spin

Who was it again who wrote the following?

With the exception of Vorkosigan, I can't think of many JM/HJ discussions that really did much to challenge my thinking.

I haven't been able to get you to support your HJ position substantively, by request, nudging, cajoling, or even with a cattle prod. You'll be communicative on metadiscussions, but not on the subject of HJ.


spin

spin

You're doing very well keeping up both sides of the conversation.

You've taken the two affirmations I've made concerning post-modernism (1. "The implications of this is one of the most significant issues to arise from post-modernism." 2) "I'm certainly not a post-modernist.") and read straight through me to the extent that you know me better than I do.

This me seems to be superfluous here.


spin

Celsus

Some people might define "postmodern" as "anything that casts doubt on my theoretical certainty." Hence why people hate it so much

Rick Sumner

I'll be honest with you spin. By the time I'm done this post I'll probably have offended half the board. Most of the other half should be offended, but they'll think I'm talking about someone else.

I could give a fuck if there's an historical Jesus or not. I tend to think it's the more plausible explanation. But that's it. I rarely make any statement as to whether he was or wasn't, and even when I do I couch my terms exactly the way I just did: I think it's the more plausible explanation. I make no claims to certainty.I don't even make claims to objective evidence. The only claim I make is that I think it's more plausible.

I comment on peripheral subjects. Paul's thoughts on the Law. What Paul's good news was. On the synoptic problem. But despite this illusion you seem to have of me as some ardent HJer, loudly professing his certainty in the proposition, your request doesn't get answered because it's a strawman. It has been years since I've suggested any measure of certainty in the proposition.

I think it's more plausible by the same, subjective criteria you and I both use to think it's implausible that mountainman is right. He accounts for all the evidence, he just doesn't, IMO, account for it very well. The only difference between us on this point is that you think we reach a point where we stop looking at the "plausible," and then like to pretend it was never there.

I think that line is arbitrary, and see no reason to take it when it's convenient and reject it when it isn't.

I'll let you in on a secret (and other posters could confirm this, since I've mentioned it off-list more than once): Half the time I argue for positions I don't even support. I like to see if I can pull it off. Sometimes I even like to take positions that seem absurd just to see if I can argue the case. It's always an added bonus when I can find a commentator who agrees with me, though that just confirms for me that they're absurd too. I like to be contrary. It wouldn't be understating the mark to suggest that the single biggest interest the field has for me is the level of contentiousness it allows. I would probably be less interested if I had nobody to debate.

I haven't read a book on the historical Jesus in years. In similar fashion to the above, I've read a lot on peripheral subjects. But, of course, that doesn't amount to much, since most NT scholarship can be considered, in some fashion, peripheral.

I don't learn much from discussions on the historical Jesus. The unjustified frameworks most participants work within on discussions here preclude me learning much of value from anything that's likely to come up. I like to point out holes in the MJ argument the same way you like to point them out for the historicist, but that doesn't preclude me from offering the occasional argument for the former and the frequent criticism of the latter.

When I say Vorkosigan challenged me, it's because he challenged how I approach the texts. It was his paradigm that challenged me. His conclusions were just more of the same, and his arguments are as reversible as everyone else's.

I don't take the debate here seriously enough to possibly fit your Procrustean bed. So now that we have that out of the way, can we stop forcing me in it? The "metadiscussion" is far more interesting to me.

So with that cleared up, are we going to drop the thinly veiled insults? Because that's my real concern, at present. The rare fruitful conversation being tossed out because you think we need battle lines.

Rick Sumner

Really? That's what I've said? That from those two sentences you tend toward post-modernism?

Rick Sumner

I tend to think that most people tend more toward post-modernism than they like to admit. It's as though everyone sees a spectrum that stops just short of themselves.

Rick Sumner

I just wanted to touch on this one, having spent my morning reading various papers by White (for the record, I do not recommend anything with the phrase "Figural Realism" in the title at 5:00 AM). As I noted to spin above, I'll say more about the more substiantive portion of your post after I've had some time to consider.

What makes you so confident that they haven't ventured? A recent (and ongoing) discussion in the "biblioblogosphere" on the need for dialogue between historical-crit and post-modernism brought, of course, many of the usual caricatures, but also several mentions of Hayden White in particular (for purposes of brevity, I'll use him as something of a paragon here). While I'm not sure everyone understands him (I'm not entirely sure I always understand him, for that matter, though it isn't for lack of trying), they do know what he says. It's not that they haven't "ventured," at least not in all cases, it's--for the most part--that he's been rejected. If you're feeling saucy, you can even begin with White's articles on JSTOR, and trace the citations of him through to every branch of history, the biblical historian included.

Do you think Crossan, or Meier, for example, developed their elaborate criteria and endeavoured to stick to firm methodologies in a vacuum? It seems self-evident to me that this effort to treat history as a science is in no small part of a reaction to White, directly or indirectly.

I'm not sure that the distinction between "literary criticism" and "history" you imply here actually exists. Neither, for that matter, is White. Most history is literary criticism, as White himself observes.

When we start drawing those kind of lines--"literary criticism" and "history," we create labels closer to "sees it my way" and "doesn't see it my way," even if unintentionally. We frame our opponents and our sources by our categories. The "historian" is doing what I do. The "literary critic," is doing what I don't. The "historian" might, on occasion, use literary criticism, but the literary critic does not do history. While I realize you don't mean the same pejorative sense we often see here with the contrast between "historians" and "NT scholars" (or, better yet, "NT 'scholars'", complete with scare quotes), I'm not sure that the effect isn't the same.

