W H T

,', _. , '. , 'f"I!l' "', ' '. ' I"' ""'

ES'TERN- I:S'TORICAL HINKING

Edited by J,orn Riisen

Bergh.hn Books

New Yorle .. Oxford

Published fun 2002 by

Berghahn Books www.berghahnbcoks .. com

Copyright C 200.2 Jorn Rosen

AU rights reserved, Except for the quotation of short passages for the prupos.e of criticism and review, no part of this, book ITJJay be reproduc ed in any form O[ by my means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any infor~ marion storage and retrieval system now known O[ to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloguing .... in .... Pu·blication Data Western historical thinking : an intercultural debate I edited 'by Jom ROsen. p. C11'1. -~ (Making sense of history)

Cb.ietly written by members of the Porschungsgruppe Historische Sinnbildung, U niversitat Bielefeld,

Based in part on Westich.es Geschichtsdenken (11999)~

Includes bibliogra phical references and index. .

ISBN 1~571B,1-781~6 (alk, paper) ~ ISBN 1=57~81=454=X (pbk, : alk. paper)

11 ':L-.r!..... Phil L. "'" C· ivili . 1v;t. 3 Ci'" _~1': ~' A ~.! 4-

Jl .. l-'"L~:tory~~ . O-SOP1J!:.y.. ~~ . n:... zanon, \IV·estern. ~.. 'Ii inzation, ~m~ .

Mrica~~·Civilizano[l .... ~ Historiography; 51. History ....... Methodology 6" Historiographu. I., R tisen, J OEn . IL U niversi tit Bielefeld" Porsch ungsgruppe Historische Sinnbildung. Ill ~ Westlich-es Geschichtsdenken. IV: Series.

D'16~9 .. W4S42001 901--dc21

200~037830

ll·ritish Library Cataloguing in Publicati,on Data

A catalogue record for this. book is available from the British Library

Contents

Jorn Riisen Preface to the Series

•• 0

Vlm

J~'" R~"

o·rn -_usen.

Introductiorr: Historical Thinking as Intercultural Discourse

1

I: Theses

Peter Burke

Wester~'Th Historical Thinking in a Global Perspective ~ 10 Theses

15

ll: Comments

1. General Comments Kla.us E .. MiiDer

Perspectives in Historical Anthropology

Tarlf Kha6di

Searching Cor Common Principles: A Plea and SOl11·e Remarks on the Islamic Tradition

33

.53

Aziz A1-Azmeh

The Coherence of the West

.58

2. The PecuJiarity oj the ~jt Francois Hartog

Toward all An;liaeology- of Historical Thinking

Frank R~. Ankersmit

Trauma and Suffering: A forgotten Source ofWesterll. Historical Consciousness

65

72

Johan Galtung

Western Deep Culture and Western. Historical Thinking

Georg G~ Iggers

What is Uniquely West,ern about the Historiography of the West in Contrast to that of China?

:8.· .. i; .~

101

Hayden White

The Westtf:rnization o:f\V:orld History

111

3. The Petspedise of the Others S.dik J. AIl .... Azm.

Western Historical Thinking from an Arabim Perspective

Masa:yuki Sa·to

Cognitive Historiography and Normative Historiography

God.ftey Muri.uki

Western Uniqueness? SOIne Counterarguments fm,tt! an. Afi"ican Perspective

MamadO'lt Diawara

Programs for Historians: A West,ern Perspective

1.28 .

142

148

4" The Differ.ence of the Others Ying .... sbih Yii

Reflections 011 Chinese Historical Thinking

Thomas H",C~ Lee

Must History Follow Rational Patterns of Interpretation?

Critical Questions from a Chinese Perspective

Romile Thapar

Some Reflections on Early Indian Historical Thinking

152

173

178

Peter Burke Replliy

Notes on Contributors

199

Index

203

Preface to the Series

J". R'"

. ORN·.USEN

At the turn of the twenty-first century the very 'term "history' brings extremely ambivalent associations 'to mind, On tile 011'e hand, th,e last 1 O.._ 15 years 11a~ witnessed numerous declarations of historys end. In referring to the fimdamental change of the glob~ political situation around 19:89 !90~ or to postmodernism or to the challenge ornres~ern dominance by decolonization and multiculturalism, "history'v=-as we know it-e-has been declared to be d.eadt ouedared, overcome, and at its end, ODClL the other hand, th-ere has been a global wave of intellectual

11 • • fl- Id h ""h= ',~ in' ~L' h b "ldi f-

explorations mto . reins t 'at are - . istoncat In tnetr very nature: tne nu '. '118 ,0

personal and collective identity through "memory", the cultural, social and political use and function of" narrating the- past", and the psychological 3tIUC~ tures of remembering, repressing and recalling. Even the subjects that seemed to can for an "end of history" (globaJizatilon; postmodernism, multiculturalism) quickly' turned 'out to he intrinsically "historical" phenomena. Moreover, "history" and "historical memory" have also entered the sphere of popular culture (fi'U1TI history-channels to Hollywood movies). Tiley also have become an ever important ingredient of public debates and political negotiations (e.g.~ to take the discussions about tile afierrnarh of t11~ 'wars, in the fo·rnler Yugoslavia, about the European unification or about the various heritages of totalitarian systems),

I h ~~,,j.~ + I,';,g,h' ,~ t, .. "", b _c1 1 - db' d ""iL..:.~ .

n at er woros, ever since . IS tory B.aS een oec are.· to be at mts end ~ tnstcri-

al ,.,. h b k ··!.L.

c matters seem to ' ave come ac .... wun a vengeanoe~

This paradox calls for a new orientation or at least a new theoretical reflection. Indeed, it calls fa.r a! new theory of'history Such a theory should serve neither as a subdiscipline reserved for historians, nor as a. systematic collection of definitions, "laws" mid rules claiming universal validity W'hat is needed, is all interdisciplinary and intercultural field of study, For, in the very moment when history was declared to be "over", what in fact did. abruptly come to an: end; was-s-historical theory Hayden W~bite~s deconstruction of the narrative strate-

· f the ni th L~'_'· ~ .. t: ;II~ b .n<o'iI1~ d

gies 0 . e nmeteen century ntstorrcrst paradigm somenow ·.eca.me regaroee

as historical theory's final word; as if the critique of [he discipline's claim for

Notes for this section can be found on pa,ge xiii,

rationality could set an end to the rational self~refiection. of that discipline; as if this very critique was. not a rational self-reflection in i tself N evertheless, since the late 1980s the "critical study of historical memory" began to substieute historical theory However; what has been overlooked in this substitution is, the fact that any exploration into the ways of historical n~emo[y in different cultural contexts is not only :1 field of cri tical studies, but also contains the keystones for a mote general theory 'of history" Each analysis of even all simple instance of historical memory cannot avoid ql:llesti~ms of the theory and philosophy of history:

And vice versa: the most abstract thoughts of philosophers of history have an intrinsic counterpart in the most profane procedures of memory (for example; when parents narrate past experiences to their children, or when an African community remembers its own colonial subordination and its liberation from it) ~ As, long as we fail to acknowledge this intrinsic connection between the most sophisticated historical theory acrid the procedures of historical memo,ry most deeply imbedded in the culture and the everyday life of people, we remain caught in an ideology of linear progress,~ which considers cultural forms of

· 1 ' · bi f Ah:'i" d f '.. th

menl0ry smmp y as interesting 0 ~,ec~ o· S,ttl'~, mstea. 0 recognIZIng .. en"! as

111 fUh ~-,~ 1~ f historv"

'exaRlpllles 0 . ow to maze sense 0' . istory

The bo ok-series "Making Sense of History", the first VO]Uu,Tle of which is at hand, aims at bridging this gap, between historical theory and the study of historical memory~ It contains contributions from virtually all fields IOf cultural :3l11.d, social studies, which explore a wide range of phenomenal of what can he

lab [ d r;;~""""'r:llL-~"I"I;,iT'r 1...!: ~ _1 n ('Hi'" 'h S' b"'ld' ~ Th ·

iane e .L="~ rustorrcat sense : .. , istonsc e ··~nn·~ ·-ung,,, I e' series crosses not

only' the boundaries between academic disciplines but also those b etween cul .... tural, social, political and historical contexts. Instead of reducing historical l11elnory to just another form of the social O[ cultural "construction of reality" " its contributions deal with concrete phenomena of historjcal memory: it seeks to interpret them as case studies, in. the emerging empirical and theoretical field. of "making historical sense,' ~ Along the s~e line, the rather theoretical essays intend not only to establish new me iliolW, and theories for historical research, bur also to provide perspectives foX' a comparative, interdisciplinary and intercultural understanding of what could be called the "global work of historical memoryl''This does not mean the exclusion of critical evaluaeions ofthe ideological functions of hi storm cal memory.But it is not the' major aim of the series to find an ideal, politically correct ~11d ideology-free mode or method of how to make sense of history. It rather intends to explore the' cultural practices involved in generating historical sense as an extremely important realm of human thought and action, the' study of'which n4~ contribute to 11.~ forms of mutual understanding, In an age ofrapid globalization primarily manifesting itself 011 a11 economic and political-s-and, much less so, 011 a cultural level+> finding such forms. is an urgent task.

This is wllity-------in contrast to the German version of this series-a-the English

di ~ ~ dd '. h b der i + ~~ di . iF 1

e tton, acu ressmg a mucr .: roa er mternanonat au: ence, sets out wrtn :). vo --

P'reja(e

.

]X

ume documenting an. intercultaral debate, This volume questions whether or not the academic discipline of"history~"-as developed at Western universities over the co rse of the last two hundred years=-represents a specific mode or type of historical thinking that can be . efined and differentiated from other forms and practices of historical consciousness. One of the most notable representatives of the modern historical profession, Peter Burke, delivers an essay ou - lining ten aspects of the specifically Western v.vay of"malcing sense of history" that allow us to speak of"'Western Historical Thinking" as a discerr ab e type of h· storical thinking, differing from other ways of dealing with the past practiced in other parts of the globe. Tile editor then invites scholars from allover the world=-from Weste:rn countries as well as fiom Asia,. India, and A_fi'"ica-to crit ~ ically comment on these theses" to evaluate them in the light oftheir respective ideas of lie sense mid meaning of historical thinking, and to reflect 0 ]I the possibilities of an intercultural communication on these issues, Peter Burke afterwards has, the chance to reply to the differen co nments and criticism, to rethink some ofhis theses, and to further identify the possible common grounds on which an ongoing debate could be based" Thus this. tITS[ volume of the set + es "Making Sense of I istory" goes to the heart of the matter; and, at the same time, highlights the major conflicts involved in any attempt to reflect forms and functions of historical memory and historical thinking on a global level,

The first volume". therefore, introduces tile intercultural dimensi 0 n of his-torical theory. The following volumes will represent it as a genuinely interdisciplinary field of research, Historians, anthrop ologists, philosophers ~ sociologists, psychologists, literary theorists, as, well as specialists in fields such as media and cultural studies, will explore questions such as: "'What co-nstitutes a specifically historical "sense" and meaningi What are the concepts of=time" underlying different historical cult res? Which specific forms of'~perception_;; inform th se concepts and which g' neral problems are connected with them? What are the d011rUl'L1J;iu_g strategies used 'to represent histo rical meanings Ranging from g·e:n~ eral overviews and thea retical reflections to case-studies, the essays will cover a. wide range of contexts related to the question of~~'historical sense," including topics such ·as collective identity, the psychology and psychoanalysis of histori cal me ory, or the intercultural dimension of historical thinking. In general they will indicate that historical memo "Y is 110t an arbitrary function 0 the cultural practices used by human beings. to orient themsel V'eS in the world in which they are born; but that such memo y covers special domains ill. the ternporn orientation of human life" These domains demand precisely those mental procedures of connecting past, present and future which became generalized and institutionalized in the West as rhat specific field of culture we can ~ 'history' Among those special areas of hun ran tho ght, action and suffering th-at call or a specifically "historical thinking," are (1) the construction and perpetuation of collective identity, (2) the reconstruction of patterns of orientation after catastrop hes aJ.1Ld events of massive des tructio n l' (3) the challenge of given patterns

x

oforientation presented by and through the confrontation with radical otherness, and (4) the general experience of change and contingency

I .r., "th th 1" f h b k ' ~;;:M ..... ·l .. '· S f

n accorwnce VII ! I e genera. aID"! o· t 'e:,loo,·· ·-sen'es .. ". (lKm,g' ·'·eosle 0'

History" to outline 31 new fiem,d of interdisciplinary research. (and to not offer a. single theory); the volumes are not designed to establish those general domains and functions. of historical remembrance as. keystones for a new historiographileal approa,eh.lnstead th.ey explore them fUrther as subfields of the study of'~historical IC~11tures~'JI' One focus, for instance" will be on the notion of collective i.dentity: General eheoreeical asp ects and problems of this field will be considered, most im portantly the interrelationship between identity otherness and representation, But case studies Oil the construction of gender identities (especially of women) 11' on ethnic identities and on different forms and poll tics of national identity ·will also be included, The ,essa:y8 Ion this, subject 'Will tty to point out that any concept of "iden d. ty" as being disconnected from historical change does 11.0t only lead to theoretical problems, but abo eclipses .. the fact that most modern forms of collective identity take inro account the possibility of their own historical eransformation. Thus the- e5Sarys will suggest to consider identity 110t as a {UI1Ctiol1 of difference, but as, a concrete cultural and ongoing "practice" of difference .. Therefore they will try to prove the production of Ii~ sense" to be both all epistemological starting- point as well as a theoretical and empirical research-field in and of itself

Another volume 'Will focus. on IDle psychological construction oC'till1en and . "history" analyzing the interrelation between ~emory;, morality, and authentici~, in dliffererlt forms of historical 01 biographical narrations .e TIle findings of empirical psychological studies (011 the development of temporal an·d historical consciousness m children, 0.1'" 0,11 the psychological mechanisms of reconstructing past experiences) will be discussed mn the light of attempts to eutline a ps.ychological concept of historica consciousness around' the notions of "narration' and the ,~~ l1;arra rive structure of historical time,' ~ A . special volume

b d· eli d ifi all h nat' .. I h h d fhi

. " ,,' ", I .. 1 I" • • l . ,,_. ,',','., t', "., . .'.~ "" .. ~ :-' I " • I .'""':: ",~' ['," ", ;.. ,"'T""":I

. e . e cate to sp ec c y psyc oa . ynca .appoo:!\c es to t e stu y 0 s

torical memory 'I-t will reconsider older [debate's on the relation between psychoanalysis and history as well as intro d uce more rec ent research proje cts .. Instead of simp illy pointing out some psychoanalytical insights that can be adopted and applied in certain areas of historical studies, this volume will aim at combining psychoanalytical ,a,ll,d historical perspectives, thus exploring the

hi f h ~ ~, ~,1. .. ~ . 1£ II he ' · ,.,. ..JI.:: • dl

seory .0 ps,yc ~ , OaL1.al-YSJl.S; 1 tse· " as we as t . 'e . tlnC omClOt'Us· ,wluellSlons un,· er-

lying and informing academic and nonacademic forms of historical m.en1.ory.. Moreover, it will put special emphasis on transgenerational forms ,of remembrance, on the notion Oft1(tUD1a as a key-concept in this field, and on case-studies tlltat may indicate directions for further research.

Ap'ar~ from the first VO~L1me at .11,Wd~ there will be another collection of essays· dealing' explicitly with the interculsural dimension of'historical thinking, offering :I\ systematic overview of historical cultures ranging fi"'OlTI ancient Egypt

·

D

to modern japan.With a view to encouraging comparative research, it will consist of gen'eral essays and case-studies written with the intention to provide comparative interpretations of concrete material, as well as possible paradigmarie research-questions fOor fiirther comparisons. IMl the light of the ongoing success of ethnocentric world-views, the vohrme wil] focus, en the question of how cultural and social studies could react to this challenge. It will aim at couneeracring ethnocentrism by brid,ging the current ~p between a rapid glo balization, manifesting itself in ever increasing economic and political interdependencies of states and continents, and the almost similarly increasing lack of mutual understanding in the realm of culture, The ,essay'S will try to point out tile nee essity of an interculeural communication about the ,COI:11trJILOn grounds of the various historical cultures as well as, about the diffeeences b erween them, Such a communication seems not only possible but indeed to be a necess,axy presupposition for any attempt to negotiate cultural differences on a, political level, whether between states, (l,r 'wmtlhin the increasingly multicultural societies. in which we live"

The special emphasis thee series puts on the problem of cultural differtl~nces, and intercultural communication shO\1VS the editors' intentions to aim 1b·eyond the realm of only academic interest. For the question of interct.Utural comrmenication represents a great challenge, :1S well as a great hope, to a project commitred to the general theoretical reflection on the universal phenomenon of

U beri th '~D' th L". th Ii" u1 ..- ... 1..J':'a, :!!!I 'L,~~ L.

' remelTI, ermg , e past. i )~ptlte. e tact ' alt _ ,e tarat UllJLere1filCe t~, uecome

something like a master phrase of the 19908; this. topic is characterized by a p.atadmc quite similar to that underlying the current fate of the notion of~~hls.tory.!j'

There has been an intensified political intervention and economic mterest of the industrialieed states. into the political and economic malts of the rest of the world, as well as. an increased (if sometimes peculiar) appropriation of modern economic and political structures in the developing countries, and in the formerly or still officially "communist" states. .. But this process of mutual rapprochement on the political and economic leve] is characterized try a remarkable lack of knowledge of or even interest in; the cultural and historical backgrounds of tile respective nations .Thus, the ecdsting official forms of inter ~ cultural c omrnunicarion, so ofien demanded in the public discourse, lack, p're=cisely what is ."r, cultural" about. them, leaving the themes and problems analyzed in. this book-series (identity, memory, cultural practices, history, religion, philosF' ophy; literature) outside of what is explicitly communicaeed: as if such matters would not strongly affect politica] as well as economic ,agendas ..

On the other hand, however, the currently dominant approaches of cultural theorists and critical thinkers in the West either claim the general impossibility of am mtercu]tllrM communication about t111e common grounds of "cultural identiries't=-based on the assumption that there are no common grounds (the

by . ~ fil:ii: ,,j~..a": ,~\._ th li + ~ uJ.r- ............ l ..J~«' '·"""L .' postanzauon 0 dmerence r-0r·~· ey lP 0 bC12e cu rut aw. omerences 10 sucn

a "Way that they are relegated [0 mere material for clte construction of cultural

..

Xl'll

b w .. • D" + thei Ie . .l eli ~,~. :;, h . f~

su je,ct-,pOSltl,ons,.esplte . xeir s·c l .... understanc ng as critique ,. t ese mteuec-

tual approaches appear to correspond to the exclusion of~~cu1tu~e'~ on the level of state politics and economic exchange alike .. Thus, culturaJ theory' seems to

10m... \iT"i'~"""'''1I.~'''' I: ul L f i 1£' + .~.'IIi.:: = ..

react to 'we margmauzatron or c. rote Dy way 0 Its own se -margmanzanon ..

The book-series "Making Sense of History" intends to challenge ttris. marginalization b1y introducing a form of cultural studies that takes the very term ~, culture ~, seriously again without dissolving it into either identity -politics, or a

h ized f 1l.' d bl "diff "A ... l "

ypostanze .: concept to unoru . gean e uJi erence, .'. t Wile same time 1t wants to

~ d · f" q. ~ .. - 1 th n h I di .. lC fro

remtro '. luee a notion 0 nistoricat I ~ory t at no onger sconnects ttselr : .;'. m

historical meulo·ry and remembrance as concrete cultural practices, but seeks' to explore 'those practices; interpreting them as different articulations of the universal (if'heterogeneous) effort to "make sense ofrustory,,~;Tllt.lS, the book-series

"M' . ~.:IL" S f His: "reli . th id th d ~ ibuti

.... ··.aJI&..mng ense o I I • tory re res on. .e 1, ea at an acae ernie contnouuon to

the problem of intercultural communication should ,as5W11.e the form of'a new' opening of the academic discourse tOI its OVl11 historicity and cultural background, as well as a. new acknowledgement of other cultural, b,ut non-academic, practices of~!ls,ense·=forlrultion~' as beh~g equally importanr forms ·ofhWl'L1n orientation and self-understanding (in their ,general fim,rnon not much different from the efforts of academic thought itself). Such at reinscription of the universal claims of modern academic discourses into the variety of cultural contexts, with the intention to provide new starting-points for an intercultural cornmunication, is an enterprise that cannot be entirely fulfilled or even outlined in ~: series of a few books, Therefore; the book -series ·i ~ Making Sense of History" should be regarded as something like a first attempt 'ito circumscribe Olle possible research-field that might p~ove to suit those general intentions; the field of "his torical cultures,"

. Most of the contributions to the book-series are based 011 papers delivered

.. f~ ~:J:" , d bv ... :1.,. if. ,. ""~.I ..... 1 rinz S f

at a series c conrerences orgamzec . ~ tne researcn -project £VJ.d~lg.· ense 0

History: Interdisciplinary Studies. in the Structure, Logic and\ Function of His .... torical Consciousness=-An Intercultural Comparison" est;]1'billish,ed at the "Center for Interdisciplinary Studies" (ZiF) in Bielefeld, Germany; ttJ.·1994/95. This. project was partly supported by' the Ku.ltunvusenschqfiU,hes Insti tu.t Essen (KWI) im Wissenschaftszentrum Nord1rhein- Wesifalen (Institute for Advanc~d Studies in the Humanities at Essen in the Scientific Center of Northrhine- Wes.t£a1i~)~ 1

As editor I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the staff of .the Zif and the .l{W! for providing a stimulating atmosphere for the scholars and excellent assistance for their work, I also want to thank the editors and co-edi-

. . .

tors of the single volumes of this series fo·f their cooperation .. My special thanks

go to Christian Geulen, my assistant editor, for his engaged management of this series and to my We Inge for her intensive support in editing n1.y texts"

XUl

Notes,

1. In German the following books represent the project: Bodo von Dorries, Im.agirlitrte 'Geschich te. Die MOgf;qfist.hrt Bede.utung his.t()rud~n Fik!.io~en ltnd PhQ.ntas.~e"~ Kohl; 1 996; Kla us E. Miiner~ J orn Riisen eds, rlisA'oriscf"e .siHlibiidlJ.Hg. Ptoblef#Utfllu~wen I' Zei tkonzf1'te~ W(f.hfflmmf,f,Hg~ ShOriZOH te, Dars tr!nungsstmwgie.n!.lleinbe1k:.~ 19'97;] ocelyn Letourneau 00.; Le lieu idmti.t~iff! de le

,

jer~ness.e dJl aUijo uri{ ~ hui. EhtJ.des de cas ~ Paria/Montreal, 1 997.; }3,rn Stuckrath, ]iir.g Zbinden eds ~

M~tagt!chichJe. H~/den J.f1]dte :fttti,d Paul ruCOn1lr. .Dar..geste~lU Wirklichkeit in iter eUf(}'pilisclum, KultlJf im Kotltext 1JOH Hussesl, M!elMJr,. AU€1balh uniJ GrJ~'lbrilh~ Baden= Baden, 1997.; Ham G·." Ki ppen. ~ ber~ Die E~1tdecku:ng tier R£ligiomgeschichte. Religi(Jn~"W&$,eft!jchaft Mona die' Mode rne ! M ih1lcnen! 1.997;J urgen Sb:'a.1lJL b ed, ~ Erzi$hl~1!.fJ Idfntit~t fJn(/. historisthes Bewuj3t!N!.in, Die. psycho1.ogische K()w:~ Sm.MetJ.()tt von Zeit und Geschlchte. EnNnern~gt Gesch ichte~ Ide~tiUit Bd. 1 t Prankfurt tun Mai IlL l' 1998; JOIn Riisen, Ji.ill~ll Straub eds, Die dl4nkle' Sl~ur der ~~tw~genheit. Psyc.hOtwu1.1yl('$cnt Zu£a.r;g:e zur ·Gesd,ichte. Erinneru~_gJ Gr;schithtr!~ Ldtntitilt Bd" 2j Pr1.nkfurt ant Mailll], 1998~ Aleida. Assmann, Heidrun Priese eds, IdcHtitiJtm. ENnn.etU1.1.g~. ,Geschich.tcJ Id,entiUlt Bd, 3) Fn.nkU7urt am. Main ~ 1998~ ]i5.lfn. Iliisen., Michael Gottlob, Acbim iVtittag eds ~ Die v~yalt der Ku.lturen. Erin~ nmu11~ GeschfchteJ 1 (j,en ritllt Bd ~ 4~ Fran.}(fnrt am Main, 1 99 8; ] .aIm Rissen red. J Westliches ·Gesthic.ht.sdfflkffl. Ei~u; int~dtun'1k Deb6J.tte, Goteingen, 1999 ~ J OoJLT.l Rtisen ed, ~ GfSrn:ichtsbe~ 1JyujJtsei:n. Psr;;Jw~ogis,he GfUndl~gen I EnhvkklungsJooI/t.f;;~tei ,efJ$pirudu BefiJnde~ Koln 2000.

Introduction

Hi t ,. I Th" k.j!, 1 t It I D' "

IS onca·tn,ng as n,f!tCUUfa tnscourse

~.. R' .+

JO'RN <,USEN

Why historical thinking has to 'become intercultural

Historical memory and historical c On~ciOU51LlleSS have an importan t cultural function: they form identity, They delimit the realm of one's own life-the familiar and comforting aspects of one's 'Own Iife-world-v-fiorn the world of others, which u su ally' is all "other world", a strange world as well, Historical memory and historical thinking carry out thins function of forming identity 111: a temporal perspective; for it is the temporal change of humans and their world+-their frequent experience of things turning out dlifIerel1.t from. what has been expected or planned-e-that endangers the identity and familiarity of one's own world and self.The change calls for a mental effort to keep the world and self familiar or-ill cases of extraordinarily disturbing experiences of change-eto reacquire this familiarity"

Identity is located at the threshold b etween origin and future, ~ passage that cannot be left alone to the naeura] chain of events but has to ble inrellectually comprehended and achieved, This, achievement is produced-e-by historical. consciousness=-through individual 311d collective memory and through recalling the past into the present" This Pl'O'cess can be described as a veDrY specific procedure of creating sense.' This procedure welds experiences of the past and expec~ tations of the fit ture into the comprehensive image of temporal progression .. This temporal concept shapes the human life-world and provides the self (the

~" ,~ ,ji "I" f ~ b· ). ith · ~ d rn , irh ~'

we and O~ Its suo ~ects WI .:1 contmutty an'. consistency wi an mner

coherence, with a guarantee against the 10'58 of its essential C01'"e air with similar images of duration within the changes of subjects, The Iocation of the s!el£, in terms of the territorial reality of living as, we11 :lLS in terms of dffile mental situation of the self within 'the cosmos of things and beings, 11.a8 a temporal dimen .... sion. ~t is only through this dimension of time that the Iocation of the self

Notes for this section em be found on page 11.

2

becomes fixed as tlhe cultural habitat of groups and individuals, In situating themselves, subjects draw borderlines to others and their otherness within the Iocality and temporaliry of a common world, lilt which they meet and differentiate &om each other in order to be subjects themselves,

Such boundaries Me normatively determined and allivnys vahse-Iaden. In that peculiar synthesis of experiences, which determines action and purposes-of what one historically knows and wishes for oneself; can. be defined remembered experience and intended goal at the same time; it is fact and norm; credit and debmt~ almost undistinguished.This is especially important for the differentialtion between self'and other.sameness and otherness.In order to survive in one's own world and with one's 0W11. self and to find iivin,g here and now meaningful and livable, each one's own. way of life is provided with positive perspectives, values atld nonnative preferences .. N egative, menacing, disturbing aspects are repressed and pushed away towards the "other," where they are exrerritorialized and liquidated, It is part of the utility of historical memory;: and of historical thinking's intentional approach 'to the past that whatever counts as belonging to one's '~n time' and world order, and Iegitimizes one's self-understanding, is subject to a positive evaluation; thus, it is generally accepted as good. In this way; negative aspects of the' experience of 'time in [elation to the world and to oneself, are eclipsed from one's own world and frO:m the inner s.pace of one's own self they are pushed away to ehe P eri phery and kept fun that distance.The identity -building differel1.0e between self and other is working in each memory" and any effore to remember is, mil itself an asymmetrical normative relation, Ethnocentrism (ill all its different forms) is quasm.~naturally inherent in human identity ..

This asymmetrical relationship] between self and other, between sameness and otherness; makes historical memory controversial and o'jp en for conflicts · Just as, the stressing of one's own ,group identity will be met with consent by. its members, it will be denied by those beyond tile border lines who do not recognize themselves 1ml these time-eableaus, let alone consent to them, Degree and manner of such an asymmetry vary enormously; their general quality is, that of tension, that its; they are always on the brink of a b\f'llum omnia conua omne» among those who exclude each other in. constituting their own selves, Of course, aJ1 parties usually have ,:1. common interest in preventing an outbreak of this tension". Therefore they seek and develop \¥ays of intra- and intercultura] communication in order to tame, civilize or even overcome the ethnocentric asymmetry,

"Historical consci 0 usness' ~ is :1\ specifi c form of historical memo,ry. It is rooted in it; to a great extent, even identical vrith it, ~JU~ it is also distinguished in some important aspects. The sp ecif.icity of ~~ historical consciousness" lies in the fact that the temporal perspective, in which the past is related to the present and-v-through the present-e-tc the future; is designed in a more complex way, Es pecially in its modern forms "historical consciousness" pushes the past away from the present thus giving itt ehe appearance of being something else, Tills is not done to make the past meaningless for the present, but-on the contrary->

3

as a means of ascribing to the past the special importance of a' historical relationship, A historical relationship is determined by a temporal tension between past and present, by a quaJita,tive difference and its dialectics .. and argumentativenarrative progress III time,

The vital power of memory lies in its keeping alive the past which those who remember have really experienced. The- past becomes, historical when tile menral procedure ofgoing back: into time reaches beyond the biographical lifesp,al1, back into. the cham of generatiol1S.Acconlingly; the future prospects of historical thinking reach far beyond die life expectancy of individuals into the nutur,e of coming generations.Tlms, the historical relation to the past is enriched by am enormous amount of experience. Only fun this specifically historical kind of memory does the 'weight and the meaning of historical experience come into view and evaluation. It also. changes the ways, of rneaningfirlly appropriating rhe treasures of past experiences. These ways of appropriation become much mote complex, since they em employ a big j[,ar](.ge of narrative strategies ~ N evertheless, the general patterns of creating sense in the' formation of historical identity are still the same: as the past is interpretatively transformed into history, "being self" and- "being other" 1"em:UJ1 strongly separated and evaluated as opposites ..

Even when the interpretative achievements of'~'''hfustorical consciousness"

are being brought aboue m the academic fo-rm of historic a 1 studies" the formative power of'the normative factors cf'historical identity remain prevalent. Even a hi st 0 riograp lry based on methodologically controlled research is determined by the political and social life of its time and by the expectations and dispositions ofus audiences .. A'cademic historiography is ascribed to a histories] culture, in which the self and the others are [treated differently and evaluated ,as normarive points of view. Thus, iri this . context as well, the questions remain if and how th,e difference between-s-and thee diJferentiation of--.-forl1:l:S of'belonging, which generally determine and socially organize human life, can h'e approached; and how the conflictory dimension of ethnocentric sense-making can be tuned and overcome. Th-e answers to these questions may be very diverse: academically historical. studies are obliged to enforce an intersubj ective validity of their interpretative transformaeion of the past, into a historical construction of belonging and difference .. Here} "intersubjective" validity also includes the principle that others can agree as much as the members of ones own group, However, such an. agreement would not abolish the difference between the respective forms of belonging, or the particular identity ofthose affected by the respective histories, Dilferences and identities, which on the contrary, are to be articulated MId coined by tins. appeal. to, the past, So academic CKaiITlS of truth ultimately depend UpOl1 the very Vlays in w hich the procedures of" ~ creating sense" lilt title framework of methodologically controlled research are regulated.

'Ibday, the quest for SUCll a regulation is becoming increasingly important, For today not only mere historical differences, within a common culture are at S take as they were, for example in at historiography committed to the national

perspective and orientation of Eumpean standards 'of historical lProfes~~.onality" By now p·rocesses of migration and globalization have produced new constellations, of intercultural communication, The European countries, nations, sooieties and seates find themselves questioned and challenged in a nevi \vay by non-European nations and cultures .. They criticize the cultural hegemony of'the Wes.'t .and forcefully intend to liberate themselves fiom the historical interpretations that the West has, imputed to them. Western historical thinking has to reflecr the critique of idleolo~, which holds that behind the universalist claims of validity, and behind the standards of reason, there are claims £0[" POVJef and domination that endanger, if not destroy, the sovereignty of other cultures", This confrontation has already caused ~. habit of self-criticism within Westerl'1 interpretations of historical thinking .. Yet this does not mean that the established institutions and methods of historical culture have already found new w.ays of relating themselves to the others or of corning to terms, with them about their cultural differences, A similar problem evolves within Western societies, themselves, in the way of treating minorities whose cultures are thought of ,as not o~:lly d.ifIe·[ient~, but definitely uncommon and strange, How can this otherness find a place in the V\Ta'YS of life of the' majority?

How should history become a source of inter;cultural

. !I! . t ti!l! ,

orren a on,.

There are two traditions of (not omy) European historical thinking, in which a possible way of overcoming ethnocentric perspectives is embedded One of these traditions ,goes bald to the classical, ancient mode of historical il1terpreta~ tio n coined in Cicero ~ phrase ~,~ hisioria magis Ira vitae", which' can be described "typ.ologic~y as an exemplary mode of creating sense.? Within this "'Way of histori-cal thinking; the space of past experienceswidens beyond the boundaries of the historian's own culture, Thus it' ·opens up the limits of jl historical p erspeerive dltat traditionally focuses on the given cultural context, The exemplary mode of memory regards the. past as a gigantic reservoir of experiences from which genlernl rules ,of, and for, human behavior Call be drawn. This experienrial quality is ascribed to the past of the human world in {?ienera.l~ no matter what valuations and adaptations the rules .dra~ &om it might serve in respect to tile self-esteem and self-approval of the pres,ent. However, the past becomes subordinated to those self-interests in. the course of interpretation. The exemplary way of creating sense op'en.s up' tile mstoric~ horizon and the possibility of generalizing historical j ud,gemellts. It ills, thus-e-at least in a strictly logical sense in a position of neutrality regarding the dif[erent agendas of fitting the past into the asymmetrical dichotomy between self and other" Therefore the perception of the Other becomes more open to the influence of actual experience, but it is not yet completely protected from ethnocentric narrowness, Experience-

5

based rules of open-minded behavior that are drawn from historical experience strengthen the competence of acting and orientation, but they do not break the power of nonnative forms of belonging and differentia "Ion.

Eighteenth-century "Enlightenment" and its concept of universal history widened the historical perspective to a global aspect, At the same tnne humanity became the universalistic norm to which the reconstruction, foundation and explanation of'identity-building particularities had to be related in order to gain intellectual plausibility: This empirical and normative universalization opened up new horizons for historical thinking, III which the others were taken notice of to an extent hitherto unknown." In principle the universalistic view pierced the perspective limits. of selfness so that it could be reflected by the other!

Withirl he category of humanity; historical thinking gained new P ossibilities of critique, liberating itself from its restriction to particular interests and! power ..... c aims. At the same time, however, those interests and political power claims became charged wid· the legicimatory power of universalization, themselves gaining an extremely ideological power of veiling the processes of privileging th .. · self and of devaluating every hing strange to it. The generalized self-esteem embedded in the "spirit of modernity" destroyed the self-esteem of those subordinated to i .

