Rec1aiming the Political in Latin American History

E S SAYS

F R

T H E

R T H

Duke University Press

Edited by Gilbert M. ]oseph

Durham and London

. CJr

<:'c.-ib,. ni sUbraYfli
revistas Gr~ci"n
SiateIl:la de :8ibliotlC<'.4,
!lO

1..,,, libros y

t1
l1ba1adacl de lCl1t Aa6r

2001

AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS/GLOBAL INTERACTIONS

A series edited by

Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily s. Rosenberg

This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and

fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the his
tory of the imposing global presence of the United
States. Its primary concerns include th deployment and
contestation of power, the construction and decon
struction of cultural and political borders, the fluid
meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex
interplay between the global and the local. American En
counters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration
between historians of u.s. international relations and
area studies specialists.
The series encourages scholarship based on multi
archival historical research. At the same time, it supports
a recognition ofthe representational character ofall sto
ries about the past and promotes critical inquiry into
issues ofsubjectivity and narrative. In the process, Amer
ican Encounters strives to understand the context in
which meanings related to nations, cultures, and politi
cal economy are continually produced, challenged, and
reshaped.

C~

980 Don
(2214

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

1
The Politics ofWriting Latin American History
v Gilbert M. Joseph, Reclaiming "the Political" at the
Turn ofthe Millennium 3
Emilia Viotti da Costa, New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:
From Economic Reductionism to Cultural Reductionismin Search ofDialectics 17

Steve J. Stern, Between Tragedy and Promise:

The Politics ofWriting Latin American History in the
Late Twentieth Century 32

TI
The Contestation ofHistorical Narratives and Memory

2001

Duke University Press

AlI rights reserved

Printed in the United States ofAmerica on aeid-free paper 00
1'ypeset in Quadraat by Keystone Typesetting, [ne.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publieation Data
appear on the last printed page ofthis book.

Barbara Weinstein, The Decline ofthe Progressive Planter

and the Rise ofSubaltern Agency: Shifting Narratives of
Slave Emancipation in Brazil 81
Mary Ann Mahony, A Past te Do Justice to the Present:
Collective Memory, Historical Representation, and Rule in
Bahia's Cacao Area I02

j@ey L. Gould, Revolutionary Nationalism

and Local Memories in El Salvador 138

III

Acknowledgments

Articulating the Political: The Intersection of

Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Generation
Diana Paton, The Flight from the Fields Reconsidered:
Gender Ideologies and Women's Labor
Mter Slavery in Jamaica 175

Greg Grandin, A More Onerous Citizenship: Illness, Race,

and Nation in Republican Guatemala 205
Thomas MlIer K!ubock, Nacionalism, Race, and
the Politics ofImperialism: Workers and North American
Capital in the Chilean Copper Industry 231
Heidi Tinsman, Good Wives, Bad Girls, and Unfaithful Men:
Sexual Negotiation and Labor Struggle in
Chile's Agrarian Reform, 1964-73 268

N
Historians and the Making ofHistory
Florencia E. Mallon, Bearing Witness in Hard Times:
Ethnography and Testimonio in a Postrevolutionary Age 3I I

Danie!james, Afterword: A Final Reflection

on the Political 355
Contributors
Index

vi

Contents

365

367

This collection, a labor of love on the part of the editor and contributors,
affords us a means of celebrating the distinguished career of our mentor
and colleague Emilia Viotti da Costa. The volume originated in the homenagem to Emilia at Yale University over the course of several days in May
1998 on the occasion ofher completion oftwenty-five years ofservice to the
university. My first debt, then, is to thank Yale's History Department, Council on Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Center for International and
Area Studies for sponsoring the conference "Reclaiming 'the Political' in
Latin American History," and the Kempf Memorial Fund at Yale and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for providing the lion's share offunding.
Their support enabled us to host thirty of Emilia's former graduate students and closest colleagues, who gathered in New Haven not only to
honor Emilia's agenda-setting scholarship and provocative teaching, but
for stimulating and often rambunctious debate-with Emilia characteristically leading by example. Her contribution to this volume originally
served as the keynote address for the Yale conference in her honor. In
addition to the colleagues whose work appears in this volume, we are also
extreme!y grateful to Marjorie Becker, Susan Besse, Nelson Boeira, Jos
Celso de Castro Alves, John French, Seth Garfield, Steven Hahn, Kathleen
Higgins, Reeve Huston, Michael Jimnez, Bryan McCann, David Montgomery, Murie! Nazzari, Julio Pinto, David Sanders, Stuart Schwartz, James
Scott, Sol Serrano, and Peter Winn, whose formal and informal intervenciones in New Haven substantially improved the discussion in these pages.
Thanks also go to Nancy Phillips, then senior administrator ofthe Council on Latin American Studies, for her deft logstical management of an
event that gathered together the members ofEmilia's far-flung intellectual

clan from acro.. th.l.n.ch and breadth ofthe Americas. Nancy and 1were
ably alll.ted by a campu. commlttee of Latin American history doctoral
student. (rwo of whom have .ub.equencly graduated and taken up fulltime acad.mlc po.llIon. el.ewhere): Seth Garfield (now at the University of
Texas, Au.t1n), Bryan McCann (University of Arkansas), David Sanders,
Amy Chazkel. los~ Celso de Castro Alves, Andrew Sackett, and Todd
Hartch.
As we moved from the conference to the book, I was aided by Barbara
Weinstein and Heidi Tinsman in selecting this volume's ensemble of essays. (Emilia set the parameters somewhat in requesting that the volume
focus on the work ofher North American students.) Editorial and clerical
costs associated with the preparation of the book were covered by a grant
to Yale's Latin American Council from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The manuscript benefited immeasurably from close readings by
Brooke Larson and Peter Winnj and the essays by Steve Stern, Heidi Tinsman, and me are much the better for the commentary provided by Catherine LeGrand-and the lively exchange with the audience that ensued-at
the panel "Reclaiming 'the Political' in Latin American History" during the
]anuary 2000 meeting ofthe American Historical Association. Yale doctoral
student]. T. Way provided valuable help in preparing the final manuscript.
As always, 1 have been supported at every stage ofmy editorial work by my
editor and dear friend at the Duke University Press, Valerie Millholland.

viii

Acknowledgments

The Politics ofWriting Latin American History

Gilbert M. ]oseph
Rec1aiming "the Political" at the

Turn of the Millennium

These are unsettled times for historians of Latin America. As the region
enters a new millennium in the viselike grip of neoliberalism-a global
project which in the name of "flexible" economic choices, "democratization," and the "rights" of individual investors implements policies that
sow insecurity and promote the methodical destruction of collective structures, habits, and forms of sociability-there are few inspirational paradigms for connecting scholarship to action. 1 Indeed, many lament that the
4itate of historical scholarship, teaching, and "the p~~fession" itself has
.n.~ver be~~..!E:~r~.~i~oriented,. fragmented, lIld.~0!1tentious (though it is
perhaps comforting to know that Alphonse de Lamartine engaged in similar lamentations regarding intellectuallife in nineteenth-century France!).2
':!fe hav~~~~:~~ed the explosion ofonce-comforting master narrativesand ....
have heard celebratory proclamations about ~e!}_d.()n~eolQgyand history
itsel[ Recently we have also observed esteemed colleagues on the Left
protest "identity politics," "political correctness," and the "trivialization"
of the research enterprise, bitterly attacking new trends in cultural history and area studies, their voices now barely distinguishable from moretraditional opponents on the Right. 3 Sorne of these colleagues have gone
on to establish a new "Historical Society" to further their pursuit of"objective reality" based upon verifiable hypotheses. 4 Unfortunately, however,
much of the "newer" social and cultural history also defangs or expunges
the political, fetishizing "experience," "mentality," or "identity," reveling
in the "unfixity" of meanings and dissolving the subject and ultimately
nullifYing agency.5 Alternatively, others of its practitioners have sentimentalized "-resistance" and "agency," seeing it everywhere and thereby diluting political analysis to the point ofirrelevance.

'v

It seems entirely appropriate at this critical juncture, then, to rethink,

remake, or reclaim the political in our work-in the sense of elaborating
richer, more sophisticated approaches to politics and broader arenas of
power. After all, there has never been an abandonment ofpolitics within the
historical profession: this is true at the most prosaic level in terms of the
continued study ofconventional politics, war, and diplomacy among North
American historians ofboth the United States and Latin America. Moreover,
politics-and political power-has never been underemphasized in the
Latin American contexto Historian and po~~!tng~~J~~.!~r_S.P.1i!!Lhas
,?~served that w hereas~.~.r:Y North Ame~~~n.~ !J.l!i.h ~ tut:.I!. a!V~ frQ!l1Poli.~
tics as an act of rejection based on the assumed "ineffectiv~ll.CJS," "irrele~~?ce," or imm<?~I!tYo{politics, Latin merica~sh~~e no such .~uxuiY~The
stakes are too high the conflicts too real. Politics and political action are
crucial determinants of everyday existence. Politics entails more than style,
image or nuance: "It can be, quite literally, a matter oflife and death. "7
It is no doubt for this reason that most Latin Americaa scholars did not
blithely follow the North American academy down the fashionable road
toward social history (and away from political history) in the 1960s and
'7os-or toward cultural studies and postmodernism in the 1980s and '90S;.
Fifteen years ago, Brazilian historian ;~i.!i~_Yi-ru.d;LC()stp~111~e~_0.llt
that the "new history" of"experience" and "mentalities" carriedwith it a
serious risk. It -gave' us"a.frigmenred plcture oE . .. society a'{d~ft~~ .
"madeusTc:'-se ~fght'ofthe interco~nertions among economic, social, political /ltyl
aJ.(lae()loc~lisi:.i.tu'tions and structures." Viotti da Costa wrote: "In
modern societies: even more than in1;he past, "poiticsis at the center of ~(o '.e,
humaiilfe':"fhis c~ntralitY ofpolitics is a result ofboth the incorporation
()f)~n.c:~~a~.!1iD:umbers of pe,ople into the market economy and the over- iRtf6~
e"fIIIIJ
whelrning presence of die state in the lives ofpeople. As a consequence of ,......,.
o,.,
~.,~
these two pr~cesses, which are intimately related, polii:.i.cal decisions have
'~ ('k"
come to affect economic and sociallife in ways never seen before. The life
of a peasant in somelost village in the backland, the labor conditions of a
worker in a factory, a woman's status in a society, the opportunities denied
prgpened to a black person-all depend not only on their own struggle or
?n thecl)og,icof the market, but also on decisions taken by those in
It is impossible to understand the history of the powerless
'without understanding the powerful.
History
from the bottom up can be-. as "-'i
.
.
megingless as history from the top down."
The present volume, composed of original essays by Viotti da Costa and
several generations of her North American students, embraces the chal- \
lenge of writing a social and cultural history of Latin America that is not
divorced from power and the political. It is inspired by her beliefthatwe as

'?y~,;

o"

.'r......

i?ower. :..

