New Historicism: Postmodern Historiography between Narrativism and Heterology Author(s): Jurgen Pieters Source: History and Theory,

Vol. 39, No. 1, (Feb., 2000), pp. 21-38 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677996 Accessed: 04/08/2008 18:50
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org

POSTMODERNHISTORIOGRAPHY NEW HISTORICISM: AND HETEROLOGY BETWEENNARRATIVISM

JURGENPIETERS

1 is characteristically postmodern" its mostelegant,New Historicism "[A]tits mostbrilliant, ABSTRACT andLouis In recentdiscussionsof the workof new historicistcriticslike StephenGreenblatt theirreadingpracthatthe theoryof historyunderlying Montrose,it has oftenbeenremarked like HaydenWhite and Frank tice closely resembles that of postmodernhistoriographers the aim of the presentarticleis twofold.First, Ankersmit. Takingoff fromone such remark, the idea thatnew historicism I intendto providea theoretical basis fromwhich to substantiate variant has termedthe can indeedbe takento be the literary-critical of whatFrank Ankersmit "newhistoriography." In the second half of the article,this theoretical foundationwill serve in as the starting analysisof boththe theoryandpracticeof new historicism pointof a further termsof its distinctlypostmoderm historiographical project.I will arguethatin orderto fully the new historicist characterize readingmethod,we do well to distinguishbetweentwo variin the work of Michel one (best represented ants of postmodernhistoricism:a narrativist one (of which Michel de Certeau's writingsserveas a supreme Foucault)anda heterological example).A brief surveyof the two methodologicaloptions associatedwith these variants is followedby an analysisof the workof the centralrep(discursive versuspsychoanalytical) While the significantuse of historical resentativeof new historicism,StephenGreenblatt. anecdotes in his work leaves unresolved the question to which of either approaches does servea clearheuristic Greenblatt purpose.In bothcases, it points belongs,the distinction wherethe new historicismthreatens to fall prey to the evils of the trato the dangerousspQt ditionalhistoricism againstwhich it defineditself.
I. INTRODUCTION

Much has been said and written about both the formal and the intellectual strategies by means of which new historicists like Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montrose, Stephen Orgel, and Robert Weimann began to define, in the early 1980s, their various practices in contradistinction to those of their forerunners, the hordes of traditional literary historians whose naive historicism the new historicists were allegedly trying to overcome. Earlier historicists, so new historicists argued, upheld a quasi-positivist belief in the objectivity and the unproblematic representability of the historical past which new historicists, as staunch believers in poststructuralist theories of representation and signification, no longer could. Also, earlier historicists reduced history to a single, massive mono1. Catherine Belsey, "MakingHistoriesThen andNow,"in The Uses of History:Marxism,PostmodEng., 1991), 29. ernismand the Renaissance,ed. F. Barker,P. Hulme, and M. Iverson(Manchester,

22

JURGENPIETERS

lith that left no room for the dissonantvoices new historicistswanted to listen to and conversewith. Finally,earlierhistoricistsdid not take into accounttheir own historicity their Vorurteile,as Gadamerput it and the subsequentimport on theirresearchof the interferencebetween the past which they triedto investigate and the presentfrom which they were doing so. There is little use in repeatingall of this: it has become part of our common knowledge of the new historicistmo(ve)ment.2I have no intention of denouncing the core of truththatresides in what I have just presentedas if it were nothing but a series of cliches. InsteadI wish to advance the discussion of the theoretical backgroundof new historicist historiographyand to introduce into it a numberof issues thathave, unjustlyin my view, been left outside it. Takingas a startingpoint CatherineBelsey's assumptionthat "at its most elegant"new historicist theory and practice can be regardedas a contemporary,"postmodern" branchof historicism, the aim of the present article is twofold. First, I want to investigate the theoretical, historiographical basis that underlies Belsey's assumptionin orderto find out whethernew historicismcan indeed be regarded as the literary-historical developmentsin the counterpart to recent,"postmodern" theory of history. My focal point will be FrankAnkersmit'sapology for postmodernhistoricism, which will provide an argumentthat enables me to concur with Belsey's assertion. However (and this is the second aim of this article, in which the discussion is moved from theoreticalquestionsto new historicistpractice as exemplified in the work of Stephen Greenblatt),I want to argue that in order to fully characterizeGreenblatt'sreading practice we do well not to treat postmodernhistoricismas a unitarymethod.I will proposea distinctionbetween two different (though obviously related) methodological options entailed by or discursive approach,and a "heterolopostmodernhistoricism:a "narrativist" gist" or psychoanalyticalapproach.The former finds its supreme example in Foucault's archeologicaland genealogical work; the latter in that of Michel de Certeau.The question centralto the second part of this article will be to which of these Greenblatt'spracticecan be profitablyrelated. In outlining my answer to it, I intend to focus upon Greenblatt'scharacteristicusage of historical anecdotes and to arguethat,on the basis of the evidence of his "anecdotalheuristics," his readingmethodcan be said to contain traces of both approaches.
II. THEORY

One of the centralexpositoryloci of the historiographical projectof new historicism is in the opening section of "Resonance and Wonder,"the final essay of collection Learningto Curse. In this text, Greenblattsums Stephen Greenblatt's up what in his view makes his work and that of his colleagues stand apartfrom for at least two thatof traditional historicists.As I see it, the passage is important to theorize or comment reasons. First, because Greenblatthas done very little
2. A fairly comprehensivesurvey of the discussion and furtherbibliographicalreferences can be found in John Brannigan,New Historicismand CulturalMaterialism(London,1998).

NEW HISTORICISM

23

upon the conceptual backgroundof his own practice. Consequently, the few places where he does so are (by definitionas it were) interestingand important. Second, because in this passage Greenblattseems to be arguingthat the name underwhich his reading practice gained rapid fame is thoroughlymisleading.3 Accordingto Greenblatt's dictionary,new historicismmust in no way be regarded as a branchof historicism. This is how Greenblatt puts it himself:
The AmericanHeritage Dictionary gives three meanings for the term "historicism": 1. The belief thatprocesses are at work in history that man can do little to alter. 2. The theorythatthe historianmust avoid all valuejudgmentsin his study of past periods or formercultures. 3. Veneration of the past or of tradition. Most of the writing labelled new historicist, and certainlymy own work, has set itself resolutely againsteach of these positions.4

Up to now, this passage has been mainly taken at face value. But it ought to be clear thatin following the strictdictionarydefinitions,Greenblattactuallylumps together two distinct historiographicalpractices that are better kept apart. To some extent, the problem is terminological.In English, the conception of "historicism"has been the cause of some ambiguity,to say the least. It is used to describe two blatantlyoppositional practices:5on the one hand, the speculative and mostly overtly teleological philosophy of history devised, employed, and elaborated by the likes of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee such as in Karl Popper's well-known critique The Poverty of Historicism;6on the other, the work of such practicing historians as Hippolyte objectivist-reconstructionist Taine and Leopold von Ranke.7In his critique of traditional"historicism"in "Resonance and Wonder,"Greenblatttries to take the two under one and the same umbrella,without wondering about the appropriateness of doing so: the firstpartof his negativedefinitionclearly applies to Hegel's philosophy of history, the historicismof universal,invariablelaws; the second partapplies to the his-