"Historicism' opposed this generalization of a sense-creating concept of humanity along 'With its ongoing teleology of progress by enforcing the principi e of individuality and general legitimacy of difference and . art iculariry, Ranke's famous statement: "Every ag" . relates immediately to God, and its value does not at .aU. depend on what comes from it, but on its existence as such, on its own self'" exp,tess.es a historico-philosophical paradigm in which identity~ building sense is. created under the condition that the particularity of the self is not to be regarded as the only one fit for g·eneralization, ~ut has to be understood as a difference to another particularity; and therefore to be enforced in and as that di11et'ence.

Yet even in this historicist paradigm, the determination of the relationship to the Other remain d precarious. That "God" who I .onors the particular 'With the quality of the singular has proved silent when the diverse historical subjects of nations, states, and cultures struggled for power and supremacy In the long run, this God continued tOI be a god of the respective selves, in whose face the othe s could be call d strange rs and thus be marginalized under the aspect of developmen and evolution; the;" were degraded to mere representatives of .3. preliminary stage of one's 0\V11 development or pus . ed to the margins of the historical universe, where they had geographically bela ged all along .. TIle representa . 01' of China in the universal and world-histories of'historicism is a particularly revealing example. 5

Also the concepts of history that transcended the . ealm of historicism ·to glo b al aspects of world-interpretation and self-understanding could deny neither their eurocentric origin. nor the perspectives and perceptions even if they

6

jorn'Rih,cn

considered realms hitherto thought of as natural and timeless, Europe and the West remained the measure of.an things even when historical comparisons became analytically more precise and rhe global perspective was based on social-scientific metho dologies ,.

The eurocentrism of historical perception becomes especially obvious when history and historical thinking themselves are the subjects .. ·The Others ma,y be regarded as historically meaningful and herlT.~en,euticany rewarding for human diversity; yet what counts. as specifically "historical" it'} respect tOI the 'way of "dealing with the past" has usually=eand with.out question-s-been determined! by our own way of thinking .. Even, today books that bear "historiography" as. their subject or title, but in fact exclusively consider the Western=EuIQ:p[ean traditi 011 , Call receive academic approval," Occasional remarks that there is an important historiography outside one's own tradicion? do not undermine the claim for monopoly of the European as being 'the essential, since those other' traditions are acknowledged only insofar as they reveal traces or equivalent aspects of European historical thinking without offering alternative' or oppositional views, From such views we could, in' fa,ct, learn what (apart' nom the tendency

....... l.:: th ' .c d . i': ~. th · = iii) make ~ I.': ;; L . .: ~

to ,geneI"fUJze e specinc an,' to. transecrm ~ t mto i e essennat . { ... S our lUJ)1"'"

tory a special one in. the first place .. s

That is not to say that sheer euroc entrisrn actually dominates the history of historiography :0'1' contemporary historical theory, In fact, historicism has strengthened the sensibility for cultural ,ditfere~ce so that with the help of hermeneutics our knowledge of the historical thinking of non-European nations and CL11tU1~s. has steadily increased, Historical didactics, in particular; propagated polyvocal strategies of interpretation and representation and [enforced them, at least partly, in the field of history textbooks .. 9 AplPlliyin,g research methods of social science has. provided historical thinking with systematic methods. for inter _. culturally comparative studies.Yet multiperspectivity has not become a representational principle of' a historiography dealing with non-Eurcpean history or with subjects and problems of global history, N·or has the history of historiography, focusing on non-European .~ys of'historical thinking and! the inrercultural comparison, led ·to a critical rethinking of general assumptions about what actually comes into view as ms'torical thinking in such comparisons,

Of 00 urse, the assumed metahistorical role of one's own historical thinking has not ,gOtle unnoticed, At Ieast, the lP ostmodern critique of the . categorical application and ideological use of'a variety of modernization models has under .... mined the hermeneutic tone of utter conviction tha t used eo be heard when researchers in the field of humanities declared their patterns ofinterpretation to be intersubjecdvely valid-that is, across all cultural dJfferellCeS., However, th:is critiq ue rhrew out: the baby of cognitive validity in historical reasoning with the bath of eurocentrism. The result is an epistemological and political culturalism, which confines its insight into the specific character of cultures temporally and regionally to thee innate scope of different cultures. [11 so doing, it has become

7

dependent on the horizon. of tho-se cultures' own self-understandings .. Besides the immense epistemological and hermeneutical problems of such tID interpre-

.. tl + th " · · L h u h L~' th ~~ 1 d

tanon, .. lete IS e irrttationtor t . Ie next generation well u;r;emg 0 • e vaJ,ue an 0 I.

self-esteem of Others from eurocentric models of otherness" They find them .... selves compelled to r-elate the liberated other self to its own culture so that it truJ.y indeed recognize dl·e other" This kind of culturalism transforms cultural difference into a hermeneutic monadology, preventing intercultural eOl11DlULlU.C(lIl= tion at .ill or enabling it only ~t the expense of an.y generally accepted rules,

A first atternpt-e-problerns altd results

Thus historic al thinking is. not '\1VeRlli prepared to solve the questions rising obj ecrive! y from ehe ,C ontext of international and intranational constellations: In the

f ..l! d ~ ~ 1 1 f'civili = .,.; 1 CI th k + b + b

context 0 a predrcte c as lOCI·. zations etas 00 1S to o· rmg a 0 ·0. out 6[\ new

communication in which the ~n.lbjecu involved may be able to leMl1110w and why they differ fiom each other, and accordingly have built up a feeling oftension, Such a mutual understanding is necess,a.ry at least in order to ease or perhaps even to overcome conflicts. Those conflicts are struggles for identity; reaching tile self- understanding, the innermost cores of the self Here history is a necessary rnedi Ul1.,]. for articulating and! actively approach ~ ng questions of identity, ,~;O cultural and historical studies can 't but be involved ,. They are epistemologically rooted fun these very problems of contemporary cultural orientation.

'hey form a cultural orga11 of and 10,r modern societies, producing essential knowledge as input for the discussions, manifestations and practices in which identity; belonging, self-determination 311,d- the b 0 undaries to others are a\~ stake,

Therefore we have to answer the question ·of how the production of cultural and! historical knowledge, which is always the production of cultural com .... petence as well, can be aligned with the goal of providing to future generations the means of intercultural communication? This calls for a variety of efforts .. They range· from simply fuHilling the requirements for information and understanding to critically rethinking tile foundations and habits of one's, own intellectual work in research, teaching and public representation, Here growing participation of non-Western experts would be of extraordinary importance, Notwithstanding their 0W11 efforts to overcome the asymmetry of valuations in historically determining c ontemp orary situations, and to recognize the selfunderstanding of othe·rs-this question can only be answered by the practice of direct communicarion .. The objective task of cultural orientation can be regarded. as subjectively achieved and solved only when the others and we ourselves .a:gt"'ee, when we historically relate ourselves to them and vice versa, Then the mutual conse:LI1.SUS of selfness and otherness. in historical self- realization has been achieved, {Of ' course> this is not conceivable as .1 once and for all accornplished task but only as all opell and ongoing process.The ever recurring exp,e""

riences rising from e¥et~yday life, struggles for power, collisions of interest, and the unintended side effects of our OWl1 actions and of the reactions of others, call for a continuous. effort to historically posi tion oneself and to Understand the

self- understanding of others.) .

The essays. collected in this volume represent such a11. attempt; Tiley do not seek to reason abou: the Others from one's own angle of'historical thinking, but they rather discuss and, analyze the common grounds and ,dlffer:ences it'} the' mental space of historical culture with them .. ]t is not surprising that the starting-point of this attempt is dIe tradition of historical European thinking; since it has dominated the international discourse up to our time, Yet, as a paradigm determining the ways in which human beings relate historically with the world and with themselves, this tradition is no longer' taken for granted .. But this is much less the case' in the discourse of historians in non-Western countries than it is in the place of its own origin, Postmodern criticism of the cultural strategmes of modernization has made us fully aware of the ideclogical 'bias. of S·UCbl strategies and their inherem will to power, What actually counts as being specifically Western-even in the definition and perception of itt opposite-s-has become all open question.

The relevant reflections in this book provide an interesting a!1SVIcr: the specificity of Western historical thinking certainly cannot be tracked down ill any easy and .cleer-cut manner, It is represented in this book in multipersp ective' t-·=-and this is, not due to thee book's form independent ·from mu. content, TIle idea that: there is all ontologically fued ~4 essence" of diffeften't cultures no Ionger plays any significant role," T~lU~ seen fiom the angle of theory of history~ the Spenglerian monadology of culeural differences has lost its argumentative pO'W'eT~ (\Vlledl,et illt has also lost its grmp on politics is, quite a different q uestion, The enthusiasm with

W1L':: ~ h th e .r'iI,"PM 1111' .,;fI; t f Samu 1 n Htmtin zton's ' ~.;(""'il1 ...... h of C··' !_-=:1~ no"i-t!" ".-:~n ' ,.,. T'itlfo"li,,fi """'"'"' ken

me .. . ~b-nll"..o·n 0 .. am e r~ I"-IIU,!: e~' s ~ .. I.·· . JlVll.l...l.:.L~ IV· SV¥~ 'l!l~~ .

up in the popular media makes one hesitate to answer itl m,e affirmarive.)

In this res.p,ect, Peter Burke's a~ent sets the tone: "Western ~,~, is, not one single principle of cultural orientation and self-interpretation, but it represents a combination of elements creating: historical sense, each of which can be found in other cultures as well. Moreover, the debate about Burkes configuration 'Of ten typical characteristics of Western historical thought unmistakably points. out that even this constellation is open '00 dissolution and restructuring. In 1'1'On= Western comments, however, we fin,d a recurring distinctive approach, which is only indirectly' addressed in resp ect 'to 'Ol1_e~S 0\iV11 historical culture; here some sort of traumatic resistance 'to West,ern claims for dominance is being articu'L .r This resi h .. .liL:,iIi.T. c. . ,,-L by. · hi ". 1 ~t,em,. I S ressstance m.acy . ave 'Llillerent; rorms eitner ...• '. JuxtaIP?lSln,g ustorica

thinking as, equally valid or even superior alternatives to the 'Western mode, or by ,dete',cting typical characteristics tl'tat are usually ascribed to Western thinking in one's own tradition as well, 'One contrmb;uto·r generalizes this. as a principal problem ,and-quite typically-e-laments the general lack of acknowledgment of originality and importance in African culture,

This debate has brought about a wide range of alternative typologies and helped to determine the logic of such typologies: they are based upon elementary and fundamental criteria of sense. These are of categorical importance when in differentiated processl averse systems of culture are in the making, They cannot be applied only to the sphere of historical consciousness and culture in a strict sense, This 'Wilde range of aspects, however" is limited M well. We can detect thar .typlologies lack the dynamic temporal category of the deeelopmental Iogic of historical thinking with irs long-term m 0 de of existence as continuity or change, Yet occasionally it is pointed IO·U t that Burke }s. typolol.gy does not cover the whole sphere of experiences of\Xfestern historical self-understanding.And, quite astonishingly there is a lack of intensive discussion of a fact Karill L5,\Vitl-112 pointed out: We.'itern historical thinking has its O\V11 dynamics of development, which .go beyond the temporal Iimits of the modernization process .. This applies as. well to the presentations of non= Western. eraditions, It is especially their immense daration and long-term p~r that reveal a temporaldepth calling for a diachronic typ 0 ill O.Bym

The typologica] approach breaks the power ofWestern dominance in historical thinking in various ways, especially by differentiating the perception of oeher forms of historical thinking: what is defined as specifically Western or European can also be detected as an important factor within the various typological constellations of other cuhu res " Indirectly however, a trace ofWestetn dominance yet to be 'Overcome remains visible .. Too often the contrasting pre~ sentarions of other cultural traditions (especially of the Chinese and African) emphasize- the lack of one or the other European element; cannot be found in one's own tradition: and the £ttnctioIL:-U equivalents are not pointed cut,

The character of the debate documented inn thi~ book prohibits :l final and systematic conclusion. On the contrary; fu ether discussions seem to be necessary SIO· that further distinctions of tile intercultural pefiC eption may provide a higher degree of reflection in t e comparisons and communication .. N everthe- 1 ess ~ this, insight rests upon a s timulating result of ehe de bate: the fact that sharp borderlines between dle different traditions. of historical culture em no, longer be drawn 311d that there is no SUCll thing as cultural esseneialism. Despite all brevity and provisionality of the documented discussion; lit did bring to light the fac t that some characteristics of Western historical thinking previously regarded as culturally specific are not: they can be shown in other traditions of historical thinking as well. The pressure of ideological self-determination in dealing with difference in historical thinking should thereby be lessened, Relieved of this pressure, the chances for ~H1 unbiased perception of the common grounds and. differences in the intercultural constellation of historical

thi ~~ ~.~.! -~ th + d

lUllUlt.Lg are ~ us 1ncrease . ~

10

Further' steps

The many voices contributing to this debate easily combine into a general

di fu· th . .....l·.. 'iIL." '1 hink ..

tenor regar ng . r .er progress in conceptuanzmg historica t 1 .•• mn.g as, a

medium ofidentity-building, determining the otherness of others, and. relating this, otherness to tile self The "decomposition ofWest'ern historical thought" already in p·rog[\ess, its deconstruction to elements and factors to be further differentiated diachronically; should be cominued, With the deconstruction of the special Westenll character 'of historical thinking ]11"[0 a' complex constellation of factors ~ each of which are not culturally specific ~ the significanc e of cultural difference is, decreasing .. But it does not mean the Westerlttih character is dissolving' into a P otpourri of historic al sense-creations lacking the contours of an identity-building self-esteem .. ~3 On the contrary: the self-esteem wins greater clarity with the complexity of the constellation in which it appears ~ At the' same. time che mutual perception focuses on 'rile fact thae what is different about the oilier is composed of elements that also belong to oneself

Together with the decomposition .of the Western peculiarity, the special characteristics of non- Western forms of historical thinking and historical culture should be outlined; they should be made visible M peculiar constellations of genel~ factors, in. the creation' of historical sense, Such a task calls for ~ln immense effo,rt fun research. Hewever.such research should be fundamerually gum.de,d by the goal of creating the means for an intercultural comparison 'Of its results. Naturally this also applies to the history ofWes.tern historiography as weU"Without the perception of the o thers the narrow-mindedness of'historical attitudes is strengthened: In the past and in the light of fundamental cl.ilferences to others, this. narrow- mindedness C ould have been regarded. as a' naive trust in our 0YJl1l exceptionality .. So what 'used to addressed as ~ simple-minded care ..... lessness of art unconscious ethnocentrism, today must be critically reflected.

Systematic; cultural comparisons ought to enforce questions of the common grounds as. well as of different tendencies fun respect eo future developments. So-called m iaohis to ire has. not rendered 'obs·olete macrohistorical temporalizations. But, far ttoln it, the cultural ,effects of globalization have become increasingl y visible on tile' micro- historical level .. In whatever way this, nece·sS:ll'Y research is being carried, out, its results would be weakened without a. critical rethinking ofthe decisive questions and interpretations that make' other traditions and interpretations comparable, A·t the very point where they can Objectify and intellectually support intercultural communication, rhey V\TOwd, hamper it without eheoreeical reconsiderations, Considering tile urgent problems of cultural conflict in an age of , globalization. and increased migration, such a we of theoretical reflections and empirical data 'should take place in direct discussion of our O~l1 as wen as of other traditions and contemporary forms, of historical thinking", The current features and forms of academic dis= course do 11.0t yet correspond to these imperatives: 'Ioo often, the respective

] 11

experts have still been talklling without giving them a voice in this discourse, But that can be changed ..

Transla,te,d from the German by Inge Riesen

Notes

1. See Khus E. MuUeJ~ 3rM:]. J 8rn Ra~en.~ eds, Ri!Jtofis,he Sinnbnd~NW. Pr()hkm~~teU~nger1J f Zeitkmvteplte~ WdfnthmUHt.£horiz,~ntf .. Da~U!ll~mggstmtegien,. Reinbek, 1997.

2. See jorn Riisen, ,Zeit und Sinn. Stmtegim ~tiJtorischtl1 De~~kms,i Frankfurt aim Main~ 1990~ 181 ff.; Reinhart Koselleck, VeIJ~~'bgene Zuk~tift. Zur S~manJik geslchichtUche.r Zeiteftlj Fr:a,tddw~'~ am Main, 1979 ~ 38-66.

3. A remarkable examp]e is the UmlAr:rs,rfll History fivfJ.$ the. Bar1i~t AC£iount q{TIttU1; tllat appeared 1736-11.76,6 in 6-6 volumes and was translated into German beginning in 1744·,,,

4. Leopold von. Ranke, Uber die Epo.chen der ~e.1jleren Geschirof,t+ Histmi${h~krl,tisd~(! A~sg~be~ Aus Mi6k und N,u:hlajJ, vol 2~ eds Theodor Schieder and Helmut B erding, M iinchen.! 1911 ~ ,'5,9f.

s. See Andreas Pigulla, Chi1tCl in der deuf.jcN.en l%l~,hithts$,hreibung vom 18. bls ZUfjJ 20 .. JahmuH= dert~ Wi~baden~ 1996.

6+ Christian Simon, Historio.8mphie. B,'ne Ei~hfltJng" Stuttgart, 19916. .

7 ~ Rudiger vorn Bruch and! Ramer A. Milllerl, eds, Histot'ikerlexikot1. Vo~ der ,i4ntike bis zum 2.0+ Jahmundert~ Miin.chen,~ ] 99] ,

8. See for example Donald E. Bl'o"Wll. i Hi~"ky; lJisto1'Y ~nd HUMJl!?n NrJi:u.le. The S,od(/~ OrigifM ,oj Hi£tfJriul Consdousnes», 'Iuscon, ] 988, whose valuable Cl.ulttlr.U.ly comparative study of hi:s:~o-rical consciousness is b~sedl upon a 5tdcdy E tlro'p,eml paradigm of bistorical1thln.king.

9. See Jorn Rusen, 'Das idea~e Schulbuch, (Yberlegl.wgen nun Leitrnedium des Geschichtsunterrichts' ~ in id, ~ flist()rnches Lemen. GrIFln.dlagm u~uJ' ,Pmwd~men, Koln, 1994" 11. 5 6~ 170.

1. O. Samuel l~ Huntington, Del Ka.mpf d:er Kultu~H. Th~ Gi(1sh ,oj CiviJiz~tiOflS" Die Neuges taltH~g dler Plkltpolitik 1m 2' l' .,Jflhrhunde't~ Mlinchen ~ ] 996.

11 ~ I note tha 1l: there is oruy one female voice among 'the authors of this bo o.k. In. the Bielefeld conference, UL ]pOTh which this hank is based, many female scholars participated Mid l'ItiI!.ny were expli~itlly invi ted to bring in the gender perspective, wmch for tile understanding of the Illstory ofbis1l:'~riography and historical tbeory is of immens,e importance, That there was, in the end, little response n"Ow f.enrinist scholars is partly due to accidental. circumstances, However, it has P :obably abo something to do, with me fact that the feminist discourse in culmral studies has recently b ecome increasingly fixed as a su bSf1tcm S["H].tting itself off from the rest of the academic discussion.

] 2. Karl Uh-vith,,, '!ifkl,fgej,hid~l;te Mftd Hei13geschehen,. Die theologischm VoroH.~,etzungen der Neilsgeschiciitr:.~, Stuttgart, 1953.

13. See JOLl1 Riisen, 'Some Theoretical Approaches to Intercultural Comparative Hisroriography' I' HistlJ1'1! aHd The(jl~fy ~ :,;·5 (1. 996), Sp1ecial Issue ~ Chinese Historiography in Comparaeive Perspective ~, 5~22,.

: THESES

Western Historical Thinking in a Global Perspective - 10 Theses

PETERfiURKE

Th rFiFh + . + 1 th l ~ e . b . ~ d i .... 1" . " d th

' e . tstorrca ougnt to ,-, e exammec In trns lP,ap,er IS concentrate: on. e

assumptions of'working historians and 'the implications of their practices." How ..... ever, itt also refers from time to time to philosophers of history, Indeed, gmven more space, time and knowledge, I would have liked to have extended the topic even further, to Include everyone's p-erceptions of the past, 01' in the- usetu1 phrase of Bernard Gu enee, the "historical culture" of the West., 1 Unlike some earlier historians ~ Hans Bal"011 for example, I shill not be referring to the

~, keni l'~ f hi + at th il"'r."1 ~ ~~ 1 (" i1l....:~. £.1. 1

.. awa -enmg o: rustortc - '1 OU.,~,t1.t at a parncutar moment 111 rns case, tne ear y

Renaissance) .. 2 N,or will I be assuming oe arguing, like Hegel, that historical thought or historical consciousness is a monopoly of the Westm On the contrary, interest in. the past appears to have existed everywhere and in ill periods ...

.All the same, since people from different cultures. have different conceptions of time and sp·.ace, and since European cultural and social movements such as ehe Renaissance" the Reformation, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and positivism all had important conse'quences for historical thought and writing; it is only to be expected that E urope21n historic al1l writing is distinctive, The problem lies. in specifying that distinctiveness. Consider how nuU1Y historical works have been written over the- centuries, from Herodotus to the present, in [1.0W ~111y European languages, Consider that to discuss what is distinctive in European. historical thought it is also necessary to· have a good knowledge of other historiographical traditions, S11Ch as the [Chinese; japanese, Islamic, Afric:lll!i indigenous American, and so on. No wonder that virtually 110 one has. tried to study historiography in a comparative ~y (it is a pity that one of the few explicitly comparative studies is vitiated by the author's assumption that the Western sty e of historical writing U Sill perior m every vvay' to ehe alternativles)~3 It is. obviously foolhardy for a single individual to offer conclusions on uris huge subject a.

Notes fOll this section begin on page 28.

16·

Hence what foUows is a. list not so IDl-IDch o.f"·con{:lusions" as of the reverse, of openings, in other words of provisional assertions that ate ineended to encourage debase and research, Let me make it clear at the start that I see the distinctiveness o.fWestern historical thought not as a series of unique characteristics, but rather as. a unique combination of elements each of which is to be found elsewhere, a, pattern of emphases, which themselves vary by period, re gi 0 11." social group 3;11d individual historian,

Anoehec point to c.brifY at the outsee is the ~ problematic nature of the concept "Weste~n,,~' or indeed of the obvious alternative, "European.fThe examples which follow run from Herodotos to the present, Since the rise of the idea of Europe, from the Renaissance onwards, the intellectuals of that continent have claimed the ancient Gteeks and Romans as. ancestors. However; it is far from clear whether Herodotus or .Almni,anus Marcellinus (say) would have agreed .. It' is more like~y that dt,ey saw themselves as part ofa Mediterranean world in whicb th·ey looked east rather than west, 111 my case, Greek intellectual traditions were influential in the Muslim world as 'well as, (indeed earlier than) in Western Europe, thus undermining 3J_1y contrast between an' ullis'" which includes the Greeks andl a "them" which includes Islam. TIle West is itself a historical construct."

The pa.per is. presented itl the form of ten points in order to emphasize its. schematic nature, not the' nature of the subject, as well as to facilitate reference and discussion. For the same reasons, the sections have been numbered, without any pretensions eo scientific acf;'Uracy or philosophical rigor" Tile points will be illustrated with reference to the historical classics of 'the Western tradition with= out assuming that these classics sum. up Western historical thought in an exhaustive manner .. The comparisons, explicit and implicit, will refer 'to ~ few classics fiorn other traditions, for. example to Ssu-ma Ch'ien and Ibn Khaldun, and also to a small cluster of secondary works in Western Ianguages that are cited in the bibliography It is because this work concentrates on China and Islam that I shall

. .

take most of lny' non-Western examples from those parts of the world, Every

attempt will he made to avoid the .misleading binary opposition between "the West"" and "the rest ~"

The ten points which follow are not isolated but linked. The Iinks are sometimes. historical. and sometimes logical (despite tensions or even contradictions between SOO1.e of them) .. 111 this sense the points add IIp to a "system,' ~ "model" or' "ideal type" of Western historical th.ought,. Like other models, tins one necessarily exaggera,tes the difterences between Western and non-Western historians and minimizes intellectual, conflict within the Western historical tradition. It-should be considered as. no more than a schematic description of a pattern ofemphases.

It is of course tempting to .try b) relate Western historicalthought to other characteristics .ofWestern culture; indeed to present it as the product a·iWestern history From time to time I shall indeed be pointing to possible connections between Western historiography; Wes.te-rn science.Western ma~ 'Western individualism, Western capitalism and West·ern imperialism, The emphasis falls, on

17

description simply because it is logically prior to' explanation a. Only after we have made the inventory of ·differences between historical thought in the Wes.t and in other parts of the globe will it be possible to make a syseematic investigation of the reasons fur these differen,ces,

The model presented in the following pages is intended to be a dynamic [one. Change over time will be discussed. in each section .. My general conclusion is that although differences. between Western and other historiogrsphies have alvvarys been visible, they have been more important at certain times than at others s- For example, there was an increasing divergence between Western and other historiographies from the Renaissance onwards because Western historical writing developed in a more and more distinctive vvay+

The phase of divergence was £onow,edt by a phase of conver.gence in thenineteenth {Thud rnrel1'tmeth centuries, the result of a worldwide interest run the Western paradigm, 'Of as Masayuki Sato puts it in Ills study of Japan~ an .~", encounter" between tt.nat paradigm ,mdl indigenous traditions. 5 In some places, colonial Peru for instance, the meeting took place much earlier, in the age of Garcilaso de Ia Vega !;'EI Inca" and of Guaman Poma de] Ayala .. 6 The result of this pro·cess. has been to weaken, if not to dissolve; the specific qualities ofWe8t~ ern historiography and to produce a global community of professional historians, 'With similar if not identical standards of practice .. There are of course a number of differene styles of history practiced today; but these styles (intellecmal history; rnicrohistory, quantitative hl'tor~l and so on) 3' are available to historians more or less anyw here in the world ..

\Vllether the general historical culture of different para of the world today is equally unified I rather doube. My impression is that the situation in historiography lis rather like the situation in painting.Visual cultures ,differ from region to region, 'but superimposed is the global cunure of professional artists, whose international exhibitions correspond to the international congresses of historians. This gIobl:W professional culture is. not uniform, but the major options. available (op art, pOop art, minimal art, and so on) are internationally available like tile ma.j or options iin history

Th .L 11 ~ ~ + + th~' .1':' • f~ th 'n'r. Ii Ii

e to OWll'lg ten propositions concern ng 'e' P ec unannes to . . e west

are presented in approximate order ofimportance,

1. 'I'he most important, or at least the most obvious characteristic of Western historical tho1.tght Is its stress on developrrient 0"" p",,"~p"'ress 111'" 0: th· ier words Its "Iinear' view

....... '1" '. ." '" - .],11., 1.I.·V'e. ~ ' .. , """." I _" r . ".~ ~ •• " .!I ""~ '. I .... "."".

of the past ..

1 ~ 1 ~

The term "progress" is wed here in a broad sense, to refer eo the idea thaft change is cumulative (o:n.e generation standing on the shoulders of another), or that it is

18

irreversible (summed up in tlhe popular phrase, "you can't put back the clliock")~ Hegel's Philos()phy dj History and Macaulay's rlistory of England may be cited ',as £:UTI.ow expressions, of this cluster of ideas, However, the assumption of irreversibility does not nnplliy that historical change is necessarily or usually for the 'better. Many of the practitioners of a new' branch of history, the history ~f the

+ ." 1 . ~ iI' • 1 &.L t ~ ~:~]I' s: th

environment or eco- .nstory; assert or llTIp Y tnat Cl'L:Wge is ustla~k '1 ror e worse,

Th'f;' assumption of progress or development has not been ,3. ··constant feature ol~estern historical thought, On the contrary; ~t has irts own history 7 That "history" is going somewhere, that it is guided by d.es.~lY or' Providence (or even that its subject is the action of God rather th:an of men, for example Cesta Dei per FfanCIJs)~ is am old as well as a widespread assumption in the West.. S.O is the idea that tile process is irreversible and will come to an end, These ideas are deeply embedded in the jewish and the Christian traditions, where they were elaborated m eerms of "fulfillment,' ji U c ODS ummation,' ~ "messiah" and ~ 'millennil1m,.H·The philosophy of'history ofjoachim of Fiore and his followers, including the w.deas of the three ages} the angelic pope and the. mast world ~emp·erolr; is only one of the variations on this theme ..

As, Karl Lowith has argued, modern concepts of historical development may be viewed as secular forms of these religious ideas .. a The idea of modernity itself is one example of this plrocess.~ 9 The idea ·of~iirevolution,,~~ at least as it has been wed since 1789~ is another expression of'this idea" of c urnulati on and jrre-

· b · ~ ~ U) S' · h 1 ~ f' ,., 1 '" t:ll h

versibihty, 0 IS tea ternanve concept 0 ~ eva- .ution, a term t . at was

adopted by late nineteenth-century historians (as it was by sociologists and lawyers), not only to give scientific, Darwinian respectability to their craft but to, stun up what they already believed or assumed, i 1 There was also the more precise and limited idea of~'developmene~ illl al particular area of culture (religious doctrine for mstancej.an idea which itself developed in the course of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries ~ 12 From the end of the eighteenth c entury; biographies of individuals came to be organized around the idea of development. 1 j;

1,,2.,

These different ideas of progress have .long coexisted with the opposite, cyclical theory of historical change, which was dominant in ancient Greece and Rome but can also be found in the Old 'Iestament.!" In the Renaissance, for instance, politics] eheorists often asserted that change in regime s f61116~d a cyclical pattern. from monarchy to aristocracy Ito democracy and black again. It was this assumption of a cyclical movement that underlay the traditional idea of revolution, a word which VIaS coined on the model of~~:revolve.:}The same assumption underlies the ideas of Re-naissance and Re-formation .. 15 Tile idea of equilibrium, a balance that may be tilted but is always redressed; was a fimdamental organizing co:ncept in We~~tern historical thought from Giovanni Villani to Edward Gibbon. 116 For example; in tile si xtee nth. and seventeenth centuries, the

19

discovery of America was sometimes interpreted as a compensation to the West for the loss. of Constantinople thirty-nine years earlier ..

In the eighteenth century; Vice reformulated the idea of historical cycles

ith t..!... + f · d' ~ 'l':r 1· d G' , ibb tl

WI ,Am view 0 corsi an" ncoes« vo tarre am ,! ,'I ',on may seem to assume ' aat

history pro·g1fe~ses~ since they often refer to recent centuries as a period of

r ~ ~ il· .. ~ 1 H b .... L I ..

lllncrea;slng crvi izanon In contrast to t ae more remote past. owever, - otn llS ......

torians believed that this progress was fragile, that a new age of'barbarism might svreep all these gains avvay. In this sense their fimdamental schema was cyclical, t 7 In. our own century; speculative philosophers of history and sociologists such as

Sp .gle S' oki . p"", iIr",.n,. ""Ii'll' dt'1f1o' nbe e ~t.. =<11 t, .. , th cvcli .~TIil "~ '" Ifbis',· 'to c,

I en, er, oro ',11'(1' areeo ano JJ.~, Y oee lJ.'1I,r urnea .0 e "y..". car view 0 1 . , 'ry,

elaboraeed in 'Various forms such as the alternate dominance of entrepreneurs and ren;tier:s ..

Needless to say~ linear views of history can be round outside the West.. Messianic and millenarian expectations form part of Muslim as. well as Jewish and, Chrisrial'} traditions ~ They call. also be round in many parts of the world in the nine= teenth and twentieth centuries (in China, III Africa, in the "cargo cults." of Polynesia) the result not Oll,jy of the spread of Christianity but also of its interaction with indigenous traditions.P

lUJ the same, 1 shall risk !the assertion that the idea of cycles is normal and that of p·rogress exceptional ill non- Westerll historical cultures, One might illustrate these' cycles tronllt the eraditional presentation of Chinese dynasties by Chinese historians, or from the famous theory of the alternate dommance of nomads and settlers in the pages of the llAuqlJddim,ah,19

2 T !'--'Il_ ..... d the id f · b di iii! fi ti· II> L

lii Ld:~.. to .. .e 11: ea 01 progress .. Jut . stmct rom tt IS tJIl.e

"I.'S".Y. If! th hiseori 1 ill

western concern WI I astorrca perspective.

.2't 1 i

By" concern. with historical pie rspe ctive ~., or the "sense of anachronism,' I mean the idea, that the past is not uniform, more and more of the same thing, but on the contrary extremely variable, each historical period having its own cultural style, its own personality One might describe this idea as a se'nse of",culturaJ dis-

~ , · f h '~1:' + H2O

tance, a view 0 tl, e past as, a lorelgD country ..

This idea too has its own history. ]t can be found in ancient Rome but its continuous history m the West goes. back to the Renaissance to the time of the discovery of visual perspective (an analogy stressed 'by the art historian Erwin P~n"oSky).21 This increasingly acute sense of the past trul¥ be illustrated not only fiom philology (Valla"s interest in changes m Latin and Greek), and from Iaw (the increasing awareness of the relation betwe en Roman law and ancient Roman culture), but also from art (Mantegna's concern with accurate repre-

sentations of ancient Roman costume and buildings) ~ 22 An awareness of the history ofcostume is at once a superficia] and a revealing expression ofa sense of the '" otherness' 'Of the past ~ This sense of otherness is evident in the work of both forgers and their critics, each stimulating the oilier to new heights of

1l. ~ ~ ~ . . rh · .. th '" d or to recoenize " 'iIL. ~-. ~ ~,~

sop tusncanon in .eir attempts ei . er to ,3VOli or to recognize anacnromsm

(a term 'which was corned in the seventeenth century).l3

'The C oncem with P eriod style, like the ,C oncem for ~ 'local color,' became even more acute in the early nineteenth century; linked to the concern with the individuality of each epoch commonly associated with Romanticism, It is exemplified not Ol1.Jly in historiography and in the increasingly popular .genre· of history painting, bue also in the rise of the historical novel m the age of Scott mid Mansion,

2.2.

This sense of Idle past was not universal even atnong elites after the year 1500" 011 the eighteenth-century English stage, for example, itt: was common for actors in plays. by Shakespeare to wear eighteenth-century clothes, including wigs, From tile Renaissance .to tile nineteenth century; it was customary for

1 + • ...... '11 h d '" R

s.ell ptors 1n particular itO represent . ·eroes past an. I present In .. '. oman costume,

whether armor or toga irrespective oftheir ~ctuaJ costume,

2 3·

, !II . i!

The awareness of'changes in cultural style is, not uniquelyWestern .. ln China, for example, there is a . long tradition of interest in period styles in the arts, leading to forgery and to the elaboration oftechniques fo,r discovering forge111.,24 Renaissance philologists also had their Chinese counterparts, at least by' late imperial rim·es~25The term "historicism'I is sometimes wed by Sinologists to refer to these practices and . attitudes, ::U~ 'There were similar tren.'lds in Ja!p.all~ where scholars were very much aware of Chinese cultural precedents and! paradigms. All the S:IDle~ I propos.e that a concern with anachronism has been more central to We~tern historical thought, and for :I, longer time, than 11a~ been the case in other cultures ..

3 jI. The sense of anaehronlsm may be seen as part of' a larger cluster of'Western ideas and assurnptions, often descrfbed by the word i'hi t ... ", .. "(Hi .. 'iI!' t ~ us) d· f . db F" "". dr"· h

e wor·· liS .. orlCl.Sm .. I.' Se ortsrnus , ' .• e toee: "y rIl.e : .•. tc .

Meinecke as, a concern. with individuality and development, 21 Development having been dis,e'uIsed above, let us turn tOI

• di i!!d ali-

In:.IVl U: :ty.

