the famous Dutch historian who refused to lecture on contemporary history, this introductory article argues that "historical distance" is a metaphor used in a variety of intellectual contexts. Accordingly, the metaphor has ontological, epistemological, moral, aesthetic, as well as methodological connotations. This implies that historical distance cannot be reduced to a single "problem" or "concept." At the same time, this wide variety of meanings associated with distance helps explain why an easily recognizable tradition of scholarly reflection on historical distance does not exist. In a broad survey of nineteenth-and twentieth-century historical theory, this article nonetheless attempts to show that distance has been a major, if seldom explicitly articulated, theme in European and American philosophy of history. In doing so, it pays special attention to those few authors who in recent years have taken up the metaphor for critical study. Finally, the paper summarizes some of the main arguments put forward in the articles comprising this issue on historical distance.
18 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an analysis of Ernst Bernheim's Lehrbuch der historischen Methode reveals that for German historians around 1900 distance did not primarily refer to a passage of time that would enable scholars to study remote pasts from retrospective points of view, but a virtuous attempt to put one's own ideas and intuitions about the working of the world between brackets in the study of people who might have understood the world in different terms.
Abstract: What did “historical distance” mean to historians in the Rankean tradition? Although historical distance is often equated with temporal distance, an analysis of Ernst Bernheim's Lehrbuch der historischen Methode reveals that for German historians around 1900 distance did not primarily refer to a passage of time that would enable scholars to study remote pasts from retrospective points of view. If Bernheim's manual presents historical distance as a prerequisite for historical interpretation, the metaphor rather conveys a need for self-distanciation. Self-distanciation is not a Romantic desire to “extinguish” oneself, but a virtuous attempt to put one's own ideas and intuitions about the working of the world between brackets in the study of people who might have understood the world in different terms. Although Bernheim did not explicitly talk about virtue, the article shows that his Lehrbuch nonetheless considers self-distanciation a matter of virtuous behavior, targeted at an aim that may not be fully realizable, but ought to be pursued with all possible vigor. For Bernheim, then, distance requires epistemological virtue, which in turn calls for intellectual character, or what Bernheim's generation considered scholarly selfhood (wissen-schaftliche Personlichkeit). Not a mapping of time onto space, but a strenuous effort to mold “scholarly characters,” truly able to recognize the otherness of the past, appears to be characteristic of Bernheim's view of historical distance.
17 citations
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that the study of past cultures always entails the mapping of past possibilities, and that the notion of possibility is fundamental for the concept of culture and ineliminable from its historical study.
Abstract: Cultural historical research has deliberately challenged “historical realism,” the view that history is comprised entirely of observable actions that actually occurred, and instead has emphasized the historical significance of thoughts, emotions, and representations; it has also focused on the invisible, the momentary, and the perishable. These latter elements introduce the notion of the possible in history. This article examines the ways in which cultural history has approached the notion of the possible, as well as the methodological and theoretical implications of this approach. Its chief claim is that the idea of possibility is fundamental for the concept of culture and ineliminable from its historical study.
The question of possibility is present in multiple ways in the study of history; it is important to distinguish among different levels of possibility. The possible may mean, for instance, what it is possible for historians to know about the past, or the possibilities open to historical agents themselves, or, indeed, the possibilities they perceived themselves as having even if these seem impossible from the point of view of the historian. The article starts with the first aspect and moves on toward the possibilities that existed in the past world either in fact or in the minds of those in the past.
The article argues that the study of past cultures always entails the mapping of past possibilities. The first strand of the essay builds on the metaphor of the black hole and intends to solve one of the central problems faced by cultural historians, namely, how to access the horizon of the people of the past, their experience of their own time, especially when the sources remain silent. The second, more speculative strand builds on the notion of plenitude and is designed to open up avenues for further discussion about the concept of culture in particular.
13 citations
TL;DR: The authors argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group and that rejecting national history on critics' terms would require rejecting the history for all groups.
Abstract: Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and American history in particular, in today's global age.
The essay makes two main points. First, it argues that nationalism, and thus the national histories that sustain national identities, are vital to liberal democratic societies because they ensure the social bonds necessary to enable democratic citizens to sacrifice their immediate interests for the common good. The essay then argues that new methodological and historical work on the history of nations and nationalism has proven that nations are as real as any other historical group. Rejecting national history on critics' terms would require rejecting the history of all groups. Instead, new methods of studying nations and nationalism have reinforced rather than undermined the legitimacy of national history within the discipline.
