Volume 1 / Athens 1999 by Angelica Koufou Review ofF. Ankersmit, H. Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History, Reaction Books, London, 1995 The book - a collection of essays written by historians, literary critics and philosophers - constitutes an attempt to take stock of the major shift in historical consciousness over the last twenty years. In his introductory essay, Hans Kellner discusses the nature of this change which involves a redefinition of the concept of history in terms of a different view of the world and its representations. This new approach focuses on historical discourse itself, on the assumption that language is a dense entity to be looked at, not something to look through. The shift of the object of research from a presumably ascertainable historical reality to the medium as creator of knowable reality, referred to as the linguistic turn, became the leading feature of the New History. Historians following this approach are less concerned with the ascription of "truth values" to historical statements or with developing sociological models of historical explanation, orienting themselves rather towards the investigation of linguistic and cultural codes of representation. In his bibliographical essay, Frank Ankersmit codifies this reorientation of the historical reflection defining at least two of its basic principles: 1) historical texts are dense realities rather than descriptions of an external reality; 2) historical texts are not reconstructions but constructions of the past. Both Ankersmit and Kellner foreground the aesthetic character of the historical text seen as a ''rhetorical practice, a form of discourse" and attempt to trace the origins of this, not entirely new, history. The book is divided in four parts each dealing with different questions of the rediscriptive procedure of the historical discourse. In the first part, Arthur Danto and Richard Vann follow the trajectory of the linguistic turn, studying the persistence of the old paradigm and the ensuing conflicts between "positivists and narrativists", whereas Nancy Partner gives her own assessment of the reception of this new approach and its influence within the academy, which she considers limited. The essays of Vann and Danto, although focusing on different aspects, supplement each other, as they each give an account of the process through which New History was imposed. Vann traces the transition from Hempel's covering laws to the rhetoric of History by analysing the relevant debates as they appeared in the History and Theory review. He suggests that the linguistic turn is inextricably linked to the rise of speculative philosophy which highlighted the literariness of history, long repressed by the analytical philosophy of history. Although Vann, like most of the contributors to this collection, claims that the narrativist trend in history is not new, he agrees nonetheless with Hayden White that historians like George Macaulay, Trevelyan (Clio, a Muse) and Emery Neff (The Poetry of History) relied on a philosophically questionable dualism between historical research and historical writing. This resulted in posing the literary nature of history in terms of good writing - at the lexical level - without its philosophical grounding which valorises the artistic character of history. Vann illustrates the debate between the two camps represented by L. Mink, W. B. Gallie, and A. Danto and M. Mandelbaum, R. G. Ely and C. B. Cullagh respectively. The former attempted to rehabilitate the aesthetic value of history without diminishing its scientific status, whereas the latter criticised the narrativist model on the ground that it introduced relativism. Vann underlines the belated involvement of historians in this debate motivated by philosophers. He also discusses the argumentation of French poststructuralism concerning the literary aspect of history. However, he is critical of R. Barthes for rejecting historical realism, being more positive about the elaborations of J. H. Hexter and Hayden White who defended the cognitive status of narrative in general and the specificity of the historical narrative. He also endorses the efforts of bridging history and literary criticism undertaken by F. Kermode, F. Jameson and, above all, by the pioneering work of Hayden White. Vann skillfully presents White's work -- whose importance he readily acknowledges -- but is critical of his notion of the "governing metaphor", which in his view implies the dissolution of historical knowledge. In this vein, Vann investigates the limits of the applicability of language theories in the historical text and shows the contradiction between the concepts of event and narrative. His argumentation is imbued with a concern for defending historical realism as a presupposition for the valuation of truth claims. Although Vann acknowledges that a paradigmatic shift has occurred during the last twenty years, he is skeptical about the future of the linguistic turn. However, it is rather difficult to combine a view of the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen" with the rhetorical character of the historical narrative as they represent two different paradigms in historical understanding. Historical writing can still be based on reality without aspiring to reconstruct the past "as it really was". Arthur Danto's treatment of the paradigmatic shift from positivism to New History follows a different path. According to Danto this shift was due to the influence not of literary criticism but of philosophy of science, in particular the pioneering work of Thomas Kuhn. Danto's essay is a vehement attack on Karl Hempel's The Function of General Laws in History with regard to historical explanation. Although Hempel revised some of these laws, he never abandoned his