3. For Greenblatt'sown comments upon the swift institutionalizationof the term see Stephen Greenblatt, Learningto Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture(New York, 1990), 146. 4. Ibid., 164. 5. Cf. FrankAnkersmit,"Historicism: An Attempt at Synthesis,"History and Theory34 (1995), 144. 6. KarlPopper,The Povertyof Historicism(Londonand New York, 1957). 7. The terminologicalproblem can be solved, along the lines of FrankAnkersmit's suggestion (FrankAnkersmit,Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value [Stanford, 1996], to the work of Hegel and his like, and to label that 375-376), by applyingthe concept of "historicism" of Rankeand his successors "historism." See also Georg Iggers, The GermanConceptionof History: The National Traditionof Historical Thoughtfrom Herder to the Present, rev. ed. (Middletown, Conn., 1983); Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis: Over interpretatie,representatieen historische realiteit (Groningen, 1990), 127-148; Ankersmit, "Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis," 143-162; and Paul Hamilton, Historicism (London and New York, 1996), passim. Seen from Ankersmit'sangle, it would be more logical and appropriate to label Greenblatt'spractice "new historist"ratherthan "new historicist."For furtherreadingmaterialson the subjectsee also Ankersmit's "bibliographicalessay" in A New Philosophy of History, ed. Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (London, 1995), 278-283.

24

JURGENPIETERS

toriographical practice associated with Ranke's work a practice, it should be noted, that was originallymeant as a critiqueof Hegelian historicistthought.8 Greenblatt'sdiscontent with Hegelian historicism is self-evident: historians who concern themselves with universalprocesses and unchanginglaws that are not consideredto be subjectto the contingentdynamics of humanaction are not doing history at all. More importantfor my purposes, however, is Greenblatt's opposes is critiqueof Ranke'shistoricism.But here the enemy whom Greenblatt a caricatureof Ranke. True, the mottoes by which Ranke's ideals have become known (the historian should try to find "wie es eigentlich gewesen" and treat zu Gott")do have the touch of every historicalepoch as if it were "unmittelbar positivist naivete with which Greenblattcredits them. However, as Pieter Geyl and others have argued, the theory and practice from which these mottoes are usually isolated is definitely neitherpositivist nor naive.9 As soon as we take into considerationthe possibility that traditionalhistoricism is not naively objectivist, it becomes clear that the problem at the heartof Greenblatt's critiqueof it lies deeperthanmere questionsof terminology.Despite the real differences that exist between his own new historicistpractice and that of old historicists like Ranke, Greenblattneed not necessarily have rejectedthe term "historicism" altogether. To see this, consider the articles and lectures in which FrankAnkersmithas In the first of outlined a theoretically sound apology for historicist practice.10 these, entitled "Een moderne verdediging van het historisme" ("A Modern Ankersmitdrawsthe contoursof what he termsa "narDefense of Historicism"), rativist historicism." By this he means a historiographicalpractice whose of the past are characterizedby an "absolute descriptions and interpretations accuracy," yet which is conscious throughoutof the fact that historical descriptions and interpretations can in no way equal the object (the past itself) which they take as theirs.11 Even thoughAnkersmit'simmediateconcerns do not lie with the new historicist practiceof Greenblattand others, it is clear that his account of a contemporary,postmodernhistoricism fits the needs of the new historicist agenda. One could even say that the relationshipbetween the old and the new historicism in
8. See Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore,1973), 164 and also FrankAnkersmit,"TheOrigins of PostmodernistHistoriography," in Historiographybetween Modernismand Postmodernism:Contributionsto the Methodology of the Historical Research,ed. JerzyTopolski (Amsterdamand Atlanta, 1994), 90. White offers a good survey of Ranke's"historism" (in Metahistory,163-190, as does Iggers, GermanConception,63-89) and opposes it to Hegel's philosophy(Metahistory,81-131). For a furthercontrastivetreatmentsee Pieter Geyl, Gebruiken misbruikder geschiedenis (Groningenand Djakarta1956), 31, and Iggers, German Conception,66-67. 9. See, for example, Pieter Geyl, FromRanketo Toynbee:Five Lectureson Historiansand Historiographical Problems (Northampton,Mass., 1952) and Pieter Geyl, Geschiedenis als medespeler (Utrechtand Antwerp, 1958), 9-25. 10. Ankersmit, De navel van de geschiedenis, 127-148; Ankersmit, "Origins of Postmodernist Ankersmit "Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis"; and Ankersmit, "Reply to Historiography"; ProfessorIggers,"History and Theory34 (1995), 168-173. 11. Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 138, 131.

NEW HISTORICISM

25

literarystudies is comparableto that between the "old"and the "new historiography" as Ankersmit outlines it in History and Tropology:"[T]he distinction between the two," he writes, "lies in differentviews on the natureof historical In Ankersmit's reality,of historicaltexts, and of the relationshipbetween both."'2 terms, the logic of old historiographyis governed by what he calls a "double transparency postulate":on the one hand, traditional historicistsconsidertexts to in the sense that they offer a direct and unproblematical be transparent access to historicalreality;13 on the other hand, texts are transparent in the sense that they are unmarked by the intentionsand critical performancesof the subjectthat created them.14 One of the earliest programmaticcontributions to new historicist theory (Greenblatt's introduction to a special issue of Genreon "TheFormsof Powerand the Powerof Forms")singles out the exact problemsthatAnkersmitfocuses upon in his criticalanalysisof traditional historicism.In Greenblatt's oft-quotedterms, traditional historicistsmonologizehistory:they reducehistoricalperiodsto a single, homogeneous traditionand they consider what they come up with in their researchto be historicalfacts ratherthan "theproductof the historian'simagination."15 Against such an approach, Greenblatt proposesa fully dialogicalpractice: one which tries to take into accountnot only the fullness of the past in all its heterogeneity,but also the historicityof the historian.In this view historicalpraxisis dialogical in two differentways: it considershistoryin terms of a dialogue within the past (every moment in the past is characterized by a conflict of voices, all of which the historianneeds to make heard),and in terms of a dialogue with the past (as Gadameralreadyemphasized,historianscannotexclude themselvesfrom theirinvestigation: while speakingabout the past, they also talk to it).'6 Drawing upon the idea that historicism is based upon the equation of a phenomenon'sidentitywith its history,Ankersmitarguesthat a contemporary, postmodernhistoricism what he calls narrativism need in no way be a contradiction in terms,with the proviso, however,that we distinguishbetween a phenom12. FrankAnkersmit,History and Tropology:The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley, 1994), 126. 13. "Forthe new historiography, the text must be central-it is no longer a layer throughwhich one looks (either at a past reality or at the historian'sauthorialintention), but something which the historiographer must look at. In the new historiography this new postulateof the nontransparency of the historicaltext leads to a concentrationon the conflicts, hesitations, ambiguities,ambivalencesin short,on what Paul de Man has styled the undecidabilitiesof the historicaltext, in which the nontransparency of the text reveals itself." (Ankersmit,History and Tropology,128-129.) 14. Ibid., 126. 15. "The earlierhistoricism,"Greenblattwrites, "tendsto be monological; that is, it is concerned with discoveringa single political vision, usually identicalto that said to be held by the entire literate class or indeed the entire population.... This vision, most often presumedto be internallycoherent and consistent, thoughoccasionally analyzed as the fusion of two or more elements, has the statusof an historicalfact."(StephenGreenblatt, to TheFormsof Powerand the Powerof Forms "Introduction" in the Renaissance, ed. Greenblatt,special issue of Genre 15 [1982], 5.) 16. In this, GreenblattadoptsMachiavelli'sfamous dictum (from the Discorsi) in consideringhistorical practice as a dialogue with the dead. (See Stephen Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations: The Circulationof Social Energy in Renaissance England [Berkeley, 1988], 1.)