Gilbert M. ]oseph

historians, our scholarship, and our teaching are powerfully shaped by

(and involved in the shaping 00 political contexts, structures, and forces.
The challenge, therefore, is not to retreat back to a more conventional,
bounded political history and claim a piece of it; it is, rather, to revisit the
political-both as a theme ofhistorical analysis and as a stance for historical practice-and to inquire, to what extent has the political undergone an
important transformation as we enter the new millennium? We also need
J
to ask, as Steve Stern does in his essay, "How do we specifY the new)9iJ
"-.J demands placed by historical and intellectual experience upon the politic~
ofwriting and teaching Latin American history?"
~
In their attempts to contribute to that enterprise, the volume's authors
explore sorne ofthe strategic realms in which the political might be studied, as well as the new theoretical and methodological tools that might be
employed. In a pair of broad-ranging essays in the book's first section,
r- "The Politics ofWriting Latin American History," Viotti da Costa and Stern
examine how the political has continually been remade in the North since
t~.e 1960s, and they present somewhat different views on what the future of
"the political" should look like. Viotti da Costa's contribution, the reworking of an essay criticizing many of the postInodern and poststructuralist
trends in recent historiography, is a revealing point of departure for the
essays ofher students, several ofwhom, such as Stern and Florencia MalIon, have been leaders in the selective application of recent "posts" and
"turns" to Latin American history.
The essays in the second part of the volume-by Barbara Weinstein,
Mary Ann Mahony, and Jeffrey Gould-address how pivotal dimensions of
the Brazilian and Central American past are remembered. Sifting through
the sedimentation of local and national historiographies, scrutinizing an
array ofprimary documentation and oral testimony, and in Mahony's case,
also exploring local archaeological remains, these authors wrestle with
how historical narratives of slavery and emancipation, modernization and
backwardness, ethno-racial and national identity-and collective memory
itself-are politically mediated, contested, invented, and reinvented.
In part 3, the largest and most diverse section ofthe book, four younger
scholars provide fine-grained studies of how p.()_ILti.s.~J-I1d~~xl2aI!~_ed
notion ofthepolitical) informs and interse,;:tsvvith C?!1structions of class,
-"v

-;:;~~-;:~d~thiii~tY.-g~~d~r~pd se~ualirY,'ge~e~~ti~n!dsea~e, anith:;~~~.~l1

:.IliIleteenth-century Jamaica and Guatemala andtwentieth-c~I1tu9:'.hiJ~

These case studies explore new theoretical concepts and me:lods, and
reexamine a variety of conventional wisdoms. Diana Paton contributes an
essay in subaltern history as she attempts, on the basis ofelite documentation and the fragmentary, state-mediated testimonies offreed black slaves,
ReclaiminB "the Poltical"

,,~

to explain why former slave women refused to work in Jamaican plantation

fields after 1837. ~~Ci_r~l1diz.1 follows with an exploration of disease as
an elite metaphor for indigenous society and national backwardness in
nineteenth-century Guatemala, which he then relates to the trope of anticommunism in the twentieth century-a discourse which would be used to
justifY the massacring of 200,000 Mayans during the civil war of the late
1970S and '80S. Thomas Klubock revisits his earlier research on Chilean
copper miners, but this time to examine the role of race and ethnicity, not
gender, in connection with nationalist ideologies, class politics, and strategies of social control employed by North American corporate capital.
Heidi Tinsman uses both gender and generation to analyze the differential
effects of agrarian reform on married women and teen-age girls; in the
process, she tells us a great deal about the role that notions of masculinity
and sexuality played in Salvador Allende's attempted socialist transition
in Chile. Each author demonstrates that ~~Ue~!iti~s (~E2~2!Lc.a! aHSls 9~'i

*\

,:s:_~}!ltiple, o~~I~l'?}~g,. andoft~?:=_~~a~i_~tory-~~ye!st_ati~._C?~\.

~_~~.

Thus, race, ethnicity, or sexuality is not the same for men and
women, and class, contrary to earlier formulations, does not eliminate
ethno-racial, gendered, or generational identities, though it may speak
through them with important consequences for collective political action.
In the book's concluding section, "Historians and the Making ofHistory," Florencia Mallon examines the everyday politicallinkages between
intellectuals and subaltern groups. She not only focuses on the historical
role oflocal "organic intellectuals" in Chilean indigenous (Mapuche) society, but also explores the evolution of her own interactive and often
problematic relationships with the subjects ofthese communities and with
their struggles-past, present, and future. In this essay, we are provided
with a bittersweet meditation on the promise and pitfalls of ethnographic
and testimonial strategies as the historian attempts to "bear witness in
hard [post-revolutionary] times."" In the tradition ofher other recentwritings, Mallon candidly ponders the need to elaborate different narrative
strategies, analytical categories, and modes of argumentation in order to
write a multidimensional history of subordinate groups in societies and
contexts that no longer rivet the world's attention. Her ruminations on the
complex relationships between historical research, historical memory, and
current politics, both collective and personal, synthesize a number of the
collection's crosscutting themes. The volume concludes with a final refiection by Daniel James, Viotti da Costa's longtime colleague, which locates
the significance ofthese new readings ofthe political dimension ofLatin
America's past in a celebration ofher most importantwork.
A few observations are in order about the goals and parameters ofthis
6

Gilbert M. ]oseph

e/

volume. It seeks to pose timely responses to sorne ofthe larger questions

currently preoccupying Latin Americanists and scholars in other fields and
disciplines, namely: How does politics, broadly construed, articulate with
other variables and categories ofanalysis? H-~ isthe politicalrealmmedi~ated through historical memory? And how doe;a potic~ sensibility infiu~
ence the writing and teaching we do, and the roles we play in the academy
and society? In this sense, the book is meant to stimulate discussion and
debate, rather than resolve current disputes. In discussing generational
remakings of the political in his contribution, Stern suggests that major
theoretical advances have come about through what he calls "reverberations": "imperfect intellectual conversations, echoes, and trackings across
research projects and across specialized fields." These reverberations give
rise to "unplanned convergences" and provide an antidote to the scholarly
fragmentation so lamented of late. It was in the spirit of fostering such
reverberations that Stern and Allen Isaacman launched the collaboration
between Latin Americanists and Africanists that yielded the fruitful volume
Confronting Historical Paradigms (1993); itwas in the same spirit that my three
most recent collaborations were born: Everyday Forms of State Formation
(1994), which brought together Mexican revolution scholars and social
theorists working on Europe and Asia; Close Encounters of Empire (1998),
which prodded Latin Americanist historians and anthropologists north
and south of the Rio Grande into dialogue with U.S. foreign relations
historians to reassess the multistranded engagement ofthe United States
with Latin America; and the recent issue ofthe Hispanic American Historical
Review (1999), on Mexico's "new cultural history," which brought poststructural cultural historians into freestyle combat with their more positivistic antagonists. 1O It is our hope that this volume will trigger similarly
useful "reverberations."
If there is a common denominator in the volume's essays, it is their
prescription for a politics of history writing that is integrative. In their
synoptic papers, Viotti da Costa and Stern advocate a dynamic approach to
poltical analysis that engages multiple levels of the world system, embraces both the state and its subjects, and understands that political discourses, symbols, and identities are intimately related to social relations,
economic processes, and power. Thus, Viotti da Costa calls for "a synthesis
that will avoid all forms ofreductionism ... (whether economic, cultural,
or linguistic), that will not lose sight ofthe articulation between the microand macrophysics of power, that will recognize that human subjectivity is
at the same time constituted by and constitutive ofsocial realities."" Arguing along roughly similar lines (though somewhat more partial to poststructuralist trends in the "new cultural history"), Stern defends what he
Reclaiming "the Poltica!"

sees as a "partial transition"-"more a matter of emphasis than absolute

contrast"-from studies ofLatin American "politics and society" to studies
of "politics and culture." Whereas the former "placed a premium on the
complex interplays of agency and structure within the unfolding political
economy of regions," the latter "asks how people constructed their political imagination within the (power-laden process] of state formation."
Though their emphases differ, both Viotti da Costa and Stern counsel
against a celebration ofsubaltern agency and emancipation that minimizes
questions ofpower, structure, and hegemony. The contributions that follow Viotti da Costa's and Stern's keynote essays represent attempts to
harness materialist analysis with "the interrogations of consciousness,
constructions of political language, meanings, and authority" by both
power holders and subordinate groups that Stern sees as emblematic ofthe
best work of the 1990S on politics as cultural formation.
Thus, these essays move us beyond fruitless current debates about
whether we should privilege material or cultural analysis-structure or
agency-in our work. Such debates have often had divisive consequences
and risk setting back certain fields, particularly Latin American labor his'
tory, where sorne infiuential practitioners adamantly argue the need to
study questions ofproduction and the workplace to the virtual exclusion of
other sites and dimensions ofworking-class life. 12 But as theorists such as
Fernando Coronil, William Sewell, Ricardo Salvatore, and Bill Roseberry
have persuasively shown, " 'political economy' and 'culture' are ambiguous
theoretical categories that refer both to concrete social domains and to the
abstract dimensions of any social domain. (An exclusive preoccupation
with material analysis] entails a neglect not only of domains outside the
economy, but also ofthe cultural dimension of economic processes themselves" (e.g., the meanings that male and female laborers put on the work
they do and the goods they produce)." Similarly, an exclusive preoccupation with representation and discourse ignores the material underpinnings of cultural practices.'4 Explicitly in the case of Stern's, Viotti da
Costa's, and Barbara Weinstein's essays, more implicitly in the volume's
other essays, the contributors take a stand against segregating material
and cultural/discursive analysis-a dichotomy that is itself culturally constructed and rife with political meaning and consequence. 1S
Although this volume represents a view of the Latin American political
that comes preponderantly from the North, the contributors' training by
one of Latn America's most distinguished and broad-gauged historians
has powerfully af'fected their encounters with the region's pasto Indeed, the
manner In whlch so many of Viotti da Costa's students have set their
storle. In broader contexts of power and culture, and sought, like their
8