ahistorical concept of scientific laws, a fact which according to Danto underlines the historicity of logical positivism and of every scientific construction. Danto claims that the declining authority of Hempel's theory of historical explanation is connected to the gradual undermining of the analytical philosophy of history following the challenge of Kuhn's work. Based on Kuhn and Foucault, Danto insists on the historical grounding of scientific theories and presents positivism as a stagnant theory of historical explanation, unable to account for historical change as it subsumes history in the natural sciences. Finally he makes two major points: first, he raises the historian's point of view as a determining factor which relativises the unifying experience of Verstehen and defines perception of the world; second, he underlines the relationship between truth and relevance whereby he explains the abandonment of Hempel's theory. Both points illustrate Danto's belief in the historicity of every intellectual operation. Nancy Partner's commitment to the linguistic turn is, to say the least, tenuous, as she appears to be reluctant to admit its impact on the historical discipline, stating that this turn is like " a revolving door where everyone got around and around and got out exactly where they got in" (p.22). According to Partner, in spite ''of the sophistication of the theory-saturated part of the profession, scholars carry on in all essential ways as though nothing had changed since Ranke'' (p.22). Although other historians have sustained this argument before (see for example L. Hunt, J. Appleby, M. Jacob, Telling the Truth about History), we should be skeptical about its validity as no theoretical shift leaves the practice of history entirely untouched. It is pointless to think of such a '' destabilising '' theory which privileges narratives and challenges factual approaches as having no tangible impact on historical methodology. It should be stressed in this respect that the linguistic turn does not put in question the existence of a certain reality, but the way this reality is linguistically construed and conveyed. This leads to a variety of ''realities '' whose truth depends on the questioning and the explanatory devices historians employ, as well as on the different aspirations of the social groups to which they belong. Although Partner diminishes the importance of the linguistic turn for historical understanding she stresses what she deems to be its negative influence on ''popular forms of history conveyed by television, journalism and film, where distinctions between history and fiction are 'purposefully blurred.'' This postmodern blurring of distinctions Partner condemns as untrustworthy and non-scientific. Tracing the origins of the overlapping of history and fiction she goes back to premodern times when prose and fiction coexisted harmoniously in historical work and when the historian's personal involvement (ethical judgments, convictions, etc.) didn't seem to alter the historical operation. "History is bound to fiction" says Partner because the latter constitutes History's prior analytical category. Partner draws a distinction between fiction as a linguistic creation whereby meaning is conveyed and fiction as an imaginary description of events. Fiction in the first sense is a presupposition for History, as for every linguistic representation. Yet, in its second quality, History is not fiction but a subcategory of ''a verisimilar prose through a system of announced limitations and accepted restrictions" (p.33) based on evidence and verification. In this process of understanding and deciphering history writing, the role of the form through which information is diffused is of great importance According to Partner, literary historicity, or in other words, a balanced coexistence between fact/prose and fiction constituted an accepted convention in the writing of history in premodern times, and before the professionalisation of the discipline. The imposition of new disciplinary rules involved a different conception of truth which changed the relationship between fact and fiction and the role of history in society. This shift is the main argument against the comparison between premodern fiction histories and postmodern historical writing. Such a comparison would presuppose the continuity of historical thinking whereas in our view the linguistic turn, as any other shift in historical understanding, must be perceived in terms of discontinuities with past practices. Another objection against this ''balanced system'' is related to the clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction in historical narrative defended by Partner. Fiction is mainly the linguistic artifact, the narrative form through which historical thought is articulated, and consequently anything in the historical account is linguistically encoded. Facts are indistinguishable from their linguistic depiction. The point here is not the undermining of historical truth/veracity as a consequence of the incorporation of fiction, but the acknowledgment that no historical raw material can be conceived independently of the narrative form through which it is conveyed. The essays included in the second part of the book under the title "Voices", deal with the subject of history, the historical voice long neglected or repressed under the domination of the powerful (historical) object privileged by modernism. Linda Orr raises the problem of subjectivity and the personal site of the historian as a narrative persona in the text, which guarantees a communicative interaction between the writer and the reader. Orr examines French historiography during the first part of 19th century and before the professionalisation of history set in, when writers like Mme de