[ am wing the term "individualitj;" to. refer to an awareness of or M]L interest in the specific in, what makes, one person, 01[' group, or culture different from oth-

21

.... m ~ ~ . ..lli::: 1':;:; . ~ iL "... theti 'j." lrof scienti

ers: me imograp JlC" m C ontrast to l~.t:e nomot , enc app.rO:lC 1 ,0 scientists,

mne} uding ~~IO em scientis ts, 28

The European tradition of biography from Plutarch and Suetonius onwards (a continuous tradition from the late 1\1ld.d1e Ages) ~ suggests tha.t the' concer-n wieh the specific or the unique goes back a long way~ That events were se en as unique by some early modern thinkers may b,e shown by referring to two famous controversies, between Machiavells and Gumcciardlini, and between Hobbes and Hyde (later Lord Clarendon). Guicciardini and Hyde criticized Machiavelli and Hobbes respectively for their lack of awareness of tile specificity of events. The concern with individuality an:d specificity was much more intense

+ th · 1'1'-'11· 1 ...ctv:r 1 · + ... " th gh'

In : e romantic era .. 1 :tat ~€ ",'as a c aaractenatrc 0'[ westlern .nstorrcai : - O,U": 't m

the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries m.ao/ hie' illustrated from the writings of philosophers of history such as Dilthey; Croce and Collingwood.

3.2.,

The examples of Machiavelli and Hobbes as well as those of tna.11Y other West~ ern thinkers who have searched for "laws" of human behavior, are a reminder that-when wt can be found at all-di];e concern with specificity has coexisted with the opposite concern for generality ..

In any case, rhe long tradition of biography is not such good evidence for a sense of'individuality as it may ~plPe~r"We' must be carefiil not to' project mod= ern notions of biography or the individual on to writers of (say) the Renaissweet who often presented their heroes as, exemplars, in other words as concrete 'examples of traditional ideals that readers should attempt to follow

A similar problem. to that of the meaning of biography arises in the case of the painted portrait. The rise of this g'"enre has often been cited as evidence of a concern 'With individuality (or individualism) from me Renaissance onwards, However mmy portraits represented types rather than specific people. Sixteenth-century collections of engraved portraits rnight use die same image to represent [note than one pers;on .. ~)

3'. 3~

The tradition of portrait painting ,. n China, in J apan, and 31510 (des.pite religious prohibitions) in parts of die Islamic world, including the courts of Ottoman sultans and Mughal e'nlp,erors,~ is a warning not to underestimate the interest in individuality outside the WestM Tile same point might be made about biographies. Ruler-centered historiograplry is of'course common m lnany cultures, while the lives of Chinese artists by Chan.gYen,g=Yuan precedes the TV'ite byVasari

It might be' better to frame the quesrion about individuahty not so much in terms of its p:res,ence or absence, as in terms of the particular "category of the person' implici t in a given historiographical traditi on. ao Alll the same, it has proved! difficult to find examples of historians in other parts, of the world (and uninfluenced by Western paradigms] ~ who demonstrate the acute interest in the

individuality of epochs, regions or' persons characteristic of Western historical writing from the beginning of the nineteenth century o nwards, Given Hindu and Buddhist views of Ule unreality of the penon" one VlO1Ud not expect an emphasis on individuals in culrures where these religions are dominant.

4. Co·llective agency, or at least certain collective agents, are given. unusual sUe:S:S in Western hlstorfography,

44 1.

TIllis trend gOles back at least as far as the R,on1.aTI history by Cato {nOW' lost) in which the author refused to name any individual (with the exception of an Idephant which distinguished itseH'by its bravery in battle),

In the course of timet importance has been imputed not only to peoples or nations, but also to such agents as f31nlilies:!. cities, churches, religious orders, armies, commercial companies, political assemblies, crowds, political parties, and SOleM classes .. I mention these group's in particular because each has given rise to a particular historical gew~, as well as. occupying a place inmore general histories, This stress on the collective is not a recent one. Civic histories have beeu

, .

a common genre since the Renaissance, [],1 the seventeenth century, Clarendon's

history of the English Civil War placed considerable emphasis 'on the a.gency of the court, the parliament and the atrm:y~ 31

The stress Oil collective agency has been a particularly strong one since the nineteenth century, and not only, among Marxists, Comre, who wrote of "histoire sans noms ~., and Durkheim and the historians who followed them moved in the same direction.There was even a Comtean project by Heinrich WloHfifu.1. to write art history as Cato wrote Roman history, "without names~~~32 I~ short, the so-called decentering of die. subject is not an invention of the postmodern age, 'but a long Western tradition,

4~ 2'"

The concern wirh rhe individual, discussed in thesis 3" runs counter to the stress on collective agency As in the case of linear and cyclical history; we are dealing with dle coexistence and interaction of opposed trends,

4.3 ..

Histories. 'Of states. or empires or dynasties are common in. various parts of the world. It may therefore 'be prudent as well as useful to, refine the argument, and to suggest that the most distinctive c ollective agents in Wes;tem' historiography are groups smaller than the state, people or nation, Of these smaller groups one right single 'Out social classes. and voluntary associations, w hich appear to have pmayed unusually important roles in Western. history; with consequences that Montesquieu and 'Iocqneville have analyzed in detail,

23

Atnong the most obvious counterexamples to cite at this P oint are Buddhist monasteries and Mudim br:otherhood~blu't have they ever enjoyed a place in historjography similar to that of their counterparts in the West?

5. Western historiography is distinctive in i\ts preoccupasion with epistemology, with the p:roblem. of hiseorical knowledge,

Historians, in most if not all! places, and times have been concerned 'With practi-

J .... · th c- th val . £ d di . · · b L.'IIl..

ca cnncism ill . re sense 0 e e, ~ uation 0 ~ anc . tscrmunation oetween, Ute

particular stories about the past that they hear or read, in order to choose what appe31"S to be the most 'reliable version of events.,What appear s to be distinctive in the Westerl1. tradition is th_e cone-ern -with this problem at a general as well as a specific level, Thus Greek and Renaissance skeptics denied the possibility of historical knowledge, and Descartes elaborated their criticisms .. In re~po:tlSe to the challenge of historical Pyrrhonism, as it VIalS called.historians of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries elaborated a defense, distinguishing

. d C 'L bili t, 1 thus i u '" •

various . egrees 0 lPoov,a - mty among statements aeout t 1.C past, . 'us unnaemg

21 tradition. that has lasted. till our own ritne.,33

5.2.

In Ills concern with the foundations ofknowledge, Descartes was himself react .... ing to the challenge of tile scientific revolution, which undermined traditional views 'Of nature. The relation between Wester]l historiography and Western science, especially fiom that Untie on wards) has been 'both a close and a diffilcwt one" Some historians have tried to imuate natural scientists and .apply mathemaries to the past.Thus in the seventeenth century.john [Craig imitated Newton by producing a list of historical principles and axioms, The Cambridge historian J .. B~ Bury once declared thar "history is a science, [~O less and 1101 more," Other historians ft'1011~ Vico to Collingwood, have defined themselves by contrast to the ,~,,, scientists," In both cases, the debate with 010 dem science has given Western. historiography a. distinctive stamp,

5.3"

Even at t111e level of practical criticism, i t may be possible to distinguish a par-

· ul 1 ,,\Yl } hI f ~, ~) oii.lj: • de :fI::; d '" ·

net ar y western approach to p1ro .~. ems 0 ~ ~SOU1'Ces; '·eVl1',. nee; an' eesti-

mony" T11e last two terms were .of ,COlltSIC borrowed by historians from tile discourse of'lawyers a. [11 the Western tradition of historiography; Iegal rnetaphors

'1 s: h '(1 ~ U 'f' , h ~ th " ib """,, _11i ~ f'" 1 +

are· CORln1.0npJIla,ce--reJ.erences to t . e JaWS 0,: .• , EStOl"~, to Ie trm'UIJill ·0 - 1IlS·-

tory, to "witnesses t; and "testimony; to analogies between historians, dete ctives and judges, The law in question nlaY be Roman maw or common law, but it is always a distinctive-my Western legal system to- which the historrographical system

24

is compared.Thomas Sherlock's The Trial. oj the U'iWfSSes oJthe Resusteaion of Jesus (1729) was, organized in the form of a trial,

I kl10W of no study of this. problem, let alone a comparative study, but it may be worth follovring the lead. of this key metaphor and considering the p·O'S=

'bili' .. ....iL.. di . el "[YJ: id . d + b h' ,. J '" '

S] - - ty t.Lld t. I snnctrv y westems - 0 eas, ,an -. assumptions a --out - istortca eV1=

dence" have developed .o·ut of ideas and assumptions embedded in We:steIrn illaw;Muslim, ChUH!Se and other courts have traditionally operated in other warys and

" obL ..JI.:::rr: • fro th ,. th"'tVJ: 34 H L.: ' ~ tho

WlUl ditterene assumptions u -- In - O.'i,e In I e Wiest.. ; ave tuseorians In - - ese

traditions taken over assumptions from indigenous legal systems, or have they been mess: concerned with the law than their Western counterparts?

6 .. Attempts at historical explanation are universal, but the couching of these explanations in terms of'~-ca,usles" is a

d'ill ,III! t-i' I ,vr; t ..... L II •

tstmctrve ywes ern enaractertsue.

This historiographical tradition goes back ·00 ancient Greece; as- the examples of Thucydides and Polybius demonstrate. Their idea of cause (ai.tion) and its distinction from at mere "symptom" suggests that the paradigm they were following was that of'Hippocratic medicine, nom which historians have also borrowed the term "" crisis ii~; originall y applied to fevers .. In other words Oi the- Wester:rlli ideal of a histormography modeled Oil the natura] sciences is an old one, It is often associated with th-e idea of laws of history in the sense of laws of human behavior, as in the case of'Thucydides, for instance, or Machiavelli,

6 2.

. ~-

Th h f b d th I,"lij,hi~ .. ", ...... 1..L. .. :"i!' d

ere . as '0- C'O-l1tse,een ~ countertren -- ~ - e- stoncist Of jlliThto'fmst tren

that rejected the comparison between historians, and natural scientists, as well as emphasizing the uniqueness of historical events (ct., 3·. 1. and .5- ~ 2) .. At the level of historical explanation, this- reaction has taken the form of hermeneutics, of a stress on meaning rather than canse, or. Ion what R.G .. Collingwood called. the "inside" ra ther than the ""'0 11 tside '.; ofa historical event .. 35 For the last hundred years, alt least, Western historiography has been marked by the uneasy coexistence, if 11.'Ot open conflict, between hermeneutic and causal approaches.

7 ~ ·Western historians have long prided thell1selves on their

)'1 d bl ,.. so'-ca .e -- o~ectlvtty.

I b·.......JI1': 'III ..J.!."'"- .. ~ h . "'tVl: di ~ f· hi ~ al

t may -'e usenn to distmgtnsr two stages m a western trar bon 0 ustonca

detachmen t,. In the first stage, the ideal. is best expressed with the term "irnpartiality" It was considered important to write sine ira et studio, in other' words

25

without emotional involvement and without self- interest, The ideal was iTIOS.t disc ussed at the' time when nit was most difficult to lffibIDlow, in the hundred and fifty years of religious conflict that followed the Protestant Reformation, for example; tile German Protestant johann Sleidan claimed that his history of theRefer rnation eold the story of those events "as they happened,' prou! res q uaeque aa« Jui t. The sirnilari ty to Ranke's famous for.tnub wiU be clear, as it is in the case of the' French Protestant La Popeliniere, who tried, he said, to, ten the story of the French religious wars as it happened (reciter la those comme elle est atlvenue) ~ Both Sleidan and La Popeliraiere, incidentally; had an unusually acute sense of history as a profession" A third famous example of rile attempt to write rlle history in a detached manner was Gottfried i\rnoJ.d')s Unpt.lrteiische Kirchen- und Ketzler11istorle~ ,from the end of the seventeenth century" A_ common metaphor used especially mn England from the seventeenth century onwards was taken from the ,g-ame of bowls. Tbe historians ideal was to avoid "bias," whether religious or p olitical.

In the second stage, under the influenc e of the model of natural science, the traditional ideal of Impartiality or freedom from bias was reformulated as the

id al of ,',' t.: m ~ .;,;, dl' hi d . r- th ~r.L' Ii; Rank c.:

1. ear or oojectrvity a, etac e presentation 0 '_ e lacts.,, . ;;,'e was rre-

.a.ii1 • d sh ~ ~ 1 f L..: • h . d ~ ~ of • h n;...::

q1.1enuy cite .. as a·· l1lmllg examp ,f; 0 a nrstorian w 0. me .. to extmgunsr rum-

self" and extract from the documents "tile [,ur,c facts," The idea that the historian's task is to present aU th-e facts and nothing but th-e facts has, been reiterated l1uny times since Ranke ~s day~ Despite challenges, this view of the historians task may still be dominant in the empiricist English-sp caking vrolr~d .. 37

8 Th ....' h hi II d·· ... I "\'VT.

I) . _ e quantitative approac to c story IS '~ 'Ilstinctive y ·wes·tern."

The development of more and more sophisticated quantitative methods by "serial histoeians ,,'" in Prance, historical demographers in France and England, and "new economic historians' in the U.S.A"t especially in the 19S0s and [960s.; is well known. However, these movemenes ,gIteW out of a much older tradition, The study of price history was already taken seriously in the later nineteenth century, especially lin the German-speaking world, The lristory of population was taken seriously, in the emghteen·tll century.As early as, the fourteenth century, Giovanni Villani stuffed his. chronicle with fi.gutes, Including thole numbers of children attending different kind') of school in Florence, a spectacular example of what has been called the "arithmetical memlta1ity.l)~38 It is s.tllte~y no accident that one of the kinds of school mentioned by Villani was the "abacus school,' which taught elementary numer,3;CY .. In Florence, with its, numerous banks and merchant houses, this knowledge was particularly usefiil, In short, we rnay argue th~t Western historiography has been shaped "byWesterl1 capitalism as well as by Western- Iaw and science, Can a similar- interest in statistics he found in any other historical traditio!"!.?

26

9 .. The literary forms of Western historiography are. di.stiu.ctive

~ .

. as Its content ...

91• 1.,

Polybius referred to some his torians of his own day as "tragedians" because . of their strivingfor pathos .. A famous study. of'Thu cydi des has undermined the analogy between his history and the Greet. drama of his time, notably the concern with peripeteia.39 Sixteenth= and seventeenth-century studies, of the art of history compared historians to composers of epic, and emphasized the importance of such literary set pieces as the battle, the character, and the speech, "They made 111.0re explicit the classical idea of the ~ ~ dignity" of history, that is, the idea that only some events and some individuals are of sufficient status to be. worth recording or remembering.P Some recent studies. have followed and developed these points." Other scholars have noted analogies between historical narratives, and the narratives of novelists, and the influence of each group on the other. 42

However, it is above all Hayden WITite who (following Norbert Frye) has. forced. historians to be aware of the literaryforms they follow (o,f~tell as unCO:R=·

SClmO~~·"]:Y ~(' Mon""~e·Ut"'Jo·lI-.JL"l"n' WI·' rite h ias describ ed "emplotn - ents !I'" ofl: ~·~t = ry

• . .... UiiIIi. .. .~.: .. .lUJilli. .. . . .·l ::lUI i.'·' [l .. .j;J;..- .;iI'iLo.L II ·.··u '~ 'JIl. I. [][ . I~, ... ,.lJ!t;;t!· ,0, ,

in the form of comedy; tragedy; romance and satire, 43

It might be usefii] to discuss other ,pref:&britcared plots, Tile battle, for example, whether literal or allegorical. 44 Ernst Cassirers study of Neoplatonism in England in dIe seventeenth century is an extreme example of an intellectual history presented in the form of a bsttle, a plsych.omachia full of personifications .. 4S

Another mytheme, obviously Iinked eo the idea of progress", is that of the forerunner, St.john the Baptist, In Protestant ecclesiastical history; for instance, Jan Hus, Girolamo Savonarola and other critics.of the papacy are presented ~ forerunners of Martin Luther, Again, this, is, the role that Cimabue plays in Vasari's story of ·the rebirth of the arts in Italy, the· true pro tagonist being GiiottO.,46 In the historiography of Latin Ame:r ic an independence, Francisco de Miranda has been formally lalbeled "El Precursor," in other words the man who plays. St .. John the Baptist to Simon Bolivar's Christ, More recently; in-the history of psychoanalysis, Charcot has been allotted the role of the precursor of Preud.

The comparison of great men with Christ is usually considered too daring to be explicit, but it does occu~ from time to time, for example, a medieval account of the life of Thomas Becket refers to his "passionfThere Dis. an underlying assumption here that d·eserves to be analyzed in more detail: the as.sump= tion t1131t historical events are (:3lt least sometimes] conscious or unconscious reenactments of models, so that the written histories that recount these later even.ts are· in a se·nse allegories. 47 -

27

9 2·

~ • ~. !!I

w:hat is distinctively Western here? White"s point is, I take it, intended to be a universa] one aboue what he calls "the historical text as a literary artifact." However, his examples, of emplotment aU come from traditional Western literary genres.f" The classical epic, to which Renaissance writers compared the history is a Western ge1.1re (or a variation 0'11 a genre that also includes the Mahabha~tl.ta)~49 A similar point might be made about tragedy" Do japanese historians emphasize the "nobility of failure ~ ~ that is such a favorite theme im]! japanese literature? 5°·D,oes th-e Ottoman history of the- Ottoman Empire reveal tbe influence of the Turkish epic?

The novel too, at least in the relatively precise sense of the term "novel" that refers to certain kinds of narrative developed from the eighteenth century onwards, is (A;Western invention, even if'it is. one that has been adapted with CO·l1= siderable succ ess to 10 cal conditions in Egypt, India, japan and elsew here+ My

m h C'.' L • ~ f "t"V1: hi + ~ 1 ,+ • h _ro.l

question." t : ererore, to mstonans 0 ~ non-western iseoncai wrmng, ts w . emer

indigenous literary gentes play the same tole of conscious or unconscious models in. the work of hL~torilans as ''White suggests they do in the cases of Ranke, Burckhardt and To cqueville. The famous study of the representation of reality in Western literature by Erich Auerbach (which devotes ;l chapter to classical historical writing) suggests a still broader question.P! To what extent dOl the mimetic conventions of historical writing vary from one' culture to. anotheri

to. Western historians have characteristic views of space no Iess than of time,

10~ 1.

Brandel's 114~dUe'mn~,e is a famous example of a study in which the problem of distance is absolutely central. Some of'Braudefs follm.ve:rs shared this preoccupation, notably Pierre Chaunu, who studied the Atlantic in a broadly similar way, However, Brandel's .. ge()fustoire~ as, he called it, is not completely without precedent. Gibbon's Decline and Fall pays as much. attention to the commnnica'bon problems of the Roman Empire as Brandel did in the case of the empire of Philip [I~ In the sixteenth century.jean Bodin wrote, much IDike Braudel, of .r~eo= mill torians (geGgraphis t(),id) ~

10. 2~

I have no intention of claiming that We~terl(~ historians are alone ill their interest in historical geography, or in what Renaissanc e historians called "chorogra-

h H [ C·11L • ~.'L. di . . f I - 1 hi ~ ~ 1 52 Ib K" h ald ~

P y: n .'. nina, tne tra tion 0 OCa! rstorres rs a Oll1g one, . JIll . ~U. un s

famous discussion of differences between nomads and settlers was mentioned in section 1 .. 3 .. However, there is a cluster ofVifes.te·rn historical studies organized around the relation between human groups and the land. It does not seem co ~ D--

28.

cidence that these studies are Western but not European, Th'ey are the work of Neo-Europeans.The blest known of these studies. is doubtless Frederick jackson Turner's ess,ay on the frontier in American history, but it is e.~y to a.dd other examples, including the work. of Capistrano de Abreu and Sergio Buarque de Holanda on the importance of routes and frontiers in the colonization of'Brazil, or Geoffrey Blainey"s The 1)n~at1ny of Distance; which analyzes. the co,nse'quence-s of Australia's geographical position for the development of its econo1llY and society, These books expl'"ess a, sense of spaoe and ,:1 sense ofbeing on the world's periphery; far from the centers of'power and civilization, Like Western. law ca\p~ italism and science, the colonizing process-e-whether we call it "discovery;" "encounter' or "imperialism" ~ has helped to shape the chaeacteristic features of\'Vestern historical writing;

I have tried to summarize what might be called a "system" of historiographical assumptions 3l11d principles.A system nos ill the strong sense ofdeductions from moms, but ill the weaker sense that some at Ieasr of the characteristics imputed to. Western historical writing are linked to one another, However, as we have seen, the system is not free fiom conflict and countertrends. For better or worse, there has not been any consensus (for centuries, at least) on. major issues. SUCll as uniqueness versus the illustratio-n of historical laws, .progress versus cycles, ·or

+ It i ulti 1 h. ~ Jll..: f f"

causes versus IneanjU1gs~ t IS nmate y t IS conmct 0 systems-=or system 0

confiicts-e-the particular shifting balances between different "forces,' ~ which has characeerised historical thought and historical writing in the West.

Notes

1. Bernard GUJeuee~ Histoue et adwre'his&J;"i€jue dlr2W l'(),Cfd,de:nt med~!ivai~ Paris, 1'981,

2. Hans Baron, ~Da8 Erwachen des historischen Denkens', Histo,ische Zeiuduijt 147 (] 932=3)~ s= 20~

3. Donald B. B[O"W'll~ Hier~rch~ I-listCfirY a~d HUtnan Nature. Th-f! Socia.l Origins .rf Hi.~J;Qrirrli Con~

sc.i{Jusness l' Tucson.], ll.. 9'88. .

4. 'Carlo Sigonio, D'e ortid:'!~tali imperio (1577) ]s an important contribution to this, construct,

5. Masayuki Sato,. Historiographical Encoonters. The Chinese and Western Traditions .in Turnof-the-Century japan t j Stosia della StQ~()grufia 19 (1[99]) ~ 13-21.

6-. Margaret Zamora, Languoge, AUtJ1-01iiy a~1i1 Indigen(Jus History in the: C~me:ntarios ret1Jies! ICMn ~ bridge, 1988.; Rolena Adoru.oj Gu~tt1.an P£1!n~a. lIVrif,iHg (Jn~ Resistance in Col()fda~' Peru~ Austin~ 1986.

7 + John ]B.lBU1'y~ The Ilea .r! Progress ~ London, 1[920.

8 ~ lem Lowith, 'fJf/;d~!chiclite u~d Hdlgesthehent 2nd edn, Stlll'tt~rt 195:3.

9,+ Hans Blumenberg, Die Legit.lmitil.!. ,der NfUZeit~ Frn.nkfUJJlt~ 1966~,.Rngl .. transl.: The Legitimacy rf the Modem A~e:j, Cambridge, Mass, ~ 1[983.

29

11. O. Karl Griewank, Der NeuzeitUr"he RewltdiltDnsbegr[ff; We.hntt, 195.5; Pelix Gilbert, IRevolutkul ~ j in Dictionmy cfthe Histmr ojIllMs! ed, Philip P;Wi,elLJ!er~ vol, 4-t NewYotrkt 1973i 157=t67imUrl~ Heinz Benda, R.eV\olutioHen, Munich, 1977.

1 ] . John. Burrow; EtlOlution Mld Sodety"i Cambridge, 1 9,66.

12. 'Owen Chadwick, From BOUUf,f to Newman~ Cambridge, ] 957 .

13. Bruce Mazlish, 'Autchiography and Psychoanalysis' ~ Eftwuntfr~ October t9?O~ 28~45;

14. ·G .. 'W: Trompf Thl,e. Idea of I-J1.£tori(;~l R£CUfr.enre ~H U/€.i,r}ern Thought _foo,j'n Antiquity to til,t Ryortn(j'" .ti()~'1~ B'erkcley 1 "979, ..

15,. Peter Burke, ·~H •. enaisssnce, Retormation, Revel ution', in Nie"lergQ.~g~ ed, Reinhart Koselleck, Stuttgart, 19'80;; ~37-47,

:[6+ Louis Gl'eent Chronicle into I-lisf~, Cambridge 1972j.17ff~ 27; Gerald ], Gruman, 'Balance and

Excess as Gibbon's Explanation of the De-cline and Fa]r! Hls~'ory ,a~ul lfleory 1 (~960)" 75-85.

17. HMllS Vyverbergi Historical Pessin~iJrn. in the Frew:h Ealightt.Rtnenti' 'Cambridge, Mus. j 195.8. 18+ Vittorio Lanternari, The Religions if the 'OP1'JresJ:tiJ! London 1 9\63.

19+ Arthur E W right, 'Chinese Historiography', lin lntemtltional En.cyt,lopae.di,CJ oj the Socir;d Sdenas, ed. DJ. Sills, New'York 1. 968~ 400-7~ Mushin Mahdi, Ib« KhrJldfJn ~ Philosopl1.y' of l-l~roF'y, London, 1957; }\ziz Al-Azmeh jIb" Khatdun, London, t 982;Tacrif Khalidi ~ Ambie Historical TIw'tt1ght in the C,'(J'$sica,l fuir!}d ,. Cambridge, 'l 994.

20+ Leslie R Hartley; The JGo-Bet<jNeen~ London, 1953;. David Lowenthal, The Pd~i is ~ ForeWt Country j Cambridge, ] 9B 5,

2; 'I + Erwin PanofikYI ~ The Pirst Page ofVasari'$ Libro ~ (] 93 9) j in Me~1\1,ing i" the Visual A,ts~ New York,. 195 7 ~ :[ 69-225 ~

22. Peter Burke, The R.a~tJi!tsanre SeflS(! ttl the Past!. London, 196"9: Rob-erta Weiss,. The Ren~i$$atut Dis~ry of ,Classical AntiqHity, Osfcrd, 196'9; Donald Kelley, FGHfidatioRS if Mtnlem I-listoriUl~ Scholarship; Cambridge, Mass+ l' 1 970+

23. Anthony Gl'aft(}n~ F(}~s a~l 'Critlc£, London, 1990.

24. 'Craig Cl unas, SUJjer.ftuG,~s Things. M~teri~i Cl\dlur.e EJft;d Sodal Status in E~fly MlOldern 'ChifuJ.~ Cambridge! 1'991 ~ 109~t5~

25. Benjamin A .. Elman, fum Phi1oso1rJhy tAli PhiLJ,logy. I"t(t.llrtCt~il1.1llf.1;d S()drdA~~pects OJ,ChaNge in Lae IfJl-peri~1 China;t Cambridge, Mass. ~ 1984.

26. ·0 n-C no, Ng, "Historicism in Chinese Thought" ~Journ~i r( the HistlJrt of Idt.t1S 54 (1[993) t 561- 8~·.

27 , Priedrich Meinecke, Die. Entstehuug des His tOfls'mus ~ M imchen 1936.~ Bngl, traasl. : Histotidsm, NewYo]'·k 1972.

28. Wilhchn \Vmdelbandl1 Ges,hi~te Uftd NatMfU)rue.mchqft! Berlin, 1894.

29, 'Gottfried Behrn, B'Udnis u~d Indiv,i.dHum~ Munich, 1985,; Peter Burke, "The Renaissance, mmtm ~ vidnalism and the Portrait' ~ HhttJrry r.if EHfopem'J, Ideas 21 (1995) i :3 93~~H)O.

30. Mj.chael Carrithers et al, eds, The Categof}' ,c/ the PaSOlf~t Cambridge, 1985.

31, Peter Burke, 'Strucenral History in the 16th and 17th Centuries', Stoei« della Stori.ogmfw 10 (j[986)~ 71.-6.

32.. Arnold I-I~user~.Phiios(Jphy lof Art Hi:sto.ry~ C1eve]~d~. 1963~ 120t '1124.

3::t Carlo Borghero, La tffteZZQ e in stosla. CtilfttsiaNesimojl 'pirronis~'nO e wnr)$te~.z-~ jt~riC4 ~ MUauj isss.

34. Lawrence Rosen, The Anthfopologr r! Justice. l..aiv (JS CHlture iH: ldafflic Sodr:tyt Cambridge, 1989.

35~ 36..

It. G. Collingwood, 11h! Id,e.t]. of Histal~.~ Oxfo1~i' 19146,

D. R. Tulley" 'History as a Calling, the Case of La P:op·e]ini~e j t in ReHaw~'~ce, Stf.idir:s in MIJiOr of Ham; Bamn! eds A. Molho and ], Tedeschi, Florence ] 971 ~ 773--89; ],(11' ~lohJ.nn Sl~n and the Origins of History as a Profession; !]ouflUll 0]- Modern Hi.~tory ~5.2 (1 9-80), 577 ~98.

Peter Novick, TI,at Noble D\P'e~rn . 11ft '€Ohjectivity 'QufSti~n' and the A.meric~~ H/stmico.i Pr~.iof1, Cambridge, 1988.

Alexander M.lttnlY~ RR~U()H a.nd Sodet}J in the Mi.ddlcAges~ Oxf01U~ ]97B .

"""01 .)0.

39. Francis Cornford, Thu'rydides M'1thistOfiCU$_" Cambridge, 19{~7 i cf Frank Walbank;. 'History and Tragedy' ~ Hi!rlfJ1i~ 9, (1 '960); repr, ,m, his Selecte'd Ptlpm; Cambridge 1l985,; 224~41l,

~o,' Peter Bt'llIkej 'The Rhetoric and Anti-Rheeorie of Hiseory' ~ in Ana»W"PhMf,~~ Jel Rket-{!lrikj ed.

Gerhard Schroeder et al. 'j Stuttgare, 1997 ~ 71-79.

41+ J. H, Brumfitt, Vo',lt~'i~ Hlstorio» C;>Xfordt 195B; Roland Barthes, "Historical Disccurse' (1967)~ repr, in SttudlJmli$~$~ 'edt. M+ Lane, London, 1l970j 145=S5; Burke, The ~et~ms,.~ana Sen..~e oj the

Pastll London, 19'c(.i9.. '

4 2,~ Leo Ih'aL1dy~ NIl'ffativf! Form i~ Hiswry and Fictionj, Princeton, j[ 970,

43. Northrop Fl"ye~ 'New Directions for Old" U 9tS:O)i repr, in his, Fables qf1drr.ntity, NewYotk 19\63~ 52-66;, Hayden V. \Vhite'j Metahistory. The HistONCiJ, Itn~iH4tio,~>t in Nitl.ettenth~ Century Europe~ Baltimore and l.on.don~ 1973.

44. An,~~8 Fletcher, A,llegory, I thacs, 1964,,,

45. Ernst Cassirer, Die platon/stllt: Rf'Hmss,ana' :in ErUland l' Hamburg, 1'9 32~ Engli&h translation: The

PlawNic RtnClUsatU;t in EJU,l~Hd~, Edmbi .. -u;gUl 1'9 53 ~

46. Michael Baxandall, Cwtto ~tul fJit Omton,~ Oxford, 1971 ~

47. Peter Burke,' Iistory as Allegory' ~ unpublished.

48. ICf. Earl Miner, CompQw~tiw P(}Jetics" Princeton, 1990~

,4'9. But cf.J.an."OslItv Prusek, 'lli~tory ~nd Epic in China and d'Ie'We.~e., Diogenes 42 (1'963)~ 20~4,3.

50. illvan Morris, TI'1e NfJbUity ~ F~i"uft. n~gic Heroes in the Histo'l'Y of JaptJn~ London, 1'975.,

51. Erich All,emach; Mit~esis~ Bern, 11. 946.

52. W. Franke, ~.H[]stori,cal W'ritin,g during the' Ming~'l1 'C~mbridge HiswfY of ,ChiNa 7~, ed. L+ Mote md, D+ l''\Vik:h.et~j, C~mDridge; 198811 ch. 1l2+

II: COMMENTS

I~'~~

• ': ••.• + " P , .1" '.', .' ,"

" _ ... - -.' ','-.- '-,'

P Ij- .. Hist ical An th 1

erspectrves In " rstoracat A I aropo ogy

KLAus E~ MULLER

A"S a rule, the gaze of the historian is, directed back into his or her OW11 history, But of late this gaze has been extending its field, roaming 'beyond its familiar landscape, seeking to co mprehend not only its own but also the ~ ~ foreign historical," and to draw the tatter into the arena of comparative examination. The eurocentric perspective is beginning to falter ,m·d could ultimately erode

Comparison has m[S, roots in the age-old attempt by the human being to bring order into tile diversi ty of the phenomena in his surroundings, I t is based 011 ethnocentrism: traditional societies wid} an intact identity; that is, a largely unified conception ofthe world, order phenomena as part of their own culture insofar as. t ey appear to be consistent with this culture, and exc] ude others that are inconsistent; often by way of deriding t11eID .. The Danish ethnologist Kt1f Birket-Smith (1893=1977) conjures up the image of ehe "first Stone Age D1.al1 who made the other members of his tribe Laugh by telling of the comical and incredible C LlS to rns of th-e neighboring horde~'''i The forms subsequently taken by this early, imagined amusement have been lnany and varied .. It is biased on 'tile sa.tisfyll'lg, inductively gained c ertainty that the correspondenc es and similarities which the gaze registers, fun .its· OWl1 ljrruted surroundlngs---=-the constant recurrenee of experiences-vjustifies the conclusion that they are IDinked by a C01TIrnonality, an "essential invariance" as Konrad Lorenz put ~,t2 ~ that is" me rule which accounts for their perpetuation in terms of'form and sequential order, In the view of the participant, the culture thus corresponds to an iron system of rules" which finds expression in a consistent, unified conception of the world,

bli h d d __ 1:: hl . a, 11' th .. f tl

esta S·: - es or er anc ~"llatrantees a relia • e oraentanon .. in _' e OpIID10l'l 0 tne

philosopher Karl Raimund Popper, there' exists a "tremendously powerful

".lI1~~ C h d hi h · that i '. d

neea lor sue, a system, a nee wmcr 15 so strong !at:mit sometimes oes not

"allow for the perception of existing regularities alt alL"3 However, ill around,

N-otes for this section em be found on page 5.0.