Gllbm M. josrph

mentor, to achieve "a synthesis that will result in both a new hisrorlogrllphy and new political stra~egies," has forged them into a somewhat dlstinctive discursive community within the profession.'d Consequently, this
volume does not pretend to exhaust or represent all North American scholarship on the political in Latin American history-a point made emphatically by Stern in his survey ofthe field over the last several decades-to say
nothing ofLatin American approaches to politics. Nevertheless, the nature
ofthe intellectual encounter it does embody is significant in its own right
and points up incipient trends of hemispheric convergence in the study of
Latin America' s pasto
Multiple ironies surround Emilia Viotti da Costa's mediating role in this
North-South intellectual encounter. Harassed by Brazil's U.S.-supported
military regime and ultimately forced to retire from the history department
of the Universidade de Sao Paulo in 1969, Viotti da Costa carne to the
United States, eventually securing a position in the history department at
Yale University in 1973. Over the next quarter century, she reestablished
and redirected her academic career, training generations ofNorth American students, a good number of whom became critics of the kinds of
repressive regimes that brought her into contact with them." Formerly at
the center of a cohort of young historians and social scientists who were
recasting the history of slavery, abolition, and race relations in Brazilintellectuals infiuenced by French and European formulations ofdialectical
materialism leavened with new forms of cultural and textual analysisViotti da Costa was now forced to engage with a North American academy
that did not prize her incisive critiques of the liberal historiographical
tradition.' Ironically, as she herself testifies, it was in the United States, in
dialogue with maverick Americanist colleagues such as Eugene Genovese,
Elizabeth-Fox Genovese, C. Vann Woodward, David Montgomery, and Edmund Morgan, as well as with her own restless graduate students, that she
"discovered" Latin America. As a younger Brazilian colleague ofViotti da
Costa has observed: "This was a fortuitous surprise that permitted her to
refiect on Brazilian and U.S. history and culture from a comparative perspective and to lend her analysis a new and enriching dimension."" Admired over the years in Brazil for her contributions to the specialized literatures on Brazilian slavery and abolition and the history of the Brazilian
empire, it was only with the translation ofher recent essays on Latin Amer
ica's new labor and cultural history and her widely acclaimed 1994 book on
slave rebellion in nineteenth-century Guyana, Crowns ofGlory, Tears ofBlood,
that Brazilian historians took notice ofthe expansion ofher interests.
In a 1998 essay in the Latin American Research Review, U.S. Brazilianist Thomas Skidmore acknowledged the intellectual resulta of Viotti da

Rrclamin.q "thr PoUtical" 9

Costa's encounter with her North American students. Skidmore featured

the work of several of her students-a group he dubbed "The Integrators"-to illustrate wholesome trends ofhemispheric convergence in Latin
American historiography. It is these scholars' preoccupation with comparative history, their penchant for integrating global, national, and local
levels ofanalysis, and with elaborating anthropologically informed studies
ofpower and popular culture (particularly "the subtle ways in which nonelites have shaped the cultures and discourses of elite-dominated institutions"), that Skidmore believes characterizes their work and combats the
fragmentation that has bedeviled humanistic and social science research
on Latin America. 20
Viotti da Costa's students and colleagues have certainly played a part in
fomenting the proliferation ofinternational cross-disciplinary research initiatives that have brought Latin American and North American scholars
into ever doser contact in recent years. It is "this widening and deepening
ofthe scholarly infrastructure," as Skidmore terms it, that has hastened "a
convergence of professional standards and the creation of a genuinely
inter-American scholarly community."" Stern, for example, has been an
integral member ofthe Social Science Research Council's continuing international project "Memory and Military Repression in the Southern Cone,"
led by Argentine sociologist Elizabeth Jelin, whose goal is to train a new
generation of Latin American and North American researchers around
cutting-edge approaches to this critical cultural and political issue. Working with anthropologist Charles Hale and ten Central American historians
and anthropologists, Jeffrey Gould has mounted a multiyear research initiative, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to examine
"Memories ofMestizaje and Cultural Politics Since the 1920S" in five Central American nations. Daniel James is currently in the final stages of
a similarly ambitious N EH collaborative research effort, "The Berisso
Obrero Project," codirected by Argentine labor historian Mirta Lobato,
which to date has gathered the testimonies of 250 male and female meatpacking workers as part of a broader effort to write a gendered history of
work in this small industrial city south ofBuenos Aires. 22 Greg Grandin's
research on Mayan constructions of the Guatemalan nation has contributed to and benefited from related research initiatives at the Centro de
Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamrica (CIRMA) and the Asociacin
para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala (AVANCSO) as a
result ofthis ongoing collaboration, Grandin was invited to participate as
a consultant to the Guatemalan Truth Commission, whose historic report
on the origins of twentieth-century violence and repression he helped to
write,>3 Similarly, Thomas Klubock, Heidi Tinsman, and Florencia Mallon,
lO

as well as Barbara Weinstein and Mary Ann Mahony, have fashioned research strategies that are highly integrated with the agendas of local universities and institutes in Chile and Brazil, respectively. At present, Diana
Paton is launching a multinational collaborative project whose goal is to
produce a gendered history ofslave emancipation in the Atlantic world.
Of course, the recent "hemispheric convergence" that Skidmore and
others are touting has hardly brought an end to scholarly fragmentation.
Indeed, inter-American collaboration proceeds on a variety of planes, and
not without sorne voices raised in opposition. In addition to the convergence around a "new politicallcultural history" of Latin America, reflected in this volume, one could also point to the vital North-South collaboration linking postrnodernist literary critics and cultural studies scholars
in the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group24 and the Red Interamericana de Estudios Culturales; the incipient working group on Latin American law and society;2S and the network that has galvanized neodassical
exponents of a "new Latin American economic history," sorne ofwhose
members have been rather antagonistic to the other patterns of convergence,>6 No doubt a variety of factors has enhanced these diverse interAmerican collaborations-to_ wit, the revolution in electronic forms of
communication, the recent surge in academic exchange between Latin
America and the United States (particularly the migration north of ever
greater numbers ofLatin Americans to pursue advanced degrees and hold
visiting appointrnents), and the internationalization ofU.S.-based fellowship competitions, foundation boards, and elite research centers, which
has enhanced the participation of Latin American scholars. Yet for many
Latin American leftist and nationalist intellectuals, these trends merely
underscore the penetration and ascendancy ofthe (neoliberal) "New World
Order" and provoke from them a tepid if not negative response.27 Sorne
Marxist scholars are as opposed to the "new politicallcultural history"which, by accentuating agency, language, and multiple axes of "difference," undercuts more traditional, monochromatic explanations centered
on class and imperialistic oppression-as they are to neodassical paradigms centered on the market and rational choice. 2
The essays in this volume argue that historians can and should bear
witness to the ways in which abstract historical processes and institutions
(e.g., markets, states, wars, capitalism, imperialism, positivism, slavery,
patriarchy, dictatorship, and "modern" medicine) are inscribed on the
bodies and memories ofreal people. 29 They eschew modernist binaries and
teleologies in their analyses, and try to show that dass, gender, and ethnoracial hierarchies and forms of oppression, although connected, do not
move in lockstep and often have distinct logics and trajectories. In the

Glbert M.]oseph

Reclaiming "the Political"

XI

process, the volume's contributors seek to reframe and reclaim the political in Latin American history.
The very fact that the political needs to be "reclaimed" says much about
the state of the field and intellectual life more broadly. The failure of
revolutionary struggles in Latin America, the lack of a cohesive social
movement in the United States, and the explosion, as Steve Stern puts it,
of "paradigms of inspiration" that might connect ideas to purposeful
action-all add up to what Florencia Mallon describes as intellectual "hard
times." Of course, progressive intellectuals have always contended with
difficult times. Referring to the totalitarian and fascist forms of"darkness"
of a previous generation, Hannah Arendt wrote of "the disorder and the
hunger ... the outrage over injustice and despair 'when there was only
wrong and no outrage.' "30 Yet, "even in the darkest oftimes," Arendt went
on, "we have the right to expect some illumination, and ... such illumination may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their
lives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shed
over the time span that was given them on earth.... Eyes so used to
darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light
of a candle or that ofa blazing sun. "3>
For many ofher students and colleagues, Emilia Viotti da Costa has been
that blazing sun. And although she herself does not believe that the political needs to be reclaimed-for her, real history is always political-it is a
fitting theme for a book in Emilia's honor. She has constantIy reminded
her students ofthe obvious: that history changesj that cycles of despair and
hope are inextricably bound up with that changej and that what is important about methods for understanding the past is not their cleverness or
their effectiveness in debunking what came before, but their usefulness in
helping us engage politically with the world. At the end ofher contribution
to this volume, Emilia surveys the new hegemonic strategies that accompany the internationalization and technification of the economy under
neoliberalism. She draws our attention to
rhe improvement of the conditions of living of sectors of the working
class at the expense of others ... and the consequent intensification
of erhnic conflicts which makes it difficult to promote class solidarity;
rhe expansion ofthe informal sectors (where workers have no power
or rights); the extraordinary increase in the participation ofwomen in
rhe labor force (generaring conflicts in the domestic sphere)j the renewal ofputting-our systems (isolatingworkers); the multiplication of
remporary workers (which makes it increasingly difficult to organize
rhem in rradirional ways) the transformations ofresidential patterns,