26

JURGENPIETERS

In Ankersmit'sterminology,the pheenon's "identity"and its "individuality."'17 given to it at a certain nomenon's "identity"is the determinateinterpretation is the actualphenomenonas it occurred momentin time, while its "individuality" in history. In Ankersmit'sview historians do not concern themselves with the of historical phenomena:historiansdeal with historical "identi"individuality" history."8 in termsof which they can view and interpret ties,"with "propositions" The distinctionthatAnkersmitsuggests between "identities"and "individualfunction:it serves as the basis of his critiqueof ities" has a double argumentative historicistpractraditional historicism,and as the hallmarkof his own narrativist tice. As Ankersmithimself puts it, some historicists made the mistake of projecting the identity of historical phenomenaonto the past itself.19This crucial mistakeis the occasion of a second importantessay by Ankersmit:"Historicism: In this text Ankersmit focuses on the historicist An Attempt at Synthesis."20 notion of the "historischeIdee,"in his words "the most fruitfulconcept that has Ankersmitderives the ever been developed in the history of historicaltheory.'"21 concept from Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Uber die Aufgabe des GeschichtsAccordingto Ankersmit,the concept has an undeniablerole to play schreibers."22 in the theoryof historicism,in thatit links the two pillarsof Rankeanhistoricism together.To the historianit functions as the key to the "wie es eigentlich gewesen," and is also the ultimate proof that "jede Epoche ist unmittelbarzu Gott." Ankersmitdescribesits uses in the following manner: ideaembodies whatis unique to botha historical entityanda historical 1) thehistorical to thatentityor it givesus accessto whatis essential theunique period; 2) by embodying we havein a thewiththeideaof an entityor period, acquainted period; 3) in becoming laws may help us to crucialsense "explained" it; 4) thoughsocial-scientific oretically to thekindof of thehistorical entirely ascertain the nature idea,it canneverbe reduced thecoherence of the ideaembodies by theselaws;5) thehistorical knowledge expressed themerits of severso thatwhendebating of a historical entityorperiod many properties will be which al proposals for howto conceiveof a historical idea,thedecisivecriterion idea cannotbe and 6) the historical proposal is most successfulin givingcoherence; as Fichteor Hegelhadhopedto do, butonlyon thebasisof unbidefined aprioristically asedhistorical research.23 The dangerinherentin the concept of historischeIdee, so Ankersmitgoes on to argue, is that historiansmay fail to see that it is not to be located in the past historicistssuch as RankeandVonHumboldtsearched itself-where, admittedly,
17. Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 139. 18. Ibid., 138. 19. Ibid., 141. 20. History and Theory34 (1995), 143-162, followed by a reply by Georg Iggers, "Commentson F. R. Ankersmit'spaper:'Historicism:An Attemptat Synthesis,"'Historyand Theory34 (1995), 162167. 21. Ankersmit,"Historicism: An Attemptat Synthesis,"154. In his answerto Iggers'sreply he calls the concept "the logical heart of historicism."(Ankersmit,"Reply to Professor Iggers,"History and Theory34 [1995], 170.) 22. Wilhelm von Humboldt,Schriftenzur Sprachphilosophie, ed. AndreasFlitner and Klaus Giel (Darmstadt,1994), 80-99. 23. Ankersmit,"Historicism: An Attemptat Synthesis,"154.

NEW HISTORICISM

27

for it-but in the historian'sdiscourse,in the interpretation of a historicalreality which reads the coherence of the past in the terms centered aroundand embodied in the historicalidea. In other words,
[n]arrativists agree with their historicistpredecessorsthat it is the historian'stask to see the coherence and Zusammenhangin the past and they will readily acknowledge the immense value of the notion of the "historicalidea."But where the historicists... thought of the historicalidea as an entelechy presentin the past itself thathad to be "mirrored" by the historian'slanguage, narrativists believe that the historian'slanguage does not reflect in the past itself, but only gives coherence to the past.24 a coherenceor Zusammenhang

Accordingto Ankersmit,then, narrativist historicismis true to the philosophy of historicismin the sense that it rejects the "metaphysicalaccretions"that still characterized the works of traditional historicists like Ranke and Von Humboldt.25 of things from the By displacingthe allegedly historical"substance" "factuality" of the past onto the discursive order that is situated at one remove from it, Ankersmit'snarrativismfully takes into account the main axiom that governs Greenblatt'shistoriographical project:"thereis no escape from continIt follows from all of this thatGreenblatt is wrong in declaringthatnew gency."26 historicism isn't a form of historicism at all. On the contrary,it aims to rescue historicism from the metaphysicalrealism which marredits older versions, and therebyrendersitself a newer-and truer-version of historicism.
III. PRACTICE

The theoretical alliance between new historicism and postmodernhistoricism still leaves open the question to what extent Greenblatt'spracticecan be regardversion of the postmodernisthistoriographical ed as the literary-critical project. This question immediatelytriggersa new one, which will have to be dealt with before we can answer the first: can we regardpostmodernisthistoricism as a homogeneouspractice,or are there, rather,differenttypes of it? Put differently, given the clear poststructuralist inspirationof Ankersmit'snew historiography, and given the diversityof poststructuralist theoryitself (not to mentionthe diverof culturaland literaryhistory),is it possible sity of its impactupon practitioners model is the sole option for historianswhose practice to say that the narrativist and knowledge? is backedby postmoderntheories of representation It will probablycome as no surprisewhen I say that the answer to the latter to have influquestion is negative. Since most poststructuralist historiographers enced Greenblatt(Todorov,Certeau,Foucault, and Lyotard,to name the most
24. Ibid., 155, italics his. In his "Six Theses on NarrativistPhilosophy of History,"collected in Historyand Tropology, Ankersmitwrites the following: "Historistsattemptedto discoverthe essence, or, as they called it, the historischeIdee, which they assumed was presentin the historicalphenomeon the contrary, na themselves.Narrativism, recognizedthata historicalinterpretation projectsa structure onto the past and does not discover it as if this structureexisted in the past itself." (Ankersmit, History and Tropology,36.) 25. Ankersmit,"Historicism: An Attemptat Synthesis,"155. 26. Greenblatt,Shakespearean Negotiations, 3.