12 citations
TL;DR: Mediterranean history, and the history of other closed seas, is seen here as the experience of those who traversed the sea and arrived as decentered aliens on the other side.
Abstract: Mediterranean history, and the history of other closed seas, is seen here as the experience of those who traversed the sea and arrived as decentered aliens on the other side. Mainly these have been men, with merchants generally as pioneers who introduced the goods, ideas, and religion of one region to another. From antiquity onwards, port cities such as Carthage, Alexandria, Smyrna, and Livorno acted as links among the three continents facing the Mediterranean, and visitors from other lands were sometimes free to roam, sometimes ghettoized.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a two-way interdisciplinary bridge between British political history and the theories of social acceleration have been posited in the social sciences, arguing that both British political historians and acceleration theorists have much to gain from further dialogue.
Abstract: The political impact of “social acceleration” has recently attracted much attention in sociology and political theory. The concept, however, has remained entirely unexplored in the discipline of history. Although numerous British historians have noted the prominent position of acceleration in the late-Victorian and Edwardian imagination, these observations have never expanded beyond the realm of rhetorical flourish. The present paper attempts to build a two-way interdisciplinary bridge between British political history and the theories of social acceleration that have been posited in the social sciences, arguing that both British political historians and acceleration theorists have much to gain from further dialogue.
TL;DR: The authors discusses three different views of historical forms: historicalist, subjectivist and narrativist, and a third view that considers both sides of the subject-object distinction or the present-past distinction.
Abstract: The metaphor of historical distance often appears in discussions about the study of contemporary history. It suggests that we cannot see the past in perspective if we are too near to it. According to founding fathers like Ranke and Humboldt, temporal distance is required to discern historical "ideas" or forms. The argument may have some plausibility, but the presupposition is plainly false, since we cannot see the past at all. This leaves us with the question of what to make of the so-called historical forms. This article discusses three different views. The first, historicist, view is objectivist and localizes historical forms in the past. The second, narrativist, view is subjectivist and localizes historical forms in the realm of imagination and representation. The third view goes beyond the other two in that it considers both sides. It does not use a one-sided but a two-sided concept of form, which hinges on the idea of a distinction. This means that historical forms occupy both sides of the subject-object distinction or the present-past distinction. Because the subject-object terminology is confusing, the essay employs an alternative distinction between first-and second-order observation. With the help of this distinction, it is possible to redescribe the distance metaphor in such a way that the theoretical status of contemporary history becomes less enigmatic.
TL;DR: In this article, a critical analysis of Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones) is provided, especially with respect to its seemingly fatalistic mingling of erotic and genocidal motifs and its disavowal or underestimation of the difficulty and necessity of understanding victims of the Nazi genocide.
Abstract: This article discusses together two recent prize-winning works of epic proportions that have received much attention: Saul Friedlander's two-volume historical study Nazi Germany and the Jews and Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the former of which focuses on victims and the latter on perpetrators of the “Final Solution.” I provide a critical analysis of Littell's novel, especially with respect to its seemingly fatalistic mingling of erotic and genocidal motifs and its disavowal or underestimation of the difficulty and necessity of understanding victims of the Nazi genocide. My analysis raises the question of the extent to which the notoriety of the novel may be due to the way it instantiates influential approaches to both literature and the Holocaust in terms of an aesthetic of the sublime, excess, radical ambiguity (resolvable at best into irony and paradox), and fatalistic entry into an incomprehensible “heart of darkness.” Crucial here is the notion that an object (paradigmatically, the Holocaust) both demands representation or explanation and ultimately is beyond comprehension, narrative, or even words. I also reevaluate the bases for the justified praise accorded Friedlander's masterwork and question certain claims made on its behalf by commentators, especially with respect to literary and historiographical innovation. In so doing, I explore and defend the role of critical theory in relation to historical narrative.
TL;DR: This article explored three differences between subjective and objective uncertainty, and showed how to reduce and report uncertainty about beliefs in intellectual history, by amassing valid data from different sources to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of competing explanations, rather than trying to prove an empirical claim by looking for evidence that fits it.