with the disappearance ofworking-class neighborhoods (whlch tradl

tionally had been centers ofworking-class activity); changes in forms
of leisure (isolating the workers in fronr of TV sers); rhe growing
impact of a media in the service of the state and of business corporations; and finally, the generalization of a consumer mentality that
intensifies the tension between privation and desire and emphasizes
the individual at the expense ofthe social.
"This extremely complex scenario, which varies from one society to
another," Emilia contends, must inform political practice and theory, as
well as the new his tories we write, for "the mere reproduction oftraditional
interpretations cannot account for this new reality." She recognizes, moreover, that des pite the formidable challenges it poses to subaltern groups
and activist scholars alike, the present political and intellectual moment is
also alive with new possibilities. No matter how cruel neoliberalism or
corrupt democracy tend to be in Latin America these days, no matter how
corrosive of old solidarities, the current period is also redolent with new
forms ofidentity and new modes ofpolitical and intellectual engagementmany ofwhich are discussed in the pages that follow. It remains to be seen,
of course, how influential or lasting Skidmore's notion of "hemispheric
convergence," fueled by scholarly diasporas and enhanced communication, will be, either in intellectual or political terms. But it has already
thrown shafts of light across these "dark times," facilitating strategies of
North-South (and South-North) collaboration among scholars, labor organizers, environmentalists, feminists, and Native American activists, to cite
the more celebrated cases.
This emphasis on the need to integrate, to achieve a historiographical
synthesis that "will avoid all forms of reductionism and reification," has
animated Emilia Viotti da Costa's discussions with her students for the
past quarter century and is centrally at issue here. "The work ofthe historian," Emilia maintains, "is always a dialogue between past and present,"
and the good historian transcends earlier understandings and modes of
analysis by means ofdialogue and argument, rather than simply by displacing them. "Ideas do not die," Emilia reminds her students, even as some
intellectuals declare the end of ideology, and of history as well: "Ideas
never die; 1848 will come again. And when it does, you better be able to
recognize it."
Notes
1 am grateful to Brooke Larson, Peter Winn, Iohn French, and Steve Srern for rheir
thoughrful commenrs on an earlier draft, and to Greg Grandin for sharing ref!ections
about Emilia Viotti da Costa and Hannah Arendt that inspired parts ofthis essay.

ReclamnB "the Political"

11

Gllbrrt M. Joseph

13

3
4

8
9

ro

II

14

See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu's provocative correlation of social and intellecrual
ttends in "Neo-Liberalism, me Utopia (Becominga Reality) ofUnlimited Exploitation,"
in Aets ofResistance: A,gainst the New Myths oIOur Time, transo Richard Nice (Cambridge:
Polity Press, 1998), 94-105.
See the epigraph to Emilia Viotti da Costa's essay in this volume.
See, for example, James Surowiecki, "Genovese's March: The Radical Reconstructions of
a Soumern Historian," Lingua Franca (Dec.-Jan. 1997): 36-51.
In its second national conference in June 1000, the Historical Society took dead aim at
"me New Cultural History."
See Linda Gordon's critique of(and exchange wim Joan Scott) in Signs 15,4 (r990): 85159, for omer trenchant observations on mis danger, see Florencia E. Mallon, "The
Promise and Dilemma ofSubaltern Srudjes: Perspectives from Latn American History,"
American Historical Review 99, S (Dec. 1994): 1491-1515, John D. French and Daniel James,
"Squaring me Cirele: Women's Factory Labor, Gender Ideology, and Necessity," in
French andJames, eds., The Gendered Worlds ofLann American Women Workm: From Household
and Faetory te the Union Hall and Ballot Box (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), esp. 78; Leon Fink, "The New Labor History and me Powers of Historical Pessimism: Consensus, Hegemony, and me Case ofme Knights ofLabor," in In Search ofthe Working Class
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), esp. 135-36, and Emilia Viotti da Costa's
essay in mis volume.
See, for example, Lila Abu-Lughod, "The Romance ofResistance: Tracing Transformations ofPower mrough Bedouin Women," American Ethnologist 17,1 (1990): 41-55; and
Sherry B. Ortner, "Resistance and me Problem of Emnographic Refusal," Comparanve
Studies in Society and History 37 (Jan. 1995): 173-93.
Peter H. Smith, "Political History in me I980s: A View from Latn America," in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert 1. Rotberg, eds., The New History, the 1980s and Beyond: Studies in
Interdisciplinary History (Princeron: Princeton University Press, 1981), 3-17 (quotations
from 4,16).
Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Emplre: Myths and Histories (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1985), xvii (emphasis mine).
In mis regard, Mallon's essay sheds important light on me mediated narure of oral
histories and testimonios, me issue which lies at me heart of me controversial debate
between David Sto11 and defenders of Rigoberta Mench Tum. See, for example, me
special issue "IfTruth Be Told: A Forum on Stoll and Mench," Latin American Perspectives
16,6 (Nov. 1999).
Frederick Cooper, Florencia E. Mallon, Steve J. Stern, Allen Isaacman, and Wi11iam
Roseberry, Conftonnng Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in
Aftica and Lann America (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1993); Gilbert Joseph
and Daniel Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms ofState Formation: Revolunon and the Negotation of
Rule in Modem Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994); Joseph, Catherine C.
LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encauntm oIEmpire: Wrinng the Cultural
History ofU.S.-Latn American Relanons (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Joseph and
Susan Deans-Smith, eds., "Mexico's New Culrural History: Una lucha libre? Special issue
ofHispanic American Historical Review 79, 1 (May 1999).
Her argument here builds on earlier iterations: see, for example, Emilia Viotti da Costa,
"Experience versus Sttuctures: New Tendencies in me History ofLabor and me Working
Class in Latin America-What Do We Gain, What Do We Lose?" Intemanonal Labor and
Working-Class History 36 (full 1989): 3-14, and Crowns ofGlory, Tears qfBlood: The Demerara
Slave Rebe1lion of1823 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), esp. xiii-xix.

11

See, for example, John Womack Jr., "Labor History and Work," paper presented at me
symposium "Industrial R.elations in Latin America: A New Framework?" Harvard University, S November 1999 Womack is certainly correct about me need to reverse me ttend
away from research on the work process, ir is his disparagement of those labor historians rhar do "culrural history" tout coart mat seems cause for alarmo

13

The quote is from Fernando Coronil 's foreword to Joseph et al., eds., Close Encoantm ofEmpire, xi; a1so see William H. Sewe11 Jr., "Towards a Post-Materialist Rhetoric for Labor History," in Leonard R. Berlanstein, ed., Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and Class
Analysis (Urbana: University oflllinois Press, 1993), 15-38; Sewell, Workand Revolanoo: The
Langaage of Labor ftom the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), Ricardo D. Salvatore, "The Normalization ofEconomic Lfe: Representations of
me Economy in Golden-Age Buenos Aires, 1890-1913," Hispanic American Historical Review,
81,1 (Feb. 1001): 1-44; French and James, "Squaring me Cirde" and The Gendered Worlds;
and me essays by Diana Paton, Thomas KIubock, and Heidi Tinsman in mis vol ume.
See, for example, William Roseberry, "Social Fields and Culrural Encounters," in Joseph
et al., eds., Close Encounters qfEmpire, 5 15- 2 4.

14
15

Gilbert M. Joseph, "Close Encounrers: Towards a New Cultural History of U.S.-Latin

American Relations," in Joseph et al., eds., Close Encoanters ofEmpire, 3-46, esp. 14; Anne
McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and SOOlality in the Colonial Contest (New York:
Routledge, 1995).

16

For Viotti da Costa's role as a mentor, see Thomas E. Skidmore, "Studying the History of
Latin America: A Case ofHemispheric Convergence," Lann American Research Review 33, 1
8
(199 ): 105- 17, esp. u9-zo, amplified by personal communications wim me aumor.
The quotation is from Viotti da Costa's essay in mis volume.
See Stern's essay in mis volume.
See Weinstein's essay in mis volume.

17
18
19
lO

2I

22

Personal communication wim Maria Ligia Coelho Prado, 17 November 1999.

Skidmore, "Studying me History OfLatin America," u5- I 7, quotation on IIl. Skidmore
focuses on me recent work ofFlorencia Mallon, Gilbert Joseph, and Steve Stem. He also
alludes to me conttibutions mat Tulio Halperin Donghi of the University of California,
Berkeley, and other exiled Latin American historians made to a "hemispheric convergence" in me way Latin American history is written.
Ibid., 111. It bears repeating mat many other Norm American scholars have played an
active role in such initiatives. In his contribution to mis volume, Stem draws our attention, for example, to me catalyzing role me Social Science Research Council played in
organizing major international colIaborations to chart new directions in Andean and
Mexican history and anthropology. These projects were spearheaded on me North American side by scholars such as Brooke Larson and Karen Spalding (Andes) and Friedrich
Kaz (Mexico).
For preliminary findings from mis project, see me essays by James and Lobato in French
and James, eds., The Gendmd Worlds ofLann Amencan Women Workm.

z3

Comisin para el Esclarecimiento Histrico, Guatemala: Memoria del silencio, I2 vols.

(Guatemala City: Oficina de Servicios para el Proyecto de las Naciones Unidas, 1999);
for an on-Ene version ofme report and an English-Ianguage summary, see htlp:/I hrdata
-".aaas.org/ceh:---' . '~~"~''''-',~-. 'oc'

Z4

On me creation ofme Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, see Mallon, "The Promise and Dilemma ofSubaltern Srudies," 1504-6; for me group's "Founding Statement,"
see me special issue on "The Postmodern Debate in Latin America," boundary 2, 20 (fuI!
1993): IrO-ZI.