28

JURGENPIETERS

in different obvious) deploy Ankersmit'scriterion of double non-transparency ways, few people will want to deny that the mansion of postmodernisthistoricism containsmany rooms. In what follows, I intend to give an outline of what I consider to be two different(thoughclearly related)types of postmodernisthistoricism:the first I will call "narrativist" (largely following Ankersmit'sdefinition of the term, yet taking as my main example Michel Foucault), the second "heterological." After having outlined both and after having highlightedthe ties thatbind them together,I will try to answerthe second questionthat is centralto this article:to which of these if either can Greenblatt'snew historicismbe profitably related? Narrativisthistoricismis a historicalpractice which operatesin search of the principle of the historical idea, yet which, in doing so, displaces this principle historicismlocated from the ontological level of the past itself (where traditional it) to the discourseof the historicaltext (both thatof practicinghistoriansandthat of the textual sources on which they operate). In narrativisthistoricism the descriptivepraxis of historical labor prevails:historianswant to reconstructthe it as it was and not in view of the presentfrom which past, to readand understand they read it (at least not primarilyso). The method that is centralto this practice is a discursiveone: narrativists aim to give a descriptionand a functionalanalysis of the discursive fields and mechanisms that structurethe past at a given moment in time. The prime example of this model is the historical,"archeological," and "genealogical"work done by Foucault and by those whom he has inspired deeply.27 Centralto Foucault's approachis that the historical idea is a discursivephenomenon(not an idealistic entity floatingfree in the air) that structures a period's historicaltexts, institutions,and practicesalike. In describingas meticulously as possible both the outlook and the functionalityof these discursive phenomenaas a set of "positivites," Foucaultarrivesat a readingof the past that stresses the heterogeneityof historicalepochs and, hence, the ultimatefailure of historicalideas to guaranteethe Zusammenhang that was centralto traditional historicistconceptionsof them. The otherbranchof postmodernhistoricismupon which I want to focus-the heterological one-takes a different aim and employs a slightly different approach.Its goal, as its name to a certainextent alreadyindicates, is to get "in of history.Given the poststructuralist touch with"or "laybare"the "other" inspiration under which they work, it is obvious that heterologists are at all times awareof the fact that this other can never be made visible and presentimmediately: all that we have from the past are descriptions and mediations of it. However,heterologistsbelieve that the other of the past can be felt and seen in thatwhich it is not: it can be made presentin its absence, as it were, providedthat we read the past by means of the appropriate method that focuses upon the margins of historical mechanisms of representation.As the work of Michel de Certeaumakes clear, this method is basically psychoanalytical:it is a methodby
27. Foucault's example crops up more than once in Ankersmit'streatmentof narrativisthistoricism. See, for example,Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 63ff. andAestheticPolitics, 96-136.

NEW HISTORICISM

29

means of which the historian attempts to find the repressed of the past, the repressedwhich, accordingto the logic of the "retourdu refoule,"returnsin our descriptionsof it. The repressed-that which can neverbe present-is therein its absence, as a negative of the very mechanismsby which it was excluded.28 The practicesof Foucaultand Certeauresemble one anotherto such an extent thatwhateveroppositionone would wish to drawbetween them needs to be qualified immediately.But such resemblancesin no way invalidatethe heuristics of the opposition. Narrativismand heterology are two sides of the same coin: they are complementarypracticesthat, in a way, can profitfrom one anotherin order to fulfill theirjoint purposes.Focusingupon his characteristic usage of historical anecdotes,I intend to arguethat indeed Greenblatt'swork combines both in one single investigativemodel: the anecdoteboth serves as the centrallocus of a culand as the site where history's othercan be ture's dispersivenature(narrativism) broughtto the fore (heterology).Since the main purposeof this articleis to make clear the heuristic advantageswhich the opposition may have on future discussions of the new historicism,I will have to leave outside its scope the more critical questionof where and how Greenblatt's practicemay be said to deviatefrom or conflict with either of the paradigms.I will, however,briefly touch upon this matterand suggest a point at which his readingpractice threatensto slide back into the habits of the traditionalhistoricismthathe sought to overcome.29 New Historicismand Foucauldiannarrativism work to narrativist historicismis to Probablythe easiest way to relateGreenblatt's that structures his firstmajorwork point out thatthe concept of "self-fashioning" functionsas a historical (RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare) idea in Ankersmit's sense of the term. This concept provides the basis of Greenblatt'sproposal to read the early-modem period the way he does: the Renaissancecan be seen as a period in which a certain dialectics between the autonomous fashioningof individualidentitiesand theirmassive societal determinationcomes to the fore and results in new conceptionsand practicesof subjectivity.The idea is not takento be a historicalfact, but as the centralcore of the discourse by means of which Greenblatt tries to make cohere the chaos of historical critiqueof phenomenawith which he is confronted.Bearingin mind Greenblatt's traditional perihistoricism,it could be arguedthathis readingof the early-modern od in the light of the single principleof self-fashioningis as monological as that of the earlierRenaissance-scholars againstwhose work he attemptsto define his own practice.30 chaptersthatmake up his However,the constitutionof the separate study refutes this reproachto an importantextent. One could even say that the between the concreteanalysesdevelopedin the logic thatgovernsthe relationship line of Greenblatt's study is much separateessays and the general argumentative that FrankAnkersmithas the same as that between the two types of narrativism
(Paris, 1975), 22. 28. Michel de Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoir-e 29. I intendto elaboratethis partof my argumentin the largerprojectof which this articleis a part. 30. On this point see Greenblatt,ShakespeateanNegotiations, 2.

