Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Gamera · 12-14-2007, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCHindley

I dunno. I just don't pick up the same message from that book of White's essays that you seem to. Brilliant as he is, sometimes I feel like I'm reading one of those crazy ersatz pomo essays generated by a random essay generator.

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/

Unlike a random generator, though, everything he says is linked to very real ideas developed to some length by specific real life authors. It's sort of like reading a commentarty by Ernst Kasemann, who knows everything there is to know about every single Greek word in every NT book. He confidently and quite casually refers to the opinions of others on these matters without feeling any need to give exact citations of his sources, but you better believe what he says is really a fact and not his opinion. White has worked exclusively with graduate students for so many years now that he just assumes his readers are thoroughly familiar with all authors, in English, french, german, italian and several other languages, who have written since the Renaissance.

That was why I liked his 40 page intro to _Metahistory_, where he spells out his method exactly, and explains in great detal who he got the ideas from, and in which works they stated them. Anyone who wants to take a close look at a good solid poststructural critic's theory of the role of narrative in historical accounts, _Metahistory_ is the place to go. White considers himself a reconstructionist, because he is attempting to understand sources with the help of narrative throry, but others place him squarely in the deconstructionist camp.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

The whole thesis of The Content of the Form is that narrative historiography produces a relationship with the past that is determined by the form. Historiography could have been in the form of a chronicle (which he discusses at length in the COTF). Or a meditation. But that's not how western historiography developed. As a result we experience history as a story, which is an artifact of the form history takes. Empirical reality isn't a story -- but that's how we experience history.

I agree that White isn't discounting empirical reality. What he is disclosing (and it's genius!) is that our experience of that reality is determined by the form of the historiography.

White clearly is not a deconstructionist. He has issues with Foucault, and he goes after him in The Content of the Form (rather truculently in my opinion, and even rather glibly). I think White is a humanist, and falls within the critical theory school.

However, he is no naive marxist and he understands the constructed nature of history. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive and I don't think you have to be a postmodernist to come to that conclusion.

Roger Pearse · 12-14-2007, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Quote:

Originally Posted by gurugeorge

[But any access you had to whether the sun rose 10 years ago would also be in texts (or records of some sort) would it not?

No it wouldn't. If the sun didn't rise it meant the earth didn't spin, and if the earth didn't spin that day, the world would have ended under physical laws. Thus emperical evidence tells us the sun rose ten years ago.

No it doesn't, because this has introduced a number of assumptions between the empirical data and the deduction made from it.

Quote:

By this I mean that postmodernism, in its beginnings, was simply a mid- to late-20th century attempt to "save the appearances" for Marxism, whose failure to scientifically predict anything had become painfully apparent to most thinking Leftist or Left-leaning academics roundabout the time of Khruschev's speech and Prague. IMNSHO the germ of what became Postmodernism was an attempt to keep a Marxian-style academic dialogue going in the teeth of disconfirmation of the scientific side of Marxism - i.e. a way for sundry Leftist or Left-leaning professors to justify their continued adherence to a way of analysis that had proved useless in predicting anything in the real world. ...

All I can say is that if you think PM is an attempt to save Marxism (a modernist ideology that is the brunt of much PM writing), you haven't read any significant PM works.

This appears to be an argument by book, tho.

The suggestion that post-modernism arises from the failure of Marxism is an interesting idea indeed, and new to me. It certainly didn't arise among the Right, so I think it has to be seen as a child of the Left in some sense. I don't claim to know; if anyone does, it might be interesting to see it.

I admit to contempt for such anti-rational movements, so probably the fact that I am likewise not of the Left may blind me here, however.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

aChristian · 12-14-2007, 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

What happened may not be the narrative (one is an occurence in the past and the other is a description of it), but that does not mean that you can't get a very good understanding of what happened in the past from a narrative. To me this 'insight of postmodernism' is being used as a silly little game to avoid coming to grips with certain uncomfortable facts. It's like saying you can't absolutely prove anything exists (which is true), including cars, but yet I don't see these people strolling about on the freeway.

No it's nothing like that. Cars can run into you. Historicity can't. Historicity is a relationship to a text. Noting more. You will never get any closer to a person you claim existed than the text that relates his story. That's all that historicity means.

You can call rigorous thinking about history "silly games" if you want, but it does you no credit. It just suggests naivety.

No, you can't prove the cars exist in the same way you can't prove facts of history, yet I doubt you carry your theory through to the logical conclusion and walk in front of cars.

Gamera · 12-18-2007, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

No it's nothing like that. Cars can run into you. Historicity can't. Historicity is a relationship to a text. Noting more. You will never get any closer to a person you claim existed than the text that relates his story. That's all that historicity means.

You can call rigorous thinking about history "silly games" if you want, but it does you no credit. It just suggests naivety.

No, you can't prove the cars exist in the same way you can't prove facts of history, yet I doubt you carry your theory through to the logical conclusion and walk in front of cars.

Discourse is not life, as Foucault so astutely pointed out. Cars are part of life. Texts are discouse. While a car can run you over, a story about a car can't.

Solitary Man · 12-18-2007, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

While a car can run you over, a story about a car can't.

Sure it can, metaphorically speaking.

aChristian · 12-18-2007, 09:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gamera

Quote:

Originally Posted by aChristian

No, you can't prove the cars exist in the same way you can't prove facts of history, yet I doubt you carry your theory through to the logical conclusion and walk in front of cars.

Discourse is not life, as Foucault so astutely pointed out. Cars are part of life. Texts are discouse. While a car can run you over, a story about a car can't.

You are missing the point. Do you agree that you will know much more about the surfing contest than the Eskimo in my earlier example?

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.