Gilbert M. joseph

ReclaiminB "the Poltica'"

15

25

26

27

28

29

30
31

Por a recent sampling ofthe "new legal history," which discusses the emergence ofthis
international community of scholars, see Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos A. Aguirre, and
Gilbert M. Joseph, eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin Ameriea: Law and Society Sinee Late
Colonial Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 20or).
Two recent collections ofthe new economic history scholarship are Stephen H. Haber,
ed., How Larin Ameriea Fell Behind: Essa~s on the Economie Histories ofBrazil and Mexieo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) and John H. Coatsworth and Ajan M.Taylor, eds.,
Latin Ameriea and the World Eeonom~ Sinee 1800 (Cambridge: the David Rockefeller Center
Series on Latin American Studies/Harvard University Press, 1998). Haber has been most
aggressively opposed to the new cultural/political history and postmodernism, which he
invariably lumps together in his attacks. See, for example, "The Worst ofBoth Worlds:
The New Cultural History of Mexico," Mexiean Studies/Estudios mexicanos 13, 2 (summer
1997): 363-83; "Anything Goes: Mexico's 'New' Cultural History," Hispanie American
Historical Reuiew 79,2 (May 1999): 309-30; see a1so Susan Migden Socolow, "Putting the
'Cult' in Culture," in the same issue, 355-65. Socolow labels the new political/cultural
history "the latest gringo intellectual contagion" and agrees with Haber that it has had
little impact in Latin America itself. For responses to Haber, see the commentaries by
Mallon and Claudio Lomnitz in the same issue of HAHR, and Stern's essay in this
volume.
See, for example, Claudio Lomnitz, "Barbarians at the Gatel A Few Remarks on the
Politics ofthe 'New' Cultural History ofMexico," Hispanie American Historieal Reuiew 79, 2
(May (999): 367-83, esp. 382-83, for a suggestive discussion ofwhy many traditional
Mexican historians have not embraced "the new cultural history."
See, for example, Francisco J. Carpintero, "Un proyecto acadmico exitoso? La nueva
historia cultural del campesinado mexicano," unpublished manuscript, 1999. Other
Latin American scholars who are in principie sympathetic ro a synthess of political
economic and materialist approaches have problems with the weighting that is often
given to them, particularly in scenarios where a preoccupation with gender and ethnic
inequality impedes the historian's ability to critique underlying regimes of class and
imperial exploitation (personal communications with Maria Ligia Coelho Prado).
l draw here on the eloquent discussion in Florencia E. Mallon, "Time on the Wheel:
Cycles ofRevisionism and the 'New Cultural History,' " Hispanie American Historieal Reuiew
79, 2 (May 1999): 331-51, esp. 349.
Hannah Alendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1968), vi.
lbid., ix-x.

Emilia Viotti da Costa

New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:

From Economic Reductionism to Cultural

Reductionism-in Search ofDialectics

These times are times of chaos, opinions are a seramble; parties are a jumble; the
language ofnew ideas has not been ereated; nothing is more diffieult than to give a
good definition ofoneselfin religion, in philosophy, in polities.... The wodd has
jumbled its eatalog.-Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, 1790-18691

"May '68 we remade the world. May '86 we remake the kitchen." This jF'fj/y':;
:>
caption, which appeared in an advertisement published in the French
7I'Sc;:~c '-'
newspaper Le Mon~e, paid for b: a company that sells modern kitchens, i, ''k 1'r'1.d,,~ b) i
suggests a change In people's attltudes from the 1960s to the 1980s: from a i / ~".t. 4--/./
~rj9_~ ofpolitical militancy to the "yuppie" generation. It is true that one J PA.,_~~e-1 ~,
might question the radicalism ofMay 1968 and doubt that it did, in fact, set
out to remake the world-although there is no doubt that was the intention
ofmany of the thousands ofyoung and not-so-young people that gathered
in the streets ofParis and other cities ofthe Western world. We might also
"
" '-'" doubt that the new generatlOn
. IS
. fundamenta1ly consumenst,
. IndIVIdua
. ..
l'IS-"",~n:rlp
;,:("..,,-...cv)"
.r.-"'~~flll1,<..

oc""

tic, and conservative. The advertisement probably expresses the hopes of ,-)~:-,.vHL,d.,
I entrepreneurs, not the attitudes of the consumers. But the advertisement- l (rv:S'r ""V-rjve,
which was later reproduced on the cover of an issue of the Radical HistOT!J
Review devoted to the study ofthe impact ofnew forms ofconsumerism on
,
contemporary culture and politics-is a good metaphor to characterize the
""" state ofmind ofmany historians and militants when they confront the new
trends both in the histories we live and the histories we write. 2
~';:"C',,","'- _
One just has to look at some of the artieles published in recent years
about contemporary events to detect a tone of concern, if not pessimism
and despair, reminiscent ofthe "mal du sickle" that affected Alphonse de
16

Gilbert M. ]oseph

sI

. 11 111,1,U'Y " whid\

I

t11~CUSSC::-' the enu~rgt.'ncc= ofthis

,,' Illo .n.!" I l, S:,lvJWtc, Carlos A. Agllirre, and

1'11111 ,llIn,"' 111 UJIII1 \merien: Luw und Soeitly Sine, Lut.

vl't
".,

ity 111,' '0,

'001),

histnry scholarship are Stephen H. Haber,

onit, E(OII~l11i[ Histories ofBrazil and Mexico (Stan-

Emita Votti da Costa

New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:

'''111111111
11'

I ""llllh" H. Coarsworth and Alan M. Taylor, eds.,

" ,,,' 1M"" I Cambridge: the David Rockefeller Center
11111' 11 d \ Inivcrsity Press, 1998). Haber has been most
,,11111 1I/I,ol1l'i(':1I history and postmodern.ism, which he
'1 ,,~
ve, fin cxample, "The Worst ofBoth Worlds:

tlJI!

From Economic Reductionism ro Cultural

Reductionism-in Search ofDialectics

,,,," M" . "n" Studies/Estudios mexicanos I3,

, 11"

2. (summeI
'Ncw' Cultural History," Hispanie American

;J:

'C" also Susan Migden Socolow, "Putting the

I~S 15. Socolow labels the new politicallcultural

IUII'

HuI, I1I1Llgion" and agrees with Haber that it has had

hJr rcspunscs to Haber, see rhe commentaries by
,

11... '.'111" iSSllC of HAHR, and Stern's essay in this

")'"Irharians at the Gate? A Few Rcmarks on the

I",,'V >Ir "kxk"," Hispanie American Historieal Review 79, 2
'<Ir 1 ,.l1ggcstive discussion of why many traditional

1111111 .

,1,1,1 JI

t,I"he

I1CW

t H lllulr'r ll , llUn

cultural histor'j."
proyecto acadmico exitoso? La nueva

,di' ,nr<ic.lIlo." unpublished manuscript, 1999 Other

lrinple sympathetic to a synrhesis uf political

'h' ,,!t' . l1.Ive problems with the weighting that is ofi:en
" 11 tI" whcre :l preoccupation with gender and ethnic

II

11'

IlIIIIY In critique underlying regimes of dass and

with ,vIaria Ligia Coelho Prado).
"" ,11'" in l'lorencia E. Mallon. "Time on the Wheel:
Ne'" ;lIlllIr;1I History,''' Hispanie Ameriran Historieal Review

1'....

""1 1" '1 11 <':1 ti 11 S

1.1 '\'~

Intr1 l'l'w VlI[k: ll~rcourt, Brace, and Company, I9 68 ), viii.

These times are times of chaos, opinions are a scramble; parties are a jumble; the
Ianguage of new ideas has not been ereated; nothing is more djffieult than to give a
good definition ofoneselfin rcligion, in philosophy, in polities.... The world has
jumbled its eatalog.-Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, 1790-1869'
"May '68 we remade the world. May '86 we remake the kitchen." This
caption, which appeared in an advertisement published in the French
newspaper Le Monde, paid for by a company that sells modern kitchens,
suggests a change in people's attitudes from the 1960s to the 19805: from a
p.!:riod of poltical militancy to the "yuppie" generation. It is true that one
might question the radicalism ofMay 1968 and doubt that it did, in fact, set
out ro remake the world-although there is no doubt thar was the intention
of many of the thousands ofyoung and not-so-young pea pie that gathered
in the streets ofParis and other cities ofthe Western world. We might also
doubt that the new generation is fundamentaJly consumerist, individualistic, and conservative. The advertisement probably expresses the hopes of
entrepreneurs, not the attitudes ofthe consumers. But the advertisementwhich was later reproduced on the cover of an issue of the Radica! History
Review devoted to the study of the mpact of new forms of consumerism on
contemporary culture and politics-is a good metaphor to characterize the
state of mind of many historians and militants when they confront the new
trends both in the histories we live and the histories we write. 2
One just has to look at some of the articles published n recent years
about contemporary events to detect a tone of concern, if not pessimism
and despair, reminiscent ofthe "mal du siecle" that affected Alphonse de

Lamartine's and Alfred de MussCt';:; (r810-1852) generatian, whieh S:lW lh<.:

early hapes of rhe Freneh Revnllltian lI10mentarily collapse during the
Restaration. Even mor<: rcvealing are sorne ofthe boak reviews and essays
diseussing new hisroriogrJphieal trencis. Con cerned wirh rhe new tendencies thar have raken hisrorieal studies away from traditional paths, enlarging rhe fronriers of hisrorical research to areas never explared befare and
raising doubts abollt rraditional appraaches, methads, and interpretarians
(tendencies rhat often go together with new palitical gaals and strategies),
sorne hisrorians have reacted as ifrhese tendencies represent a dangerous
ruprure with the pasr and a rhreat to rhe future.
The field is polarized. Gn one side are those who view the new tendencies wirh suspicion and reservarian, and who, unwilling ta establish a
dialogue with the new, continue to write history as ifthey were stillliving in
the 19 6 0s. Gn the ather side are those wha uncritically pursue the work of
demolition of traditional approaches, embracing new fashians jllst because they are new, withaut examining their limitatians and implications.
Both positions are misleading. The first, because ir refuses ro incorporate
at the theoretical level the extraordinary transfarmatians that have taken
place in the pasr thirty years, srubbornly clinging to theorerical schemes
that no langer account for the world around them. Nar surprisingly, those
who adopt this pasition have lost the capaciry to recruit follawers among
new generations. The second is misleading because, in irs quest for originaliry and its sedllction by new fashions, it simply inverts the assumptians
afthe historiography ofthe 1960s instead ofintegrating them in a new and
richer synthesis. 'Ihus, in spite ofall its claims to nove1ty, ir runs rbe risk o
re-crearing a rype of history even more traditional than the one it repudi~
3!es. and-what is worse-in its eagerness to look for new themes, menew historiography" ignores aspects that are crucial for understanding
society and history. Readers of mis new history are .often kft unable t
situa~(theiSelves in relation ro past and present, henee incapable of consrrucfing he furore. h its best, this attitude converts history into a mere
rhetorical exercise aimed at entertaining the reader. At its worst, it transforms ir into an academic exercise that, in spite of its authors' intentions,
serves purposes fundamentally conservativc. In this polarized field it is
extremely important that we stop to think about rhese contradicrory tendencies, not with the purpose of returning ro approaehes and strategies
that have been obviously superseded by history itself, ar to uncritically
celebrare the new approaches, but ro open new parhs for a mueh-needed
synrhesis.'
To understand rhe episremological ruprure thar has occurred in the past (
thirry years, we have to place it within its historical conrext: rhe changes
I r ' ,1
18