34·

beyond the borders ,of one's. own world, the forms 'become indistinct, mis ..... shapen; ever new, exotic experiences folmow one another, and, m proportion to the distance 'fi13m. the observer, an increasing cha-os. seems to prevail that does not adhere eo any rule at ill. In order to make this. at least comprehensible as an expression of~~anti~ol1:1ert" mt is defined as rudimentary, dev1wt or as degeneration, as. a distorted image or caricature of the well-proportioned form of one's own world: worthy of contempt, perhaps of amusement, but ultimately hardly of attention, let alone of'serious study-e-and if at all.then as. a difiuse silhouette of the sublime formal clarity of one's own culture, which is positioned at the center of the world"

The Greeks, too" saw themselves as inhabiting this center; locating it at dif ferent times in Olympia.in Delphi and in Ionia, depending on the origin of the author." The Greeks, moreover, were themselves already practiced ethnographers, as a result of their establishment of colonies and their trading and reconnaissance 'expeditions .. This compelled them to make comparisons, ill the process

. of which they consciously selected, What seemed to them above all noteworthy was that which conspicuously deviated from the Greek way of life; for 'it V/aB precisely here that they thought they were' able to recognize what was characteristic of a foreign culture .. Hippocrates. (c, 460~37.0 B·~C .. )" who not only acquired importance as a physician, but also as an ethnographer-e-undertaking research expeditions to; aanong o~l.er pm~ces; the territory of what is today Georgia-s-and ethnological theorist, reduced the principle to a fo rmu] a: "I intend eo depict only those peoples who differ fro·m one mother verr consid .... erably in terms of their nature and their customs, but to leave out of consideration those who exhibit a large degree of similarity'" . This approach was extended to create a system that differentiated foreign cultural peculiarities: the Mediterranean core area of the archaic civilizations was surrounded by COlle entric circles: with the first 'being' constituted by the peripheral peasant cultures, the next 'by the. nomadic societies of North Africa; Arabia and Scythia, for example, and the third, alit the outerme~st .·edge of the world, by the htln~ and gathering peoples of Africa, India and northern Eurasia, Corresponding to. this

. horizontal diffeTentiaticQ·n was a vertical concept of stages, giving rise to a picture' that was "three-dimensional," andwhich was also conceived of as a developmental pyramid-the axis. of which was in Hellas .. 6

In itself this VIaS .nothing new given the common identity-ideological selfawareness of traditional societies, according to which each 'ethnic group sees itself at the pinnacle of the developmental potential of all humanity; while the diverging forms of Iife of neighb . ormg peoples are comprehended as merely rudimentary prototypes or imperfect products of'processes of stagnation, f~ulty development or degeneration, 1 The Greeks were the first to develop a theory for this: the thesis=-already intimated in die work of Herodotus (c, 490-.430 B"C,,)8; and then reformulated conclusively 'by Hippocrates-+that there existed a determinative interrelation between geographical environment and cultural

35

development." The' systematic fiamework for this was provided by a corresponding theory of climatic zones) according to which the world was for the most part divided into three typical major spheres: a cold damp one ill: the north, a dry hot one in the south, and a. temperate changeable one in the Mediterrnn'ean central area. While the extreme conditions in the north al1d the south l) as mt were, paralyzed the people there; so mat they persisted in stages close to that of animals, it was only in the central sphere, wit!'! its benevolent but at the same time fluctuating and to that extent intellectually stimulating climate,

, .

that ill the conditions of a constant and progressive development pertained. to

Beyond the boundaries of Greek culture lived ," barbarians" ~literilly ~ 'babblers," human beings who do not have a command of a "proper" language-ewho, were varmous.~y categorized and seen as enslaved by the adverse conditions of their' environment. They were measured in Hellenic terms, Extreme cases 1Ne1'e constituted 'by the genuine "primitive peoples," The Mossynoics in the inaccessible mountainous northeast of Asia Minor, for example, appeared to

X lh d hi W..: ~~ ~ be ' ~ ul t d b .1L • ".~ 6' '" d ..

enopl ·Ot1 an .IS D.lCC to e partie : arlY raw anc ~. arnartc ..____,_, or- neir cus-

toms deviated tlle most from those of the Greeks" (AnabasisV 4) .. Hellenes who went among the barbarians, even settling M11.0ng them, could only degenerate; whoever had direct contact with them or went 50 far as to grant them incorporation into his o-wn homeland threatened the continued existence of the- cuI=· ture, 01 at least his personal ability to participate in mt~ Between barbarians and Greeks, as Plato (427 ~.347 E'.IC~) found, there existed a natural (physe~) antagonism. (Politeia 47.0 C)., Atbens, which" on the bias", of its. position, W-dS preferred and loved by the gods above all other regions of the earth, owed its. greatness to, the ",ery circumstance thac its inhabitants always remained "purely Hellenic arid separate from the barbarians .. '~ For that reason, they ha.d gro\Vll~;;s.o strong and healthy of nature't-e-into a race of people which "surpassed all other-s in intelIeee; (Menexleno$ 237 B, .... 23,8 B, 245 C~·D)';, any lasting contact W0111d have neeessarilv weakened their' noble breed and led to bascardization.Aristotle ('.'384-322

~ .

:B~C.) was, of exactly the same view 011 the basis of the central position of

Greece, he argued conclusively that its. population united ill it5,emi 011~y the merits of the barbarians living a .. round it: the co·urage and the yearning for mdependence of the' Buropeans (in the north) and the technical skill and intellectual prowess. of the AsmlS (in the east), For this. reason, according to .Aristotle, d·.u:~ Hellenes remained "merely continulilly' free." but also most importantly within a state order and would be able to establish rule over all other peoples, if they were united in a single state" (politics VII 7. 1327 b, 2.0«.) t Occidental erudition began to reveal its Janus. f:Joe.

The end of'the nineteenth century V{aS marked by the triumphal march of Darwinian thought, It had been preceded by pioneering S1.1CCeSS,eg in the natural sciences, which seemed all the more striking when their practical application proved capable of producing perceptible improvements in the quality of'life. The concept of development, promoted. above all by discoveries in geology and biol-

· · gl d ·_1£ C;'..J.~ '" h ". t, d" th lin

ogy;.lnCleaSllll y asserte rtsel .~. rJln'wng ats beightenec expression ill' e I' ear=

1 . .' 1:""1h:i· . d' t1 .. h h nl

evo unonary perspectrve, . S U1; eunx talse· tne quesaon as to W iet er not 0 y

natural history; but also cultural development was not necessarily to be comptehended as evolution, of whether cultura] history was not to be grasped as a part of natural history; and [thus as. governed by icon, 'universally valid laws.!' Elevated to tile status of a dogma, the idea immediately assumed a. dominant role in the ethnology of the time. EdW3J}d Burnett Tylo'r (1.g32~1917); one of the leading

1.. k r , •. :ru .. :~ 1 · 11 (" 1'· . ~:!I ~ t1 · ".

t arm ,ets Of ,eUHIO olg:u::al.1 evo utiorusm, gp(lle expreS110n. to' 1l1S convtctton:

To many. educated minds there seems something presumptuous and repulsive in the view that the history of mankind is part and parcel of the history of nature, that our thoughts, MUs and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govtl"n the motion of WThVe$, the combinaeion of acids and bases, and the growth of plants

and animals, 12 .

One eonsequen(>e of this VV'aiS that a ran.ge of invariant antecedent conditions could now also be presupposed 'Within the cultural and histerical sciences One such. condition had its rooes ill the Enlightenment: it was ,gene-rally postulated that all human beings were of'the same psychological and intellectual predisposition.P Prom this was deoci¥ed the postulate that there existed everywhere in the world at least the tel .dency for the development of similar, if not corresp ending ideas :111-d instituti 0118, that is; at tendency for unitary -evolutionary development .. TIle history of human society, according to thee Scottish·et"bll01ogistjohn Ferguson Mcl.ennan (lS27-1881)t''is that of a development following very closely one general law;' n,~

However, this appeared 'to run counter 'to the fact that all known cultures in part diffe:red very considerably fr1).m one another. Here the second invariable carne into ,play, supplemented by a" range of variable additional conditions: for the evoluticnists, the instsumentum regium for th-e explanation of'cultura] variance was constituted by the Darwinian principle of selection.james Georgie Frazer (1854-194 my, another leading representative 'Of evolutionism, was certain "that . in tile competition between forces". whether in tal physical or menta respect, the strongest on the whole asserts ;ntseillf and the fittest survives. ~ ,. when all is said and done it is the berter ideas, which we- describe as truth, which. emerge victorm,ous~'~'l5 At a secondary level; factors seen as contribueing to the divergence of courses ofdevelopment were ehe necessity ofadapting to. different environments, proeesses of diffiision and migration, ~ (1 wars (as an instrument of seleccion) i 7 ---even racial varieties, Indeed the latter view was one shared without exception by all evolutionists. 1 S If the principle of selection itself already exhibited a certain Iack of consistency with the postulate of equality; the latter \VaS thoroughlyviolated by the addition of racialist explanations,

Both were based mn eurocentrism, a phenomenon that Peter Burke rru.ghtly argues should be seen in relative terms.Added to this was anothercentral thesis of evolutsonisrrr, according to which all cultural development, in accordance

37

with biological evolution, in principle progressed from simple to. ever more differentiated and complex forms. The Eure-American nations were themselves regarded to be tile obvious proof of this: they represented the historically highest degree of cultural complexity and consequenrly occupied the leading position among the peoples of the world-e-and deservedly so; since in the

'" .. '. b bili ~ "~tl h d ~ ak bI" d vi

, compention between ,a '" l(t1es lley ,a ' unmist ~a " y em'erge' victorrous as

ehe "most capable" of' an .. The principle of selection-e-a naturally inherent "developmental constant" according to the biological model-e-provided them with ehe "scientific" confirmation of this", Since it was grounded in. biology, this principle could not leave the body unaffected: the Europeans were necessarily also members ofa superior "race," Lewis Henry Morgan (1818=188t)~ highly admired (and "parroted") by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, included in this

. "" lbei ...... 'II; iall t1 "S' ~.~, n t1 " Ii ~"'"' n I

category+-at eu amy parns y-- ae "" eminc as weu as 11e" ~.u.'yan race, n

b rl 1 1 IlL dt h 'I' ~ f h ~!I' c.... ....1t •.

0., 1 ae ce ebraeer t .e mam streams 0 'tl1TIc111 progress,;, felLerrln,g to mem

h .ttl:.c: d f [ haic] + ill" + + , ~ 19 L f ~ ... ..3 hi .

as t e lOUD ers o ~ar,c aic cmv zanon, ater, 0: course" ieaaers ' lP was

"assumed by tile MJlm family ,alo,rHe~~'20 which from then on constituted the' "central stream of human progress, because it produced the highest type of mankind, and because it has proved its intrinsic superiority by gradually assuming control of the earth,,";21 According to his. American compatriot, the political scientist john William Burgess (1 :84~4~ 1931 ); only the Aryan &H~ e possessed "that

'. hi h ha ~ ':'l!,_ '. "'22 I .. + ~'l· d rr~,H c.

gelllUS W· C r s ipes crvtnzatron. us superior mtelngence an ' girt tor g'OV~

ernment predestined it, also in 1Y1ors opinion, to control of the world, 23 Others tended Co express tb.emselves even more bluntly,; the claim merely changed according to tile nationality of the author, ~'I maintain," declared Cecil 'Rhodes (18S.3~1902)~ who was president of Cape Cokmy from 18'90 unti11896 and Wl101 expanded the British "colonial possession" in southeastern Africe to include Bechnanaland and the area late'! named after him as Rhodesia, "that we ate the worlds fu"St race, and that the more of this, world we rule, the better it is fOI' the entire h uman race . ~ ~ What a dream! And yet mts realization is possible,"?"

The apparently elevated position. of the Euro-Arnerjcans was seen as based on nature '5 gift of a superior gen,etic make-up, favored by their central position ill temperate latitudes and hardened in the test of natural selection, and thus their claim to centro] of the world appeared to be predestined by thee laws of nature, an act of providence, Naive ethnocentrism had ,effec€iveffiy stylized itself into a scientifically legitimized, xegaDy clad eurocenrrism.

Little wonder then, that science '\"VaS given credence- to' an almost unlimited extent. Even social problems, it was thought, could, with certainty be mastered with its help", Condoreet had already made a claim to this, effect, 2S Malthus had envisaged a previously underrate-of'refining of tile human body and intellect, lasting peace and an endless life=expcctancy.26 Anld Tnotsky saw in. science the possibility ·of forming a human being Wl10 would b .. e "incomparably stronger, cleverer and more refined' than the present one: "his body will become more harmonic, his movements more rhythmic and his. voice more

musical": even average persnru would "raise themselves to the level of'Arisrotle, _ Goethe and Marx .. "27 Decades earlier, Herbert Spencer (1820~1903) had decreed even more apodicticallyr'rhe d·evelopment of the ideal human being is. logically certain-e-as certain as every illogical conclusion to which VIe can give absolute credence ~,.t22

But what = f other no ~ E1II1· .... 0p M n hum ~ "l 'IIn, b M1" " Or-:t' tho "11i'""f.'l"1:T.FI" .......... ,c~ ". "1i"Ji~

'" I, . 0 c' !;.:;; . ,. .,1. m:l= 11I-i.J_1· \ ' .. ~a . , . . I ~ • .IIL ,',.... nb.,;JI, e' lUi VT ..... r JL~. I!;"S !Ii '111 V.I. """

they '00 have a, part in the paradisiacal future; or had they not been ~ong since

)] d by th -. ~1 f" al el ~ n·'9.Th f '

concemnec U)' '_ 'e pitn ess courr 0-' natur, ' s ecnon r . ey, 0 course, were to

be measured against the standard of the E mop,em typ e, "The educated world of Europe and. America," according to Tyillot; "practically settles a standard by simply placing its O~ nations at one end of the social series and lavage' tribes at the ,other,t'29 "Deposited' and ingrained there by the logic of ethnocentrism-eaccording to which 011:e;S own reality represents the summit 311d thae which

. .,.l':'«; L ~ th 1 . th -~ ld nl ,i.\.~..c. .:1" f

moot curers II om mt ~ .' e owest pcmt-« ey COw.: 0 ' y appear as lOS su S 0 ear-

Ii ~ '} ,,~ d ~ "'" 1 30' ~1b k rd ~.~ 31 · ~ - f -_ ...... 1

er, ower . evetopmental stages". 3.,~., ac twa ' •.. ~ POt)f in terms 0 cuiture

mel, hi Darwinian terms, fatted by runt of the mechanism of selection to be completely erased from. the earth" 32

But the' heart of the world was ruled by an. inexorable impetus .. According to the eurocentric perspective, combined wieh the basic criteria of evolutionlsm, this had to appear' as. a single linear pro cess of 1P10greSSit011 in order to :sa-dsfjr the required postulate. of continuity It is this view of things which Peter Burke

d "b (ililth' '" ill th bvi ch ~ ~ f

escrtbes as me most rmportant.iorat Jcast ' e most 0 zious cnaractensnc 0',

Wes;tern historical thought" (Thesis 1)~ However, whether intentionally or not; this suggests that what we are addressing here is 'a specific quality of"Wesre·m peoples,,"33 In fact, the ab·oVe merely represents an extreme variant of the identity .... ideological-s-in this case eurocentric-ejustification for priori tization,

TraditionaJ agricultural village societies were as, a rule based on' kinship associations. (lineages, clans) ~ were of easily comprehensible sizes ofbetween 80 and 200 members bound together by strict rules of reciprociey, were for the lL1IlOSt part economically autarkic, politically autonomous and, due to their settled existence, could develop and hand dGM1. consistent theories of nature based on unchanging experience, TffiUs constituted the precondition for the systems of

1.. + d '111 oil.. ... thei , .... 1 ,..J -~,._. •• d f b 'L. '

exp ammng anc .w.egtt1J.m1Z1ng l .' err SO·CIa! oraer, ms,nmbons~ an ". norms 0 cenav-

ior remaining as comprehensible as they were incontestable .. Since such societies, were, moreover, relatively isolated from one another, they became differentiated over time in this sense, similar to 11' species" in biology-e-forming cultural individualities with fixed contours and an optimally unifying identity, kept stable by a t311g·e 'Of integrative and supportive mechanisms (mutual confirmation and affirmation~ demarcation from the outside world, rigorous traditionalism) .. One conseq uence of this was the fiction of an uninterrupted continuity strecchjng back to the beginning oftime and the conviction that my serious infringement of a norm could at the same rime endanger ehe functional capacity of the w hole, that is" place the existenc e of all at risk,

39

In identity -theoretical terms traditional agricultural societies to this extent constitute ideal-typical model groups,; whose generally corresponding characb,~'ristics-i~ e., those not environmentally or historically conditioned-e-seem open to generalization as a ~y of ' also gaining a. better understanding of other societal forms insofar as they fulfill roughly comparable conditions-e-for instance, comprehensible size, at fixed location over at least 'three generations CO~ operation, a common culture and tradition C~bistory~')4 These can then b,e' understood in analytical terms as atrophied" mixed or hypertrophied forms of the identity- theoretical ",r standard groups,'

A principle feature of tllile id.eoillogy of identity is the tendency to render one's own sense ofself-worth absolute. Groups with an intact consciousness of identity tend to, regard the w:IY of life- that has, been handed down eo them to be the best possible". the ultimate form of all conceivable human realizations of being .. Such groups regard themselves as, located at the center of the world; the only place where ideal climatic conditions prevail, and claim to descend in a direct line filJ'm the first human being, who received life (vitality, and free spirit) at precisely this lOC31hOfl1, directly from the creator. Accordingly, ethnic designa-

'" ~ ..... 1L." th I" 1U... bei "34 & '"'- th jl;,," 1

tions m n.tnany Ca.8'eB mean notmng more .nan numan ,ewgs~ l-i5 e c ao-

::;=-:J 11 '" th .' ~~ L e: f~ G''''II ...11: Th B .JI ' el

sen, one s own peojple enjoy e parncutar ravor 0,' ,', oc, e r onoo ill i ae

Indian State of Orissa understand themselves "as the first-born ofthe whole of humanity; the rest constitute parvenus.~~~:l'; A member of the Limbu p eople IT! eastern Nepal explained the Limhu view of the world to Rex and Shirley Jones as follows: "In the center are the Limbu, because this. is our maud and our home We are number one<oH36 According to Plato, as. cited above, this role befitted only the A,thenians~ 111. the name of early Christendom.justin "the Martyr' (second century) claimed: (~We are a holy people ~. ~ 110,t a barbarian tribe or an ethnic mass, like the Carians or tile Phrygians, but God's chosen~~"31 In the prologue to the Lex Salica (R.ecensi,o' Pipp'ina) the Franks boast of'themselves as, an "illustrious people, founded by God the Cre~tor,~"38 while the Byzantines understood themselves as the only ones endowed with Gold;s blessing."

The ideology of identity; that is, ethnocentrism, has a necessary complement, its dark side, so to speak, It follows from the absolutizing of self-worth that everything differene found ill the ethnically foreign external world; that is,

'i""'IIj: ..... rl . ...:t. - ...l~ • di + '~. ~ ... ..!Ii f b . nl

ever Y Hung um.at stands ill contra tenon to one s O'\1Vll orner 10' oemg, can 10 ' Y

ap'pear as inferior, as a product of rudimentary or "abnormal" devciopm.elnt, a quality magically proportional tOI the degree of deviation, A tendency exists to "belittle' ~ the exotic-s-tools and! technologies are dismissed as limited mn their usefulness and "'l1\W:'~ customs and ideas as ridiculous, absurd or repulsive, and the

. I bt 1 d ill db' IF . • ~. .~" ~ ~ ;.; E . . h

pe,o]p e memse ves are .' .. ec are to .. e prtmnrves or savages, xistmg on t e

periphery of tile viewer's respective field of vision; they appear to occupy a position next to, that of animals .e The instances of such categorization are Iegion, "When questioned by Hans Nevermann, a group in New Guinea declared that their name was Uir (men or human beings): for, as they added dismissively; "the

40

th ib f d '. f al h 1b ,. n~ Th K ..

o er ttl es, 0 'COl1XSe", _:0 not c PDSlSt 0 rea wnan.·eln,gs ~ i ne r urnai 111'1

southeastern Australia b·illul1tly described their neighbors of. fOllrei;gn origin as ~!ls,avage;';'(b,-qjerak),,~~1 Others, such as ehe :pygnfn,es in the C,ong,o~42 the Isanzu in

Tamlzan.ia.,1r,3 or the Munduruku in north-eastern Braztl categorized them even

'" • ,iT"j'~ ~~ •• - ~~~ :!i·:!i·44 E h ~.·1~ b d

more uncomprorrnsmgry 31S, animals. urcpeans r ave aiso ieen groupe·-.·

within the ethnic anti-world, To the- Trobriand Islanders (New' Guinea) they ap-peared to. be mistakes of creation, to be ~~erippmes·t~'45; me Washo in Nevada

describ e them with an expression (mwJuege) usually used to refer to wild animals." III China "ehe simple equating of bar bar lim and animal when referring to non- Chinese remained all established commonplace in the- two millennia of the iUtnp erial period,' t4i Aristotle proved the "fact" 'with the following syllogism:

~ the l b + ". 1..:.,,.. b · hi I ..

smce .re .ruman bemg "ts ";11 nature a,emg w s c 1 asplllreS to a stare commn-

mty,,""~ other forms of'Iife which exist" external to all stare community by nature' and not due to accidental circumstances" can only be either more o[,"less than a human being't-e-spiritual beings lor animals (Politics I ~~ 1253 ,a; 1£[)!

Societies with some dleg~·ee of unity and stable identity have ~ conception of the world that is composed of two antagonistic spheres: the endosphere of ones OWl'! world, the only-sphere in which human existence a.ppears as ide-.ally . realized, is surrounded by all outer-worldly exosphere, which represents the former's negative counterimage and is accordingly ruled by pernicious, destructive forces, 43 This, point of view allows for comparison only ins-ofar as itt serves, the demonstration of one's own uniqueness; it thus tends to amount to H constructed. dissimilarity"

In Europe, endospherical development merely took a very special, almost extreme course, one characterized by an exponential increase in the wealth. 'of differentiation :pro cesses of all Dl1.ds~ E t follows fi'Um this that every transfer of information or goo-ds has to pass through considerably more systems and' system gt'"nl1pl5 than in less differentiated cultures, :i .. e., is subjected toa correspondingly

1 + hl., - b -- f"'d ~ffi- ~ t,. - d " i-..G.. ......... ~ a_' .,.,. [ ~ - -- • ill this di -

mgner num er o: .: 1 racoon 31"1' retraction ettects. It ts precise y .1 - IS, arver- .

sity; and therefore apparent "mobility" ofevenrs which" when transferred into a temporal perspective, gives th . e deceptive impression of an acceleration of even'ts,,,49 & a co-nse-q_uence-, EUropeans experience their history as imbued with a particular dlynamism~ Synthesized with. the ideologemes of eurocentrism, this gives rise to the belief that "progressiveness ~.~ is a specifically European property which Iegitimizes presumption and possibly entails- the obligation to engage in a mission of enlightenment,

Diversity of development means "history;" 11l1L the exospherical external world, where, measured against the central area, hardly anything seems to change or to, "move," people are pinned down by sragnation, According to Leopold von Ranke, those lli.ving there were "the peoples of an eternal. standstill" (die Volker eines €Wigen Sti llstandes) '" It would be ab SLl rd, he argued, to- take them as ~ starting point "in order to grasp the internal movement [!] of world history [!] ~"50 Such peoples, as analogousl y formubted. by Kurt Breysig, were "peoples of an eternal

•

primeval timle~tt51 The historian could consequently disregard them, As an expression of the eurocentric ideology of'identity, Ranke and, Breysig were cereainly not the first to, champion this conception. Otto von Preising (c, 1112~ 1158) provides an example, Comparing Christians and non-Christians Clews and Heathens"), he comes to the conclusion that the former make up "all the more significant states; while the latter are insignificant 110t only before God" but also before the world"; there were "hardly ally of their deeds which- would, be worthy of mention and which would merit being passed 011 to p.ostefity~"52

Interest in the savage world was only aroused once profitable treasures. began to beckon .. , This. incursion took place without the slightest scruple.After ill" thee treasures were located=-according tOI the linguistic usage of the ,tmme-----

'"' :iii! 'iii b d d" 1_-<-.d53 +th ~ + th a, Th

01'1 " empty or' at ani one: laIl' ~Wt. out pel0jpJie 111 t ie gent.un,e sense, . il e

English mathematician, biologist Wid socialist Kar] Pearson (1857-1936) described those found there as follows: "The path of human progress is strewn with the dec.aying bones of old nations, everywhere we can see th'e traces ~eft behind by inferior races, the victims of those who have not fouu·d the narrow path to perfection.TThey could nevertheless console themselves with. the fact that they had formed "the steps upon which humanity has risen to- the higher intellectual stage of contemporary life," 54 Yet it was to be 1eJq? ected that in the near future the further ascent of "those who had reached perfecticn" would leave them behind crushed underfoot,

However, there were still quite a few breathing; indeed, they appeared astoundingly vigorous. Given their nnmbers, the option of annihilation, although often considered .and partially practiced, did not really ofter itself as an operable solution. Thus, there remained the choice of training and enslavement or the civilizing P'l'OCesS, The colonial powers had the all thority to ellg.age in both on tile grounds 'Of their b eing of a higher species, "We are,' as. an A_meri;." can senator of the time (AJbert J .. Beveridge) put it, "a conquering race, we must fo]]]lmv the command ofour blood .. ! ~ O-ur skill in the art of govetmnent is a gift

c.: G" d th d il 1 ~'l' H+ ~ . tl

rrom .'. ,0 so . at we em govern savage an, ' servt e· peop es~ .. IS, compatnot, i ae

historian James Kendall HOSUl,er (1834~ 1927)" expanded on this: "Anglo-Saxon mstitutions.Anglo-Saxon thought and the- English language will have to become principle features of the political, social and in telle ctual life of humanity.,t;55

There was general allg:reemenl" on the use of training; it accorded with the nature of the savages, which approximated to that of annnals, The Indians, Chinese and Malays. had already drawn a distinction between "wild" and "tamed" barbarians .. 56 The gteat Islamic philosopher of hiseory Ibn Khaldun (1J,3.2~ 1406) argued-e-like many oehers-+ehat it "\!VaS, more reasonable- to ace ustom the s,ava.ges to meaningful labor; such as carrying 110 ads, than to let them sit brooding impassively or to conduct costly wars of annihilation against them, !}']' Slavery was a universal phenomenon,

The civilizing process appeared more problematic, Some ,gave it no chance at alL In the case of the Africans there were particular doubts.Voltaire estimated

42

Contewts

their intellect to be !i~ considerably lower" than that of Europeans, and as simply "incapable 'of operating with- ideas in any discriminating fashion, or of forming connections between th.em .. "5g .]11. their work; TWes ,oj Maf'tkind {]854}"1 the American physical anthropologists J.,C., Nott and G.R~ Gliddon expressed the conviction that Black Africa was populated by people "whose mtellect is as dark as til e ir skin and whose cranial structure makes every hope of fiiture improvement appear to be a utopian daydream .. " The German cultural .historian Friedrich von Hellwald (1842=1892) rounded off the' assessment with the categorical declaration; "The negroes can be trained but not educated};S9

Others had. at least made the attempt; they had held out their hand to the savages and had success+-: in making them into human beings, a result which was of eOUI'Se exclusively due to the' fact that the necessarily iron hand, as the British historian Jo hn Beattie Crozier (1849~ 1921) puts it,' took hold "disguised and softened by the patemal gmove.;~6(l This had already belen practie,ed by the' Romans ill exemplary fashion when they Romanized large parts . of the barbarian world. Later all even more elevated motive was added .. The church father Clemens of Alliexan dri a (second century) was able to promise the barbarians that aSI soon as they had "feeed themselves from then- existence as animals d1tOUg11 transformation, through belief in the Lord," they would become "God's people" (Stromateis VI 50) ~

There was, yet another motive, the culmination of all others, as it were: "With the civilizing process the savages abo, received the gift: of the. capacity for history. In this. sense 'Tacitus (Co, S.5~! 20 A.D.) is, quite consistent in having' the history of Britannia in Agrico,la (c, 13-17) first begin with the Roman occupation .. In classica! Islamic historiography, events 31110ng those of a. different faith received attention only when they "came into direct contact with the Islamic world~;;"fH On the hand of their cokmial masters even the "underdeveloped" stepped out of the darkness that had case a shadow on them into the circle of'lighr of'world history" -ini tially into the peripheral area of' II co ill onial history" There they have recently been tracked down by "historical ethnology;" which only grants them history insofar as it is, attested m written form--------vrith means of documentation oftC~Wes.tern;~ provenance. That which precedes this in time' had already b lee 11- dismissed 'by the functi onalists as "conj ecnrral history"

P B k h ~~1Il "hi '. al __ 1 H fth ith

eter urxe compares t . e generai .. rstorics culture 0' ie present WI .

the practice of'pa ~ nting, which, while regionally differing, is. overlaid worldwide by the general criteria of the profession together with its possibilities of alternative options, Lmyself would suggest that ,3, large studio be envisaged in which a master goes froln easel to easel and guides the differentlliy colored hands of his pupils-e-sc adroitly that they believe themselves to be painting ..

TITe drawing up of the. "General Declaration of Human Rights'; by the United Nations (119'48) was influenced in no small lP,~t by American ethnologists-s-above all Melville jeal! Herskovits (1895=1963)" who exercised a decisive influence on the draft declaration presented by the American Anthropological

Association, which in turn had a fundamenta] influence on tile formulation of

h "de 1 + ,." Tl d · + ~ ... d " f th

t e, C aranon. ae c OCU1Tle:nt VJaS uncompromtsmg In mts a option [0 ' e

prin.cipl'Co1 of" cultural relativism," The term "WaS coined. by Herskovits himself who was also the most consistent representative of the concept associated with it. It implied that all cultures represent individual, unique and thus noncompatable units of self-worth th~t were to be comprehended exchisively in terms of their own conditions, te.; which could he neither legitimately nor adequately

judged by others.,62

This represented a visible and hopeful step in the direction of the "de-barbarization' of the' "primitive" and Col onial peoples, Moreover, there' were already models that it could refer to.The pioneering forerunner of cultural relativism, the American ethnologist Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) acknowledged the orientation of her work to. [German traditions, Her work drew in particular on that of Herder, 'Wil01 had emphatically championed the thesis that ,every culture ,pos=sessed its own jntrinsically valuable individuality and historical uniqueness and was therefore incommensurable with others .. 111 Herder's view" the re,(l5011 for this was to be found in the action of varying enviro nmeneal conditions, whi ch shaped culeures in differellt VJays .Every people thus possessed a specific "naeional character" (or volksgeist-=-tlle~l'spirfut of the people"), which lent all its forms of cultural manifestation (social, moral, artistic; religious) their ,typical, uni tary fornlll~ giving aspect. But Herder was also a European m,d thus could not resist taking this bold concept further. He integrated it into a universal "doctrine ofdevelopment," according to which not only evel'y people" but also humanity in general underwent (by divine willl) ~ quasi-biomorphemic process of growth that began with "childhood," passed through phases of""boyhood,l!~ and "youth," reached its apex in the phase "manhood" and then entered a phase of decay, the phase' of "extreme old age,,;; In this model, S2lvages, are located at the level of childhood,

while Europeans O'CCllPY the highest point-e-i'at the top of the tree" (auf detn

Wipftl des Baums)-with,Qout showing any recognizable signs, of the onset of senility,63 The boldness of cultural relativism expired under the weight of eurocen ~ trism, and the advent of evolutionism was heralded,

Nevertheless, the ~~ JIO'lksgeist idea" lived on in the shadow of evolutionism, with which it \VaS incompatible, Scholars such as the legal historian Karl von Sa(V~ igny (1779~1861), the ethnopsychologise Heymann Steinthal (1823=1899),~, ID'e philosopher Wilh,elm Dilthey (1833~ 1911)~ ID,e ethnologist Adolf'Bastian (1826~ 1905) and the sociologists Alb,ert Eberhard. 'von Schaffle (1. 83 m ~ 1903), Paul von Lilienfeld (lB29~1903), Ludwig Gumplliovicz (1838~1909)' among others remained committed 00 it, also in conceptual terms~'64 At the same time, it provided the legitimatory basis for 'ID,e emergent nationalism of that era, entering into an il.=fated ruhanoe"Mdt the evolutionism that constituted the driving force behind the inflation of this nationalism into. the European conceit of supremacy

Peter Burke's support for the concept of relativism is both decisive and welcome: "People feom different cultures have differene conceptions of time and

44

space," Europe is only one case a.I11.ong others.The problem; according to, Burke, is determining what is specific to. its particular character, He sees consistent cultural comparison as a fundamental means to t11]'S end

However, strictly speaking, relativism excludes comparison, which of course rests on the proposition of possible ,CO mmo nali ties, Furthermore, the requirement that cultures be comprehended solely on the basis of their own conditions can only lead to circular explanations. The "liberal ~,. dicrum of postmodern authors that each culture has its own "truth" is thus consistent, l~)ut the

• + h d · h hi th ~ 65 I· . ~i

question remains as to w . 0 can c et~rmme w iat tr ·,S ·t.rU·~" IS;' t is precisely

here that one finds a fundamental self-contradiction within cultural relativism in general-s-it formulates a thesis that claim's' generalvalidity something which does not accord with its 0W11 premises ~,iS;6 And mt should 110t be forgotten that the

. .

entire construct is a product of Euro-American thought, and in this sense was

U ib d" th U . d N""· 0 . tho ~ b d 1

pl"CSlcn ec to e t .. lute, an 0 TIS.. c· . nee agam, . 'is is .: ase on an+-at east-

crypto-eurocentric claim, one which Justin Stag). interprets more radically as,

constituting a type of power dictate, 67. .

In physics relativism is based 011 the demand that there 'be .no privileged observer with reference to both space .and time~.6H given the known premise that the same laws of nature apply in all cases at all times, [11 the case of'human societies, at least the first postulate is excluded, since these societies are always-+and for good. reason-e-hierarchically structured" Physicists are also members of societies; and some of them, q ill te C011.tJ."arY to the principles of relativism, understand themselves as being "privileged observers'l-e-they are in this, case victims of th "...... .r, '". entric' ~. poi t 69

e acaoemoc .ILl.. rc view om ..

A dilemma remains .. Cultural relativism takes the sting ,out of ethnocentrism, but irt is .. to be understood more as an appeal than M an explanatory theory; it is capable of explaining neither ethnocentrism nO·I· itself Even more quesrionable is tile fa,ct "that it drives cultures into the isolation or~monadically organized individual systems:~70 a form·of overstatement that renders them as genuine singularities, which as such are neither comparable nor capable of explanation.

Singularities can lb·e "facts" that carl be played off against ill too, bold conceptional constructs. At tJle end of the nineteenth century; the critique of evolutionism began, drawing on the increasing wealth of material being brought to light by archeological finds, ethnographic field research and archivalresearch.?" There was a desire to, know "how it actually W3Sr" Peter Burke has. shownthat such demands were already being expressed before Leopold von Ranke's time .. Only now though. did research JPrese~t the possibility of providinga convinoing resp1otu,e to the appeal, Dilthey; a student of Ranke, declared that the goal of science could only be that of aspiring to advancing knowledge of the realon the basis of experience, "All. science," according to Dilthey's credo, "is experiential science" (aile Wts~lenschtift Lsi Eifahr.ungswissens(.h~). 72 The N eo- Kantians Wilh·ehn Windeffiband (1:84-8=1915) and Heinrich Rickert (1863-19,36) provided the p hilosoplrical -systematic foundatiorl for this claim .. Historical knowl-

45

edge, argued the latter" solely concerned the recording "of the unique event hilt terms of ehe individual course it takes ~~' 73 while, according to Windelbanld, natural science \VaS concerned with ~~ establishing, collecting and assimilating its facts only from the standpoint of and for the purpose 'Of understanding the genera]. maws to whim these facts are subject,"?" Natural science considered "the

~ 111 C. ~~ h th bi f th hi '~ l' "th

i::Uways. constant rorm, w e·reas . . e object 0 . e istoricai scmences "Ylas . e

'" . all d fi d f th ~ '1 ,.!II th U hi h h

Ulllque mterna y ue nee content 0' 1.I.e teal event - ai[··w H: once was,

In the former case, he spoke, as 1~ well known, of"'nomothetict"'" in the latter of

,c: + li hi ." ~ ~ 15 n.::: 111~' • ~ hil ~ ~. . ,. el

]C ograp ic sciences.': L'...J1Cl!.\-ert S posiuon, w .' ; e anaiogous, mote pr,ecnls_' y

addressed the em rural sciences: "The cultural smgnificaJ1c,e of a reali ty is not based on that which lit shares wieh oilier realities, but precisely on that which distmguishes i~ from thern '". ~ Indeed, the cultural ~~igruficanoe of an obj ect commonly increases the more exclusively the cultural value concerned is tied

I disti .. s: . L_ bi :Hi76

to t :I'e· • nncnve torm glven to tnato '~~ ect,

Tt....:: ' ~ ~.1 d . .c.:.~ ,,, hetic" I' ~ ........ ..J .... th

lUS SlgtLdJ.e, a turnmg away nom nomot etic evo. utionrsrn towards e

individualizing, "idiographic" historicisrn orientaeed to facts that Friedrich Meinecke; for example, lauded as ,~~ one of the greatest intellectual revolutions, which occidental thought has undergone .. H77 Here too, Peter Burke rightly casts this in relative terms (Thesis 3) ~ His reference to the fact that the l~O[JnO~ thetic and idiographic traditions of thought ]pro ceeded parallelli at least fronrJi antiquity onW1UUs, that individualizing tendencies. can thus be proved to have a long history; also in cultures outside Europe, somewhat blurs the contours. defining why, when and. under what concrete conditions one or the other assumed a dominant position. The· implications and consequences flowing from this are also worthy of consideration ..