30

JURGENPIETERS

outlined in a centralessay in his De Navel van de Geschiedenis("The Navel of History").In this text, Ankersmitproposes a distinctionbetween what he calls a narrativism: while the latteris mainly concerned "dispersive" and an "integrative" with presentinga coherentview of a historicalperiod,in which every part(icular) is expected to illustratethe whole from which it is isolated, the former(exemplimicrostorie)attemptsto lay barethe ideology of illustrafied in CarloGinzburg's makes us approaches. Dispersivenarrativism tion thatlies behindsuch integrative is awareof the limits of this ideology by arguingthatthatwhich is representative the singularityof individualphenomeneverfully so: in the integrativeapproach, the sinforce, in the dispersiveapproach na is reducedin favorof theirillustrative gularitiesremain singularitiesnot necessarily coherentwith one anotheror versions of an underlyingunifying force. keeps a In each of the six chaptersin Renaissance Self-Fashioning,Greenblatt steady eye on the fundamentalheterogeneityof the materialsthat he makes use of, and insists on the way these singularitiesmay resist being integratedinto the cultural universe which the book as a whole purportsto produce. Indeed, the which in this book he brings to some perfectionfor "dialogical"reading-method the first time in his careercan be said to result from that heterogeneity:in each of the essays Greenblattcombines and opposes a numberof contemporaneous texts in his analysis in order to produce (parts of) the discursive system which they all share, a system whose main function it is to structureand stabilize society and to subject the individuals living within it to its demands, while at the same time leaving sufficientroom for the work of autopoesis inherentto earlySuch discursive systems resemble modern mechanisms of subjectification.31 what Michel Foucaulthas termedcultural"dispositifs":they result in a diverse and complex dynamic system of texts, practices, and institutions, all of which share a common goal and all of which relate to one anotheraccordingto a logic In Greenblatt'sview, these "dispositifs"or discursive of "unityin difference."32 and that of "mobility"33: formationsdevelop along two axes, that of "constraint" culturalsystems work and develop accordingto the limits which they pose, limits that make some things possible while making others impossible. The task of narrativist history,then, is to describe the formationand the functionality of these culturalsystems. Its most succinct and sharpestprogrammatic expressionis found in Foucault'sArcheologiedu Savoir. It comes as no surprise, therefore,that the sort of questions which Greenblattattemptsto answer in his culturalanalysis of literarytexts are largely reminiscentof those that are central to Foucault'swork:
31. In this respect, Greenblatt'sidea of self-fashioning could be profitablybrought in line with in the early-modernperiod. See, for Foucault'sanalysis of the rise of theories of "governmentality" example, Michel Foucault,Dits et Ecrits (Paris, 1994), III, 635-657. 32. See Lawrence Grossberg, "On Postmodernismand Articulation:An Interview with Stuart Hall,"in StuartHall: CriticalDialogues in CulturalStudies,ed. David Morley and Kuan-HsingChen (Londonand New York, 1996), 141. in Critical Terms for LiteraryStudy,ed. FrankLentricchiaand 33. StephenGreenblatt,"Culture," ThomasMcLaughlin(Chicago and London, 1995), 225.

NEW HISTORICISM

31

What kinds of behavior,what models of practice,does this work seem to enforce? time and place find this work compelling? Why might readersat a particular betweenmy valuesandthe valuesimplicitin the workI am reading? Are theredifferences does the work depend? Upon what social understandings Whose freedom of thoughtor movement might be constrainedimplicitly or explicitly by this work? with which [the] particular acts of praise or blame What are the largersocial structures [involvedin literarytexts] might be connected?34

conceptuis at the heartof Greenblatt's The same logic of "unityin difference" between partsand wholes in his historicalanalysis of alizationof the relationship a culturalconstellation.Its locus primus can be found in the author'sstrikinguse of the historicalanecdote.In the most typical of his essays, Greenblattstartsoff andideological analysis(a Geertzian with a meticulousrhetorical his investigation of one or other seemingly bizarretextualizedevent that calls "thickdescription") up in the critic's mind-and in the most successful cases also in thatof the reader-a second text, the one that is reputedlycentral to Greenblatt'sessay.35The opens with a chapteron Othello in Renaissance Self-Fashioning,for instance,36 De OrbeNovo. The pasinto a passage from PeterMartyr's ten-page"excursion" sage is thatin which Martyrtells the story of an expeditionof Spanishconquistaa groupof LucayanIndiansinto workingfor dores who succeededin manipulating them in their gold-mines, by telling them that they (the Spaniards)came from a countryto which the forefathersof the Lucayanshad moved after their deaths. attemptsto producewhat he believes to be a typiFrom this anecdoteGreenblatt by inscribwhich he calls "improvisation": cal Renaissancemode of subjectivity, the Indians'worldview, ing themselves into the culturalparadigmsthat structure the Spaniards manageto controlthose whose forces they wantto employ.Much in Othello'snegativeself-imageandhis the same way, Jagosucceedsin manipulating fear thathe won't be able to live up to the expectationsimposed upon deep-rooted him by a Christiansociety to which he is nothingbut a stranger. It is not surprisingthat Greenblatt'smethod has raised the criticism of "arbiHis rejection of the sort of causal explanations that trary connectedness."37 formed the hallmarkof traditionalhistoricist analyses invites such a reproach, refusing as he does to fully explicate the relationship(causal, functional,or otherwise) which he perceives between the diverse particularsof a culturalwhole. What is the exact natureof the relationshipbetween Jago's attitudeand that of the Spanish conquistadores?In which ways are they similar and in which ways to him does not botherto answerthese questions;important different?Greenblatt the is that the similaritybetween the two phenomena(and, equally importantly, of his interthings thatset them apart)convince the readerof the appropriateness
34. Ibid., 226. 35. For a thoroughtreatmentof this aspect of Greenblatt'spractice, see Joel Fineman'scontribution to The New Historicism,ed. H. AramVeeser (Londonand New York, 1989). 36. Stephen Greenblatt,Renaissance Self-Fashioning:From More to Shakespeare(Chicago and London, 1980), 222-254. in ShakespeareReproduced:The Textin 37. WalterCohen, "PoliticalCriticismof Shakespeare," Historyand Ideology,ed. JeanE. Howardand MarionF. O'Connor(Londonand New York, 1987), 34.

32

JURGENPIETERS

pretation.Both relate to the same historical idea, but this idea in the first place constitutesGreenblatt's discourse,not the past with which it deals. Ironically,the reproachof arbitrary connectednessdoes not necessarilyneed to be takenas negatively as it was originallyintended.After all, what Greenblattwants to illustrate is that the connection between two texts or two culturalphenomena is in fact arbitrary. It is arbitrary because it is not natural:texts and objects are connected and it is this field, in all its because they sharean ideological field of articulation, historianwill have to describe. arbitrary logic, that the narrativist The narrativistreading-methodthat Greenblattdevised in Renaissance SelfFashioningis broughtto perfection in ShakespeareanNegotiations. The practical and conceptualimpact of Foucault'stheories of discursivitybears more fruit in this book than in the previous one. As the introductory chapter of has developed a more elabShakespearean Negotiationsmakes clear, Greenblatt oratedview of the functionalityand formationof culturalsystems and processes. In this chapter,"TheCirculationof Social Energy," he conceives of culturaltotalities in terms of organized,dynamic systems that are subdividedinto separate, "zones"(the zone of religion, the zone of economy, the zone thoughinterrelated
of theater, the zone of politics, . . .). These are reminiscent of what Foucault in