Stael, Michelet and Tocqueville actively participated in their narratives. Long after the establishment of anonymity in the historical text as a result of the domination of the positivist paradigm in history, the linguistic turn rehabilitates the status of the historian's personal voice in the text. This approach is shared by all the essays in this part. Philippe Carrard's study is a thorough investigation of the reasons accounting for the elimination of the historian's person in the text - in the form of the personal pronoun ''I'' - focusing on the mode of enunciation in the context of the Annales school. Carrard adopts much of the critique of the French poststructuralist literary critics who suggested that the effacing of the enunciator strengthens the powerful reality effect of (traditional) historiography. In the conception of history advocated by the French positivists, the historical text is presented as a direct, unmediated representation of past events - the facts speak by themselves - whereby, as Roland Barthes puts it, the signified is identified with the referent. Carrard's apt observation that impersonality is rather superficial and that the enunciator is not fully erased in the historical text contributes to a different assessment of the historian's active presence in the text. This observation leads to the deconstruction of all claims to objectivity and impartiality. The gradual abandonment of the positivist model did, however, affect the mode of enunciation. Thus, the first generation of the Annales school struggled against the emotional involvement of the writer aiming at the attainment of objectivity understood as a ''lack of partisanship and not as an independence from a cognitive subject'' (p.111). Using examples from the work of F. Braudel, F. Furet and G. Duby, Carrard shows the explicit presence of the enunciator in the text as manifested by the use of pronouns as well by the expression of strong individual beliefs and feelings. Carrard also observes a reluctance to use the ''I'' and a preference towards the '' we'' (nous) or "on'' (structuralist enunciation), the indeterminacy of which conceals the real subject in the text. Avoiding the first person seems also to be the choice of the third generation of Annales historians (R. Chartier, M. Ozouf). Yet, this choice seems to be more of a reaction against the historical authority of their predecessors than an endorsement of the idea of value-free research and objectivity. In spite of the weak presence of ''I'', their subjectivity is nonetheless overt. Carrard concludes his study claiming that the Annales school relies on a highly involved enunciator, thus inclining to a postmodern concept of the historical enunciation, without, however, being aware of the epistemology that underlies this textual usage. Nevertheless, personal involvement mustn't overstep the limits of historical deontology. The critique of Ladurie's fierce partisanship and undermining of testimony seems to have a point. Ann Rigney foregrounds the importance of the narrative strategies as a model of organising historical information in romantic historiography. Her central argument is that the selection of discursive form shapes historical events and allows communication with the reader. The study of four romantic historians (Thierry, McCaulay, Monteil, Michelet) reveals a rich variety of discursive forms, through which these writers attempted to present historical reality. Rigney claims that this variety proves the lack of congruence between discourse and historical referent, and establishes the superiority of narrative as the constructive matrix of reality. In the third part, under the title "Arguments", Allan Megill and Robert Berkhoffer deal with issues concerning the historian's profession and identity in the postmodern era. Megill reflects on the modifications and the gradual abandonment of grand narratives which he considers embedded in the ontological assumption of world unity. He challenges the authoritative role of historiography in understanding the past and argues for interdisciplinary collaboration. Megill designs a typology of four distinct, although coexistent, historiographical attitudes towards history in chronological sequence. The first attitude is based on the tradition of universal history and grounded on the belief that there is one coherent history that can be told or retold in the present. Its origins can be traced in the Patristic period but its secularised version was established by Kant. The second attitude is based on the belief that there is a single history which postpones its narration and corresponds to the emergence of professional historiography in the 19th century. This attitude is exemplified by Ranke who condemns the apriorism of Kant and Hegel without abandoning the notion of totalisation based on the idea of continuity and objectivity. The third attitude seems to dominate the historical profession in the 20th century. The idea of a single history that can never be told locates coherence not in the story but in the discipline itself in the hope of maintaining its purity and autonomy. Megill fosters a fourth attitude which challenges the concept of a single history but embraces the three previous attitudes as different modes of understanding the past. Megill's commitment to disciplinary pluralism in approaching the past takes him beyond the field of historiography in the cultural condition that has come to be identified as'' postmodern''. Finally, he proposes four ways of practicing science: 1) by rejecting totalisation and turning from history to histories; 2) by crossing disciplinary boundaries and creating hybrid states; 3) by cultivating the literality of historical writing; and 4) by establishing links between history and theory. R. Berkhoffer