Abstract: Intellectual historians often make empirical claims, but can never know for certain if these claims are right. Uncertainty is thus inevitable for intellectual historians. But accepting uncertainty is not enough: we should also act on it, by trying to reduce and report it. We can reduce uncertainty by amassing valid data from different sources to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of competing explanations, rather than trying to “prove” an empirical claim by looking for evidence that fits it. Then we should report our degree of certainty in our claims. When we answer empirical questions in intellectual history, we are not telling our readers what happened: we are telling them how strong we think our evidence is—a crucial shift of emphasis. For intellectual historians, then, uncertainty is subjective, as discussed by Keynes and Collingwood; the paper thus explores three differences between subjective and objective uncertainty. Having outlined the theoretical basis of uncertainty, the paper then offers examples from actual research: Noel Malcolm's work shows how to reduce and report uncertainty about composition, and David Wootton's work shows how to reduce and report uncertainty about beliefs.
TL;DR: The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault.
Abstract: The French philosopher and intellectual historian Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) is known primarily for his conception of philosophy as spiritual exercise, which was an essential reference for the later Foucault. An aspect of his work that has received less attention is a set of methodological reflections on intellectual history and on the relationship between philosophy and history. Hadot was trained initially as a philosopher and was interested in existentialism as well as in the convergence between philosophy and poetry. Yet he chose to become a historian of philosophy and produced extensive philological work on neo-Platonism and ancient philosophy in general. He found a philosophical rationale for this shift in his encounter with Wittgenstein's philosophy in the mid-1950s (Hadot was one of Wittgenstein's earliest French readers and interpreters). For Hadot, ancient philosophy must be understood as a series of language games, and each language game must be situated within the concrete conditions in which it happened. The reference to Wittgenstein therefore supports a strongly contextualist and historicist stance. It also supports its exact opposite: presentist appropriations of ancient texts are entirely legitimate, and they are the only way ancient philosophy can be existentially meaningful to us. Hadot addresses the contradiction by embracing it fully and claiming that his own practice aims at a coincidence of opposites (a concept borrowed from the Heraclitean tradition). For Hadot the fullest and truest way of doing philosophy is to be a philosopher and a historian at the same time.
TL;DR: The authors explored the different interpretations proposed by Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg of the relation between Platonic philosophy and myth as a means of bringing to light a fundamental divergence in their respective conceptions of what precisely myth is.
Abstract: This essay explores the different interpretations proposed by Ernst Cassirer and Hans Blumenberg of the relation between Platonic philosophy and myth as a means of bringing to light a fundamental divergence in their respective conceptions of what precisely myth is. It attempts to show that their conceptions of myth are closely related to their respective assumptions concerning the historical significance of myth and regarding the sense of history more generally. Their divergent conceptions of myth and of history, I argue, are at the same time not simply matters of abstract speculation, but spring from fundamental presuppositions concerning myth's political significance. The present elucidation aims not only to set in relief one or another of the ways in which Cassirer or Blumenberg understood myth, nor even to present Blumenberg's critical reception of Cassirer's theories, but above all to contribute to the interpretation of the political implications of myth and of its historical potency in our contemporary epoch.
TL;DR: In this paper, a model of time embodying a notion of temporal distance that is at work in Gadamer's hermeneutics, while it is rejected in Collingwood's theory of interpretation is proposed.
Abstract: In this paper, we begin by suggesting an intuitive model of time embodying a notion of temporal distance that we claim is at work in Gadamer's hermeneutics, while it is rejected in Collingwood's theory of interpretation. To show this, after a brief review of the influence of Collingwood on Gadamer and of their disagreement over the possibility of recovering an author's intention, we examine in turn their answers to the problem of transposition, upon which the philosophy of Dilthey supposedly foundered. We show that Gadamer embraced the idea of temporal distance in his solution, which consisted in claiming that the distance between an author from the past and us is filled in by tradition, which opens access to the text for us, while Collingwood considered explanations of the actions of historical agents, and by extension understanding of a text, in intentional or rational terms. Furthermore, he thought that such explanations are not causal, and that the thoughts involved in them do not stand within the flow of physical time, which is involved in any notion of temporal distance. This is why Collingwood felt entitled to anti-relativistic conclusions about the recovery of authorial intentions, conclusions that prompted Gadamer to claim that “the dimension of hermeneutical mediation which is passed through in every act of understanding” escaped him. We then discuss the underlying notions of time at work in both Gadamer and Collingwood, showing that Ricœur had a better appreciation of the issue, since he saw that Collingwood's moves parallel, up to a point, Heidegger's critique of “vulgar time,” albeit with an entirely different result. We also point to the importance in Collingwood's thinking of his notion of “incapsulation.”
TL;DR: Rheinberger's brief history brings into sharp profile the importance of history of science for a philosophical understanding of historical practice as discussed by the authors, and the long-standing gap between the natural sciences and history as a human science has been significantly bridged by the insistence upon the local, mediated, indeed "historicized epistemology" of actual science.