In spi te of the empirical character of this "factual research;' -it "WaS not free of irrationalities, Individualities are not open to explanation.This can be remedied, it is believed, by connecting certain of then'! with one mother where they exhibit proximity to' one another temporally 0,1" spaually, where they allow tlte·

. '" fl' I ~ ..... ~I I l' .. :L r· , ,

recognmon a. a re atronsmp, a causa; connection on t ae grounos 0 SJn1.1-

larities .. 78 Taken itt itself,. such an assumption is anything but compelling: this would be the case only if the "event" referred back to a minimal amount of invariant antecedent conditions-e-only then would mt occur' repeatedly, thus standing in contradiction to the postulate of individuality There are nevertheless. reasons. for positioning related or similar phenomena in relation to one another-e-rcasons, that however; ap·pe.ar to precede historical considerations. David Hu:me defined them :IS universal "principles of conceptual combination": one of these employs the criterion of't:res.embmanoe,'~ another that of spatial 0 r tem p oral proximi ty, or "c on tiguity," 79 1-1i5 S cottish comp atr iot, the previously cited ethnologist james George frazer, was able to sh-ow that what is involved here are the two fundamental principles of magic: the-e-as he :P1D.IUt

• "':.'11 ... , f similaritv" d' th "~1 f ~ ;;~im p ch 1 .

It-LaW 0 - Sl' ; anry ano . e ~w 0. contact or contagaon. ' SY" 0 ogists

whom have specifically looked into the principle of contiguity, and who have

46

thereby been able to provide the clearese proof of its effectiveness in experimental terms, describe it as, 4~ a significant. and deeply rooted characteristic of tl1ougbt," which gives rue to "apparent d,ependencem';S]

If several events axe linked in a ,~.equenc,e; ~ chain of dependence is funned, each link of which increasingly strengthens the others; the impression emerges, of

. W,~ ~ " 1~, . d + ~", ~" ""Th III h

a sertar, quast= J.aw-golve:rne succession, an apparent ICon tntlllty.. " .. ' e. ~on.ger t : e

sequence, the more reliab e the connection, and the more established the position. of the governing link~unil1terru:pted continui .. ties have ~ legitimizing function ..

This, function increases with the significance of the first link, which. founded the sequence and Ient it the "causal thmst" ul"on which legidmization is established, Divine ancestors, . he gemonic genealogies, heroes aLS· creators of important institu tions, legendary eli ty founders, founders of religions and "forerunners' al[ stand. for this, European scholars have referred-v-as Peter Burke note.t--to the scholars .. and intellectual traditions of antiquity (and not only Moe the Renaissanc e) r In antiquity itself traditions circulated according to which great minds such as Pythagoras, Thales of Miletus, Eudoxos of Cnidus and Pta\1[o traveled to the Orient to, learn fiom the "sages' there (among them Zarathustral), 82 The Copts claim to be the "racially pure successors n of the ancient Egyptians .. &3. Islamic Somalis claim. to be the oldest representatives of their faith on the basis that Adam, from whom they claim. eo be' descended "in art uninterrupted line of succession," was the first Muslim to walk the earth84- here too, the evidence is legfuon~ .

TIl ~.~ .. f th .,..Co , ,." h h 1 ~, f- I ]" Alb 1 N h =

·e· questron 0 me nrst, Slays rr e sc ··C u ar 0" SUUl1. '-, orec It'', or ,.; is

"quite legitimate and also fundamental for the modern historian," There are writings in Islamic literature ko:n[l the middle of the ninth century "in which the exclusive fo cus is the question of the initial instance, applied to ,3. wide :range of areas"; the beginnings of such an approach can be found from the seventh century onwards .. The concern here is with determinmg, for example, who first forced his way into a defeated ·city~ who first killed a Persian, who the first cornrnander was to advance into, Syria, who first constrncted a two-story building in Cairo, Wl10 first forbid the 'wearing of VTe burnous a- 85

TIlle search for the p'ritrUi causa holds a particular fascinaeion-e-due '00 both. its primary causal and its legitimarory functions; if the "origin' is named, it is believed that one is beeter able to understand, indeed explain the subsequent course of development, including the final result, The well-known French paleontologist and prehistorian Andre Leoi-Gourhan ~r-esses the conviction that

-' - U ~ r! ' ~, d ~ 1 ill U! .... 1_ f h de el r m " ~1.: ~ ~ ,." tl ~

since earnest tnnes. an ,at,~ revers 0 . It e •. , v ,opment 0][ civmsanon i, .us

search has numberedvamong the fundamental occupations, of human beings .. ;tB6 For Leibniz, as Wern,er Conze in particular points out, the question of the Olrig_' ines was all elemental concern of'the historical sciences."

This is certainly consistent with the ethnological experience-e-afbeit not in the sense of a procedural postulate. There is no ethnic grol-mp that is not keen eo name its ancestors and its .' place of origin, In most cases this point of or~gin is·

47

identified with the territory inhabited by the grou1P~ the place where the' forebear was . allegedly created by the hand of God as the first human being, the p~ace to which he descended 011 a rope nom heaven or where he emerged from the earth, The implicit assertion is that whoever seizes possession of something, creates something, ttarutfonns wilderness into, cwtivated land is entitled to it, has

". . gh ~, . Th ~ ~ 'r'II-l" - 1 s: din fi . d .

a prror ril" t to it, : e ancrent, lu,LywTmCallO'Ull. 'lg hgure reeamer : all consrstent

presence throughout the literature of antiquity.In the+snore in-depth-s-consideration by both the Greeks. and the Romans of peoples, cities and cults, al11.ong other things, me "story of origin," a1clt~iologla or o'rig,o t formed a fixed tapas ofethnology and historiographv, usually performing an introductory func-

. .

tion.;: in part it continued to play a role up· to and including the development of

th ...1.:: ~_ll "hi · h f- 1I"" O· _~J I id fS ill G' f' e n~eum.;v.aJll iseonograp y 0. peoples . ordanes, S!" or to ..•. ev e,,·. regory 0

Tours" Paulus Diaconus, Widulkindl of Corvey) .. S8 As, part of his declared endeavor to define t1H~ specific character of the Buro- Alnerican understanding of hmstorry,. it is precisely in the purposeful research into causes that Peter' Burke

1" e 1~. _. • d tifi d U ...l~ ... '. ... 1 "tv:r. h ' , ,~.,~ (·Tl T 6) I

c rums to nave 1.· en,' ·,e··, a cusnnctrve y wester!t c araceensnc I. aesis .•. ~ .n

.... 1 ~ • h "" 111. _ .... ..t:" he anci blis 1. ~.= ~ ~ d .

trns connection e u'SO reters to t e ancrents-e-estabnsnmg a contmuity=-an .. m

particular to the significanc e of the aitia for the Greeks. E thnology, however, . recognizes a specific genre of transmission, which is represented by stories. whose subject is precisely this particular interest in causes=-and which are'

th £... . by h d ih d ~~ . 1 ., :i'tTh· 1 · ill d .C::

ere ore not '. c wee, .escrmec as . eno og~es~ eir t .iemes can mctude, tor

example, why certain birds have red beaks 'or why women are' not skilled at hunting, me origin of the sunset or why neighboring peoples build their huts in mother fashion, Here too, then, a relative approach is required ..

Perhaps the queseion should rather be posed as to the cause of the hiseorical interest in causes" NonnaUy the identification of primary causal instances involves the running of one ]?,eTSon (a founder, ruler, commander, inventor) or one particular event (the birth of a future figure of greatness, at battle, the postill1:,g' of Luther's theses, the Hidshra,89 a discovery, a catastrophe). The impression emerges of a cone' stood 01"1 its vercex-e-the "cause" contracts to a point, ~ nucleus or a seed that holds the possibility lof development into an open furore; if one reverses the cone, movement LlPWV"Mds converges to a point-e-towards a foresees ble end, a prospect which is 0'111 Y reluctantly identified, with ,. This would constitute a possible identity-thecretical explanation ..

And why precisely this ruler, that invention or that battler' A closer investi-

. als further ' ,'...l ...... 1" th id tifi d hi 1 c. th·

ganon reve '. urtner causes under ymng '. e one 1 en' ~ ec, W ic 1 lor . err

part are interwoven with 3 wealth of vertical and horizontal branchings that extend adl infinitum until ultimately reaching the '" uncertain" world of particle physics governed by the Laws of probability.And there one likewise finds only

!l:!l: dl 1 f" + .. btl" E rdi th 1Il.... ~ •

. erIll·· ess layers 0 :mnereMUlg SU,··. . ety. I. Yely attempt, acco n.g to .~ e plnlllYSllClSt

David Peat "to reach the most fundamemal level" leads into a veritable labyrinth of"still deeper; unexplained processes~~~?O De facto there is no "single cause" just as there are no ,,' causal chains .... which can be reduced [0 linear connections

48

between single events," Such causal chains are dissolved and cushioned by the general interc onnectedness of events .. 91

And even given it were possible to define an isolatable point of origin, this would only represent a Pyrrhic victory; since what is. ~n'VOmv:ed here is. a singularity, which as such is not only itself resistant to explanation, and thus' not suitable as a conclusive explanatory tool, but which shares with others of its kind the quality of its dimensions being irrelevant to its definition. The smallest imaginable particle is just as much a singularity as th,e universe is, Contracting causation to ~ point would not achieve a result other than 'that of perhaps being thrown back into universal interconnectedness,

However.just as within social reality there are clearly "privileged observers,' "smgllie origins" can also be fixed there, by runt of decisionistic access, More or

1 · d ~ ~ b d ~ · "'. fin' ~ ....

ess conscious I, ecisions oase: on more or mess COruClOUS cntena 0 - CID.ThOlCe pwy

1 h ('tJ ~~. · ".a. .,.,.£. d '" n1 ~ lbei . a, ro e ere, lie - power mterests 01Len rererre- to constitute 0 ' 'y one.albeit an

.. nIL + 11 )' Tl ,'" :Ii:li ~, "" t hai ,.~ d r::" ., "',' ;:; l' h th

11l '. uennar aspect, r ae causes, causae C .ains an' contmuitres w llC .nen

become apparent constitute only one possible rough version of 110W the point

f .. " . ~ 11 n

10 ,ormgm" actuany was.

~N rth 1 ' h . h t th'~ pa "'U1110' in terests'

< ever' 'e ess, In SOU,,: a versron=-wna ever re acco,m,'~n/_~I'I!lA.;:.L'~' ,ll'

involved-e-arbitrary choice plays only ~ limited role.Those who acted {and who ace+-as historians, for example) were ,alVlaYS, members of groups and th-us followed, to a lesser or greater extent, the criteria of identity -specific behavior, also in the formation of ideas." Ethnology is capable of exacdy identifYing these with the aid of wide-ranging cultural comparison .. They conform in terms of their essential features everywhere, being founded on a set of'universal guiding principles .. This; as lit were; would constitute a nomothetic framework. Peter Burke

,. di hinz si ~1,=, 1 he insi h ... L,~.," h ,',

seems. to m acate somet ~ lng ~111Uulr W len e insists ae t e outsee tnat wr at ]is,

particular to Westerrl historical. thought" is to be understood "not as a series of unique characteristics, but rather as· a unique combination of elements each of whi clll is to be found els ewhere .. "92.

Idencity-theoretical precedents em also, .aCCOU11't fo,r the emergence of his-

• ...., ~ "'...l: •. 1- f d by nl +

tOTICat consciousness: as comparative studies SJlrLOW tanc '. no means 0, ' y 111

reference to traditional societies and archaic civilizations) it ignites or revives without fail in societal conflict situations-c-as a c<onseq'llenCe of quarrels that cast doubt on inherited legal rights, in eases of ethnic overlap, 111 the wake of enforced acculturation or radical.innovations that shake the edifice oftradition as a. whole, The consequences, are social, ethnic, religious processes of differe - tiation: splits" alliances, the formation and reformation ofgroupings result, withcorresponding disassociations and breaks in the ideology of identity, Cracks. appear in myth (the story of creation) as a gen,erally binding basis of autheneication.The separated clan, partially or newly formed groups, SU'"aIU, classes neeessarily modify this basis according to their particular needs, but in addition look for further secondary grounds for their identity-specific postulates of priority; the illocalization of such grounds is inevitably confuted. to the post-

49

primeval phase, in which human beings increasingly gain, influence over events, These are then disseminated by sagas and me;gefIll~n:d also by historical tradieions, and, ultimately, by professional rustory,,93'They name founders, kings and innovators, pioneering migrations, miraculous events" victorious battles and reforms mat have contributed, to the ascent of one's OVfU group to the apex, or at least provide grounds for its ]e.gitirttate ,c~airu to this position. Individuals and events gain significance singularities attract renewed interest, The need for grounds and the efforts to assemble individual proofs to, as. it were, "smoothly

;; th ,t'''h' . ~ ~II"" f ~,~,:;; ~ " . 1..]1 - ~

pave ~ e istoncar avenue 0 C!J.alOU increase m proportion to, t lie uynaDllsm

and cornplexiey of'the differentiatmon processes involved .. The science of history becomes indispensable; idiography comes into its O'iVIl~94 ArId the longer the historical tradition of ' one historically representative instance lasts, the more the impression is, created 'of focused interconnections of events, that is, of linear, progressive development,

N h 1 · h di d + " 111 ,,'"

onet e ess, in t . e mer um -term, constant ten encies to -l'X!'CY'Cw.e" so to

speak, are noticeable" The safeguarding .of identity withm the system, the pres,cr-

, f'i h ~ 1 ~ 'II!- bili f insti _.If:

vatton 0 its co erence, aiso requIres tne sta ·11Zat1011 0 msntunons and norms.

The periodization of the life and work processes,. annual and commemorative festivals attached [0. specific dates, jubilee cele brations of foundation, ele ctoral cycles and the demarcation of periods of political office fabricate the "eternal return," the preservation of that which ills indispu tably worthy of continued existence, safeguarding and consolidating rhe foundation that annuls the ehrearening aspect of dynamism and change,

Nomothetics and idiography by no means have to SUpPl'"eSS one another, On me contrary; they necessarily form a complementary whole, In itself each

, 1 ds i th ~11i d · ~~ if· f d ~, ... 1 de d _.,.]!...._

persp ectrve ea' mto e 0 aC~I. emoc entrtc 110 ill: JIl... eisuc cui ~ -sac an, u£s~

torts knowledge" "Historical anthropology' represents one possible m,~ of a unitary interpretation-not because it is somewhat fashionable at the moment, but because- of the optimal conditions it ofiers, precisely m its combining of ethnology and history+-tor a better and also operable understanding of human societies in both historical and p resent contexts ..

Seen in the context of this, task, historical anthropology can also be linked with a "founding father" worthy of the title, & Herodotus once put it: if required ~ 4 to select the cus toms of highes t qt'l31ity from all diose available, each people, after examining all of the different customs, would prefer' mts OiVlrTI above ill others" So great is the pervasiveness runo11g hUln2U1 beings of the opinion that me forms of life which: they themselves have developed are the best" (III 38), Herodotus recognized the ethnological rule, and he is rightly celebrated as the

"fath f1 " ;iI:!,

~ . er 0" 11StO:ry~

Centuries later and still before our own epoch; Spinoza wrote down something which could 'be recommended to al], mid not least eurocentrically deluded, human science: ""~ humsnas actiones non ridere, non lug,e.rejl neqt4e detestari, sed in telleqere .~' 9~,

Notes

~ e Kaj: Birker-Smith, GeschicJ,l,le ,det" Kultuf. Eine (Jl1eelfl.e'ine Ethnt)logie~ Munich, 11l948! 5",

:2. Konrad Lorene, Die R.ilckseite des Spiegek J.trs~Jch einer NatHrg;esd'lichte tnetuch1khtn Erkoonejts~

Mwtk:h" 1973" 162f. .

3" Karl R~ Popper, IOl?/ekttve Erkt'nnmis. EU,'l; ,rEUJOlu,tioHlm?f EwttMJif; Hamburg, 1973" .36.

4. Klaus .E,. M iiller, Geschicf1:re der ,Gntikm Bth,JfwgmphJe mul ,etJ1>noIQg~chet~ Theorkbii&uHg+ lIOn da1.

AttM"~t his n;~f di,r: byZQfMinischen HiJw1'iogmphen" vel, It Wies.booe:tl'll~ 1972i .~5·j '65,.~ 75f.~ lZtL .)1. Ibid." .1. 42.

6~ Klaus E+ ~ii]ler~ "Geschichte der E,thn.ologie'l' in. E.~hn&l(lgie+ E·irifUhruNg uNd' O'htfMich ed, Hans Fischerj, Berlin, 19'92, 28f.

7", M futUer" Kla us E. j 'Gru.ndzi~ge des menschlichen Gruppenverhaltens', in BirO'lO'gie t\Ol~ So·rial' .. sl.rukt~'ren bel ner U11(J Mensch~, Glijttil1.ge~ 1 '9:8J.~ 1. 09.

S. Miille[~ Geschichte der ,~Ntikf"n Eth~ujg,apm~~ (see note 4) ~ 126", St Ibid+ 137t1' ..

10. Klaus lit Miille'1'j "Geschichte der Eth[[ologie~'; (see note 6)~ 2?f~

11. Reinhard Goll, Der Evol;~tion{JmuS'. A "~s.e tines 'C,uHdhegrif!s n.tuzeltiidten DM.kens, Mtuu1ch~ 19'72t23.

1l2~ Ed'\lVa[d 18 .!flo,r, Primitive Cldr"~, ~[. t ,. London 181 ~ ~. 2 ..

]3.. Goll, E~oluti&numus (gee note' ] 1)! 83; cf Theodor \tfaitz, ANth~logle der Naturoiilke,~ vol t, Leipzig 1L 817, 12; Edward It Tyloi:, Res~mrhes intO' the E~fl1 K~torr of Mankind ~nJ· the Deoeloptnent ,~,CiPilizQ,tion§' London 1·870l190+

t 4 + john F. McLennaID4 Studies in Aoo'etlt History; London 1896~ 9 ~

15.. janles Geol'ge Fnzer, Psyme'~ 1:1$1£+ A Discoune COftcemiMlt the lftfl~ten!t cj .s:upmtitWn on the Gr.lJiIVtIt ~ ImtitutiotU j London, t 9: ~ 3, 1·6ft

16., Robert L. Carneiro, ~ Classical E~[ution ~ j in Main ·Cumnb in Cwtuml Anthropology em RaQU~ .

. & Prada Naroll, Bn~ewoodl Clifi,.1l973, 82££.

11. Carreiro, 'Classical EvcJution~ (see note 116); 109f:

18. Mbid. 'j 90((

19. Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society ~ Cunbridg-e·, Mass, J 1964, 427,. 40f

20. ][bid., 41.

21. nsa, 475+

22. Hansjoachim W. Koch, Du S.oz1ald.(1.fW.irti:smus. Seine lGenese wnd sein E;f!fl:~ a~ aM ·invpefialh .. tist.he Denk~~ M unich, 197:3 ~ 120(

23,. ~d~u.>d. .B. Ty19r, Anthrop~wl1~ A H Imroduc#off to the Suuly Of M~n and .CIVIJ&fdti(jf?~ vol, 1 ~ Lon-

don, 1'930, 58 ..

24 u , Koch, Soziliddanvioomm (see note 22), 9·j[. 25.. Goll, EvolutMwdsmus (see note 11), 1l6.

26~ Koch, Sozialdanvin,islluu (see- note 22), 27 f.

21 + Leo- TrotzkU ~ LU~mmr f"'$d RfVtO'lutic~~ Berlin, 1968~ 215,", 28. Koch, Sozi'~ld~'ulini$mus (see note 22), 20,

29', Tylo[:I·Prin~itive 'C.ult1t~re (see note 12),.23.

3,0. Carneiro, ~aassi(:al. Evollllltionj (see n.ote 16), 72£(,

:3 ] • JMnes George Prazer, Fo.r,k- Lore in tJ$e Olil Teswnent. Sl.udi~ in ·'COmplIlmtiw Religion, Legmd~ {Jnd· Lfiv, vol, 1~. London, 19119~ p, vii, .

32. Ch-'ttles. Darwin, Die Ab$tm·n~~4ne. des ~tnschen una d~~ g~fllech.tlicfJe ZuchttvaJd~ vol. ~ ~ Stu®tgart 187t 1.39 ..

33. ThE ~8 in fact held by many to be the case, Ru.dolfWendortf, for example, rem. to "thinking in terms of progress as a fM:W, dynamic atti tude OD. the part of Western humaniey I[ my emphasis] towards its history" See Rudo](fWend.ortI~ Zeit uud Kultr~,. Gesfhichte des Zeitbt~ w~ifJtseim in Eu.rop(J~. Opladen, j[ 980 ~ 326.

34. Miinet'"j '~Grundzuge' (see mote 7) ~ 102f.

51

35, Ven:~er Elwin, B~ndo H~hla.HJeri.lB,o.ltnb·ayi 19'5·0, 266·.

3·6, Rex L. and Shirley K+ Jones ~ The Himalq,aH J.ftbm"t1,. A suufy vi limbu Hi&men in M~m~:te mul DiVi)Jtrt~ No A.lt·o~ 1976,. 40.

37. I mtinrJIS Ma.rtyr~ 'Dislogus cum. Trypbone judaeo' ~ c, 11 9, in .Pat1olo~e Cursus 'Cr)mple~ Series ed, J+P; Migne Graeca, vel, 6; 212, col. 152~ cr. Clemens of Alexandria, Pw.otwptikru X111. 23, 1.,

38. Cited in "Waltb.er Lammers, ~'VolrWore~ in. 'Gesf,hJ,htsdenke~ UM Gesrhicht.sbilJ lm Mittif.alw, ed,

Walth·er HLanm1eL"5! Darmstadt; 196·,5, xvl,

3'9, Miill.elr; C~c.hichtt de, a~tdke~ Bthn~graphif!. (see note 4) t VCQt 2" Wiesha.den; 1980, 426, ..

40. Hans N evermann, Die Natuwii£leer und dk Humm'J.itat~ Leipzig, ~ 94,8, 1.1 f ..

41. AJ.fL"ed Willi,a n Howiee, 'The JeD-ein!. or Il1'i'lJ~ll'tion Ceremonies of tile Kurnai Tribe", Thejouftf.rll ,(!_{ the Anthnlpoiog~l Imtitutri! cf 'Great J3"ri tain a~d lre1af1Ja 14 (1 aSS) ~ .301, £n. 3 ~ 311, fn, 8. 42L lPete1'" Weidk.uhn.~ 'Die Rechtfeedgung des Mannes am der Frau bei Ituri-Pygmaen', .AntJ~ro~ .pos, 68, no, 3·~4 (1'973),447 ...

43,. L udwig Kohl- Larsen, liWIJbeurer in Os.t~ik(j. Di(2 TI~dig,a ~ ei« ]a~~ UtuJ Sanun~lkJ' Berlin, 1955~ 31..

4r4~ Robert 1IR Mllllphy, 'Intergroup Hostility and Social Cohesion' t American AnthropologL~t~ 59 (1957), 1n'28~

4.5. Bronislaw M~litiLO'WSlti~ The S~,a.l L!fo ·of the S~gt.S in .N(Jfth~ ~tem Melanesia~ London, 193.2~ 258.

~'6.. Jam,es R Downs, The TwO! ~rlds of the Washo. An Indian 11ibe of California (JnrJ NeftaiJa, New York, 1 ~66,~ 78.

4· 7. Claudius M ull.er~ 'D·.lJ.,e Herausbildung der Gegensat'ze. 'Chines-en und Barharen in der ftuhen Zeit (1l. Jwtaus.:endl v, em. bis 22·0. n, em.) ~ ~ m Chitw unil ,dil! Fr€wden~ 3tJ(J(J ,fohff AW'ein~nders-etzHHR ~H 'Krieg unA Frieden,. ed. WoJjfgru1,g Bauer, MwricJh~ ] 980!. 60.

48. K1la1LlS E. Miiller~ "Ideutirnt und Geschichte, Wid~l"spl']lCh oder Komplementarirati", ~itl€uma~.

38 (1992) ~ 25[.

4·9. Milller, 'Identitat und Geschiehte' (see note 48)~ 20.

50. Leopold von Ranke, Ui.ltgfSd'tichtel. ~·th edn., vol, II ~ section L, Leipzig 18.86~ viii.

51. ; This is. the -title he gave 'the first '\f.()l ume of his Gesthl,hte der MeNSddu~it~ Berlin, ] 907 . 52. Oeeo von Preising, CI"ron.ica slue H~t.cria de d~Jflhus chritaubm ~ ~ Proomi ron.

5.3" Otto K'obner, EinJU,.hrung in ,dle Koiontaip(JUtikl,Jffi3.~ '1 '908, 11. 5 l' 11. 96-~ IC£. 'Charles Dickens, M~,~

tin ,Ch U2zdwit~ Munich, 331.

54,. I{ocll~ SozialdanvlnwnN.'i (see· note 22) ~ 117 [ 55+ Ibid,t] 15~ 1120f~

56+ Wilhehn E~ MiUllmannt RQss,~n~ EtnRiel''tJ• Kulture1tl+ Mode.rne EthR;:Jlogie,~ Neuwied, 11964, ]91; Mi.iller~ ~Die Herausbildnng der Gegensatze' (see' note -47) I. 53.

507. Susanne Enderwitz, Gf.iellsc!1;qfJ;Ucher &~ uad ethisthe Ltgit.ima.ti(J~ Frcib\LIlrg i. Bt.~ 1979t 491, cf, 26££

5·8, Carlos Moore·, H!ere M~~ a~d Bngels Mite Racists? 1ne Prolet~Arya.rt 014tioQk oj Marx and Engels j Chicago, 1. 97 2~ 12.

59. Will1.dm Schneider, Die Naturviilh'er, MiP~e~tJJ.~dni$se~ Mij3d~~tu~n und MYJhandlungenJi vol, 2~ Paderbom 1885/6; ]6~t

6ij. Koch, Soz~(;]ld(JtlJli~i$m~iS.~ (see note 22) ~ 93·~

61l. Bertold Spuler, ~mslunische und abendlsndische Geschichtsschreibung, Erne Gfunds3J~~lBetEa'cb:rung1 ~ Saeculum ,6! no, 2 (195.5), 130.

6.2. Miiller~ ~ Geschichse der Behnologie j ~ (see note 6) ~ 45.

63, See' above all his ldeen zur PhU(J$'fJpnie der Gesrfii,i1te. der M(ffl,.~(hJu.it! 4 vols, ~ fir-Bt pun blished t 184~91 + See also Eberhard B'eL~t lolh.rum Goufried Herder (17 4.4-1803) ~ ~ in K1~sikef der Kslt~mntl~r(jpo~u.tir! jed., Wolfgang MatIlCOOU, Mwdch. ~ 1990 ~ 5 'Jl. ... 68; M finer!. ~ Geschichte der Bthnologie' (see note 6)! 34.

64 + MiWeJI:; ~ Geschichte der Ethnologic' (see note 6) i 43f.

65. Hans Georg Seeffner, "KjlafrUl~oziologie' zwischen :KJulturwd.ten und WeIltkul'hJJJt. Zu Joachim Matthes. (eeL) ~ Z wischen den Ku.ituI;"tn? Die Soeialwissenschatten vor dem Problem des KtU~

turvergleichs', Soziowgisdu &t?~w ~ 1·8 (1. 993)" 12. .

66. M'ijJler~ 'Geschichte der EthnoJlQgi-e~ (see note '6}" 46.

67" JUstiJl Staglt j:Obett:' die Stellung der Erhnologie rut Enewicklungspolitik ~',~ in Soziokuituft.lle FaktofM tifT E"tuJicktungsz~~s{JmmetlMoh\eil und de! Beif.~g' der B,tJ~nologie, edt. Frank. Bliss, Bonn, 1986,57.

68. Timothy Perris, Die fot~ GftflZt' .. Auf·de, Suche n~'Ch d,em Itand .J,(t!$ VniwfSunu i' Basel; 1'982, 126~ 6;9. Magoroh Maruyama, l Endogenous Research vs, Delusions of Relevance and Exp ertise among Exogenous, Aca~demics" ~ Huma.n Org,a.r';z{jtion, 3.3 (1974)" 318£[

70. Soeffner, ~'Ku.ltlH'Sozio]ogie ~ (see note' 65) ~ ~ 2:.

71l. Klaus E. Muller, I Grundzuge des ethnologischen Historismus' ~ in Q'UXq{tfjgetl, ,da EthfWwgie+ B;fitriW,e zur gegf~wilrtig\eR Theorie='Di$kw$ion.~ eds Wol:fdietricll Schmied-Kowamk.~lll.ls.t~n StagI, Berlin, ]'993" 1919.

72" W.illhe-1m Dilthey, EinleibJng in die Ceis teswissemchafim. VmtJch ein" Grundlegung jlJ r d~s Studi~m der ·GeseUsdM}i urut der Ge$d~ichte~ Leipzig, 1923·, xvl,

7:t Heinrich Rickert; Kultun.vmru1SC~uifl unA NQ.tunvi$$~1S-c~u(t~ Frdburg L Br, 1 :899 ~ 3,9~, cf 37 ff., Sit 7 -4. WiUu::]nl, Windelb~]]]d, Pral!-~d,i'f!ft.. Aufiiitz{! urui R.~den %.1&.1' PhUosophie ~".d ih~f Geschic~k" 'VOl" 2~

Tiithingen~ 1924,~ 143.

75. Ibid, 145£[

76. Rickert, Kulturwwe~ucluift (see note "3) ~ 45" cf 37.,

77. Friedrich Meinec~ Die EHfs.teium,g des I-lLdori$r1ut5.,Werke'~ ~L .3i St1lllttga:[![r.~, 195,9; ~. 78+ Edward I-IaJ1et Carr, Hi&s ist Ga,hicht~?, Sruttgart, t ~72, S[

79.. David HiI11me~ Ess~s dn,dThati$n mt Stirmat Subjreits, vo1.2, Edinburgh ]809',. 24.,

80.. ] ames G~'orge Frazer; The .Magic Art dflla the EvolHti{j!n of [({figs, vol, 11 ~ London, ~ 963,! 52ff. See Klaus E. Miiller, Das m~sme Un;MtlUm Jer ldentitdt. ElementmfotltU'!H sozioie» Verhaltef6! PrankflU:t ~,.M.,~ 1987, 207ff.

81.. J OM Cohen, Mark rI2LrJJSe-i; GUtck wH,d R.isi1.uJ. Die Lehse V,OH iJet" subjektiv£fl ~1wch(!inJkhkdt; Frankfurt g" M. j 1961 ~ 38~

82T M fi.llert Das magische Universum (see note 80) -; 2 to.,

B:l Muna Nabhan, .IKopten und Muslime in .A.gyptal~ Eigenven:t3.i1JLdrds und Vbltutteili~,~ ~~ Thesis, Frankfurt a .. Mm, 198Bt 57ff"

84," Gimther Schlee, Das ,Glauhe'm- und Sozialsyste:m der &rf.di11et K~l~flfl,omadern NIJM~K.eni(J$j' Berlin, Jl979 j 277.

85" Albrecht Nom, Qwttl,~enkriti£che StudieH Z~ Themen, Porme» ~nd Hf1&eRzen frah~s1,(l.mismer GucJdchl$tJblr!niqeruHgt Bonn, 1973,; 97f.

86+ Andre' Leroi-Gourhan, HaRd und Worl s Die Evoi;fJ,tion lro~~ Technik j Spmtht Una Kunst, Frankfuet

a .. M+" 1980~ 13, ..

87.. Weri)er Conze, LeibHiz als Histanker" Berlin, 195,1" 58£.

88. See Klaus E., Milner., Geslhithtfi d,er ant1ken E,tnHogmph1£ (see note- .39) j 34-Qf[

89. Se,9 Julius T. Fraser, Die Zi!i t. Auf de.~ Sp~~rm ,ein~ Votrlmuren u~d Jock ftemden Ph~fW'fium ~

~unidh;1992~ 118(

90., R David Peat; S_ynchJ'oniziUit. Die :verbl1lrgeRe OrdmlHg!, Munich, 1992t 210. 9 ~ .. Ibid" f 53 j' ';,6£[

92~ Cf So-etlb.erj "Kultursoziologie' (see note ·65) ~ 13.

93+ MUllerl ~ldel1.ti,ti'tt und Geschichte' (see mt,o,te 4S)~ 26; Klaus E~ Miiller" ~"~lPr:ahi~to:r.isch.Jesj:"

Geschichtsbewufftsein.Versuch einer ethnologischen Strukturbestimmung', ZiP: Mitteilungm~ 1995 (no. 3); 1 J.ff,

94.. M iiller, ~'mdru'Ititat und Gesehichte ~ (see note 48) ~ 28. 95. Spinoza, n11ctatus po liticus, I 4.

Searching for Common Principles A Plea and Some; Remarks on the Islamic Tradition

Peter Burke's paper is an elegant and finely nuanced defense of a thesis, which, when stripped of elegance and nU,a11Ce~ argues. that since the Renaissance Wes,t~ ern historical thought has developed a number of characteristics that appear to distinguish it from other, non-Western historical thought.What is the purpose

f th h ~ Th s '''0'' ill' ft r, d th ~ f ...:a1:!«

out esis? e answer is: " y a ter we nave rna e. e inventory oi WII0:r=

ences between historical thought In. tile West and mother parts of'the globe will it be possible to make a systems tic investigation of the reasons for these differ =' ences," Implicit ill tins particular formulation of the problem is a challenge.This is what we think, or have thought, about history What is YOUl[ response?

There are vaxi01L1(8 strategies of commentary that one can adopt by way of an answer, One such strategy would be to consider the following scenario .. Let us s.upp·ose that UNES'CO' (U:nited Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organizations) has, delegated a committee to put together an anthology of 'world historiography. Let us fiirther assume that the members of this committee divided into two groups as 1[ICgarW the eable of contents of that anthology ..

O d s: hi ~.1 di · ~ · i: I '1P""i,i1rr. !'::> ne group' argue.' [orr a geograp . rear " vision IT]Lto; lor eXanlp e . western,~

~ ',;v;r. .~ ... ~ ,.,. "" Ii, :C~ + ",. ...J]I "13 A .. ·:u r. ~ + .... 111 Th t1

w estern -lUlU! ~ i1..UICal'l:J ana astern ~m.m msroricat texts ~ - e a. aer group'

...,,-v~ lied for '"" th ematic . ..3 ivisi .', .' n 1l1~ .~....... .co'" ~"'U"""'II mple ~ ~ .4 -, . - ". mt ~, u C ''':)1 '" p .~.c. ' ,:;

,a[~}!..lli- . ru ~, . e ~"'L.Il' UJII.. 0,. 11t.U; II ,1' "!!"'-..n..cbU~ '6 .l1....1'g-ume , .' ause, ['Clace;l

"Evidence ~." and ~ ~ Style," \Vh~Blt might the arguments b·e on either side of rhis divide? I carl think of at Ieast one overriding advantage ofthe thematic division: + t would rid us of the illusion that texts can be C 01 nsidered simply or solely as, i·i examples' of their ci vilization or nation .. In other words" Ofl_e might argue that the broad principles of historical writing and thought emanate from a common human environment where the investigation of the diversity of stimuli to historical writing would be our primary concern ..