examines the issue of perspective and point of view in history writing and focuses on the modes of representation of multivocality and multiperspectivity in historical texts. Berkhoffer brilliantly demonstrates that even though multiculturalism challenges hegemonic viewpoints and defends the coexistence of many perspectives in the historical text, it does not in effect succeed in creating a balanced text of different voices. The multivocality aimed at is mediated through the dominant perspective of the text maker, the great story-teller, and thus undermined. In this way multiculturalism failed to transform the presuppositions of the normal historical paradigm; it merely expanded its field of application to "untraditional subject matters" (p.183). Against the privileged position of the historian/narrator Berkhoffer endorses his/her participation in equal terms in a dialogue involving other voices and viewpoints. Both essays validate the belief in a historical shift towards a postmodern consciousness which is inextricably linked to disciplinary interaction. In the fourth part, entitled "Images", Stephen Bann moves beyond the textual approach to the contested subject of historical representation which he understands as a double procedure of historical construction involving the represented object and the process through which it is represented. This binary approach constitutes what Bann calls double vision, which he deems characteristic of modern historical consciousness since the beginning of the 19th century. Such an approach, according to Bann, cannot but be ironic as it is directed not towards the comfortable notion of ''the'' past but towards a plurality of different co-existing pasts. This double vision, or stereoscopy, allows the representation of history in a historical site (locus) [e.g. Eglise Toussaint in Angers] as a procedure of establishing perceptible differences and creating a palimpsest of pasts rejecting the unmediated contrast between past and present. Frank Ankersmit develops a pictorial approach to the historical text that challenges the literariness-thesis fostered mainly by Hayden White, on the ground that it undermines historical truth and reliability. Ankersmit argues in favour of the analogy between historical text and image on the ground that the former is seen in its entirety and not as a set of separated statements. This resemblance has its origins in the semiological approach of the picture introduced by E. Gombrich and elaborated by N. Goodman. Ankersmit extends the pertinence of qualities such as density and repleteness and the inseparability between subject and predicate - which, according to Goodman, differentiate a picture from a word or statement - to the historical text: the historical text should be approached comprehensively as the historiographical equivalent of the pictorial sign. Exploring in depth the relationship between picture and historical text, Ankersmit distinguishes between the qualities and the aspects of a picture, stressing that aspects always relate to the qualities of the picture itself and not to the depicted object. This leads to a distinction at the level of representation between pictures representing that and other [pictures] representing something as by virtue of which Ankersmit classifies the historical text in the second category. Nevertheless, he discerns a co-existence of the nominalistic and the realistic interpretation in the historical text in the sense that the qualities correspond to the text itself (picture), without precluding its agreement with historical reality (depicted). The point could be made that this distinction involves a serious contradiction as it rejects the opacity of the picture as a permanent quality and opts for its occasional transparency. Is it possible to perceive, in our (postmodern) times, the picture as a transparent medium, as "an open window" to reality ? According to the linguistic approach, the historical text, constituted as it is through linguistic procedures, has a narrative form which we can not attribute to reality. Even if Ankersmit displays an analogy between picture and the historical text, visual arts as another powerful language create and impose a reality rather than imitating an external one. Although Ankersmit criticises the naive resemblance theory in art, he accepts one of its variants as applicable both to art and the historical study. The absence of representative schemes and codes for the whole historical text leads Ankersmit to a comparison not between the past and its textual reconstitution but between the content and the form of the text, concluding on a certain agreement between them. This agreement is based on a relative independence because, according to him, historical form is not fixed and doesn't function as a representational code to which the content must be adapted. Even if Ankersmit seems to follow Hayden White and P. Ricoeur with regard to the uniqueness of the form and its analogy to the content, he tends to distinguish the two, where(as) White sees an inextricable unity established through the organising force of the form. The independence from one another guarantees, according to Ankersmit, the truth and the objectivity of the text. Without underestimating the originality of Ankersmit's conception of historical text as resembling the picture, the extent it moves towards better understanding of historical text and its functions is rather limited. The essays in this volume touch upon a number of serious transformations of historical consciousness in the postmodern era without fostering a rigid professional authorship. Although they endorse the linguistic turn, they articulate an autocritical discourse which constitutes a reflection on the future of what we call New History. Return to Top