Abstract: Rheinberger's brief history brings into sharp profile the importance of history of science for a philosophical understanding of historical practice. Rheinberger presents thought about the nature of science by leading scientists and their interpreters over the course of the twentieth century as emphasizing increasingly the local and developmental character of their learning practices, thus making the conception of knowledge dependent upon historical experience, “historicizing epistemology.” Linking his account of thought about science to his own work on “experimental systems,” I draw extensive parallels with other work in the local history of science (the ideas of Latour, Pickering, Rouse, and others) and consider the epistemological implications both for the relation between history and philosophy of science and between history and theory more broadly. In doing so, I suggest that the long-standing gap between the natural sciences and history as a “human science” has been significantly bridged by the insistence upon the local, mediated, indeed “historicized epistemology” of actual science.
TL;DR: The intentionalist alternative to essentialism in this paper successfully clarifies and avoids many standard problems with anachronism, which is often difficult to sustain for metaphysical or epistemological reasons.
Abstract: Many long-standing debates about anachronistic concept-attributions derive from an essentialist understanding of concepts that is often difficult to sustain for metaphysical or epistemological reasons. The intentionalist alternative to essentialism elaborated in this article successfully clarifies and avoids many standard problems with anachronism.
TL;DR: The authors proposed and clarified six interpretive norms to guide micro-to-macro inferences, including coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization, and identified four risks in making such inferences.
Abstract: How do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro-to-macro inferences.
I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill-fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self-image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks.
My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi-literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style.
TL;DR: Historical distance presents more complex issues than simply evaluating the meaning of the temporal span between a point in the past and some moment present to an observer as mentioned in this paper, and the complexity of historical distance presents a challenge to the horizontal character of normal historical practice.
Abstract: Historical distance presents more complex issues than simply evaluating the meaning of the temporal span between a point in the past and some moment present to an observer The ordinary historical difference, which is horizontal in the sense that it evokes the notion of hermeneutic horizons, fragments uncontrollably when examined closely, resulting in what might be called a “chronoschism” The experience of encountering a historical painting by Botticelli provides an example of this fragmentation This complication of historical distance reminds us also of quite different sorts of distance, including the depths of endless regression, and the elevation of the historical sublime These various forms of historical distance present a challenge to the horizontal character of normal historical practice
TL;DR: Paul Connerton as discussed by the authors argues that the workings of late capitalism and the institutionalization of forgetfulness in ever more abstract conceptions of space and time can explain why the topic of collective memory has waxed so large in contemporary historical scholarship.
Abstract: In his new book, How Modernity Forgets, Paul Connerton seeks to show a relationship between the workings of late capitalism and the institutionalization of forgetfulness in ever more abstract conceptions of space and time. He uses this argument to explain why the topic of collective memory has waxed so large in contemporary historical scholarship. I interpret his argument in light of his earlier work on habit memory and his still earlier critique of Frankfurt School social theory. I close with some comments on his study in the context of recent work on mnemonic practices in modern culture.
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TL;DR: In The Deaths of Hintsa: Postapartheid South Africa and the Shape of Recurring Pasts as discussed by the authors, Lalu claims to offer a critique of apartheid's colonial past.
Abstract: In The Deaths of Hintsa: Postapartheid South Africa and the Shape of Recurring Pasts, Premesh Lalu claims to offer a critique of apartheid's colonial past. Emblematic of this colonial past is the 1835 killing and mutilation of the Xhosa king Hintsa. Lalu uses this violent event to argue against the evidence provided by the colonial archives. He argues that the killing of Hintsa was not an empirical fact but a product of the colonial imagination. The review argues that although the critique of apartheid's colonial past is timely, the book is not about Hintsa and does not therefore offer an alternative narrative of the death of the Xhosa king.
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TL;DR: Marramao's argument for the productive potential of cosmic disorientation and contingency will merit the attention of historians interested in Benjamin's blend of messianism and historical materialism.
Abstract: The recent wave of interest in the “theological-political” has focused scholarly attention on the constellation of ideas associated with “messianic time.” The term kairos belongs to this constellation, and Giacomo Marramao's brief but ambitious text of the same name both proposes and performs a “kairological” reconfiguration of the close relationship between philosophy and time. Marramao's argument for the productive potential of “cosmic disorientation” and contingency will merit the attention of historians interested in Benjamin's blend of messianism and historical materialism, and of anyone who is intrigued by the prospect of a messianism without apocalypticism.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss a pushback against the concept (thus also against claims for the historical occurrence) of genocide, and discuss the history of the Armenian "Aghed" (Catastrophe).