Emilia Viotti da Costa (

11:1Vl;

:J1I;~cII'd [;111"

sllL'icty ;lnd rhe conditions of inrelleetual produc,'alJ Iw I '-:leed b:1ck to the 1950S. The work ofJeanl' 1111 Sdrlll' (l.ltllllilllly 111" "rilltjUC >Ir Dialertiral Reason) and also of his
.1dvl'r... IIY \kil 111 ",'1m' I('~P_" i.llly IlulJllllli\1TI and Terror and The Adventures
I IJIilIt, 1111) ,l1r. 111\' '11111,11111 d 111l' 11(''1'''!it.iI,;~ and doubts thar led to the
thnn:li, .11 il1lPOI,o,l' Wl'll1llfl1l1l Ind '1\' 111 .111 <.:ssay published in the sixties,
lvlcrlc:HJ-I'nnry 1VII 1. 1I1..1'r1 Ih 11 i11f ,tl.dl" tir I1.HI IS own hjsrory. He called
attention tu tlll'; ivll"'OI1 IIlIWITII IIn'dlllll .IlHI nCl'C'ssity in the interior of
the dialectic anu IIUI iced 111.11 dl'llll11lllll; Iln'flcL,l )lr.lxi~, historians were
led ro emphasize either impl'rsllll.lI IIld "111111'( Ilvr" 1Ii.'illlrical forces or the
role ofthe hisrorical subjcc:t, .JI1d lhll" ,11 .llhJI'lllvity, will .. llld fret.:dom.
In fact, when we examint: I he ch.lllf:t''' (11,11 !v' I,I'\'II pl.,".t.: in rh
historiography of rhe past thirty YC<H:;, WI' r1l11111 '1 f'l.ldll:tl -.hin 1IlJ.: 1rom
necessiry ro freedom: from an emphasi~ 011 w!l.lI W\.I'f' U111T tktllH:d as
"objective" historical [orces to an emplusis UI he 111';(11111.11 .111111'" ~llb
jectiviry, creativiry, and agency; from a prcaceup:.l1 ion WIl 11 111.llt'll.tI l'lIIHIt
tions of existence ro a preoccupation with pcrCCp[illll~. ~YJ1lht1'" 1111',111
ings, and rituals; and froID a preoccupation wirh whar in lhe I()("):. IV:I:.
characterized as infrastructure to what was then conceprualizt:L! as :,u[il'r
strucrure. What started as a healthy and necessary critiq uc of mecha niSl \(;
interpretations, economic determinism, structuralism (as in E. P. Thompson's critique of Althusser, for example): and the artificial separatian
between infra- and superstructure (a separation skillfully criticized by Raymond Williams in Marxism and Literature) 5 ended, against the original inrentions of the authors, in a complete inversion. Culture, polities, language,
and meaning, instead ofbeing constiruted (determined) became constitutive (determinant). Consciousness was again seen as determining the so
cial being rather than the reverse-as posrulated by the historiography of
the sixties (ieaving aside, of course, the conservative historiography, which I
has always asserted the transcendental nature of consciousness).
I
The valid critique of essentialist notions of class and of meehanical
relations between class and class consciousness (so well problematized in
G0ran Therborn's The Ideolo,gy of Power and the Power of Ideolo,gy),6 and the
new parhs it opened for an investigation ofthe process of construction ana
articulation of multiple and ofien conrradicrory identities (ethnie, religious, class, gender, nationaliry, and so on), often led to the total neglect of
the concept of class as an inrerpretive category. What started as a recognition that historians construct their own objects, and a critique ohhe objcc
tivism characteristic of a positivist reading of marxism (which wrullr:1y
assumed a total separation between subjeet and object, asserting l!le ~(it'l1
tific nature of historieal knowledge), has frequenrly led ro :1 CIIIII(,kl,'
11111

t 1111 L SiUIl!> d' 11'1\ ,111\1',

New Publics, New Politi,,,, Nrw IlislurI

I,

subjectivism, ro the denial ofthe possibility ofknowledge, and sometimes

even ro the questioning ofthe boundaries between hisrory and fiction, "fact
and fancy" (for example, Hayden White's emphasis on "the fictive natme
of historical narrative"). 7
Both the traditional and the new approaches are eminently antidialectical. They not only establish an arrificial separation (opposition)
between objectivity and subjectivity (or freedom and necessity), forgetting
that one is implied in the other, but they also ignore a basic dialectical
principIe: that men and women make hisrory, but not under the conditions
oftheir own choosing.
The result of the shift from one theoretical position to another was an
inversion: we simply moved from one reductionism to another, from economic ro cultural or linguistic reductionism. To one type of reification we
bave opposed another. Both are equal!y unsatisfacrory. Neither approach "
does justice to the complexity of dialectics and tbe theory ofhuman praxis,
but thanks to sucb an inversion, it may be possible today to attempt a new
syntbesis. g
The demolition oftraditional approaches has bad several casualties. One
was the notion of historical process. Dissatisfied, and witb good reason,
witb a teleological history tbat saw each historical moment as a necessary
stage in a linear process that automatical!y conducted to an end already
known, a great number ofhistorians went so far as to deny that history bad
any logic ofits own. They also gave up any attempt at totalization. This led
to tbe discrediting ofal! tbeoretical models, whetber tbey originated in the
tbeories of modernization, dependency, world system, or modes of production. Consequently, theoretical debates, whicb in the past often lacked
empirical basis and risked becoming scholastic and sterile, have been postponed if not abandoned altogether. Empiricism became fashionable again,
not as a necessary moment in the elaboration ofany theory, but as an end in
itself, as if history would somehow reveal itself to whoever leans over
documents. From a nondialectical, deductive appraach that demonstrated
more than investigated, and that seemed to know what it would find even
befare it started looking for it, we have moved to an inductive approach
Lhat never reaches theoretical levels. Instead of emphasizing similarities,
h Istl;lrians empbasize differences; instead of privileging regularities, tbey
privikgt, the unpredictable, tbe accidental, the unexpected, the irrational,
I Jll' 'plIIlf.lnCOUS.
1111 "lli~llJire tableau" and the "historie de la vie quotidienne," whicb
I,Id 111)1':11 11l11t1l1S in fr;mce in the 1950S but since buried, were resuscitated
111 11 llf.\\ IIld !l1I1rC: refined rhetorical garbo So were tbeories of national
'"illlI,Iel', wltlcli 'WryOllC bclievcd had been put to rest with the defeat of

l/l"

Vil/lli

,JIl

r;'JIICl

) Nazisru ill 19['i. hut whieh now reappear under the guise of"culrure" or
"ethnieity." ~UllUll.UlCOu.sLy, memory often took the place of history. A
\
gro;ng nllITiiit:r.of hislori;;ls.scemed more imerested in gatheriog people's testimonie:. [JI,] colltl'tii1gilieirmemoirs than in wriring their his ro ry.
So importanl h~lS lhi~ Il'l'nci hc.:cme that in December 1997 the American
Histotical Reuiew t!L'dic~lll:d Ollt: of its "forum" sections to "History and
Memory." In lhe inll'o(iII"t-lJ!l, tile editor stresses that "collective memory
has become ;1 cornrwllill": 'ill'llI oC historical analysis." FolIowing on the
steps oftbe French hislul"i:11I i'ic.:rrl' Nor:l, the adepts ofwhat soon became
an overwhelming gellrc h;v~ ne:llcd magazines, pramoted international
gatherings, and nar surpnsingly I'clrllited ever more followers. Although
most historians cOlllinuc til 11~1: ilr:J! testimonies to supplement archival
material, some haY<> c.:OIlIL' lo n.:Jy l.'xclusively on interviews; thus memory
takes the place ofhistory, ,IIHI oral Ii~tury displaces archival research. This
genre has become espec.:i:i1ly Sllccessllll :1l1long gwups committed to making the voice of the voicc.:lcss h":1nl in rhc puhlic arena." But often, as
Steven Watts put it, "cgcr ro dispense disclIrsive 'participation' to all excluded cultural graups. lincuisl il kftisb fuikJ ro challenge the underlying
socio-economic, politica!, :tnd clillllr:i1 SlrUCllln:s lhat have excluded those
graups to begin with :1Ild havc suslaint.:d the il1usion of'choice.' "10
Because the tradition:i1 hi::.wri()graphy had neglected the subjectivity of 1
historical agents (transfnrming it into an epiphenomenon, seeing people
as "bearers" of hisroriea! (Ofl'CS r;:ther than as historical agents), the new
historiography chose tn focus 0/1 human agency and ro write history fram \
~ the point ofview ofthose who h;:d been silenced or forgotten. Ihenumber
of practitioners uf ora! history grew, as did the number of srudies based
exc1usively on testimonies and inrerviews-as ifthese conrained the whole
history, or as if hisrory were nothing but a confusion of subjectivities and
voices, a sort ofTower of Babel. The extremists claimed that the only way
out was for each one to tell his or her own version of history. Hisrorians
would be limited to registering the many versions, and perhaps adding
their own. There was a danger in this appraach, however, that some scholars were quick to poinr out. Witnesses' aecounrs are always partial; one
cannot grasp historical pracesses by hearing one side. And even after
hearing many and contradictory testimonies, historians have to submit
them ro historical criticismo Otherwise they will miss the history behind
the words.

rj

Under the infiuence of Foucault, hisrorians' attenrion moved fram the

global strucrures ofdomination, the pracesses ofcapital accumulation, the
state, and the relations between social cJasses-an of \-vhich had been at
the center of traditional historiography-to the micropbysics of power.