What these "broad principles' of historiography might be can, I think, be briefffiy set forth as follows, Historiography everywhere and in all ,1g-eS has been a

Searching for Common Principles A Plea, and SO'lUe Remarks on tnt: Islamic TraditiQ1n

T ARJP [{HAllO[

Peter Burke's paper is an elegant and finely m.tJl1COO .djefen~e of a rhesis, whi~ when stripped of elegance and nuance, ergaes that since the Renaissance Westan hi!iltorical thought has developed a number o,f c~aracteti.st.ics ma~ appeer W m::;ri.D.guish it (rom other, non- W-esn:t"'...{n histcrical thought Wha~ is the purpos-e (j,f this tb,es.i5.? The an!>WIT is: '~On:ly afier 'we have made the inveP}'Wry of differences bel!Vlttn h.]5_t,cnic.r!l1 thought in the West ami in QiI;.hl1;:I pans ofthe globe will it be ~ihle to make a. ~ternaric investig;;u:iOJlJ of the reasons fur these dJifferences,' ~ ]mp1icit in this, pa-r.tiCl.1.b.F. formubtio~'iI. of the problem is a challenge: This is what we think, or have thought, about history. What is your response?

There are various 5trar.-egics of commeneary that one can adopt by WJY 0'-( an answer. One such strategy would be to ccnsider ~he following' scenario, Let us SUpp'lJLS.oe !that UNESCO (Uni~d NJrio!U Ed.uca.t~oU3l, Scie ~tific, and Celtural Organiaauons) has delegated a committee to pUll: IDge~b.er· an anth.ol-og;t o,t world hlstorlograplw, Let us further assume: thalt the members of th.i~ committee divided into ewo groups as regards the table- of contents -of that anthology. a'De group argued fer a geoguphical di.v:U:Uom il1~01 fur ,ex:amtple ~"We!iitel'n,'!

'4 "I: 'Il y. ,.,. . • "4< A .e.: " .l ~'E A·'~ D.. ' • c -n f

wcstt:rn ..!"!k'illaIlj .clJ.l.'lCaJli:!< anu a,srerD.SLaln mstoricar texts, ae otner group

argu.'ed full;" a thernatie division into, for example '·.t\r~enlt,j'",jCause~~~ LjPreface,~' "Evidence" and "Style," W1u1t migb~ the- arguments be on either side of thjj divide? I am think of at least one overriding advantage of the thematic division: it VIlOu1d rid us of the illusion that texts can be considered s.impl.y or solely as "examples" of their civilizazion 0,[ nation, In. other W'O~" QIL1.e Inigbt argue dJlat the broad principles of historical writing and rhoughr emanate from. ;II. common human environmene where the illvestigaoon of the d.iversity of s;ri.m[]li to histcrical writing would be Our primary cencern.

W~t these "broad priaciples' of histodography might be can, I think, he briefly set forth as folloM. Hisroriography everywhere <bod in all ageg has been a

54

b . d helteri ivitv I b ~ C..:..-.. thi d Ii ~

_ orrowmg an· s II eltermg actrvity t ~ orrows its purpo!se rrom e" " CS. anc _PO" tics.

It borrows ]its method from philosophy md natural science, It borrows ~ts. style hum Iiterature .. Al'1d it seeks shelter under ttlle umbrellas of reason or revelation, If

• ....IU,. . ..: :~~ . .: 1 " ." .. ;i'Y~ eh b d ul

'one were to posit this or a smniar image, one rmgnc . 'en . e temptec to ern ate

Th_OIDatS s. Kuhn 1. Stsuaure oJ·Sdentifir; Rf1JolutitJ~1S and to seek for a structure ofhistoriographic revolutions, It 'WOuld seem to me that this sort of pursuit would be not only more intellectually exciting but abo truer to the WJlY things have been,

A A ~"..A to th " JL:: .. f sti uti" ~ ,.!to . .• h" + h c: 11 ~ £

ill regards e orversuy 0 snmu , one lll1g It cite t ·e 10 0Wll1g areas o

investigation. First is the ~y in which a particular culture or people learn a new historiography when they acquire a new religion or id,eolog~ and how this affects their perception of things like time, causation, orjgins and ends" Second is the ~ in which new formulations of the power 'or legitimacy of states affect historical writing and thought, in such areas as identity formation or the struggle between nanrral and supernatural sources of law; Third H the way in wlhich bureaucratic elites have defined the agenda of history and dictated its standards of veracity: It would seem to me that the search fur these or similar stimuli across cultures lis. ultimately more .rewarding than to cordon historiographic teadidons off from one another in pursuit of Burke '8 "inventory of differences,"

I SUSPC(:t that Peter Burke would not necessarily object to the reformulation of the problem set fo·rth above, Aft,er all, his own very pronounced Interests in comparative historiography would lead one to this conclusion. But perhaps something more is required than the suggestion of alternative strategies to the runventO'IY~of-differen,ces-ap'proach. I have in mind a number of special ,difficu.illties. that beset Burke ~s approach and that] "WOuld like to enumerate, in no particular order of importance, as follows:

1;1' Linear VS~ cyclical (thesis 1)1

I have alwa.ys. femt rather uneasy about this contrast; particularly when it is used to distinguish between two q uite different approaches to dIe tempo and the end of'history .. When posited 3.5 all either/or alternative, it tends to oversimplify; Let us, for the sake of a1!gument consider the spiral view of history Would it not be possible to maintain that 3\ historian can indeed believe in cycles but also believe, that history is moving towards a definite end? It would seem to me that many working historians are impressed by both recurrent patterns as well tIS linear evo-

" "

lution lor .pro'8res~~ Perhaps one should speak not in terms oflinear and cychcal

but rather of teleological and nonteleelogical conceptions ,o.fhistory..~ere Ibn Khalduns Muqaddimah is concerned, it is not at all clear that the overall pattern of historical development can simplliy be described .. as cyclical.Thus, the arts and sciences of a. particular era may well survive and continue to develop sine ji.nt .. Khaldun was. himself acutely aware of the fact that his 'own science of human culture was entirely original.

55

2" The Idea of Pr'ogress

The idea is linked by Burke to the idea of cyclical and lmear historical thought, But it 'boo needs to be anatomized a lit.de fiirther, In the same historian, different conceptions of progress may coexist, for example moral and intellectual It is possible, for instance, to hold that mankind is declining on the moral level but advancing on the inrelleceual.] suspect that the belief'in inrellectoal progress in all cultures is intnnately linked to intellectual climates that are deeply impressed by the achievements of natural science, These cllmates of historiography seem to me to offer the most challenging avenues of exploration.

.3~ "Distinctive" means "central'; and ["for a longer time" (thesis 2)1

That this or mat pattern of'hiatoriographic emphasis is ~~distinctivelyWestern~' is said by Burke to be 8·0 because of its centrality and continuity, But neither quality~ it seems to me, is particularly' easy to substantiate when historiograp·hfuc tra·ditions are b eing investigated. To begin with, historical thOllgh't as such is by 11][0 means confined to historians, Indeed one right be tempeed to argue that in all cultural traditions theoretical reflections on history are most frequently to be found in works of belles-lettres, philosophy and political science, rather than .an1.0ng bread -and- butter historians.At such levels of gene1['ility~ the establishment of centrality and continnity within any one particular historiographic tradition becomes acutely difficwt. Burke asks: has the problem of historical "evidence"

b + gh .... 1. .; t; b ~ ;m d,,·t ~ 1 ~. ~ th h = , 1 ~ .l! ~ .. h

teen as tl .. ··uy "em ieooec m iaw IF]: 0 er istorrograp DC tradmons as it as.

been in Western tradition? The answer, for the Islamic historiographic tradition at least, is a very extensive and pervasive tradition of inter-action: not yet fully investigated, it ]is true, but clearly both central and. continuous .. One might cite the legal literature, on questions such as witness ($hahada)~. the chain of transmitters. (;,snall) and single versus multi. ple transmission (ahad, .tawt1.tur) and the impact that an ehese legal discussions had on historiography

4 Th '''. mpl - tment . f hi story" (. thesis 9)'

~ . .• e e. ··.IlO.~.· :.... O. I. S. . .•.... >' . . . a ~ .

Here too, I have often femt uneasy aboue the usefulness of literary tropes fo,r historical analysis, Quite apart from the arbitrariness of the tropes themselves and their capacity for almost infinite multiplication and variety; tile more general question as to how literary conventions have affect,ed historical styles resembles the question of law and historical evidence mscUlSse·d alb ove, It seems to me

+ • th 'f L.::; • h + • d db' · +. uld h 1

axiomanc at m - mstortograp .' y !IS ill c. ee.·· a' - orOOW1n.g actrvi ty, It wou .'. : e on y

naeural for it to borrow its. style too &011][][ the literary conventions available to it

~u: anyone' period of time, This is particularly so when history itself is. regarded, as mt has so of tell been, as all a·djtlnct to tile complete educatio-n ofa courtier, say,

.~.~ d '!iI "tVrt. th I 1 e radio" d .. t,

or gen eman, W nere I. e s anne tr '.; uon JIS. concernee , one carl pomt to tne

tradition of A.ha.b (belles-Iettres or, better still, Paide.a) as formative in the genesis and evolution of Islamic historiography; .

5~ How European are such movements as the "Renaissancevand the "R.efonna.tion"'·P

I suspect that no extensive hjstoriographic tradition can ever be fixe of these major Iandmarks of historical periodization. In any history of culture or ideas, one can hardly do without them .. TIlle fact that these particular berms were applied, beginning in the nineteenth century, 'by European Orientalists to the history of non-European cultures s~em:n:s to me to be' a reflection of the great accumulation in knowledge of the non-European world by modern Europe" But there is nothing inherently or distinctively European about them or a bout their use as descriptions of what Burke calls ,.~ cultural and social movements .. ~"

But then whae might happen jf we reverse the course of argument so far and attempt to answer Burke's challenge while accepting his. basic aSJ1wnpti0115 of'European distinctiveness? Let us assume, in other words ~ that the inventory of dilferences is. a legitimate ¥lay to proceed, I would almost certainly begin MID a sense of unease as I try to record the distinctiveness in certain features of s.aY:t Islamic historiography when I do not 0Cn0Vll the' ott-mer historiographic traditions as well aLS I should. But let 'us for the sake of argument attempt a. very brief Burkean counter-inventory for Islamic historiography ] will. speak of only two:

1 ,. A sustained and ,dis tinaiue interest in the his,tory' a'flld ethnography [of

tUJn· .. Mr4S lim f'U1 tions

It may be argued that the Islamic historiographic tradition displays, from its inception and right until the eighteenth century at Ieast, a dis tine t, [extensive and very decided interest m the history and culture of the non-Muslim world, The Ind'i.tt of Birtmill. (c. 1050) is one of the finest monuments of this anthropological-historical tradition, But long before Biruni, Muslim historians had decided that as Islam was the last religion. .of mankind, so it also was the heir of world civilizations, From this emanated a concern, clear y ~~ distinctive," for ci vilization as a concept accompanying the history of various nations.

2· At' d d d'~' n" ''l..~ h

. ,.'. sus asnea a'11S.~~f1( ve mtetes: Ui [~10grap r

Biographical dictionaries constitute an immense and distinctive part of Islamic historiography right until the present ,day. These dictionaries contain the biographies, long ·as well as short, of hundreds of tIThou.s:.m.ds of men and women of almost .all walks of life and ill almost all periods of Islamic history They have

57

hardly been used as SOUl"Ces for the rei' 0 nseruction of the faces and characters of premodern and modern Islam. Accepting Burke's caveat about the danger of imposing modern notions of the' personality 011 premodern biographg one can nevertheless assert that these biographies endow Islamic historiography witt! a vividness, ~ variety and an individuality unique, or so one might argue.

Clearly lone can add to this counterinvenaory But 'f we nOW" follow Burke's

...J. + d dto a " . r •• f th £ ",,1~ ..J!tT.:

.3,UV1ce an; procee,' to at systematic mvesngauon 0' . e reasons or tnese curter-

ences" what sort of results MIl we obtain? Would we conclude, for instance, that Islam's chronological position ,a11r:l,ong world religions is responsible for its think-

, f'· elf' ] . ld "_-!111.:._; ''''!. ""'('Tor: 1' ... 1 .............. ' hasi """ 1 ha ~

Ing 0' its, 'as leu to worn crvuizanonsr was isiams emp, asis on morai C 'a.JI1-

Ienge and individual salvation the reason for its excessive interest ill the details of individual biographies? I do not think that these or similar answers ]ea.d! us very far. By their 'Very nature, such explanations are arbitrary; unstable, ambiguous.

The object ofdetailed studies of specific historiographical traditions is not to llieave \]~S. marooned OL1. little islands 'Of unique particularities but rather to tty to formulate these detailed studies so as to encourage an inventory of resemblances, I have suggested above that the comparative mvestigation of what ImhY be called the stimuli ofhistorical thought and writing across cultures could offer a more mllitfiJl avenue ofexploration for comparative historiography;

AZ"'IZ·A,> -Az·_ .• · .. ·'I\A'~U ,. '. ~ ". ~~~

Peter Burke's text is structured by t\VOI elements; uneasily juxtaposed, in the manner of the 1990s~ these are the two tropes of modern historical conception,

th . 'ilL:, d th .. ... T1 s: 1~ th ." f' . .1.::: '" ~

e vitalist an" "- e pOS;tt1V1St~ 'le termer Sltpp ies e· noncnso oisnncerveness

and continuity in combination, and is underwritten by' the culturalist and relativist temptations and desires of rhe 19190s~ The latter pr-ompts, self-reflection, reserve about the strong ideological and mythological implications of distinctiveness and continuity, and is sustained by scholarship.I wil follow suit in radically questioning some assumptions upon which the vitalist trope stands ...

1.

It jig. difficult to ground the "distinctiveness of the West ~ ~ meaningfully without resort to the vitalist trope and to, metaphors of the organism and of'generic con= tinwty., Professor Burke is clearly not in the business of constructing yet another version ·of "the uniqueness of the West;'; romance, recently in renewed ascendance in the shadow of impoverished readings of'Ulelb,er; and it may indeed be fair to see West'ern distinctiveness as ",3, unique combination of elements each of which is tOI be found elsewhere, a pattern of emphases, which themselves vary 'by period, region, social group and individual historian ~" But do we thereby, in this combination of elements, have a structured pattern, ehat is, ~ combination of elements internally connected and consistent (without this. necessarily implying consistency)?

] believe we do not, What we have" rather, is ~ register of'various views and divergences without n1ecessary connections, sequences, or taxonomic implications; views and divergences whose unity is seen to' be- a direct cow:equel1ce [of

th 'I' • ""tV!: .~ ml ""L~ ... b ~ I· 4 lici · .. If"

eir putative westem genealogy Uill) nemg tneir imp CIt pnncip e 00 generlc

continuity and organismic unity; TIle West is here understood both as. a place which is associated with a fairly homogeneous {hence West~m} conception ,of

history; and as a continuous s.e·quence of time, I should like empirically to contl~~t both these elements, and, further, to suggest thae endowing theln with a substantive' pres.ence~ an ontological weight, requires. extrahistorical assumptions of durability and consistency These assumptions can only derive from metaphors of the organism,

] take the liberty of making this mast assertion because I believe the modern age like previous. ages-e-makes available a limited repertoire of conceptlUal means by which people might formally state positions on the past, on the social order, on political organisations, and on much else besides. Sentiments of identity; inclusion, and exclusion, like other sentiments, are not concepts; and need a. conceptual articulation in order to be enunciated.The two conceptions of history available are the vitalist (premised, noiens volens, on an organismic conception of significant historical objects, such as the nation, the people, the West, OIr Islam), and the positivist (which does 11l0t nee essarily have to bear a teleological evolutionism) ,.

The former" is of course of great moment in European and indeed uni ..... versal poli tile-a! and social thought in the last l\JVO centuries" animating most :par ~ ticularly the universal ideologies of nationalism and populism, .an·dl other forms of romanticism. Though its momen t app·ear8 somew hat indistinct in recent textbooks and to the contemporary consciousness" this is rather a wishful excision and abridgement of historical reality by the liberal order that followed World War II .. Organismic romanticism in the conception of history derives its conceptual profile ultimately from medieval naeural-philosophical and medical notions, such as [Iemp·e·r and nature as states of balance and test and as an entelechy: this connection is explicit in Herder, who even depilloys the conception

f th "'. L ~ ~ f 1b + ~ ~. +. eli _~.1 ...,I] 1·· d 1 r • •

o e grleat cnam 0 ··eln.g; m m[S mec evai ano exp nlCl_.y nonevo unorust

un d ers tan din g .. As. often happens when thinking in metaphorical terms, the derivative term is made fUlly to be- the metaphor incarnate: a complete consubstantiation is assumed to relate the metaphor and the metaphorized in which the rhetorical distance is lost and the last becomes the first .. Thus are historical subjects conceived in terms of living organisms, and thus is history narrated as the romanc e of this We,~tern, Islamic, .01'" otherwise denominated S-lubject.

That the discourse on cultures today, with mts emphasis. on individuality (rather than particular] ty) ~ on correlative notion of ~ 'meaning," ,of"·~incon11nen .....

bili ,..,. "c(''''h T ~ ~ dl ~ · Jf d d .

sum .ty!. 0'1 _ • ermeneu trcs, ..•. ectares itse postmoc ern, . oes no t convince me

that ]it is not in direct conceptual continuity with medieval vitalism e The sentiments and political and social wills to distinctiveness Call only be consistently articulated in terms of the vitalist trope ..

Clearly; this is. not a trope of which Peter Burke partakes .. What I wish to emphasize by bringing up the matter of vitalism its that it is needed to sustain the imputation of unity to the West~d the Western historical tradition-e-as a historical object homogeneous. in tune (con~tiit'Jtl1lmty) and in space (essential coherence) " It su btends the integrity of time and of place attributed to the West.

60

2.

Peter Burke does declare that the West is a historical construct, and casts doubts 011 whether Herodotus would have regarded himself a European or 31 Westerner~ [ should like to take this, further than comforting recognition, and use it 00· question one element in the PKSUll1.ptiOl1 of\Vestern continuiry and to subvert the mythogenic proclivity of genealogy.

That ·thJ!; Roman republicanist model and certain Greek traditions were traditionalized and adopted as a European heritage in the Renaissance is very well known, It is also well -known that, in the eighteenth century; the Egyptian and other "orientalizing" gen'eaJogies. adopted by the Greeks thems . elves, were displaced in favor of one or another version of the tale of the Greek miracle; which constituted the .initial terminus. in the normative and progressive course of civility and rationality, The notion of the somehow miraculous nature of the Greek phenomenon is not Ufi1"UltU1aJ~ given the requirement ofal] genealogies that beginnings be absol ute,

The recognition of these matters should in itself have a salutary influence, and stem, by a historical deconstruction, tile temptation to translate the typoIogical construction of history underlying all genealogies (this is a nutter I shall come back to below) into an evolutionist register, to seek praiseworthy ancestry; to see the present prefigured m the remote past,

Yet this G'reek, OJ[ a more generally antique past, is not in a serious.historical way the- past of tile West despite the use of Roman typologies by Machiavelli, Ingres, or Nap·oleon~ or ofthe Greek alphabet in mathematical formulas, or indeed of Athenian democracy as the putative fount of just political order. This is so similar that the notion ·o.fJudeo~Chris,tim continuity and affinity-==-a doctrine 'that had some fundamentili~.t Protestant incidence before Wo,rld War II but which acquired particular political salience thereafier-e-is .not his to rlt c ally meaningful despise the wide use of Old Testament typologies by Christians (and~ v,ery extensively and perhaps more consequentiallgby Muslims), and despite claims to intertestarnental unity.

I would submit instead the thesis that antiquity had a geographies] context stretching from the Mediterranean littorals to Persia, and that the millennia] ebb and flow of cOlLl'lIllqu'est and counterconquest across the Eurasian ecumene reflected a long-term trend towards ecumenical unity Initially, this thrust had been sustained by the Achaemenians, who served as a salutary modem of sound polity to a great many contemporary Greeks, including the court of Philip of Macedon .. The Mexandri;:;1\fl conquests and the- first unification of the oecumene by Alexander, ill his capacity as the last of the Ach<i.emenmans,,. was the fulfillment of a long .... term tendency that was far more consummately and durably accomplished b1y tile Caliphate nearly a n illennium later" The Caliphate had composed together the military and economic trends towards. unity; with the cultural monotheistic universalism of Byzaneium, which was itself the product

61

of Augustan imperialism and Eusebian Christianism. Late antiquity thus had nNO termini: Constantinople, and Baghdad, which MId. more ill common 'With each other than either h~td (except nominally; or typologjcally) with Aachen, Magdeburg, Paris; or Gregorian Rome, The latter places were the 'tail that; llfTh the fullness of time, came to wag the dog; as a result of al very distinctive line of development, incubated in isolation and discontinuity; .in the northern and Western margins and wastes of the ecumene,

This conception of later antiquity ttl1aY not be popular, but neither is it new 'Or idiosyncratic; ~ t is often stated, but its conaequences+-not least for periodization-e-are rarely drawn consequentially .. Arnold Toynbee saw it quite clearly, although this vision was somewhat clouded by concern with the l'"'esp'Ol1se of the Syriac civilization, Of orientalists, IC"H~ Becker discerned it, One historian ,cleuilly sketched its wide economic and cultural bearing.,2 Recently; it has been systematically sustained by one study ofcultural universahsnr', and by mother on conceptions and metaphors of order and power in. relation to sacrality; 4

3 ..

The historical traditions-e-and by these I mean, as I presume Peter Burke eo mean, formal traditiow rather than folk conceptions-of the antique ecumene, W this perspective, are historically coherent in terms of their vast geography as well as of their cumulative, cross-linguistic traditions, mid cannot be characterized. as Westerl1. (or Eastern) in the sense of ' all exclusively coneinuous tradition, Were Origen, Tertullian, Philo, Eusebius, Plodnus, Proclus, Arius, or Zeno, "'~Westerners"? [ would submit, moreover, that in. searching for distinctiveness one cannot reduce non- Western historical tradirions to cyclism, not least because linear I~eilsgfschichte is, despite Bossuet, a Zoroastrian, Je'wish" Manichaean and late antique notion of history, 'which predominated in medieval Muslim conceptions of universal history no less than. in that of Orosius, Cycles ill religious (and nationalist) readings of history constitute eddies within a gl411.d,er Iinear flow of-time to a meeting with destiny, this being the Eschaton or national sovereignty Time in l-lei.lsgesch.icht'f! is spital and threedimensional; in mainstream Muslim traditions, cycles repeat one another with the last, inaugurated by Muhammad, performing this repetition at a higher ~11d more consummate level of accomplishment .. That history is. habitually recidivist does 110t necessarily give time a cyclical structure with 110 end as in Brahminical'Yngas ~ although it does produce cycles, normally at irregular intervals, within a large linear structure.Augustine of Hippo (a "'Westerner~'?); for one, signaled the differentia of paganism to consist of believing the downward trends in history to lbe fina!';, in secular historiography and! political ideology; the notion of translatio imperii catered to the sustenance of 1· nearity; In any case" cyclism itself is rather more complex tl~an we are usually led to believe, and far more inter-

63

which there is mu.ch in medieval Arabic historical writing and wisdom literature (Ibn Khaldun, Biruni, Mas'udi.Ya'qubi, to mention bet a few). The same could be said of source criticism, Medieval Arabic astrologjcal histories and prophetic histories of the immediate fiiture were, moreover, highly q u anti tative, The relation between medieval Arabic historical writing and other genIes VIaS strong: as in the narrative typ·es identified by Northrop Frye~ they go, back to, a prior general stock: [of structural types out of which. they develop, Local histories, and the histories of specific categories of people (philosophers, judges, grammarians, Shaft; is) are ubiquitous in medieval Arabic historical writing, S Finally; the notion of causal explanation in history is a, matter requiring more than a celebratory statement.

AD these belong to a repertoire of Late Antique ecumenical notions, canons, and genres of the historical craft and of political wisdom; in. the highly distinctive f01'111. acquired under the Caliphate [or in its shadow That they are of inci =

)J...... ., '""f'V'r. ' , . ,. ....JlI. fro .. ~ h th

oence In western wnnng uenves ._ m a p·Qlnt m nme w en I; ey were not yet

conceived asWestern~The dlifferentla.. of'modern conceptions, of his .tory; signaled above; is indeed ofWestem origin, but is 11.0t an exclusively Western tradition.

That all ·the characteristics are combined, is undeniable if we specify a time: beginning with 'the Renaissance, but far more consistently from the Enlighrenment, most particularly when steeled with the notion of objectivity; formally

a, d· ",m... ,.....1L Ilarv to sci · Th" bi

consntuee 111: tne nmeteentn century as a cere ary to sciennsm, us comoi-

nation was achieved in Europe at the same time as history 'became all academic discipline in its own right~ at roughly the same time that saw the rise of correlative cultural phenomena: literary naeuralism, the photographic (and Iarer the cinematic) notion of realism, no less than taxidermy and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. As, Peter Burke indicates, this [combination has become 1 universal patrimony: this was accomplished by the universal modules of modernity; enracinated globally in institutions of cultural, 311d in tropes of political, social, and historical thought, It is produced and, re .... produced everywhere, indeed in many instances more successfully outside Europe, for moderniry is a global development going back to the early nineteenth century; a combined global development, which was (and still is) uneven in 'the rhythms and incidence'; and in which the '''''''Westh hac'S not always been the pioneering location for these convergent movements, despite the Eurocentric narrative that predominates globally; The most profound consideration on history; its philosophies, crafts, and histories; that I have read in two decades was written in Ara1bic,9 and I doubt whether it would be translated, as publishers are likely to think it much too exotic 011 account of its language, :and not sufficiendy exotic on account of its content,

64

Aziz Al-Azmeh

Yet it must not be assumed that we have here a homogeneous eternity of a rational historical culture, objective, wary of anachronism.The robust and reflec .... tive positivism espoused by Peter Burke, albeit professionally originating in the epistemological utopia encapsulated in VOL1 Ranke's celebrated but not very

r_ d h ", ... ;t... l_.. j!:; • • .~ ~ ~ nfin d th r "' ........ ~ ..... ~I " d

prO][OU11. r P_." rase "" une es etg,en,td(;,ft, geu;esen; IS socmauy co . e to, e TOm_'U.J!iU an,

professional writing of history" There acre layers of historical culture in all societies, and Westerners. are as. irrarional in the conception of history as any others:

Romantic notions of the past, vitalist conceptions of time and of otherness, the cyclism of national greatness and decadence; the very notion of dec I ine, are an part of a concept of history t113t; for half a century, had been relegated to tile demotic, but is now resurfacing, under the guise of culturalism and of postmodernism, to subvert historical reason as it had when it predominated until the end of the Second. World War .. I think it important that the lhisto,ty ofhis- . tory be set out clearly, that history reaffirm the parting of ways with rhetoric and religton that inaugurated Ranke ~s uropia in the nineteenth century and led to the rise of professions] history; after all; for what 'better task is there fo,r the composer of historical narratives, but to be the remembrancer celebrated by Peter Burke; as· the "guardian ofawkward facts, d.1e skeletons in the cupboard of the social me'nl0tty!~?10

Notes

1. One miglJEt most usefully refer to J~E+ Schlanger, Us metapho"s de I.~ (]rga~$me~ Paris, 1971 ~ 2r M .. Lombard, 'The Go,ldm Age of Islam, Atmten.,jlamJ 1 '975.

3·.. G, Powden ~ Fro,,,, E;npift to' Common~l_Malth, Princeton, 1'993,~ 4~ A .. M=Azrneh! Musii,ffl Kingshtp! London, 1996.

57 A .. M-i\zmeh, Al~Kitab~' at~ttJrikhiy~ wa'l Jt~ajJrifo at~f4rikl;iyya {H{s,tof_iMl Wr.iting lJ.tU!i Hi.storiCt~l Know.ledge], Beirut, 1995,,,

6~ H .. Lazarus ... Y~ehj. IrcJJntwined Worl,QS. Medieval MtlSlim Bible Crit:kism~ Princeton, 11 992.

7 ~ Thus the tide of my contri burien to R.eliJlwn ad Pmiti{;(Ji R£m.oH~ ed, D.lbt.cy and F. ~eyoolds~ Albaa'hy ~ 993 ~ 163 ff.

8~ Medieval Arabic historical writing has been poorly served by ~cholat'".shlp. But see now T.

Khalidi, A ruble Hist()tl',al Thought iR the 'ClasWAI Periodt Cambridge, 1, 994.

9'". ;,... al-' Arwi~ Majhmn al-tMikh {The CO'nJ;ept of Hi:;.tory}~ 2 vols., Beirut and Casablanca, 1992 ..

10. Peter B,urke~,"History as, Social Mel1'lory'~.in Memory. His~ CU~feJ and the MinJt ed.T, Butlet; Oxfg]~d.~ 1 '989; J11. (),

s. '7h ~~¥,tAe ~ Toward an Archaeology of Historical Thinking

How to begin? With a commentary and a brief discussion of each point brought tlP by Peter Burke? This approach possesses a certain disadvantage in that the proposed, framework must be taken as a given, and then conveniently; tile ensuing analysis will bring out the nuances and put tile finishing touches 0:0 tills. or that point for which Burke has already provided the basic outline.After an initial remark about these issues, about the vvay to pose such questions todaj; I shall + • th .~~ .. ..l ~ £.. II_;.. ".11:,.. b .... f thi .;\':; h ~ . l' h h"

invite e reaaer to rocus her gaze on tne .. ' egmnmgs 0 II S . rstortca tr oug ,It.

Gi ven the difficulty of practicing comparative analysis mn a meaningful way~ we can at least use it as a. framework for our present reflections, A pote].'1- rial if no tactual comparativisml A history of historiography; inspired, opened u.p and even thrown into question by this demand, to compare would be able to

•. • a h ~'11 "d h revisi + d 1

escape constant repention O[ nug . t aiso aVOIl· so rnuc " revtsiomsm lone .3 ways

from. the inside, By inscribing "historical thought' within this. comparative framework~ we would be able to· take a certain distance from these Wester1Lfl historjographical paradigms and would perhaps be able write a, renewed history or even better an archeology An archeology that would appreciate the successive

~ ". ~ 1 . 1 L.~. ~ d d :.II 1Ii~1t....: ~ ;:II ~

ano retrosp ectree teieo ogmes t .iat nave Q·rgaruze·.· an, maoe tnstory meanmg-

ful, To this we carl add a, firrther elabcration: historiography can be understood as a kind of or part of, intellectual history To understand the books. of his tori - ans, you must read books other than those by historians-e-otherwise you sound the death knell of a profession! Burke is thus correct to speak more largely of

"hi '~1 .~'U... ........ lh n

. 1S torI Cal ·UIOUOUt ..

This text which. wants to be and is an op erring onto a wider world, is without any doubt written from the heart of old Europe, Imagine that the same question was asked from a Californian university; for lnLSt311Ce-: the answer would

Notes for this section CMl be found on page 71,

most certainly be different. This said, we should thank Burke for taking the risk of beginning such. a debate since as soon as these questions are uttered there i~

h f b ~ ~ .. d if' di dl

. ··i· . .., . .. : ., .. '.. , .. ,.. -.

a strong c ance 0 .> ell.llg crt ticize . . . no t repll. ate...

If he struts, by recalling that the We~t is itself a historical construction, Burke refers only to the ~oM'.Glremp'o['.ary situation of professional historians who today make up' a "global community' that shares the same professional standards (But who codified and transmitted tl1em?). Only stylistic differences" which is to say different types of history, exist (quantitative, social, cultural and so forth) .. The historical interrogations and debates of tile mast thirty years are not directly invoked .. Are they not just Sl~ much froth on the ~,~ IOlngue dt4fee/' of "historical thought" that Burke rightly wants to make more visible (W:ouldl this, he an attempt to avoid the idea that historical thought can be reduced or summed. up by Hegel's philosophy ofhistory?)~

Do eg, 11()!t ehe proclaimed universalism ofWes.tern social sciences, inscribed in the very heart of this historical (Who ~s the le-u"P,) proj ect, translate into the surest evidence of its eurocentrismi Is it not itself in need of~·~d.ecoloniiri~g;;-? Was not the universal Ol1.'C'e parochial? To translate the Arab worn tarlkh as, "history" (tlli~ is undoubtedly the case since the sixteenth century) caused the specificity of Muslim historiography to be overlooked .. The tirtkh., as a recent translator felt that it VIaS necessary to underline" "is also and especially at field of'knewledge that is mscribed within a non- Western cultural system ,,+ + giving ·00 itself objects, putting certain concepts in practice, assuming functions in society and in a ,ge:n= eral field of knowledge very far removed from what existed in the West"1 With= out this preliminary conversion, compsrativism can only be myopic,

jrh diverse j ' . .-l.! = d th '\"'Iir.r. •• hi .,

; e, verse mterroganons directee at e west concermng Its, .nstorio-

graphical practices in the mast few years have all touched on the problem of the o bje(:tivity of this discourse and .its attendant presuppositions, Whether it is. a question of the linguistic turn that inquired into the relationship of history -an·d fiction" or of mnvestigations. that introduced concerns. about gender and later cultural studies; these approaches must all address the following questions: who speaks tOI whom, when, how and 'why? To this remark we can add a second ... As. long as Europe made history; the practice of writing history seemed self-evident: today when such is no longer the case, it is hardlysurprising that tile interrogation would turn back to how the making of this history had been written.'

Acco,rding to Burke, the specificity of\Yestero historical thought, 0][' to use the phrase of'Bemard Guende, of'its historical culture, H to be found less En the elements of which it is composed than in the combination of these parts, The ingredients can be found elsewhere, only irs preparation is unique" Moreover, this ~~ thought" is. itself a composite: it is. formed by an ensemble. of propositions, each with its, O'WTI history, its own chronology, without any necessary coherence [but nevertheless coexisting, one with the others, more or less wen. There is room £0[' play and. conflict with this consequence among others: the distance

t, .i •• ;L. 1-.. ~ ~ m aI' ,t I· ;; d th l....: s . ~. ~ s: ~~ 1L ..

betweerr+-tne rnstonc _ ·(.U ture .anc o : er tustoriograpnres-e-rar rrom J[]l3.V'1:ng

67

been constant, has varied following me course of centuries, clearly rising with thole Renaissance and diminishing in the nineteenth century,

Beginning with Herodotus, Burke wants to show the Iong trajectory of ~ 'historical thought,' ~ how earlier propositions contributed to 'me making and transforming, the reformulation and criticism of this ~~ thought," By so clearly historicizing this Wes,tlern model, such an approach deserves the credit for relativizing it,.2 This. approach, which straightaway challenges the idea of the Great Divide, aims only to furnisb a certain number of entry points. fo·r a' descriptive inventory of differences t~'; ten points are located, each one incited disputes or caused a tension 00 take hold at the- heart of the Western tradition that formed it These points make up a system or at least refer to one another, elaborating throughout the centuries: the terms of a debate comprised of agreements, disagreements and even contradictions .. BLU'ke even suggests that it might be p ossible to see a "system of conflicts" here (perhaps in the image of democracy). The- formulation is seductive but is it convincing?