It might be helpful to quote White:

For better than a century many historians have found it useful to employ a Fabian tactic against critics in related fields of intellectual endeavor. The tactic works like this: when criticized by social scientists for the softness of his method, the crudity of his organizing metaphors, or the ambiguity of his sociological and psychological presuppositions, the historian responds that history has never claimed the status of a pure science, that it depends as much upon intuitive as upon analytical methods, and that historical judgments should not therefore be evaluated by critical standards properly applied only in the mathematical and experimental disciplines. All of which suggests that history is a kind of art. But when reproached by literary artists for his failure to probe the more arcane strata of human consciousness and his unwillingness to utilize contemporary modes of literary representation, the historian falls back upon the view that history is after all a semi-science, that historical data do not lend themselves to "free" artistic manipulation, and that the form of his narratives is not a matter of choice, but is required by the nature of his- torical materials themselves.

Hayden V. White, "The Burden of History" History and Theory, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1966), p. 111

What's important to note is that, as his discussion progresses, it's quite clear that it's the "literary critic" he has in mind. But he doesn't draw the distinction you do, between "history" and "literary criticism."

While the paper is somewhat dated (though not archaic), the criticism still holds, more or less exactly as it stands. White's contentions later in the same page that the "Fabian tactic" is failing my have been unduly optimistic, or at least didn't recognize how protracted the failure would be. White might turn out to be history's Popper, but he isn't yet.

Also germane (not to you, but to other readers) is the implication it has for the "biblical scholar." What we have here is a neat rephrasing of the oft-used criticisms that distinguishes "biblical scholarship" from "real historians." Except White isn't addressing the biblical exegete. The criticism is the same for history at large, and consequently the charge that this type of "Fabian tactic" applies only to the exegete is clearly misguided.

Also important to note is that he doesn't reserve his criticisms to "literary critic." Iconographic interpretation, for example, gets painted with the same brush. The tendency to think the investigation of ruins or more tangible evidence precludes the same dangers (a view I'm not ascribing to you, just a general comment) is misguided. The interpretor of the Mithraeum is on no firmer ground than the interpreter of the Gospel of Mark.

But to get back to the start, the implication that the "literary critic" of history hasn't "ventured" into modern literary criticism isn't necessarily true, and creates the impression that you're saying "If they knew the material, they'd agree with me."

DCHindley

Hi Rick,

Would you mind indicating which blogs have ongoing discussions involving citations of Hayden V White?

His dense and highly nuanced style can certinly be difficult to get one's head around at times.

I have brought him up several times on Crosstalk2 in years past, and generally he gets stereotyped as a relativist who denies history, in spite of pointing to statements of his that show he does not deny that we can know historical facts with relative certainty.

He once responded to a personal e-mail I sent him and said he considers his approach a subset of "reconstructionism" (this is the traditional historical method without injecting sociological theory to explain gaps in the known facts, which is "constructionism"). Everyone, though, acknowledges that White employs deconstructive methodology, which stresses that all historical narrative interpretation has to be understood from the POV of the historian.

White's real passion, FWIW, is a recognition that historical representation has more than one aspect. Below is a table that shows he is analyzing historical narrative on four levels (represented by the columns). For simplification, White narrows the types of tropes, emplotments, argumentation, and ideological implication into a four each (represented by the rows). The author utilizing the trope, for example, of metaphor generally utilizes a romantic emplotment, a formist argumentative strategy, and an anarchistic ideological implication. However, in theory the elements of trope, emplotment, argumentation and ideology can be combined in any combination, and multiple elements may be employed rather than just one. Also realize this table applies to historical narrative from the 18th century to present.

DEEP LEVEL	SURFACE LEVEL 1	SURFACE LEVEL 2	SURFACE LEVEL 3
TROPE: Figures of speech that deploy words in such a way as to turn or translate meaning.	EMPLOTMENT: Story line or plot structure that imparts meaning to a historical narrative.	ARGUMENT: A set of premises and the conclusion drawn or inferred from them.	IDEOLOGICAL IMPLICATION: Ideology is a coherent set of socially produced ideas that lend or create a group consciousness. Suggests to readers the import of their studies of the past for the comprehension of the present:
METAPHOR	ROMANTIC:	FORMIST:	ANARCHISM:
METONYMY:	TRAGIC:	MECHANISTIC:	RADICALISM:
SYNECDOCHE:	COMIC:	ORGANICIST:	CONSERVATISM:
IRONY:	SATIRIC:	CONTEXTUALIST:	LIBERALISM:

DCH

Toto

I haven't read all of the blog postings, but you will find some on The Dunedin School here and here, and you can follow the links there.

The article that set it off was An Elephant in the Room: Historical-Critical and Postmodern Interpretations of the Bible (available for purchase.)

DCHindley

There is a responce to the original article in Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, vol 9, article 2 by JOHN VAN SETERS, "A RESPONSE TO G. AICHELLE, P. MISCALL AND R. WALSH, 'AN ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: HISTORICAL-CRITICAL AND THE POSTMODERN INTERPRETATIONS OF THE BIBLE'":

http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Arti...rticle_128.pdf

It looks as though he is trying to "diss" postmodernists by equating them with "novelists."

DCH