New Publics. New Polities, New Histories

21

This led to an extraordinary expansion of rhe frontiers of history: criminaJity, prostiturion, homosexuality, wirchcraft, carnival, smells, processions, rituals, the theater of p~er, myths and legends, cartography and
other forms of representations (all of which had interested historians only
marginaJly in the past) absorbed the energies of the new generation of
historians. But only rarell' did they attempt to establish a connection berween the ~acro- and the microphysics ofpower. In SODe rare and notable
exceptions these rwo approaches carne together." More often they ra n
parallel ro each other as alternative wal's of looking at history. The result
was that in spite ofthe extraordinary expansion ofthe field ofhistory allJ
our understanding ofthe multipliciry and variety ofhuman experience. tI\(:
macrophysics ofpower remained in the shadow. Although this mechod nl"
J analysis, derived from a simplistic reading ofFoucault, did help idcntify rhe
manl' places where power is exerted-and this was a positive contributilln
to our knowledge ofthe past-it refused to explain how and why power is
constituted, reproduced, and transformed. Contrary ro Fouclulr's original
intention, the micro-histories remained often as colorful pieees of a broken kaleidoscope never coming together to produce a design, fragmenrs of
experience without meaning.
The politica1 strategies that in the past were based on the critique of
the state and of economic and social structures \Vere not validated by the
new historiography. Other strategies found justification in the new history, which celebrates spontaneity, negotiation, day-to-day resistance, the
"weapons of the weak," and preaches the subversion of language. But
these trends that mal' mean emancipation can easily lead to a dead end,
since it is difficult to take a position before a history that is characterized as
arbitrary, chaotic, and without meaning or direction.
None ofthe tendencies mentioned here has contributed as much to the
inversion of dialectics as the emphasis on discourse, be it the discourse of
the oppressed or of the oppressors, the discourse of the reformists or of
the conservatives-a tendency that one author has defined as "vulgar linguicism." As Bryan Palmer stresses in Descent nta DisCDurse,1.2 manl' authors
who have adopted this approach have imponed a rerminology that serves
only to decorate their historical texrs, which otherwise continue to follow
very conventional methods. "Discourse," "Ianguage," "symbolic," "deconstruction"-all have become common expressions in historians' jargon, although often as part only oftheir vocabulary, not oftheir theory. The
nexr step, however, was the reification oflanguage. This tendencl' appears
clearly in influentia1 studies ofthe working class. 13 Gareth Stedman-Jones,
for example, in Languages af Class, 14 after asserring that there is no social
reality ourside or befo re language, concludes that Chartism "spoke a lan-

(f) \

\.1~

22

Emilio Viotti da Costa

,.

gu~gc oC class rhat was constructed and inscribed within a complex rhetorie (Ir IIler3phorica1 association, causal inference and imaginary construclioll "-sollll'rhing that is always good to remember, but in itself is not
('llOugh lo understand class experience (as Neville Kirk has pointed Out in
his illl' !"l'vil'w ofthe literature on Chanism)." Criticizing Stedman-Jones
llr 11lH ".Irrying his methodology to its ultimate consequences, Joan Scott,
111 "( 111 I..IIlEu;lr~e, Gender, and Working-Class History,"'6 went on to proI' US l' ,1 IIIL'rhllc! 1 h:Jl would sho\\' how "ideas such as class become through
I:JUI:II.Il::l', SlJ(."j;J n:;diries." This is a complete inversion ofthe traditional
11l..:tlwt!D!uH). [111 ilis e;IS(:', 13nguage determines social relations rather than
the r~verSl',l' In tll i:; t..:xt Scan seems to give priority to the concept of c1ass
over c!;JSS cxpericlI(.;(:' whl'1l she says that "concepts like class are required
befi)re illdivic!u;Js can irlemitY themselves as members of such a group,
befare they call :Icr colleerively :lS such. "'8 1,\ <il ,.. \ \l~ ,... r~ eh(>'; ~'11<
\ Discourse an;.l1l'sis is, ofeourse, fundamental 10 the historian's work. In
fact, it would be flir to say rtur rhere i5 no hi5torical research that does nor
start ~yith an analysis of di~our~e. But LO recognize this [act is not the
same as to sal' that discoursc anall'sis is sufficient for understanding history. And certainly it does not mean, as sorne people would like to believe,
that the only things that exist are texts upon texts, or that the work of
the historian, like that of rhe iterary critic, is nothing but an infinite
deconstruction.

(!

Terry Eagleton, describing the events of 1968 and the emergence ofpoststructuralism, commented on the irony that, incapable of subverring state
power, the generation of '68 subverted language. In a review of Furet's
book about the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt noticed in 1981 that the
history ofthe Great Revolution-whjch [or a long time had been associated
with violence, hunger, and class conflict-had been transformed into a
'" "semiologica1 event." Furet had invented a new metaphysic in which 1anguage creates human relations. '9
The new historiography has also shown a growing concern with epistemologjcal problems; that is ro say, with the discourse ofthe historian. Thi:;
tendency is not new. In "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of tlll'
Human Sciences," Jacques Derrida observed that we need ro interprct thl'
interpretation more than to interpret the things themselves. 20 His appc,d
would find many followers who were more concerned with discussill; 1h
limits of historical consciousness than with history itself Thc catL'gOJ'It'~
used by historians in their interpretations of the past were brollglll lit"
question, leading to obsessive speculation about the validity o/ .11~pl) 111
our own categories to other cultures, and to other times ;lnc! pLICI", ( .nl W
appll' categories born out ofEuropean experience ro tlll' "Oril'lI"" COII\ tI"
NrlV f'uvlif5, NCll' PUllllt\, N"II' Iltltori

L'

colonizer speak for the colonized? Can we write the hisrory of the opprcssed, or should they speak for themselves? Can che subaltem speak?21
Can the theories about the sexual division oflabor that we use to study the
central areas of capitalism be applied ro the periphery?Z2 Doubts mount
and multiply. More and more, we talk about what historians can or cannot
do instead of talking about history. Here too, what started as a healthy
reflection upon the distortions that historians' biases impose on the writ
ing of history, and a critique of Euroeentric or Westem-centric points of
view, can easily be tumed into a perversely gleeful denial of the possibility
of historical knowledge. We are far from the many certainties that charac
terized the sixties. This can be good, but it can also be bad, especially ifwe
beco me too certain of our uncertainties.
That the historiography which carne out of a positivist reading of the
classics of the dialectic left much to be desired is something that has been
acknowledged for a long time, though the beating of dead horses remains
one of our favorite intramural sports. In fact, much of what appears today ~
under the labels of"postmodern" or "poststructuralist" found its roots in
'-. ~?
the work of a French philosopher who had a great impact in the sixties but 1:.
'a""J...
was later ostracized, probably because ofhis political connections. Anyone ~
who takes the time ro read the first two hundred pages ofSartre's Critique of
Dialectical Reason (the section entitled "The Question ofMethod")" will find
a keen critique of marxist historiography as it was written by Sartre's
contemporaries. Sartre criticized intellectuals who believed that they were
serving their party by simplifying the data, neglecting details, and conceptualizing the event before they had studied it. He accused them of having
"" transformed what was supposed to be a method of research inro a new
metaphysic. Commenting on Daniel Guerin's La lutte des cIasses sous la Pre
miere Rpublique, Sartre said that "this method is a priori. The author does
not construct its concepts from the experience he wants to decipher. He
knows the truth cven befare he has started. His only goal is to fit the events,
the people and their actions inro pre-fabricated molds."" Sartre also criticized the reduction of the political ro the social, and of ideology to c1ass
inccrests. He condemned historians for Dot being able ro integrate into
gleir histories the perspective of the historical agenrs, and fOI dehumaniz
ing b.i story. Sartre also challenged those who established a mechanistic ~. - ..~
telation between individuals and social c!asses, bet:ween social c!ass and (),__ c...
consciousness, and between imaginary and real praxis. He insisted on the
I importance of mediations and condemned the teleological nature of his
torical explanations. Sartre also criticized the essentialist, functi~:JI1ali~t,
and static approaches that ignored the meaning of contradictions and the ";'-;Frl~
importance ofthe historical process. His friend and companion, Simon ~

,ti

""j-J~-L.

1)

l4.

Emilia Viotti da Costa

"Y

de Bcallvoir, rJisl.:d I'he b:nncr ofthe new feminism." She was one ofthe
first ro show h()w powcr is il1lplicared in the construction of the other. 26
Thus already in rhe fifrit.:s ane! sixties, one could dctect the perplexities, the
conflicts, ancl rhe rrcnds lb.ll Gime ro dominate the new historiography.
But the new gcnel~11 i'lll ni hisrori:l\1s did not follow Sartre. 27 Their work is
closer ro FOllcall[t. Derrid.l, :Ind Ihe new French philosophers. 28 This led
them to a confronraj()ll .11)(.1 ; rllplllre with the historiographical traditions
of Sartre' s era.
It is perhaps in rhe fidrl of laho!' his1'Ory rhat the conflict between the old
and the new is more visibk. Wilik in rile past hisrorians focused on conflicts between capital :lIld 1:Jbur .Hld on rhe macrophysics of power, and
were concerned with ceollomiL Slrlll.:lurcs :Ind the role of the state and of
trade llnion leaders :1I1d lHJlil'i(.li [).Irl ic.:s in rhe formarion of the working
c!ass, the new hisLOrior,r.lf'hy tlIrnl.'d ro rhe study of rituals, language,
family, leisure, and daY-lu-d.JY n:sisr.lncc. Whilc in the past hisroriansr
asked what impacr illdll~ln,d l'il.lIlgl' :l1lcl rhe starc had on the workers'
movement, the nt'w hiswry IIIVc.:IIL'U thL' (!ucstion and asked what impact
the workers' movemenr h:\(1 nn 1h(' t'COIlOI1lY ~ll((J 011 state formation. While
traditional hisroriography W.IS cOIlll-rncd Wilh "rhe working c!ass," which
was assumed ro be rht.: revllllltilln.lry dlS~, tile new historiography problematized and hisroriciztd IlI)UtJIIS nf c.:Iass :ll1d class consciousness, questioning the essentialisl vicw n( llie w\.Jl'king class characteristie of traditional historiograph)'. TIH' Ilc.:W hisl<lringraphy aJso raised doubts about the,
alleged "natural" solicLlrilY of rhe working class and exposed the internal
conflicts that iSSllCd fmllll hL' 111,111)-' Jnd sometimes competitive identitiesnational, religiolls, cthnit;, Sl'XU.J1, :lllll so on-undermining working-class
solidarity. Simultancollsly, lhe IlCW historiography repudiated teleological
approaches that in rht.: P:ISl h:,d assumed that history marched inevitably
toward socialisrn :lIld rh.lI' l':lch hisrurical moment was a new stage in that
direction. The fOCllS of;llention moved from the labor movement ro the
workers, fmm the f:H:tnry lo the houselwld, from rhe working man ro the
working woman, Prum rile individual worker to his family, and from work
to leisure and clllrure.
The new hisroriol-:r:lphy ofbhor reexamined rhe relations bet:ween leadership and the grass !'ours, bctwcen the trade unions and governments. It
challenged rhose wilo hau Jssumed an alltomatic connection between the
forms of conscinusnl:s~ :lIld types of activities workers were involved in,
and it repudiJtt:d rht: cOl\ceprs ofhegemony and false consciousness often
employed by traditioll:,d (storiography. In this process of revision, historians also incorpor;ted into their analysis the urban nonindustrial workers
who had scarcely cl:Jimce! attention in the past. As a consequence ofa11 this
New Publics, New Politics, New Histories