Burke proposes a kind of mapping to poclep·.are for at future sta.ge that would address tile "w hy" of differences in earnest. Nevertheless" this West,ern. "model' still remains, a bit like 3. painting where one poines to and measures absences and

th 1....: U d d:n th . '" h .. ._m~, k 111

presences ~ at W1UC' un .. erseane S 0,.1 er exp eriences iowever 1'"3 plu..qr eva- .. eo

by China.japan or ehe Islamic world .. If I must attempt an archeology ofWes,tern "historical thought," I would prefer rather to ~ 'take the measure of tile p ossibiliries that, in becoming Western~ we have closed off,;'~ Maurie e MerleanPonty made this statement in regard to' the arts of India and China, but it seems eo me equally vaJi,d for hiseory;

In the following pages; [will restrict myself'to it few' general remarks 01'1 the

"" hi "f '"''t....:. + ~ 1 th ght' f J:". £".. ~ ~ b

pre· istory 0 'mstoncai ougr t : 1101~ out 0 ~ a preterence lor orrgms out

because here we em set up· an experimental situaeion, We can gras.p the con:fi.g ..... urations from which choices and bifurcations", which did not have to be or could have been different, were made.And later, they were forgotten or became so self-evident that no one any longer dreamed of questioning them. We can also measure the distance' between "an interest in tIbe past" and the e·mergence of"llis.torical thought," which is above all concerned with present,

Let's g'o back for a moment to Mesopotamia where, ar the end of the third millennium, the monarchy of Akkade.; which was the first to unify the country under its au th or i ty,. called in scribes to write "its" hiseory in other words, to legitimate its power in the present. Without pausing over this first IIIOd·e1_ of monumental and royal historiography whose methods axe as incontestable as they are simple, I would like to focus on the exchange that eems to have tied divination .a1t1d history In ancient Mesopotamia, as we- know; divination played an important role in decision making." How did the soothsayers work? They accumulated, classified even ts, made lists, compiled, C onstieuted real libraries ~ They were guided by an ideal of exhaustivity; itself ruled by a logic of precedent that brings us c iose to the knowledge of a judge and juridical practices" In other

• .....l ~ ....JlI.::. ~ '1::.......... f' ""'- 1'If; • f th A' J:" t

woms, IWVJL11ab.on JlS· nrst 0 all' a science ofthe pase.z series OJ[ oracles were

found at Mari (dating from the beginning of the second millennium) that modern. researchers dubb ed "historical oracles.'; Instead. of employing a canonical

d .... i1: • ..., If ~JI. I' f th .~, ~ ( .:...c d)" .n.1_ • + " th th kin

rna. anty: . (llle lver 0 '.' e ,arum~ sa·cr.urce." ms .m..uUS; It m.s· a Slgll ' at '" e . '.g

tvill take the town in such a. W'dY,~'!I' they say "Ifthe liver of the animal is thus, it is a sign that the king to.ok· the town in such a vlal~~" This passage from the future to a completed past is, truly surprising even more so since the events to which they refer are thought by us. moderns to actually have taken place, 1].1. addition, some have wanted to see here the ve·ry beginnings of Mesopotamian historiography: first divination then history e. Sinologists such as· Leon Vandermeersch held the same point of view in regard to Chinese historiography

My incompetence' keeps me frons taking sides but what interests me is that these two methods, divination md historiography, seem to belong to the same Intellectual Sjp ac e a. From the point of view of the consultant, the king-she comes

· h fassi · 1~..: decisi fro th · f + f h

11'1 s·e311~ ~, 0' assistance in lna~ng;l . ecision. rrom . I e pomt 0' view 10 the spe~

cialists consulted, the scribes, who take 110te of the "historical" oracle, transcribe it and study it-+they add the oracular configuration to their lists and thereby increase their stock of precedence, We might also imagine the "WOrk done in

b lL ,., ith h ", ,; ( ..... 1. f h ~ 1-;: f.l-.m... )

reverse': Iy Degm1.11ng ~ I t ie event tne news or t· e taking 0' tne town' to

decip her (verifY) the signs mscribed on the liver .. Another possibility would be that the scribes right recopy actual royal inscriptions relating this or that act by

th 111_.: d G.. th 1· f roval cl ~.1_' " d" th f

e lhYl1g.,. an linin Ie sst 0 .i.u·,.~ ora es, maxe It correspon to. i e state 0

the liver that these events implied or would imply,

We could extend this investigation to Rome through an. examination of the famous Pontifical Annals~ which are ill the more famous for having disappeared .. Each :rear' the sovereign pontiff wrote a chrondcle (tah1i4,la) that he hung on the front of"lliis.;)~ house, Cicero understands this transcription as the beginnings, albeit clU111SY and unrefined, of Roman historiography; In recently reexamining this. question, john S cheid demonstrated that this documen t, delivered at the end of each year, must have functioned as a kind of report on the state of the relations between the city and the gods, It was left to the po-ntif~ maximus to compile it as the povver to "retain on his I,abula the memo·ry of events'; that had devolved to him, 4 W11at events? Victories, calamities and portents all were collected and treated ·onmy as smgns that allowed for the keeping of accounts of piety" Especially important in this reg-ard was how to decipher bad omens, and

all 1 "~'''~'' s: th

eventu iy 1.0W to "expiate lor I em ..

A IH ffi ial" hi" f R if lik 'ii: ... 1'·' H L.:_ L. hi

no: icis S.tOIY 0 ,ome, 1 we' e~. or a. .. reug 11 0 us history vut t~ IS.

compilation, divided according to, the rhythms of the city~s calendar, responds to the followmg questions: Where are we in relaeion to the gods] Have we done what was necessary? Whdlt should we do? The pontiff was also a man of the archives guided by resear-ch into precedent (particularly concerning omens) but concerned with the present, Each year he fmnis.hed to the new consuls a report

.... iL ' ; ~1· .

on UIlJ!(e City s ~·,t:llgJO'US state ..

69

The choices of the Greek city-state were dilfe1'"el1t~ Divination was certainly present and collections of oracles do exist. But what was historiography for the Gre·ekr-and later to become "history" for the moderns--etook a different path .. This historiography pre,~upp·ols·es, the epic, Herodotus wanted to rival Horner, and he fman·y became Herodotus. He undertook to do for the Medic wan what Horner had done for the Trojan W:u" From this point on to write history would be to begin with a conflict and tell the' story ofa great war by fixing the "ori-

• H (t1.Jl1 .. f th ,. J:':. H do tl ~~ " c!"

g;:ttrl: 'lie determma tion 0 ne (J', Ua lor ero €uS or . ae . tru est cause ror

Th ucydides). [11: contrast to the Bible which tells, a continuo us story from the beginning of time, tile first Greek historians fixed a point ofdeparture and limited themselves to recounting a specific set of events,

The bard of the epic, who sang the exploits of heros., had to Ideal Vlidl mern·ory, forgetting and death, Likewise, Herodotus wanted to prevent the signs of human activity from being erased uno longer told, But he limits himselfto what "men made" happen, telling only what he "knows" in a delimited time period, the "time of'men .. '~Wl1,ere~ the bard owed his knowledge to the Muse who was omnipresent and all-seeing, the historian vvill call UpOll histon«. He means to procure for himself: via this substitute, a vision analogous to the one henceforth + ibl h th M id d 5 Thi .c.; hi .. hi al' ,~" g.;;

maccessm e e ar ae .... use previae ~ s nrst istorrograp c ' operataon

encounters and reinforces the primacy gran·ted by file Greeks to the eye as an instrument of'knowledge, Beginning here, the history ot\V~~tern historiography I( ould be written in. counterpoint as {Th history of the eye and of vision!

If in relation to eastern historiography; the Greeks are Iate-comers, it is with them-e-precisely with Herodotus-e-that the historjan emerges as a subjective figure .. WithOl..lt being directly commissioned by any .political power, Herodotus

'IlL.... d cl ... .,; h th beai ., th th· ;... f'} · 1 ... .::;

marks an. ciarms t e stOty' . at ... ·egtns VV'1 .'.(1; mscnpuon 0 J.d· . ~11~1111e as LUS

own. From th-e outset, this, place ofknowledge is claimed and yet must neverthe less be entirely constructed: this construction will of course be lthe work itself., Additio·nally, the Greeks are less the mventors of history than the historians, of the writing subject, Such ,3, mode of .~.e1f=affrrmatiton and the production of a discourse were nor at all only historiograp hical phenomena, To, the contrary; they' are sign, the true signature of a period of Greek intellectual history (between ehe sixth and tenth century B. C~) which witnessed at the same tirne

th · f'" . U • ilL il 1 f d d

e rue .0' egotism amon~,g artists ~ ]P1rlll' os,op aera 0, naeure ane I. octors.

. A new figure on the' stage of'knowledge but one who, did not emerge &011('][ nowhere, yet the historian will nat take long to bow down in {mint of the philosopher, who? from the fourth century; will become the major reference and symbol, so to speak, of the intellectual, TJu.~ philosopher 'will be a. man of schools {not so with the historian), but his place, his relationship to institutions. will from 1hl0W on be posed without cease, As .soon as history Call no longer claim. to be political science as Thucydides would have wanted it to be, the historian was left with tt-le task of convincing his audience that history was also philosophy, that it was, pleasing and useful This will finally result in the presen-

70

ration of history (\1$ at magistra vitae, and philosophy preaching by· example: less a; science of action than one of self-actualization. But fiom the choices. ofThucy-

dj. eIll dri" · ft b ugh b Momigli "1m h Ids ilia hi .

", _', ' I I" 0 (c, '" ' , ,. --"', , " 'I~_' • "" " ;' '. c, 'il', - '''', ' '"., : .. c':,' .. '. " .. ",

'. es,~ s pomt, 0 en oro .. c, ,t upy. ann" 3110, so II 0 ' . t true llsrooc-y

is first of ail (and will be for a ~on,g time to come) political history.leaving aside the field of antiquities and erudition. It is onJy in the modern era that research

he anci Id ill' ,.. h·

on t e ancient '\NO[" w· rejoin tstory

Aristotle's formulation in the Poetics (ch~ 9) leveled a blow ofgreat ,c:onsequence at the' ambitions ofThucydiidian history Thucydides had the ambition of creating ~ work along the lines, of the famous formula, kthna (acquired) forever, His, goal was 110 longer alb 0 LIt saving threatened, valued actions :from being forgotten, but about transmitting an instrument of intelligibility concerning the present to the men of the- future'. In going from tile present (not the past) toward the fiiture, the aim was not that of prevision but rather of deciphering the presents to come: because given what men are, other analogous crises would surely break out in the illimture. It is, the p,e.rmanence of'human nature that establishes the exemplarity (ideal 'type) of this conflict, named (forever) by its, historim, 'the Peloponnesian War.

Wh,en opposinghistory to poetry.Aristotle, as is well known, limited history eo the "particular," to what Alieibiades ,did or what happened to him, The "general" is . by definition outside of history's purview. It follows. that poetry is

",,," bU' .. ' hi .... 1 ~Hi d' 'it.. r, S h 1 - .... P 1 1b ~ '", d . ..l,"

more p osop C~ aan i1l:jto~{)mew at rarer "oy -,IUS trie tel rernrect

. '

Aristotle's argument by showing that history' was more philosophical than

poetry because its tragedies were' . real, His efforts met "YJith little success, Even if the E talian humanists rediscovered the various argmnen ts of 'this deb~te, postermty has not shown much interested ill ir .. On the other hand, the Aristotelian division. will remain one of the .imp ortant themes and one of the recurrent interrogations (under diverse modalities': individual om: collective; idiograp hical or nomothetic history, -etc~),ofWes,tern historiography.We have here a configu-

ra tion of a tongue ,dUffie'" .

I will stop here with these rapid remarks, which do not attempt in any vvay to demonstrate that everything can. be fbundl in the beginning, or that all the important ques ti om, were already put into platy a long time ago" Rather, I view' these examples as an ·e'xplerim.erital space where the divergent experiences of history are communicated, divisions start emerging, positive choices are formu= lated ruptures take shape, ,3. "Western~" tradition begins to be made,

Notes

1l. Ibn Khaldfin, hu_p1.es ret ~l.l1tions au mOHtie, translated and presented by A. Cheddadi, Paris, 1l9B6~ 25.

2, In tbls sense, he responds at least in. part to the objections communicated from India by A~hls Nandj; 'Hisrorys Porgotten DIOWiblLes~) History and Th.tMY~ 42 (~9915), 65t 'Where he criticizes Western historians fur havimtg historicized [everything but his:tory irself

3. J, Bottero, '~Syrnptolttt~} signes, ,ecritu1'e~ ~ in Divi~~tion et mtiotuditll, Edidons du Seuil: Paris, 1974·; 70~8,6.~JJ+ Classner, 'Ch~vniques mes~o't~mien:HJes! PM'~.~ ~ 99.3.

4 + J, Scheid, 'Les t,emps de la dte et 1 'histoire des pll&tres; ~ in Tm:nsrnr€ les mrd,!~I.l(jgit$ ~ under the direction of M. Detienne, Paris, 1.'994, 149~1l$8"

.51, F. Hartog~ Le Mimi! d ~ I-!erodo te t Pari . s, 1991 t iii-xvi.

Trauma and Suffering

A Forgotten Source ofms~rn Historical Consciousness

FRANKR.~T

1. MethlodologicaI problems

Comparison always requires some more or less neutral background, a genus proximum, in terms, of which !JlI description can be given of ehe items that one wishes to compare, This poses a difficult problem when we try to deal with the question that Professor Burke has put 011 the agenda: fo[ what description of historical c onsCiOUSl1.eSS could one think of as actually possessing the required, neutrality with regard to both Western and non-Western conceptions of the

? I . hI . 1 th . '&:i • lL.... ~ III..:: .,_.,_ ~L -. L .= ~ ~ 1 r. ~ d

past: : t 1S.~ argua y" precise y. err lUC0ili!WWWlUnlulnty that nas awaxene ~ I our

interest in th . e relationship of Western and non- Western historical consciousness and that has invited! the camp arisen.

Hence, o'~lr mnitial[ problem will be how to start our investigation into this relationship and, more specifically; how to make sure that the right thing is compared, to the right thing, To put it dramatically, it might well b'e that the closest analogue to, the Weste["n conception of the past lis. not to be found in non= Western historiograplry; as we might have thought as a matter of course, but; rather; fo,r example, mil tile theological systems; conceptions -of the self or in the works of art that we may find in non= Western cultures, Moreover, even Western historical consciousness mtse[f ~ provide us with further examples of this kind of complication,

'For instance, if one wishes to understand the evolution o·f\Vestern historical consciousness 6."'OlTI 18.00 to 1 8.30; one cannot I eave literacure, ;311.& more ,ilP ecifically, the historical novel, out of one's account. One would fall to identHy one of the strongest determinants of this, evolution if one were to restrict one's ga~ze to historical writing mtseIDf and to ignore the tremendous influence of Scott's historical novels ~ in. particular, on the development ofWestern historical consciousness, during this absohitely crucial period in. the evolution ofWe s tern.

73

his torical thought In this period, the history of historical consciousness t,emporarily abandoned histormcal writing mtself and preferred to fellow the p,atlls ,of literature, Moreover, it could be argued that the nineteenth-cenrury realist and

-~~ 1 ~ 1 h ffi 1 t f ~" + + ~ ~ f 1 h' . l'

naturaust nove was tr e resui '0' a contemporaruzanon 0,· t le istorica

novel: 1 the aCCllracy in the representatio 11 of the life and times of the characters of tins historical novel (am. accuracy Walt was ehe strictest requiremenr of the genre), WdS now transposed to the present as well" After this transposition had been achieved, th e realistic novelist could be required to present to his readers

r(' ., l 1 · II. ~ n Z 1_ ,. tl £ rd

une copte exacte e't 111- tnu tieuse Cj e ,a 'Vh~ ,urnau:u; as ..... O'Ja put it mile orewor to

his, Therese R,aquin,,1\nd~ to put the crown on all this, one may agree with Hayden Wllite when he writes that historical writing, from the nineteenth century dOW'D to the present da~ has carefully cultivated the style and the prose of the realistic novel, whereas in the novel itself; since the beginning of the twentieth century; marlY new and exciting experiments were made in the representation of human experience in language.

Thus, we may observe in the' nineteenth century, from tile perspective of th-e development of Westerrl historical consciousness, a most complex intermingling of me genres of the novel and of historical wrjting No exposition of the development ofWest,ern historical consciousness can claim validity if it does not properly account for these most complex interrelationships. And if such crossings can already be' observed within one and the same culture, it is quite likely that they will similarly confound 'the far more' ambitious and, adventurous attempt to ,C 0111pa.re 'Western and non- WeSI~ern histormcal c onsciousness,

A re~ated and. additional complication is that Western historical consciousness, in particular, has undergone so many and. such profound metamorphoses since the days of Hecataeus, that itt may well be that in several phases of its evolution it has been closer to variants of non ~ Western- historical consciousness than to several earner or later varianrs ofVVestern. historical consciousness its elf (1 shall return to this concept later on) '. Needless. to SlY, were this actually the caste, i t would make nonsense of the' whole question whether there are any categorical .differences between Western a111d non= Westen1 historical. consciousness. AJJl we would then have are different ways of experiencing [he past, and the attempt to find any systematic dif£erence(s) between Western and non- Western conceptions of the past would be just as vain as the attempt to discover systematic differences bemreen two slabs of marble coming from exactly the same location of the same quarry., Differences there may; and even will be" but dTey will not allow us IW make any inferences going beyond the nature of these differences themselves .. In both cases difIerences would 'be nod-ling but the signs, of themselves.

74

2" The '·'psych·oanalysis," of bistor-.ical consciousness

However, even though Pr-ofessor Burke does not insist on this and similar' methodological problems, this will not, 111 itself, be sufficient to put in doubt his exposition of the differeolces, between Western and non~Western conceptions of history For we should realize that each such comparison always has to begin somewhere. There will always be an initial phase where we cannot yet be sure about what exactly we are comparing with what, and in terms of what we are

~ ~.1-..: <ib.L _;.M ~ 111 £:i • '" ~ 111 d n 1Il... bl +. hI

frl.alung urn; camp·anson: onJilY alI:ter some lrutlla~!I ano prot .. ia .' Y, om: even mevita •. y;

b · d P ;bill.....:: ~ di ,. 'n · d = 111~ b 1

a iortrve attempts are mar e ill uw .. ' recnon, W1 m.t gUI. uany . ecome c ear

what we have been talking about all along, Inevitably; cross-cultural comparisons like these Call onlv get started in such a trial and error manner; and we have at this. early phase no foolproof methodological rules at lour disposal that we can blindly follow Nevertheless, we ought to be aware of the problem ,and try; as much as possible, to, avoid the projection or "transference," in the Freudian

f th rd f' ~.. "hi , J

sense 0 I at word, 0 our own unconscious assumptions or .istorrca nell-

'U ~ 1 1

roses onto ot aer cu tures,

] have deliberately been using Freudian terminology here: for the language of psychoanalysis might be helpful in making clear where I would differ with Professor Burke. Once again, I do not object to his list often points. ofwhere Wester11 and non- We.~tet'n historical consciousness differ. Everything he says along these lines seems to' me' entirely plausible, convincing, if not outright true' .. My question is, rather, 110W can we know that this list is exhaustive and, more specifically; not merely 31 random sample that could be enlarged at will, bur one that really gravitates towards, the center of our issue?

It is here that I should like to introduce one extra phase into the investiga ~ tion, My suggestion is that we should not start with intuitions about the formaJ features O.fl110'\V the past is. remembered by th_,e West lor in non-Western cultures, as is Professor Burke's strategy, but rather ask the quasi-eranscendeneel question: w hat made historical consciousness possible in either the Weslt or in non- West-, ern civilizations? Similarly-e-and this is why I took psychoanalysis as my model a moment ago-e-if we are well acquainted with two persons A and B,'VIe 11~ enumerate any number of differences in. how each of them relates to his or her past, but itt is. only from ~ psychoanalytical point of view that 'we ~y guess the

. d th 1 f ..... L dil"_a.· '0' ~1 th "d th' f ( ,P

importance an .. e re evance 01 tnese : ~ rrerences .. 1.IIUY 'e' .... ep 10 a 'qua,~l=

) psychoanalytical assessment of the personalities of A and B may yield a hierarchization of these differences and give us an idea of their relationships and relative importance.And the explanation is that it is. the psychology of A and B in which these observed differences have their ultimate ground, that has made these differences possible and therefore may enable us to really comprehend them, Hence; what I would like to suggest ills. that we should apply SUCIi a kind of ,~~ cultural psychoanalysis" to the Western and the non- Western attitude towards the past; and not be content merely to compile lists of agreements and

75

,differen,ces in the absence of any' reliable guide' for Il0W these might be con= nected, however useful and enlightening such lists may be at the' start of an investigation like this one.

N 0Vl, I am aware that trying to do something like this, is an ambidous enterprise that would require both a whole Ilbrary for adequately working it out, and a perhaps, even larger library on which the e-frolrt would have to be based, So what I shall be s~.g about this only suggests the kinds of topics that one might think of in this connection rather than what might be the right and most adequate thing to say about the issue,

3 ~ nauma as the orjgin of'Western historical consciousness

]f~ then; we look at Wes.tel'l1 and non- Western historical consciousness with the ,eyes of the ~~ cultural psychoanalyst"] introduced a moment ago" it must strike us thar Western historical consciousness was. strongly stimulated by and perhaps even originated in the traumatic experience of certain historical events. We may think. here of what 1494 meant to Machiavelli, Guicciardins and to. so many other sixteen th-century Italian historians, or 'of what 178'9 and aJ1 that followed the Revolution meant: to the french and the German hlsrorians of the 'beginning of'the nineeeenth century. It may well be that the fact that the Anglo=Saxon 'WOrld has had the fortune of never having to undergo such a traumatic experi-

1lL.~1 ~ '" hy hi · ~111 • r h ~.:. .,~

ence, neips us to explain w : . istoracat consciousness 1S SlO muc an mvennon

of the European continent. An additional argument for this thesis might be that what is undoubtedly the most interesting phase in the development of British historical thought, took place in the wake of 16491.-!le·I1Ce, of the event com-

~ cl h . . in th fB ~ ~ h hi

ll"l.g·. osest to sucn a tranmattc expen.en,ce In. e course 0' ·tlltlS." nstory;

Purthermore, the view that (the origins of) (\Ves.ter[Jh) historical consciousness should be related to trauma can be clarified with the he~p of the following argument. It has often been argued that our sole contact with or experience of reality in which reality discloses '00. us its 'true nature, irs radical strangeness and majestic indifference to. us occurs in trauma-e-far in. the nontraumatic experience of reality; reality ~'1.~ already been forced within tlh:e limits of the knOW11, the familiar and the domesticated, N ontraumatically experienced reality is a reali ty that has already been processed by US'~ in much ehe same 'W"ay that the Kantian

~ f .L1J. ..JI .,l.;: &: II: H' tl d f- .. ~ ha

categories 0 II..l1.e un'uer,~tmwng process· ; ae raw c ata 0 experience Into w 7 . t

Kant defined as "phenomenal" realit~ Here reality has been appropriated by US". is familial' to- us and has been robbed of all the threatening connotations of the traumatic .. It is here that we may' also observe ~ link with the Kantim sublime, since the sublime" as defined by Kant, transcends the experience of reali ty as condidoned and processed by the categories of the understanding, and thus presents us with reality in its. quasi-noumenal quality, and therefore with a reality that has still retained all of its, radical. alienness .. TI1e trauma is the sublime and

76

Pnmk R,A~nmit

vice versa, and ~t the bottom of both is an experience of reality that shatters to pieces ~ our certainties, beliefs, categories and expectations ~

Continuing this line of argument, we might argue next that history as, a reality of its own cam only come into being as a result of the kind of traumatic collective experience I suggested ~ moment .ago; and the implication would be that there is an. indissoluble link between history and the miseries and the horrors of me past, Happiness, on the other hand, would, within tms view; not sig-

• £ .. 1. +b th b f .1L z , R~~·~": ~~ h J,. rial

mncantly contrabute to I. ie S,U :,$.tatlc,e 0 ll.lStory..,eant~as S,UC'" noume ~

realiry-vand this would be true of historical reality as well-is, essentially a painful reality+fimdamentally an encounter with death; as this reality "as such," i11 this century, most paradigmatically manifested itself in the traumatic sublime of the HO[.OC3\1lillSt. Of course, he:re' we ate in. agreement with Hegel's well-known observation that the happy days of mankind are flO ips()' the empty pages m the book. of history

Moreover, [lbis line of argument l),JOuldl also elicit our agreement wid!

Huizinga's view that history is. tragedy, and that the belief in progress and our more euphoric views of the p-ast are merely om attempts to, hide this unpleasant reality from view, Thus! "what Kant in his Det Streit der F(j·.ku.ltiitlffl (1798) referred to as. the "moral terrorist" and the "eudemonist' conceptions of the past, should noe be placed next to each other at an equal level: (psycho-jlogically the former reilly precedes the Iatter, Once again, the past is. essentially and primarily a painfiil p.ast; and histories rejoicing in; for example, the triumphs of monarchs, soldiers a1(ld heroes. will never be able to give U-S that eudemonic essence, The great deeds of a nation" of a social class, 0[" a civilization give it much less of a historically defined coherence and identity than trauma and sufferin,g~t Ieast if certain circumstances are satisfied=-ca» achieve; this is pro bably an explanation why the victims of'history may-once· again, under certain and surely no: all circumstancee+-discover in history a far more powerful ally than their victors will ever be able eo do, Shared traumatic pain provides the collectivity with a common basis, in a far deeper layer of reality than happiness and Joy ever could. Here Thierry and the Marxist.s were right; with regard eo the bourgeoisie and the mdustrial proletariat respectively, when they showed that their past sufferings had been the condition of the so prominent role they

would later "may ill the history of mankind, .

Now, I believe that this will ell-able us to discern a fundamental difference between Western and non= Western historical consciousness, Though 110· 1 ~ Western history. ha-s had more than its, own share of tragedy; of war) murder and devastation; though 1494 and 1789 may· even be considered mere ripples. on the surface of history if compared to the abject fate of the Aztecs; the Ameeican Indians or of the unspeakable horrors that Mongol rule inflicted on Centra]! A,~i~, it seems that only Western man was capable of a traumatic experience of history. Strangely enough there seems to be no proportion between the amount of suffering that a civilization has. had to go through and its prop ensity to at trau ....

17

matic experience of these horrors.Apparently experience also has its varieties-e-

". ." d R 1 ~ 1 '. n + di d +

as mterpretation r oes. .e atrve y rmnor co ectrve c 1:S3Sten may;: unr er certain

circumstances, prove to be a stronger stimulus of historical consciousness than the 'WUrst that humanity has had to undergo in the course of its history.

I would even be prepared to defend the view thae this. insight ll1ay illuminate where Western civilization since the Renaissance differs. essentially from the medieval West preceding it (and from the relationship to the past that we may find in non- Weste)~11 cultures), For what were 14'94 and 1789 if C ompared to tile disintegration of ehe Roman Empire and the confusions that followed it, or to the Black Death of 1348, that killed 011e third of the European population and instilled an intense feeling of fear, despair and desolation in! the mind of the West for almost two centuries-v-as Delumeau so brillliandly showed in his La ,pro., en OccitJent? Once again, arguably; mere ripples on history's surface .. Y:et not even these frightful,event~ of the early and rhe late Middle Ages, nor the tragedies and horrors of the Hundred Years' War,2 effected anything even remotely resembling the coherence and the intensity of Guicciardini's experience of the past in the minds of the Gregory of Touts and the Proissarts, who so extensively and exhaustively (and VJith such curious dispassion) described these horrors.

One may wonder how' to explain that tragedy; horror and human suffering at au. unprecedented scale so oft-ell. faded quietly away in the mists of time, whereas in the West relatively minor historical disasters could suddenly be experienced as the kind of trauma from which Western historical consciousness originated. Why and how did this unique capacity for collective trauma come into being in the West? Asking this question U, to invite once again a number of unpleasant methodological problems, For, surely; a~ this highly abstract level we "Will typically be unable to distinguish expla:naf'!tia :&om e;cplana~nda~ and lit may even be that what we mention as t111e cause of this sudden Wester11 susceptibiliry to historical trauma is the consequence of this susceptibility rather than its cause,

4 .. The traumatic past is an abstract past

But allowing for this and similar uncertainties, I would nevertheless venture the followitng explanation, fu wi]] be clear finffi the above, this susceptibility to col ~ Iective trauma should not be explained by considering the' ,quantity of""C"oUec~

. . ,,. j~'L . -'I.::: d ·"11' by the i . f tho

tive pam that was mtncte .: Ion a ClV1 zatron, nor evenI][·~." ie mtensity 0 ' us

pain, for even outright unendurable collective pain only rarely results in the ereation of historical consciousness, I believe that the explanation is, rather, that fun the West a s.:trift mav be observed from collective pain to an awareness of this

.r

pain arid that this, is how this peculiar Wes.tern capacity for suffering collective

trauma originated, I hasten to add the following in order to avoid misunder-

78

standing, When thus. emphasizing the significance of the awareness of pain, I certainly do not intend tOI aetack the commonsensical and unexceptionable view that one cannot be in pain without an awareness. of this pain: certainly one cannot be in pain without knowing that one is. h.1L pain, Certainly; I do not wane "'0' areu ~ iTL.._·t the Az··t.r;;;c" e or £(OT +. L ~ .. t 'I"I9I .... atter fi:·Cite··, eneh -centurv E' 'I rep ean II:' were','

I!J..,' ...... ;o.1l ,Ij,.,. IU.La ' 'II,;.r,' "- Ii)" t 1Dt.:ll. UJ,d,i ~..I&., :t! Ull I Ul.' '.., J' ,,,,,!-!!l..v, Alt.£''1I' , .. '" '

singularly unaware of their su£Ieril1~gs and stolidly underwent their historical fate in the '\Nay that a rock nury tumble down from a mountain,

"l\Vllat I wish tOI say is rather the reverse: that is, what is, typical of trauma is precisely an incapaciry to suffer or to assimilate the traumatic experience into one's :tife history .. W11at comes into being 'With trauma is, not 5 .. 0 much an op,el1~ ness to suffering, but :l certain numbness; a certain insensitivity as if the receptacles for sufre'rin,g have become .inadequate to the true nature and the proportions of suffering, It is ill the ~y that ~ dissociation has come into exisrenee between suffering' itself and the awareness of this suffering; although the two always and inevitably go together, it is here as if, when being in pain, [ experience my pain as being a mere, though absolutely. reliable sign that someone (i, e." myself is in pain, while .not actually feeling the pain itself Whime being in pain myself I now fed tempted, S,O to speak, to look at myselffrom a point of view that no longer; or at least no longer automaticilly, coincides with myself

M the p,erS,Oll who is in pain. "

Similarly" ttawna effects a dissociation of a traumatically experienced realit}f and the subject of the traumatic experience, When Charcot m,d Janet were, in the 1880s.~ the first to seriously .investigate the phenomenon of traumatic shock, especially Janet strongly insisted on the dissociation that trauma seemed to effect in on.e and 'the same penon between a normal self, with normal memories, and a traumatically disturbed self to' which this, normal self and these normal 'memories are no, longer accessjble, Much of this original conception of trauma is retained in what is presently known as the so-called Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder and which is clinically defin,ed as follows:

In Pose- Traumatic Stress Disorder '(PTSD) ,... dlt' overwhelmirsg events of the .P~ repeatedly poss,es; in intrusive images and thoughts ~ the one who bas lived through them, ~ ~ , Yet what is particularly striking in this singular experience is that its insistent reenactments of the past do not simply 8~ as testimony '00 an event, but may also. p'nvddrnri,eal1ly Ie no ugh , bear witness to a P··M.t that w.IS never fully experienced. as it occurred .. Trauma, that is, does not simply serve as record of the past but it pre-. cisely registers the fOITe of an experience rhar is 110t yet fully ov:ned.3

The paradox of trauma thus is that it gives 1,15. a past that is neither for,gotten nor remembered; it gives, us a past continuing eo exist in us as at reality 'mat we remember precisely because we cannot remember it and because we have no actual. access to it. Trauma occurs, because of the su~ject~, incapacity to absorb the traumatic experience within the whole of his life story; and that makes him traumatically aware of a reality hiding itself from rum as soon as it reveals itself

7'9

and makes itselffelt to him.Or, to rephrase all this in the- terms that were proposed by J met: whereas ~ ~ normal t, history is ehe res rut of association, of a narra ~ tive integration or concatenation of experiences so that they can be

,~ . . dU ~~ dH b ~.' ~ ,,"il.! • h ~~ 11 f'

appropnaee or ownec .y us" t.talll:lUhC nrstory rs t ·e result o a procllGSS

of dissociation, of presenting our faculty of historical and narrative association with a challenge that it is; as yet, unable to meet .

. [ W1Jwd suggest that something closely resembling the foregoing description of trauma took place when Western bistorical consciousness came into being somewhere in the sixteenth an·d the seventeenth centuries. History became something that was remembered precisely because of thi.s paradox of at remembering that one cannot remember, because of an awareness that memoties did not enable us. to "appropriate" or to properly 1'·"·OWll.'·" the objects, of memory Collective suffering now took 'On the features of al reality that is continuously most painfully present to us, but that we' are, at the same time, unable to assimilate in ourselves: suffering 110W became strangely and unnaturally abstrace, something to be explained (historically) ~ but that is 110,t experienced primarily; or, at least, not completely eshausted in or by the experience of suffering itself It b ecame an occasion for thought, much in the same Vlay that both Hegel and Freud argued that what distinguishes human beings from animals. is that thought places itself'between ·desire and the satisfaction of desire in the case of human beings, whereas animals always look for an immediate s~tiSf~H;tiO[][ of their desires .. Collective s uffering I1fMl became ~ part of culture, something that could be expressed in the idiom of that culture') something that one could talk and write about .. And ill this ~ '110[lOW'" b etween suffering and tile language used for speaking about it; a new kind of discourse gradually and gropingly came ineo being=-that is ~ historical writing-s-having as its goal to relace this talking,

d ~. b sx: ~~a':' "._.J£" H" ~ ~1 •• _j~ d

an wrrtmg about sunermg, to sunermg ltS'~r tstorical wtlttng"lwscourse anc

historical consciousness mediate between trauma and suffering cllemslelves~, on the one hand, and the objectification oftrauma and suffering, on the other; that is, so characteristic ofWes:tem civilisation.The historians language originates ill the 'i-iillogicd sp 3;C e" between traumatic experience and ~ language that still had a primordial immediacy and directness in its relationship to, the worJ]d..---and then pushes this language aside, Historical Ianguage pulls Ianguage and reality apart and thus destroys the directness fun the relationship of language eo reality that the former still possessed jn the pre-historicist phase of civilization-e-that is, in the Middle Ages Of in 1110n- Western civilizations-while at tile same time attempting to bridge the gap it had thus inadvertently opened L1PI~

This may also explain whyWestern historical consciousness is so ineirnately and so closely related to an. awareness of the unintended consequences of intentional human action .. We may intend eo do one thing~ but while trying to realize our purposes, actually achieve ·quite another thing. TllUS Guicciardini sincerely believed that he had given. the best possible advice to ClemenrVll, but at th . e same time, he was, painfally aware that with hills advice he had, :Ul1 f~ct;

Fra~~ R. Anb!r.£fflit

achieved the Sack of Rome and therewith the destruction of the beauties and the glories of the Eternal City. It \VaS his realization that, unwittingly; 11e 'ha,d, been no less diSastto1.1S to the history of the country that he loved more than himself, cll~Ul Ludovico il Mom ha·d been when he invited Charles VIII to invade Italy in 1494:: a realization nut made hint aware of the unintended eong,eqt1.ences. of our actions with an almost exisrendalist intensity. This is what history essentially meant to him andwould mean to later, postmedieval Western civilization, For it is when wondering about the torment of this frightfUl discrepancy between our intentions and actions, on the one hand, and their actual consequences, on the other, that we are forced to step back fiom-r-or outside- - ourselves in order to be able to observe this discrepancy and by doing so, to start thinking historically, The pain we fed under such circumstances is, peculiarly enough, a pain that alienates us from the painful event i.tself---as. is, typically the IC3,s,e in trauma as discussed above .. And, Iastly, it is a pain that, 'not onmy Guicciardini, 'but almost .a11 of the sixteenth-century Florentine historians seemed to cultivate with an almost sadomasochistic pleasure: for one cannot read their lhis~

. -

tories without being struck by th . eir strange propensity to attribute to their own

country; to. Florence, a far gre~lter responsibility for Iwy~s disasters than is warranted by actual historical. fact. Perhaps self accusation is also all art that a civilization learns to practice properly only in tile course of time (and from that perspective it would not be surprising that the discovery of the art of self-accusation began with such a strong overdose of it) ,.