each of the zones "L'Ordre du Discours"has called "des regions de discours"38: is a discursiveareawith a distinct way of determiningand producingthe objects thatdisthatcirculatethroughit, and of relatingthese to the specific truth-regime tinguishes it from other zones. Greenblatt'szones are societal spaces whose specificity is functionally determinedby the discourses that are properto them and thatgovern which phenomena"naturally" belong to a certainareain society, what can be said about them and by whom. This account of cultureand how to read it is employed in ShakespeareanNegotiations to detail the cultural and involved in the movementof discursivephenomenafrom one social transactions zone to another. While these are generallymaterial,theirimpactis primarilyone of signification:the negotiationsinvolved are negotiationsof meaning. (To give a simple example:a bishop's miter does not have the same meaning in the zone of theateras it has in the zone of religion.) Primarilymeant as a corrective of traditionalmaterialisticand economistic zone model does not relegatecultureto a supratheoriesof society, Greenblatt's structural level, but considers it a fundamentalpart of a society's makeup.The betterbetween the diversepartsthatmake model also enableshim to differentiate up the unity of a society, encouragingas it does distinguishingthe distinct functionalities of different social and culturalpractices. "Fiction and Friction,"the thirdchapterof the book,39offers a perfect example of the range of Greenblatt's narrativistapproach:startingfrom a passage in Montaigne's traveljournal that recounts a strange legal case of hermaphroditism,and elaborating upon it through Jacques Duval's contemporarymedical treatise on the subject,40the
38. Michel Foucault,L'Ordredu Discours (Paris, 1971), 39. ShakespeareanNegotiations, 66-93. 39. Greenblatt, qui est requis Accouchemensdes Femmes,et Traitement 40. JacquesDuval, Des Hermaphrodits, pour les releuer en sante, et bien eleuer leurs enfants (Rouen, 1603).

NEW HISTORICISM

33

chapteroffers Greenblatt's analysis of the motifs and mechanismsof cross-dressing and gender-switchingin Shakespeare'scomedies. This chaptermakes clear that in ShakespeareanNegotiations Greenblatt'sconcern lies more with the extent to which similar cultural practices differ from one another than in Renaissance Self-Fashioning.4" Throughoutthe book this concern with difference in unity is reflectedin the author'sattempt(largely absent from the earlier book) to outline as specifically as possible the way in which theatricalpractices (may) relate to the society of which they are a part,yet from which, simultaneously, they stand apart. What ultimately binds together cultural practices in Shakespearean Negotiations(in otherwords, what assuresunity in their difference)is the notion of social energy.As the book's subtitle alreadyindicates, the concept is central to the logic that Greenblattattemptsto develop. The concept of social energy is meant to explain how and to what extent certain culturalobjects and practices call forth in a group of people at a certainpoint in time a similarresponse. The notion of social energy, Greenblattwrites, "is associated with repeatableforms of pleasureand interest,with the capacityto arousedisquiet,pain, fear, the beating of the heart, pity, laughter,tension, relief, wonder."42 Greenblatt'slogic is perfectly clear: certainobjects and practicesproduceparticularsupra-individual feelings because they contain a certain amountof "social energy."The fact that these phenomenaexert a "compellingforce" upon a groupof people sufficiently As a matterof fact, explains why Greenblatthas opted for the energy metaphor. Greenblattadds, the same image can be found in the poetical writings of several authorswhose writings were centralto Renaissanceaesthetics, like Quintilianus and Scaliger,on whose work he seems to drawhere. In these texts, the metaphor refers to the power of language to cause in the reader"a stir to the mind,"to use the words of George Puttenham,whom Greenblattquotes directly.43 Greenblatt'sreferencesto the genealogy of his concept are quite important,if only because they serve as a reminderof the fact "thatits origins lie in rhetoric ratherthan physic."44 Its ultimate source is, of course, the third book of Arisis defined as "actutotle's Rhetoric,in which the notion of linguistic "energeia" In Aristotle's alization, vividness, representingthings inanimate as animate."45 work the idea of linguistic energy points to the power of the poet's words and images to give (the illusion of) life to lifeless things and people. By means of this
41. In the latterbook, Greenblattis not always clear on how to conceptualize the transitionfrom one text to another,or from text to context. Most of the time, he omits the question altogether.In the Othellochapterfor instance,the relationshipbetween PeterMartyrand Shakespeare'stext is presented as a self-evident one: "I would hope,"Greenblattwrites in conclusion of his analysis of De Orbe Novo, "thatby now Othello seems virtuallyto force itself upon us as the supremesymbolic expression of the culturalmode I have been describing."(Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning,232.) 42. Greenblatt, Shakespearean Negotiations, 6. 43. Ibid. The quotationis from Puttenham'sTheArte of English Poesie. Greenblattalso points to the existence of a similarpassage in Sidney's Apologyfor Poetry. 44. Ibid., 6. 45. Aristotle, The "Art"of Rhetoric, with an English translationby John Henry Freese (London and Cambridge,Mass., 1947), 475.

34

JURGENPIETERS

potent language,Aristotle argues, "things are set before the eyes by words that signify actuality."46 Even thoughthe referenceto Aristotledoes not really answer the crucialquestionaboutthe exact natureof his social energy,it does containan important clue to our understanding of Greenblatt's all too vague concept. In fact, Greenblattargues,the question of the true essence of social energy is to a large extent unanswerable,since "[t]hetermimplies somethingmeasurable,yet I cannot provide a convenientand reliable formulafor isolating a single, stable quantum for examination.We identify energia [sic] only indirectly,by its effects: it is manifested in the capacity to produce, shape, and organize collective physical and mental experiences."47 Given the fact thatAristotle'sremarkson the energeticnatureof languagewere taken over most prominentlyby Wilhelm von Humboldt,48 the usefulness of the concept in outlining a narrativist praxis centered upon the search for historical ideas becomes evident.At the same time, however,the link with Von Humboldt's work makes clear the potentialdangerthat lurks within Greenblatt's concept. In following in VonHumboldt'sfootsteps,Greenblatt might have been led to employ and devise the concept in order to put back the "historischeIdee" where Von Humboldtprofessed to find it: in the past itself, not in the historian'sdiscourse which deals with it. Earlierin this articleI pointedout that thatwas precisely the centralbone of contentionbetweenAnkersmit'spostmodernhistoricismand that in the view of the latter,the coherence of the past of his traditional forerunners: (its Zusammenhang) was a function of the materialitself, not of the operations which the historianuses to renderit comprehensible.As Greenblatt'sminimal descriptionof the phenomenonmakes clear, social energy (though not immedithe Zusammenhang betweenpast pheately visible) is what ultimatelyguarantees nomena:their coherenceis a materialization of social energy.Consequently,the concept may be said to embody that which Greenblattwants to avoid most: the searchfor the "originary the searchfor that which makes the past what moment," it was apartfrom our (and others') constructionsof it. Devious as it is, this logic may ultimatelybe taken to imply that the historianwho manages to sift out the social energy from its pluraland pluriformmanifestationswill be able to get in touch with the real of the past and to reducethe heterogeneityof its diversemanifestationsto its trueground.Thus, anecdoteswill no longerserve as scenes of disof social energy. persal,but as diverselyshapedmanifestations New Historicismand Certalianheterology Greenblatt'suse of the concept of social energy is too undevelopedto warrant assertinga definitivecausal relationshipbetween the use of this concept and the desire to get "in touch with the real."49 Given the fact that this desire can be said
46. Ibid., 405. 47. Greenblatt,Shakespearean Negotiations, 6. 48. Von Humboldt defines living language (speech) as "Energeia,"not "Ergon"(work). (Von Humboldt,Schriftenzur Sprachphilosophie, 418.) 49. Stephen Greenblatt,"TheTouch of the Real,"Representations59 (1997), 14-29.