Abstract: The two books discussed here join a current pushback against the concept (thus also against claims for the historical occurrence) of genocide. Nichanian focuses on the Armenian “Aghed” (“Catastrophe”), inferring from his view of that event's undeniability that “genocide is not a fact” (since all facts are deniable). May's critique assumes that groups don't really—“objectively”—exist, as (by contrast) individuals do; thus, genocide—group murder—also has an “as if” quality so far as concerns the group victimized. On the one hand, then, uniqueness and sacralization; on the other hand, reductionism and diffusion. Alas, the historical and moral claims in “defense” of both genocide and “genocide” survive.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how the notion of distance works in the practice of interpretation by studying the philosophical underpinnings of the originalism debate in American constitutionalism and conclude that the originalist and hermeneuticist positions do not mutually exclude each other, but can be synthesized if they are seen as different questions about the same text.
Abstract: This paper explores how the notion of distance works in the practice of interpretation by studying the philosophical underpinnings of the originalism debate in American constitutionalism. Focusing on some of its most important spokespeople, the paper shows that they start from the historicist presupposition that distance can in principle be overcome by a reconstruction of the original intentions of the framers of the Constitution. With the help of Hans-Georg Gadamer, who explicitly based his philosophical hermeneutics on the notion of distance, this presupposition will be criticized. The paper concludes that the originalist and hermeneuticist positions do not mutually exclude each other, but can be synthesized if they are seen as different questions about the same text. The meaning of the Constitution is therefore not given but is dependent on the direction of the questions asked by the interpreter. From this question-dependency of meaning it follows that interpretation follows the law of acoustics: "Angle of incidence equates angle of reflection."
TL;DR: Two new books about the Pragmatist tradition, Richard Bernstein's The Pragmatic Turn and Colin Koopman's PRagmatism as Transition, represent respectively a summing up of the past half-century of the tradition's history and a possible program for its future development.
Abstract: Two new books about the Pragmatist tradition, Richard Bernstein's The Pragmatic Turn and Colin Koopman's Pragmatism as Transition, represent respectively a summing up of the past half-century of the tradition's history and a possible program for its future development. Bernstein ecumenically considers the achievements of a wide range of thinkers from Peirce, Dewey, and James to Brandom, Putnam, and Rorty, drawing valuable lessons from each, while not sparing criticism of their flaws. Koopman also tries to bridge the gap between what he calls “classicopragmatism” and “neopragmatism,” although he finds more to admire in Rorty than in his predecessors. Whereas Bernstein attempts to supplement the pragmatist tradition by turning to Habermas, Koopman finds his inspiration in Foucault. Both authors emphasize the historicist, evolutionary, and transitionalist implications of pragmatism, paying as a result insufficient attention to the historical possibilities of repetition, rupture, discontinuity, and the unexpected event. In terms of the political implications they draw, Koopman advocates a meliorist incrementalism that lacks any real bite, while Bernstein expresses dissatisfaction with the democratic pieties of Rorty's final work, but doesn't really provide a sustained alternative.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the relationship between the past and the present should be conceived of in terms of temporal distance, and the spatial metaphor of distance at work in this intuition is thought to provide the basis for the epistemological model appropriate for understanding the nature of historical knowledge.
Abstract: The point of departure of this essay is the intuition that the relationship between the past and the present (or between the past as the object of historical investigation and what is said about it by the historian) should be conceived of in terms of temporal distance. The spatial metaphor of distance at work in this intuition is thought to provide the basis for the epistemological model appropriate for understanding the nature of historical knowledge. This results in two claims: 1) epistemology is the philosophical instrument we must rely upon for understanding historical writing, and 2) the metaphor of distance is-whether one is aware of it or not-the model for most, if not all, epistemological thought. This essay discusses the pros and cons of these two claims. It argues that the two claims are indeed the best way to begin our analysis of the relationship between the past and the historical text or representation. However, we cannot afford to stop there; indeed, we must ask ourselves where the associations we have with the metaphor of temporal distance may, in the end, be misleading. This will enable us to recognize that the notion of distance will, finally, have to yield its prerogatives to that of the notion of function. Historical writing is functionalist in the sense that the historical text is a substitute for the past discussed in it. That is its function. Hence the essay's title.