Obviously; one might now go hack one s(,ep' further and ask what the explanation is for Guicciardini's unprecedented susceptibility to the unintended consequences, of his actions.Why did his awareness of what he ]had done to his country film his mind with a11_ unbearable and traumatic pain, whereas, for example, Philip, the Good of Burgundy looked with complete equanimity a\t the d·estruction wrought on Prance because of his, self serving alliance with EngImd? Once a\gain~ when considering this ·questmon it MU be hard to distinguish causes n1)ni][ their ,e;'fifects and to establish exactly what preceded what. But now that we have already entered onto the path of reckless speculation, I may be forgiven for venturing the following view,

It might well be that for. Philip the Good socio-political reality would remain fundamentally the God-willed. order that it h~·d ~W3lys been, regardless of the nature of his actions, That is to :s~y" he considered his actions to touch merely LIp·on the surface of socio-political reality and to be mcapable of stirring ih. depth=-supposing that me distinction between its surface and depth would have made any sense to him at aJL He did not yet have the notion of political action in the real, modern sense of that word; that is, of the kind of public action that truly "makes a difference" to what the world is, 01" MU be like, Certainly; that does not in the least imply ·that he would be incapable of £ee~ing any l"eSP onsibility {or what he did ordid not do; but the crucial datum is here that this responsibility regarded only his awn person: 3l1d how that pers·on might h·e

81

seen by tl1.e eyles of God .And this was different for- Guicciardini: for the iespon = sibility that Guicciardini felt was a responsibility to IDe world (or to Italy) rather than to God,

But perhaps this is an unilluminating way of putting it it might be more enlightening to rep hrase the contrast into the terms of Ruth Benedict's wellknown opposition between "shame cultures" and "guilt cultures," Pollowing this lead one might $,ay that in a certain sense Philip thee IGood could only feel ashamed of'himselfbecause and when he had, somehow, messed up his own life; but even if lie had done so, in ills O~'1 eyes, the cow,equences of his actions. could, within his conception of the world, never have any rea] impact on the order mat had been willed by God. He 'Gould only feel responsible towards himself and his own salvation. Precisely because he was so much part ,of r,eality; so completely submerged mit, sc much surrounded by reality on aD sides, precisely because of the complete osmosis between himself and reality; a responsibility towards himself was the maximum he could possibly be expected to feel. To feel guilty; to feel responsible towards the world would have been to him a pre~ sumptuous and preposterous blasphemy; That would have been as if all ant had thought of itself as having been: the cause of the death of a whole civilization. And in that sense he could not properly be said to be "guilty" of his actions: for shame is a p-rm'\fat'e feeling, whereas guilt always has to do with a debt that we owe the world" So what happened, sometime between Philip the Good and Guicciardini, is thflt the individual withdrew fiom the world (in which Philip the Good still femt immersed to such an extent that he could never detach hits. own actions from i1:), and now became enthralled by the idea that from this vantage-point outside reality; he could do things to reality that might make "a difference to itt' or even fundamentally alter it.And the paradox is, therefore, that it was a withdrawal and not a further immersion fun. it that made Western man exchange shame for guilt, and transformed a fixation 011 the responsibility for one's own salvation into that for the (hiseorscal) world,

I would not ave hazarded this risky contention if it did not find some additional support in what happened in out" relationship to natural reality and in the origins that the sciences. have in the same period that witnessed, in the writings of Guicciardini and his Italian contemporaries, the birth of modern historical consciousness, For from this vantage point we ·CaDl10t fail to be struck by what the historical and the scientific revolution have in common, As we all know; tllite scientific revolution. was 'Only possible thank! to the creation 'Of the scientistic, transcendental e;go whose philos.·op,hical properties have been so eagerly investigated by Descartes, Kant and so many others down to the present day. And, as we all know; this transcendental ego W3S~ Just like historical consciousness, the product and result of a movement of anaihoresis, 4 of a withdrawal of the selffiom the world itself'wirhin all inner, cognitive sanctuary that decides about the reliability of the data of experience, Quite revealing here is the bene vixit, bene qu.i latui.t (he has. lived well who knew how to hide himself well) that

82

Fmnk R. Ankersmit

Des-cartes took as his device: scientific truth will 'never be given to man as long as he fldJy participates in all the complexities of dailliy life, Science requires distance, 110't immersion and participation. The mastery of both the historical and the physical world is ~ therefore" the miracle wrought by :3. reculer pour mleux seater: 'Only after having left (historical and physical reality) itself and after having situated irself at an Archimedian vantage point outside reality itself=-only a,frer having ~Mjo,pt,ed this paradoxical strategy-e-could the Western mind gain an ascendancy over historical auld natural reality that it had never possessed before" And it is only ill this, way that what we have come to see as "history" and "science" in the West became possible.

But a price' had to be P add '. For the same' numbness that we observed a moment ~go when discussinghistorical consciousness, the same falling apart of the directness and immediacy of (histo,rilical) experience that gave us (Western) historical consciousness also gave lIS modern science but at 'the expense of the experience of nature. Instead of the experience of na ture, we now have our sci ~ entific knowledge ofhow we can make nature subservient to our aims and pur= pos,es~,d it is; perhaps, only in the arts that a faint reminiscence of the experience of nature has been retained.We can experience nature only by and through the artifacts that artists have of it in order to represent it,

Moreover, this is why we may well have out doubts about the tradition ordinarily associated with Vico suggesting an invincible epistemological barrier between historical wri ting, on tile one hand, and (Catb:~sian) science, on the other .. Certainly, there may be such a barrier between the direct and immediate experience of the past such as we find it in non-Weseern civilizations or in Western historical writing before the days 'of Guicciardini, but the historical writing ofVico,~s and ofour own days is, like modern science, tile result of the anachotesis, or modernist division of the self Vieo could only regret the directness in the relationship 'between Horner's heroes and their world because of his awareness thar this directness had sadly been Iost in his 0W11 days of the "barbazi f fl .. "

ansm 0 re ectaon.

5" Final remarks

I want to add one last remark, We must not be mistaken about the narure of this change, It is, in many V1ayS" not at ,all a big change: it is not something like' a war, a revolution, the birth of a new religion, or 'the discovery of a new and effective weapon .. In fa,ct~ historical reality as such is not in the least afrected by it, it is ot even a ,change in historical reality itself. Rather, it is. 3 change in.' how Western man decided to look at historical reality" it ms, a change in perspective, while, everything that it observed remained the way that it had always been.Yet, these small and immaterial changes may become irreversible and determine the future fate of humanity, They are like a mutation: somewhere ill the union of

83

the· genies of one specific animal of a specific genus something l11ary go different: on a microscopic scale, and yet, this microscopic event :may result. in a new- phase in tile history of evolution, and in a new' regime 'between the victims and tile victors. in this world.And so it has been with the rise ofWestern historical consci ousness, In tbe minds, of authors like Machiavelli and Guicciardini, the fate of I'bJy after 1494 was experienced as an irretrievable, irreparable and traumatic loss that caused in them an unendurable pain, the deepesr regret, feelings of the profoundesr guilt and of the cruelest self-reproach, Nevertheless, it was this historically microscopic event, this "mutation" that would cban,ge the face ofWest:= ern civilization and, by the illogic proper to, all mutations, several centuries later, of non- Wes.tern civilizations as well.

Ofcourse all thac I have been saying here is l]1igll1y speculative: it is just one more way of selecting and arranging a number of well .... known facts about the gradual development of'historical writing and of historical consciousness since the dawn of mankind, Many other selections ,m,d arrangements of these same facts are just as legitimate, or probably even more so, Hence, these musings about the trauma &om which the Western conception of the past originated are emphatically not an attempt to state the fmal truth about the origins ofWest ... ern historical consciousness, or about how that might differ :&om non- Western historical consciousness,

I do believe, nevertheless, that we should ,go down to this very fimdamental leve] . f we wish to address the issue of the relationship between Western and non- Western conceptions of the past, It is at this leve] that truth should no longer be our primary ,goal; simply because the set of shared presupposirions 'that truth alway's requires are absent here, But if tru th is. not artainable h ere! this should not deter us from asking questions like these, For it may well be that the truly important thing' about such questions is that we should discuss them, and go 01'1 discussing them, even if we were to know that we will never- know the fmal truth about the issue at stake" As, Lessing already argued more than two hundred years ago in hls Nathan der J1Ieis,f', it sometimes is more important simply to p o ssess a certain discourse rather than th e truths that might be expressed Vl'ithin th~lt discourse-s-and perhaps, this is what I have' been talking about all along, Perhaps this is a trUlth 110t only about the history of his tori cal writing and alloLlt historical consciousness, but about historical writing itself as weI. We should always. iluiefatigably and passionately search for historical truth; but never forget, art the same time, that we lose rather than gain something when we actuaillmy achieve it.

84

Notes,

1. ·A movement into the opposite direction can be observed at the bireh ·cf the historical novel, Fc,r it has been. argued that the histoncal novel resulted OO-lU a UhistoricizatioD.u of the literMY genre of me "arcadia," Ordinatrjly, in. tlris genre, invented in sixteenl'cll=century I taTI.~ a compan.y of YOllmg lovers make :in journey through rhe countryside while their conversation is not only devoted to love ~ 00 t also to a learned exposition of the histOrical antecedents cf the towns and villlages which dley pass . .lIn this ~y dements of fiction (situated in me pr~

) dl L.: b· ....ll d . · d ..... 1k~ tl "'1· · ~ . :1':1' f ... 1 t

sent I an· DlStOl'Y were com ineo, an llt requu"O·· ·OJJ.~1 . ]eltstOi]:lCl~t~.Ol1 0 rne ~conte:rn~

porary} element of 6cfrion.~ that is~ the location of the Arcadian love SOOl'Y in the past as well,

tOI produce the genre of me MU:o,ricalltTLovd. . ..

2. We· may well recall h'ere the lines that Shakespeare .PUt iato the mourn of La. Pucelle of

Orleans when she addressed Philip the Coed, D~ of B·urguMy=

Look t)f"t thy rou~~ look ·ON fertiie Fmf'u:eJ

And set the. citie.s ,~"d the toWNS dif-a(;~d·

By tilasting yui~ of the auel Jo.el

As .lQ.Qks the mother on her .lovely baht! Men iiellti! dolh dose his t~ul." 4yiiV; eresJ See.see the piNJitJg mtJ.llJOy of Fmf1ce;

Behold the woundsJ. the most t~Hnat-umJ. woundS JiVhich tho« thyse.lf has: livfn Ilf!'r ·wt}.ifui breast!

(See Fl~~'t Part of Kh1g H~itry VI, scene nl)

The contrast between Philip the Good and Guicciardini-e-to whom I shall. turn in a moment-e-is l1]I .. ~J5t revealing here.Philips alliance with Eng]and bad the same disastrous consequences for Fta1iL,ce-his, own country; that is=-as Gtcic ciardi ni ~s advice ito Clement Y:II would have for lwy a century hter.¥et! while Gnicciardini was dJr]ven·to a par-uxy~ln of desperation by his ~ess of what he had done roo his country in spite of ill hls most praiseworthy intentions, Philip could not ~ve cared less. It ]s this difret1ence that stuns up the differences between the medieval and the Renaissance' relatio.li.wup to the past

3+ C. Caruth, 'Introduction' j Ameria~j1 hlu~!'1o' 48 (1'991)~ 417.

4- ~ I am. deli berately using this theological term in order to suggest what might he considered to ha'Ye been. thee religious origins of modern science and historical w~ifing.

· .

I

Western Deep Culture and Western Historical Thinking

,}OHAN Gl\.LTUNG

1 .. Western Histortegraphy as Implication of Western Deep Culture

If [----=J.1:ot a historian-e-were to try to predict Western historical thought I would use lTIy own ge·neraJ. postulates about ·West,ern (Christian and secular), or Occidental (including Jewish and Islamic) civilisation. 1 I would sary, this is what I assume to be the g,eneral code for Western civilization, and it is used to explore implications for peace, war, ,conflict and development, and macro=history~2 so why not also. try it out on historical thought, and as, a background for a genel~u theory ofWestenr:rl historiography] N,ot on]ly are Western historians themselves Wes.teroer8~ usually applying their craft on something We stern. 1111. addition they are usually paid by :! Western State (as, opposed to ·Western Capital or Wester11 Civil Society), to teach history at the university; secondary or primary schooling levels; or to ,do research .. Who P'ays the piper tends to call the- tune, j

mat do- I find when I use the first column.t'Occident Itt4 in the following chart, reading downwards through the "spaces" with only one question in mind; how does the column translate into the field of historiography? Bllt:d.n.g postulates about basic aspects of Western civilization, I could use the column to explore paradigms underlying any scientific pursuit, like economics, 5 But the present exercise is in historiography, askmg what we would we expect, In trying to answer I should not draw Ot1 knowledge outside this civjlizatiortal paradigm, this effort to spell out codes for civilizations, Rather, the implications should have the character of an "unfolding," already hidden in that set of civilizational codes.

~
Ooa.DENTI OCCIDBNTD INDIAN BUDDHIST SlNJIC NIPPO'NIC
NA'flJIf8 I
: H uma ns O'!.fe'r :rnI.!t1la foe HUrrLilln O¥elt lfutnammd Senrtiorut ~ 'aver Homans ~ HIillmm (Wer
'life non-1:i!'"e
rlldtUr:E ren ~Le]Jt, ilJ'IreI' mtl'll'e mJlJ!J!re
" rll:l~l~ife
;
i 11 r:J'fSd1"!P He~ndxl1l\k " R6~mfJUhqff
: GilUMml CM'nivinn ~~: :]VepiIDl ,Mi~ Mjxed
SJIifl
I, . "
:
SEL~
~k~~er-ego Sl'ro~Jg sMpll:f-ego M»re.rll5.~'lW~ S[:mil1g SL1,P~-~ M.ha-li'!.1~ St!ll:l:ilg:t'L~go
Stmlmgeg:o Weak c:go M'~,ego \fIe;]k ego MixOO,~~ '\'lerllk ~
S1rollg id Mi~~d ~m ·WeM\:id. MDredid MixeclM
_~ ~ _ . .. . ~ _ ~
SOC1ET~1
\~~ul ~ri.d \if.rtiQl ~ Ver~ca] Venid
~ ~lrl geru~fi' C~ISf;e antI. ~h1!del' C_e :lind ~tdcer $gtIMJ"bLl~ Mj~~but MUted, btUlt
indlivid~.m] 0. ti ve mmr] gendEr oo11ecm'tl' g,m.E1Id$i' :L1li~--ed. gml'~er (olootive
[{not:§. Kn.o:t ~r;!~ I{no~ and net Nm r<:rtot and not Nets ad.sets
W'ORLD
~pr"1t[;;: M,ilirY P'JI!'iIs.: Oue ,:.urI: futrmy _[lrnm;; Five lITtIW~ . tlnJee~
Ce~lt'er Eadl PJrU a oenklI' Unity of Humans fuch~~a zrwll£~gJW M1wn
: P.eriplllery muer NSEW ,,~&1\..(;I
, p ~
,'Evil 1 ,iit"JfJi..:Jil'M lwww;r&~ I
Unbm.mkd '~ounded ;,i1oonded Bmmded Un be IU1I1tIBd U~1ll11lm1ded
TIlW"F. ,
S~f~ btrunit:ed aOlJllnlded Un~~ndecl Un'bollm1ec! UnMJMOO Unhounitecl
I
Stld~tr- bounded I Bm.u~fl6d IBWllld~ , i thboUJ~d~d Um-ouru:fed Umbommed I
TRANSiPERjONAL
TrallScende:Llrti1 '"lbil"Wl:/imnlment lhu,mcJimltnan. OOm:htiient 1bmsr:J~mWl:in. Thtn!t:./itnma:1l.
One God One-God M1oli'e Gods N lGOO No God One/No GOO
0, .. ,
a~]pe~(3} Chosen peol'l{!W Chosen ~p!e
OUlie~1 OneS4l~n No,Sat:m No SaJt'a!li1l. No Satan No S:lti:lril,
01];6 Sod OUl~ 3001 One S"''l11 NCiSlDtll N~SoD.l1? No SOl.'lil?
b;;1'l:)3[ u!!Mnlhdl Ererwi)] hea~h.cll MoiEShn~ il1~rk~~ ~. ~t~
'[tea~J.al['m..ti 0;11; Re1:Mfttb Mbwd MfocOO
I
Sin~gu~lUmVf!ml sa11~ilin:llhll,m'S1 ll"iU!J?aVOlliwr.sa[ :~FairlticuJar Ul\l~mro1lar Pima]/~f
._-- - -
E.P~
,Awmn 11 s ric Ho~is~C" lEdeooc HoJjj~tk Edecth: Ecloctic
~
Deduotive DedliCtLv:e Eclectoc ~~ lEklecoc ~
No~clidtmil No IPo~l.tltftili~OJJI j1EclectiG Co:t11mld"icrioo C~l:iOIl I Coo[!'l}dic~
I
_ _ __ S~:J:'l11~ rerntts i\",I, need lof d~r~6carion: ~!I;Cm!'nivism ": me· '~el'J.,cteillCY to eat 1rne~~~ much and ~UIi!nt1')t S~jtlhil'C a ~"Llt HuddW~~ c::omnt!rU1'li1lY~ ]ik,e a mQ!];;'jJs~yj ~~treat. Z~-g{[r,Q: Chinese :iI:'OIr Chma, the Midcle Kingdon1.. Nikon: Japanese :for Jafan; the Origin of the Sun. Dei-te-o: japanese (or Great ~~rr Asia. MoksAer. Splr.utlL]a[ :Mb~r-a:tiOJ,1. ltwWif.M: the out~dofj @.S l"'B&OU1~c:e; raw materiels and markets. The time CIl,]rv:e~ fui' self and society ref]OCIi'; th~· images of 'l,.vh~t is norntal and rilltl1u1\l in terrus of 1J,~p5 and dOtwi"1S; in prnornll life and f.or the society as :II! w,hj~e.

Nature

I would expect the theme nature 1110t to' be absent in Western history, but to be

fUr mid«; not at! .dch .. Nature, of any kind, abundant 0[' scarce, would appear as ~ factor, causing/ conditioning' or being caused! conditioned by human agency;" But the processes of nature as such would not be included; they would bee relegated to natural science"

81

Slelj

I would expect a strong emphasis on individua] agency ,311'd, on the agency of strong, active individuals, as opposed to the weaker ones, in particular. Categories, would appear~ weakly organized as collectives or "parties,' strongly Olqyt ....

• ~ ~..;m 1111. , a - h , t ~ iii 'ill ... .! ,=."L ~ ;, th ,., 1 ,., B th

DJZeu as conectrve actors, sue as the working I~S~ " e p·eop. e~ _ 'ut I, e

focus would be on the strong, "colorful," individuals, those who em.e·rge with. distinct individualities" 7

Siociety

I would expect strong emphasis on the apex of any vertical dimension in the social formation: on men rather than women, on the middle-aged rather than on the' marginally young and old, on dominant races, on upper classes=-the powerful mel priviilleg,ed-=--<on the ~ 'normal' ~ rather than the "deviant," on dominant nations and dominant counsries. The others will be "forgotten," suppressed, treated as deindividualized categories 'with little or 110 individual agency; or be relegated to nonmainstream branches (like black histery; women's history)"

vt{,rld

I "WOuld expect world history portrayed as ·30 drama focusing Ion the West as the center fiUD1. which good causes emanate, being resisted by Evil in which ehe bad caus es will be ever ]urking~ and 'With a periphery in-between, eagerly waiting for the Western message: with 'God" meaning evangelism, gospels; without God meaning secularism, "enlightenment," with ttniversal categorical imperatives as God, and modernization as, gospel)."

Time

I would expect linearity; with progl"eSS~ as a basic theme. But this irreversibility will be encased in finite time:

= there is a beginning, an identifiable point of origin, a takeoffpoint fiom which the process, can be said to, have started;

- there is an end, all identifiable point of arrival, catharsis or ap&m.lypsis, in fulfillmene or frustration .. But all. end,

~ in short, 'time ~U be seen as bounded, for any' actor, £0[' societies, fu[' humankind, There is birth, maturity; decay and death. The task of the historian is to capture that process from beginning to, end. Hence, good history should only be written for complered processes, and there is. such a thing, 9 This applies not onllly to the societal level but abo to strong individuals, key themes ofWesten"1 historiography; whether good or evil, meaning that biography as microhistory has to abide by the same basic rules, and then be insereed into mesohistory

88

In short, history should be written as, a Wes;tern drama: a beginning with the presentation of the actors; then something dark happ·e;·ns; then the Iight comes;

..,.L· .' ~ •. ,m.. ~bl .~.111~~ • b ~.~=.

were IS progress unto a crISIS, W1ltml!l rwo P'OSSI .' e outcomes, maze It or '~~ It,

Heaven or Hell, catharsis or ap(N.zdypsis. to If a historian. does itt this paradigmatic

h fi d bIDi ide th f Il d wak

. '.J' .: . '1: .: '.' '.' "'" . . ",' , .'. :"1' '.' . . .. 'I -

VV"a) e may In a pu .1 C OllCS1··· e ;range 0 co eagues, an even . e up as

the author of a best seller .. tt

Transpersonal

Western historiography splits into two; with or without God, With Go-d the basic theme would be .history as enactment of God's 'Will or the sta.ge where the: figllt between God and Satan unfolds, Dichot10111. ous, Manichean, with Arma,geddon (DMA)~ 112 Without God there would be a search for one basic secular eheme or struggle around which to weave the story, for' example, as defined by the four successors to a God sidetracked by the- Enlightenment .. The successors are:

. .

- to God the omnipoeene the drama of state-building, via rex grati'a dl~!Ji as

transition figure, and with power as theme,

~ to GOld the omnipresent; capital, market, the drama of the eeon()n1.y~ MID we31th as theme ..

= to GOld the omnisciene science, tile drnma of mastering nature through knowledge and technology; with truth as theme.

= to God the benevolent: the' drama of the nation as a home, ~ith security as the basic theme,

TI· .~ 111 , ~ 1 ~ 1 . ~ 4 ~. t 1 .. ~ ':II ~.. ~II ~ ~ .".".. .~- ~

ae stun total, state-logic Pill us capt tar ~ ogmc P rus science- rogtc, 18 JlLnatvnL

as modernization. &' there was only one 'Go·d,. one Satan, one struggle for the soul (Freudian version: one Super-ego, on·~ Id, one struggle {or the Ego; Marxist version: one bourgeoisie, one proletariat, one struggle for state' and capital), th e search for a Leitmotif, Sinn, in history could abo, be guided by Western singularism: pick one. Wes;tern universalism would extend that theme to the historical interpretation of non- Western actors.P

Epis teme

I would expect both an empirical, atomistic fo-ens on details detached from each other, and a theoretical, deductive focus on propositions correctly deduced from a small number of axi oms " preferably only one (Leitmotif~ Sinn) ~ Th·ere would be a division in intellectual styles, between the Saxonic sty~e with its focus on empirical data, and the Teutonic-Gallic Sty~~SI foocl1sing on concepts, contradiction-fiee theory-building and the: tendency to generalize; universalise, 14 TIle' problem with the latter style is to find examples tl~lat fit those grandiose theories; the problem with the former is to know what the cases are examples of

89

However, the two styles coalesce into eclectic inductive .... deductive styles, typi .... cal of Nor me intellectualism .. 15

So much for the West interpreted as Occident I~Wha,t kind of'historp; written or oral, as reflected recor-dings of past processes, would we expect from the other civilizarionsi The key to the ·~U1S\.Ver is in the last line in the chart, the episteme, as defined by the civilizadons. For the other civilizations there is a more or less heavy emphasis on two, epistemic elements missing or weak in Occidene J.: holism (not the same' as interdisciplinary studies) and dialectic" (not the same as interdependence.)

Typical manifeseation in tile field of reflected recordings of past proc esses are" of course, the saga, the tale, the epic; the Mahabh,ara.ta~ ,~" VVie es eigentUch g·~f)fsen" is not the point (nor '\'V'aS, it for Ranke, the Christian, who III history saw the unfokiing of God's will). The P oint is to arrive ae a deeper understanding, trw =

..J,: distincti b ~~ a, H . ...lI1 ,·c ght" b h .. h 1

sC1en1wng any snncnon between llLS, ano ouzr t .'y S rowing some w 0 e

(holcn1) individual and collective, with its inner fault lines, h.ow they break open, how a new halon is arrived ~t (or not) e. There would b·e less attention to deeail and, the fine tuning and splitting of units and variables" and to theory-building, deducing from some axioms.The focus would b·e on story as detached from, yet a reflection of; "real" reality, Empirical reality will be tested against, held accountable to thae story, at vice versa. This nukes. the craft of'history writing very different, not necessarily superior or inferior,

The basic theme of'histcry as am epic is, the unfolding ofa projet; as, it is for Western history But the West adds to that concern, fulfilling its-elf 'by' implanting its projet in others, convinced that ijl4\Xfestern history equals universal history;" maybe some centuries earlier, paving the wa-y for the rest through sacred and secular evangelization, thereby fulfilling the earth, We would expect the glory of God, whatever His. name, to playa major role.Iike in rite sacl~dWest. However, we might perhaps expect a richer, more diverse reflection in polytheist cultures (Indian) and nontheist cultures (Buddhist, Sinic and Nipponic) than in monotheist cultures (Oclci1d,ent II). The hero as the embodiment of collective concerns (like th·e 47 renin In a major Japanese tale) ShO'LUd be at home in ill of them; the individual on ~ collision course perhaps mainly in Occident I,

[1'1 anaua (no, soul) Buddhism deindividuation ITlay be the rule, We would expect partnership with nature to be emphasized more than in the others .. And drama, crisis with catharsis or apocalypsis as the outcomes, would be played oue more at the individual, and mess ~t the societal levels in the non- Wes,t~ Socieey has its, ups and downs; inner life is the basic stage.

"'What is ac tually being said, then, is that history as a science i11 the sense known. in the Wes,lt is a manifestation ofW:estern civilization, and that Western style history writing in other- cultures is. a part of the Westernization of 'tl10~H! cultures. This does 110t mean that the outcome is necessarily uninteresting, Western methodology/epistemology used by Westerners~ lor socialized nonWestetneTS,; will capture Wester[()_~typ,e processes· elsewhere .. But it is only one

90

approach ~ong several, And it. might bee at least equally Interesting to have 110n~ Westerner." write epics and sagas. on the basis ,ofWestet;n history ~.6 It also means that non-Western historians trained by the West in their writing will reflect the non- West as seen by' the West, and be nonanthentic as witnesses from their own cukure because of an overfecus on what can be seen with Western ..... ized eyes~ They have' been polluted by the West.

2. Professor Burke's, paper on Western, Historfcal Thought

Peter Burke, "With a life spent on superbly . researched and written history and hiseoriography; has presented "some theses for debate," theses 1 ~ 104 SOl I shal] do exactly that, debate them, by comparing them with the seven deep culture eheses in the chart, codes l~ 7 .. However, I think Burke commits a frequently encountered methodological error. itself a part of Westet'n methodologica]

a Th I uld L=:"lYT. u ~ ~.. '" H disei ~ s:

atomtsm. IUS, wo '.' never clarm "estern . pecunarity or c 1 stinctiveness lor

anyone ofthe codes 1 to. 7.A glance.at the table, read horizontally; will show

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C'OI. es at are snared across marry CJ.VluZatJOBaM drvi es.: . at wo : .. ~ ann is

holistic specificity distinctiveness, for the' syndrome of the seven code dimensions .. Civilizations differ, but tl1.,ey~like genders=-do not 'have to differ in all

d b djffi. H B k h he i fi' ~ di"ffj ul ~

"- . -::J ." . . . ....', a- !" 'J l : 'J _- 1 ',' • ',- I : •• 1 'l ::~ " • :,' l' - _ • I. [" I .... " ~ .. ~ -. - . r - ','

re;gaIJ __ S to e . ,erent.. ence lIT. e, onest as te IS, 0 ten gets, Into .... ret ties,

or doubts, when he claims, specificity for ·any single dimension.

Second, Burke's approach is inductive; mine more deductive, spelling out implications of Western codes, for historiograph~ This provides me with an 'OIPP' '0· rtunity to chec k·, .my ,'."'"li:rM"ll ,JJ1ed' . Ctl~ c· .. , H , ..... ' ., ]B., ,,1l~,_ ha . ,t . . . ,. ·d"

.. .... ... ~. .. On.ll.L leI. ·c UI _ om~ . owever~ urru.:: r as n.ol exal1nne

II L.~~ ".. 1 "\Vl . th ...l.:~ th .. 11

a mstory- writmg 1I.n t le west, extracting • II emes, co[wug ·i.. em systematscal y~

tabulating and correlating, Hie has, looked around with very Informed eyes. and reported his findings, possibly on. the basis of a. mind-set not that different -from· the i[eft hand column in thetable above" If what he reports coincides with my implications, that doles not confirm them, strictu sensu; nor does nonreporting disconfirm, These are lists arrived a!t in different ways. Comparing them we may arrive a.t more insight in this thing' called the West~, in general, and as reflected

in hi ical tb gh ,. ,. -~,,~,

m nstortcal 'QU,_, t m parncutar .. :

Thesis 1

l>rogres~ lil~ea:r VifU1, cumulatlo« ,and imVltrsi biUty,. This is similar to code 5b above, noting in passing that BLU .. ke seems less interested in the history of one person, biography (micrchistory), and particularly inner life, the history [of the Se,lf~ HOVTeVer, the terms listed ,above' (OOlU Burke), far fiom exhaust the 'Western ideas, of time, I am missing the concept of closure, not o:n1y an end but also a beginning; a basic facto1t permitting mesohistory (the history of something" anything, located between the .hisrory of.everyrhing and biography). Birth, and death are markers for the. individual, even if less so in a Hindu-Buddhistcontexr,

91

giving some sense to biography (as opposed to clancgraphyr.All beginnings and ends are brutal cuts" and totally unrealistic, but useful for writing history;

M'oreover, if Western time is creation-paradise-fall .... darkness ..... illuminationpro,gIl~;.~s--crmsi~(;atharsisl apocalypsis ~ that is, four pomts of kaift)S ~ each one fo 1 .... lowed by' one £low of khronos, then there is more to look for in Western historical thought than identified by Burke, TIle obvious hypothesis would be that the biblical drama from genesis to, revelation has shaped historical thinking, mtroducjng schemes (not the same as plots) like' "equilibrium =disrurbance- - dis,equiJibriw11~tight~pl'"O.8ress=-~new equilibrium" as, the key to historical drama.Iike the' countless works constructing some medieval equilibrium-ethen breakdown-s-then the author's fO'fa trh"trice-early modern disequilibrium-sone more crisis (like la ,grande revolu.tion)--and mature modernity; The Marxist Stujengang, is, biblical a l'extrtm,~; ~11d the Bilbille is probably much more irnportant in shaping the West, including Western historiography) than tile literary genre types in Hayden Whites typology. In short, there is much more to time

than progress" .

It should be noted that in this mere complete presentation ofWesrern time a dichotomous distinction between linear and cyclical time becomes less oppressive. R'l11'l the Western agenda only once and the focus may' be Ion only 'One era of plro,gt:e~s~ But couple two or more Western agendas in series and we have a cyclical view of history, Tile Bible runs 'th-e agenda only once" b'Ult does not proclaim my end of hiseory; only' a basic rupture, based on rapture, It takes a Francis Fukuyama (more Francis than Pukuyamal ro proclaim one run only; ending in 11U1"ket liberalism.

Thesis 2

I-liston:cal.persp·,fcti've.! anaihsonism ~ past as foreign" Burke finds, a sense of cultural dis= tance, that the past is. like a foreign country But he himself seems to have the same doubt as, I have about Western specificity, I have not come across ,any human excursions backwards in time reporting uniformity; except one: the tradition of'British social anthropology exploring (for the colonial office) African and other colonial "tribes'twieh no written language, recording a-chronism, no historicity On the other h V]! d." a-chronism/synchronism. is a question of perspective, In 1n)" approach Occident [I (the medieval period, manorial and feudal) is certainly a foreign country relative 'to the two forms of Occident [ ehat flank it" But the basic code is the same, meaning 'that they are not foreign conntries, only different countries with the same basic code, Plus :f&t. c.hange, plus IC} est la N1bne those .. Sacred-secular, for instance, becomes a minor change of discourse. LA focus on codes deprives any point in. social space of individual specificity; the craft of the analyst is directed at pattern recognition, not ~t the specific, The code focus opens for historicity only as unfolding, and threatens amy claim to' "my period, my country, Iny tribe,"

92

Th ~ 2' eSi.S J

H.. · ,. ":J • , s I" 4d · i ... ; I h ~ f"!r"l ..r,..,..".l"", claim f E ~

~ toriasm, maunaua l ty~ ~" to.grap'f~ K .. nemot! etic. .lJ. 0 s~~e out a ". aim lor . mme-

Ug·kftit~ based on syndromes of-events and processes rather than on any single one of them, is easy' but hardly specifically Western~ As. Burke himself points out, "the concern with specificity has co-existed with the opposite concern for general-

~ n B .&.L. • '" . ~ el th hole eoi ilL de 7 th .. feni

1~ 'ut nus is precis yew 0 e pomt about co er: e coexistence 0- epis-

temological atomism with deductivism, exploring the particular, the atom; and hyp"oth1esizing the universal, deducting old and. new particulars, Missing is hclism/dlalecdcs: except for a Hegelian/Marxian countertrend, a trickle relative to the Taoism (mainstream in China) that Leibniz 17 added to the p',anta rei.

Thesis 4

CollectilJe agen~ collective ,agents. Like' for human rights, a distinction should 'be

.............. ...l b '" IDl .. "," . . ( k 1L.1 ~ .~111_~ hil' .r., )

maae .. etween co ectrve as category .. women, workers, uJ.at.:U, cr orem, as

group/organisation (famili.,es" clans, farms." firms) and as social structure (focus on relations lather than elements) .. Historians will have to refer to all of this, The basic libera] mind-set, society (and my group/organization) as a set of individuals, prevails .. C ategories are left to demographers; groups and organizations to sociologists and anthropologists; structures. to economists.poli tologists, sociologists.They would all do better iifthey added! a tune dimension, a diachrony Historians do not have my monopoly on explorations' of the human condition with time as parameter. If they did, then Burke is right: there is much study over tinr1e~.Western or not, But time belongs to everybody Wh·ether a study of social structure (without names of actors) over time is historical sociology or social history is uninteresting: it is sdenee de l'homme. SaJ"lS &olltieres~ ~8

TIJ.eSis ·5

Preoaupatif.n1- with epis.tetn.ology. If by epistemology is meant Western at omistic, deductivist epistemology then there 'is no doubt the' West' is concerned with itself including modern (i.e., Westerrll)' science .. The problem is that epistemo-

11', • .: .... 1 _1 • .. '3I..:·L .... "1'""! • . 19 1 ii1 •. "'bI ~ ~L • '" f

j[Og.h~i:ll alternatrves exist, m.~ ·.1.aOl~~ c earllly VUi .. , e ill 'the wrmngs 0 '!I' s,ay, a

Ssu-Ma Ch'ien, The basic insight of Taoism is. not necessarily inferior' or sll]pe= rior to a Descartes in Dlscour: dela Metho.de, but it is certainly both different, much oillder~ and used in other parts of the world .. The two epistemologies both. fare badly in the eyes of the other; Cartesianism being much stronger 0:0 the aetendon to detail, taoism being much stronger on grasping toealities, There are clearly ~podictic .elements in. both, but both have rules of evidence, in taoism linked to dialec tic processes,

Thesis 6

&p.lanations in terms of causes. This is. a specification of the preceding argument about epistemology, privileging causal explanations, 'The causal paradigm is diachronic, so is his tory; mn. principle they sh ould fit each other Post hoc, C1J10