NEW HISTORICISM

35

to lie at the basis of most forms of postmodernheterologicalhistoricism,thereis nothingwrong with it-at least, as long as it is temperedby the historian'sawareness that the past for which he or she yearns will never be encounteredimmediately.As such, the desire is similarto thatwhich Greenblatt refersto in the opening passage of Shakespearean Negotiations:the desire to speak with the dead in the full awarenessthat the dead can no longer be hearddirectly.50 Like thatof Foucault,the work of his fellow-countryman Michel de Certeauis centeredupon the insurmountable barrierbetween historical discourses and the past reality that they claim to contain. However, whereas Foucault'sprime purpose is to describe (the functioning) of discursive fields and formationsin the most accurateway possible, Certeauis mainly concerned with the mechanism that divides past reality from its representations,both contemporaryand later. Certeau's view on the barrierbetween "les mots et les choses" is Lacanian: "Historiography (that is, 'history' and 'writing') bears within its own name the paradox-almost an oxymoron-of a relationestablishedbetween two antinomic terms, between the real and discourse. Its task is one of connecting them and, at the point where this link cannot be imagined, of working as if the two were Foucault's method, as I have argued earlier, is descriptive:he being joined.'"51 takes the ideals of the Geistesgeschichteto an extreme in that he even refrains from consideringthe meaningof such and such discourses.He is interestedin not so much the significationof discourses, but the rules and regulationsthat have made them possible and that make them what they are.52 Certeau'smethod, on is a intent the other hand, on laying bare the mechanisms psychoanalyticalone, of writing and representation the real by means of which discourse appropriates and invades it. What Certeaufinally wants to make clear is the extent to which as he calls it) returnsin discourse as that which it has the real (history's "other," in other repressed.The "other," words, can only be known and made present in that to which it is opposed and from which it has to remainforever separated. In each of the three essays that Certeauhas devoted to Foucault's writings,53 his attentionis drawnto the historiographical logic of dispersaland estrangement that lies behind them. The supremeicon of this double logic he finds in the sinof the rise of modergular stories thatFoucaultintroducesin the grandnarrative most of his books. These stories functionnot as illustrative nity which structures gestures;they are "scenes of difference"thatenable the readerto experiencethat which Certeauintends to bring to light in his own work: "un eclat d'autre."54 Certeau's analysis of the dialogical relationshipbetween past and present resembles Greenblatt'sto a large extent. In Certeau'sview, this continuingdia50. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations, 1. 51. Certeau,The Writingof History,transl.Tom Conley (New York, 1988), xxvii, his italics. 52. In the words of Gilles Deleuze: "seul compte ce qui a ete formula, la, a tel moment, et avec telles lacunes, tels blancs."Foucault(Paris, 1986), 13. 53. One is devoted to Les Mots et les choses ("Le noir soleil du langage: Michel Foucault,"in Michel de Certeau,Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction, ed. L. Giard [Paris, 1987], 1536), anotherto Surveilleret Punir ("Microtechniques et discourspanoptique:un quiproquo," in ibid., 37-50), and the thirdto the totality of Foucault'swork ("Le rirede Michel Foucault,"in ibid., 51-65). 54. Certeau,Histoire et psychanalyse entre science etfiction, 55-57.

36

JURGENPIETERS

is foundedentails a never-ending logue upon which the practiceof historiography processof (self-)estrangement: the past underscrutinyboth serves as a touchstone for opinions and expectationsthat are productsof an investigativedomainthat is in andof itself historicallydetermined, andas a rejectionof the philosophyof teleand perfectedproductof the ology that regardsthe presentas an unproblematic structures of the past. In Certeau'sview, historicalmaterialsare not open to such easy appropriations. Attemptsto projectthe presentinto the past (and vice versa) if only because the historicaltexts thatthe historianuses as source are frustrated, materialsare characterized by an internalrift that is constitutiveof writing as such: on the one hand, texts are the productof a series of "effets de reel" (narraarounda numberof (mute) tive or other), while on the other they are structured mechanismsof exclusion and silencing. Texts are characterized, Certeauwrites, by a non-saidthat is implied in the closure effected in and by discourse. These backboneof Certeau'shistoriography: termsalreadyindicatethe psychoanalytical since historicaltexts can no longer be seen as transparent windows that allow full sight of the past "as it was," historiansmust substitutefor the naive mimeticist readingmethodfosteredby such a view one thatis centeredupon textualsilences In such a and blind spots, both of which are signals of the text's "unconscious."56 to somethingoutside readingmethod,textualsigns do not referunproblematically of a numberof mechanismsof the text; they are, rather,concretematerializations productionthatmade these texts possible.57 One of the central conditions of possibility underlying historiographyis, accordingto Certeau,the fact that historicalpractice itself is relatedto what he calls the rise of a "scriptural Europe:an econeconomy"in seventeenth-century omy of writing, in which texts are regardedas-to borrowNelson Goodman's In Certeau'sview, however,the image is not phrase-"ways of worldmaking."58 necessarily as innocent as it is in Goodman's:the textual makeupof a world (in the concrete case of L'Ecriturede 1'histoireof the New World)involves a ruthof an extratexualreal which is given meaning, that is, upon less appropriation which a meaningis forced. Certeauis interestedin the extent to which, similarly, the historian'swritingbetraysan attemptto produce(literally:to figureforth) the past in its singularity-a necessarily frustratedattemptat that. Writing will foreverremainin search of this other of the past which, in its turn, will forever in the scripturaleconomy. At best-and this is the ideal to resist appropriation which Certeauhimself strove-the practicinghistorianwill try to make felt in his writing this continuous and mutual process of exclusion, inclusion, and resistance. The heuristicsof the anecdoteor the microstoriais one of the instruments that may contributeto the success of such an approach.
55. Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoire, 58. et histoire"Certeaudrawsan outline of the parallelsbetween the tasks of the 56. In "Psychanalyse analyst and the historian.(Certeau,Histoire et psychanalyse entre science etfiction, 97-117.) 57. Cf. Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoire, 19-20. 58. "[S]i l'histoire est une institutionet une pratique,elle est aussi, et peut-etresurtout,une ecriture,"Roger Chartierwrites in his apt analysis of Certeau'shistoriography (in Michel de Certeau,ed. Luce Giard [Paris, 1987], 160). Certeauintroducesthe concept in Michel de Certeau,L'Inventiondu quotidian.1. Arts defaire [1980] (Paris, 1990), 195-224.

NEW HISTORICISM

37

A more thoroughanalysis of Certeau'sown practicewould lead me far beyond the bounds of a single article.In what follows, then, I will confine myself to outlining the way in which Greenblatt'swork can be related to the project of hetIn orderto do so, the key termswhich I have introducedin my descriperology.S9 tion of Certeau'sown readingof its program-"dispersal"and "estrangement"are of immediateuse: the twin terms by means of which Greenblatthas tried to capturehis own project-"resonance" and "wonder"-are in more than one way analogousto those singled out by Certeau.Greenblatt'smost direct treatmentof the dialectics of resonanceand wonderis to be found in the essay thatbears their In the conclusion of this essay Greenblattasserts that "it is the function name.60 of the new historicismcontinuallyto renew the marvelousat the heartof the resonant."61 The programmatic driftof the argumentis clear:the readingpracticeof the new historicismneeds to take into accountboth the contextualcircumstances thatlie at the basis of a work of art (circumstancesthat have producedit and for which, in time, it has come to stand) and its autonomy as a formal, aesthetic it needs to keep an eye both on the singularityof a work of art(on what structure; it is in and of itself) and on the way(s) in which it serves as an illustrationof somethingthat lies outside it. "By resonance,"Greenblattwrites,
I mean the power of [an object] to reach out beyond its formal boundariesto a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged and for which as metaphoror simply as metonymy it may be takenby a viewer to stand. By wonder I mean the power of [an object] to stop the viewer in his tracks, to convey an arrestingsense of uniqueness,to evoke an exalted attention.62

himself does not providea link between the Even thoughin this essay Greenblatt dialectics of resonanceand wonder and his prominentuse of historicalmicrostorie, the anecdotemay serve as the prime point at which this dialectics manifests itself. The anecdote is the supremeexample of Greenblatt'sanalytical logic of unity in difference: it offers a view of history as a site of potential conflict a site which presents a culbetween a culture and its 'so-calledrepresentatives, ture as a dynamic, structuralsystem of rules of in- and ex-clusion. As such, it allows the historianto interprethistoricalmaterialsas simultaneouslyrepresentative and non-representative. The most extensive treatmentof Greenblatt's use of anecdotesis that of Joel use of the anecdotein light of both its narraFineman.FinemantreatsGreenblatt's tivistandits heterological that"[t]heanecdote,as the narration potential.In arguing of a singularevent, is the literaryform or genre thatuniquelyrefersto the real,"63 Finemanalreadypoints out its doublefunctionality. While it keeps drawingattention to its narrativist "ontology" (to the extentto which it reflectsthe historicalidea
and de Certeau," 59. In my article"Gazingat the Bordersof The Tempest: Shakespeare,Greenblatt in ConstellationCaliban: Figurationsof a Character,ed. Nadia Lie and Theo D'haen (Amsterdam, 1997), 61-79, I have tried to relate Greenblatt'swork to that of Certeauin a more elaborateway. 60. In Greenblatt, Learningto Curse, 161-183. 61. Ibid., 181. 62. Ibid., 170. 63. In TheNew Historicism,ed. Veeser,56.

38

JURGENPIETERS

thatstructures the historian's discourse),the anecdotenevertheless retainsa unique, referential bondwith the past realityfromwhich it is taken.Put in the termswhich RolandBarthesdevisedin orderto analyzethe referential illusionof historical(and other)discourse,one could say that the anecdotecombines the joint functionsof "prescription" and "notation"64: "thereis somethingaboutthe anecdote," Fineman writes,"thatexceeds its literary[narrativist] status,andthis excess is preciselythat which gives the anecdoteits pointed,referential access to the real."65 The referenceto Barthes serves as a reminder(as does Fineman's "access to the real")that what the anecdote presents, of the past can be nothing more than an image of it. While to some the remindermay seem somewhat superfluous, unnecessaryeven, othersstill take the referentialpromiseopened up by the "effet de reel"for a fact and considerhistoricalanecdotesas places that allow the reader to standface to face with the past "wie es eigentlich gewesen." If we restrictourselves to Greenblatt'sown reflectionsof the heuristicsof the anecdote, it is difficult to decide once and for all to which of the above groups Greenblattbelongs.66While his treatmentof the subject in several essays in Learning to Curse focuses upon the way in which the anecdote functions primarily as a mechanismof estrangement,a recent essay on the impact of Clifford Geertz's anthropologicalwritingson both the theory and the practiceof the new historicism draws a partly differentpicture. In this text, Greenblattstresses the fact thatanecdotes,thoughthey seem to be "raw" pieces of past reality,are in fact Yet he also arguesagainstthe use of the anecdote as a mere pieces of narrative.67 rhetoricalploy: "If it is only a matterof rhetoric," he argues,"thenonly a reality-effect is conjured and nothing more."68 Only a reality-effect: if postmodern and in its heterologicalform) has persistently historicism (both in its narrativist confrontedliteraryand culturalhistorianswith the impossibilityof encountering the past in its full immediacy,it seems also to have inspiredthem to come up with new ways by means of which to sidestep this problem. Grantingthat the "effet de reel" is what Barthesand others believed it to be-une illusion-Greenblatt wants the historianto be true to his calling and become a "conjurer" (un illusioniste) who presentsthe past as if it were real. Universityof Ghent

64. RolandBarthes,"L'effetde reel,"in idem, Le bruissementde la langue (Paris, 1984); see also Ankersmit,History and Tropology,125-161. 65. In TheNew Historicism,ed. Veeser,56. 66. The same ambivalence,so I have arguedin anotherplace (Jirgen Pieters, "FacingHistory,or the Anxiety of Reading: Holbein's 'The Ambassadors' according to Greenblattand Lyotard,"in Literatureand History, ed. TamsinSpargo [Houndmills,Eng., forthcoming])comes to light in a confrontationbetween Greenblatt'sconcept of the "dialogue with the dead" and his analysis of Hans Holbein's "TheAmbassadors" in Renaissance Self-Fashioning. 67. Greenblatt"TheTouch of the Real,"27. 68. Ibid., 21.