25

revisionism, rhere was a grear expansion of the boundaries of the historiography oflabor, which carne to include social rnovements, women, and
workers in rhe service sector. This, too, has been a positive movemenr, bur
if carried ro its extreme, it can have negative consequences because it
makes people lose sighr of fundamental historical forces rhat affecr nor
only rhe lives of IVorkers, bur also rheir own lives.
The new tendencies in rhe historiography of labor have triggered great
debares and sorne negative reactions, parricularly because they are direcrly
tied to conternporary poltical questions. This becomes obvious, for exar:npIe, in Michael Schneider's 1987 essay, "In Search of a 'New Historical
Subject': The End of Working-Class Culture, the Labor Movernent, and
Prolerariar,"29 in which he shows the direcr connecrion berween rhe new
historiography and polirical rrends in posrwar Germany-rrends which
have led sorne wrirers to assert thar rraditional forms of prolerarian consciousness cannor emerge in rhe presenr time, and even to predicr the end
of rhe prolerariat and of rhe labor movement, and rhe emergence in irs
place of social movemenrs such as peace rnovements, ecological movements, feminisr movemenrs, and so on. Confronting rhis challenge, orhers
look wirh nostalgia to a past thar rhey describe as a rime when the workinglass culture was integrarive and radical, and blame rhe srrategies of social
democracy for irs disappearance. Schneider argues that rhe successes of
social democracy.and of rhe trade unions within rhe liberal democraric
system and rhe marker economy in Germany did indeed irnprove the conditions of workers, leading to an erosion of class consciousness. 30 The numerical decline of the working class and the difficulties of creating class
consciousness led to a redefinirion of political strategies and, simultaneously, to rhe search for new historiographical paradigrns orienred toward the study of the polirics of "ordinary" people's daily lives. Analyzing
the consequences of these new political and hisroriographical practices,
Schneider remarks that the solidarity among small groups of workers, or
the inhabirants of a neighborhood, may indeed create alternative islands of
culture and social reform, but cannor replace a more inclusive polirical
programo In his opinion, rhe projecrs that aim ar exploring the poltical
porential in the lives of ordinary people, and which emphasize only the
negative aspecrs of more inclusive class and polirical party organizarions,
may lead to a dead end. Afrer pointing ar rnethodological flaws in this new
hisroriography, Schneider concludes thar rnany of the local and regional
studies rhar are following the new rrends offer nothing more rhan an
uncritical compilarion of derails whose relevance is never questioned. They
rem:lin a cemerery of sources, a museum of curiosities. There is also rhe
danger, hc SJYS, rhar the hisrorians who cultivare rhis type ofhisrory will be

26

Emlia Viotti da Costa

rhemselves unablc to assess critically rheir own situation and rheir own
vuloerabiliry.
What Schneider does not seem to visualize is thar whar today seems ro
him so derivative may be a necessary moment ro correcr distorrions and
insuffieiencics of the past historiography, and that it might lead ro rhe
producrion of a new and richer synthesis, and a new and more effecrive
political pr;:crice. 31 For rhat synthesis to happen, however, we need to pay
atrention ro both sides, and subjeet borh to a serious critique. The need for
such a cririque seerns even more imporranr on rhe periphery, where intelleetual fashions, instead of being a resulr of a reRecrion upon internal
conditions, arc ofren imported from places where the realiry is profoundly
differenr. When 1 hear Michelle Perrot, the famous Freneh feminist and
labor historian, say thar rhe posrmodern sociery is "a sociery in which rhe
possibilities of individual cxpressiviry have actually mulriplied," that the
"impacr of dominanr polirical and cultural models on people has been
exaggerated, rhat peopIe srill have rheir private lives, their critical facuIties,
which are more and more important because peopIe are more and more
educated," 1 pause and wonder whether this rea11y applies ro Latin America. But when she goes 00 to say that "after a11, posr-modern sociery is :1
sociery in which class has a different meaning and in which people ha ve.:
greater respect for each orher," 1 ask myself. in which world has she.:
lived?32 It cerrainly is not the one I know. Racism, torture, massacres 01
poltical leaders, dearh squads, increasing numbers of robberies and ~IS
saulrs, domes tic violence, probIems of survival rhar affect the day-to-d;IY
life of men and women of the periphery froro Mozambique ro El Salvatk>r
and Guaremala, the SLX million abandoned children ofBrazil, the problclll
ofthe inner cities in the United Srares-rhese sorrs ofrhings do not S~'I'JlI
ro have entered the universe of Michelle Perror, or thar of many orhn ill
re11ecruals of the developed nations. Seen from the periphery. 'he: (d '
bratory narcissism and the forms of militancy of this new aV;lIll-:,lltl, ,
which ignores what happens in their ex-colonies, and SOrnel illl~". t Y"I1
what happens in their own backyard, seem suspicious and forc<.: 111(' 1(1 1,11 ,/
questions about the validiry of applying analyticaI c:1tegoril's borll ltlJl ,,1
such a diverse experience to orher parts ofrhe world, and prh.I1', (\r'1I l.,
our own.
The new tendencies of American and Europe:Jn Ili,'irlll'io/;ll lpil)' \\
born out ofconcrere situarions. Sorne are similar ro thu'i<.: 1Ve: fltld ill I h
called Third WOrld; others are not. They are, in p:.lrt. re:l.llt'd lil lh
the Sovier system and ofa certain rcading ofrn.lrxiSl1J dlJrllJl: Ih
period, and the ensuing critique offorrns nforg;llliz.llilJlI . !lld Sit'.. !!
followed by political parties associar<.:d wirll I/W 'illVt'! LJIJlIIJ, 1" lile ,1

11!'lll'IY,

pruccss was accelerared by political repression triggered by

W~Ir. The failure ofsoi-disant socialisr regimes in Africa and events
111 Chil1;r generared doubrs and perplexities among the academic Lefr. During rhe pasr forty years, East-Wesr polarization and intense propaganda
on borh sides made a critical assessmenr of contemporary and historical
cvenrs difficult. Ir was wirhin rhis conrexr rhar rhe new generarions looked
for new forms of polirical action, and rhe historiography searchcd for new
paths. Bur this is only one side of rhe story. The other is much more
difficult ro analyze and has ro do with rhe growing internationalizarion of
the economy; rhe indusrrialization of rhe peripheries; the process of deindustrializarion in rhe cenrer; rhe adoprion of new rechnologies and rhe
shrinking and changing nature ofthe proletariar in the central areas ofthe
capiralisr world (though nor necessarily in rhe periphery); rhe expansion of
the rertiary and ofrhe informal economy; the presence ofgrowing numbers, I
\
of migratory workers (Arabs, Africans, Iralians, and portuguese working in ~
France, England, or Germany, for example, or Mexicans, Hairians, Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, and orhers in the
Unired States); rhe improvemenr of living conditions of sectors of rhe
working class ar the expense of others (whites versus blacks in the Unired
States, narionals versus foreigners in England, France, or Germany) and
the consequent inrensification of erhnic conflicrs which makes it difficult
to promore class solidarity; rhe expansion of rhe informal secrors (where
workers have no power or righrs); rhe exrraordinary increase in rhe participarion ofwomen in the labor force (generating conflicrs in rhe domes tic
sphere); the renewal of putting-our systems (isolating workers); rhe multiplication of remporary workers (which makes ir increasingly difficulr to
organize them in traditional ways); rhe rransformations ofresidential patterns, wirh rhe disappearance ofworking-class neighborhoods (which traditional!y had been centers ofworking-class acrivity); changes in forms of
leisure (isolating rhe workers in front ofTV sets); rhe growing impact of a
media in the service ofthe state and ofbusiness corporations; and, final!y,
rhe generalization of a consumer mentality that inrensifies the tension
between privarion and desire, and emphasizes the individual at rhe expense
ofthe social-al! this has led ro a redefinirion of practice and rheory.33 It is \
wirhin rhis extremely complex scenario, which varies from one society ro
another, thar rhe new hisrory was borno
After a1l rhis, ir should be obvious thar the mere reproducrion of tradirional inrerprerations cannor acco"t f<;;this new realit]'. And since the
work of the historian is always a dialogue between past and presentl it is
nor surprising thar traditional ways ofloolgng ar hisrory seem inadequate
d.rhat.the_oastls rewritten.frolll~p'ersp'ectives.In this sense, 19 68
IIIIS

illlo' (:l'd

,....J~
~

28

Emilia Viotti da Costa

re;rl!y was ;\ \V;III'rsh~d. Hur rhe opposition suggested by the advertisemenr

with which I st.lncd "\lby '68, \Ve remade the worldo May '86, we remake
rhe kitcIICI1," Illilit.IIICY versus consumerism-may be more apparent rhan
real, :1I1d is Lcrl.lillly rcversible. Recent events in Europe and rhe new and
recurrcnr ... ri~i, ill IIIl.' clpit;disr world, particularly felr in rhe periphery,
suggest pcrh,lps Ih:lI Wl' :lIl' cnrering a new hisrorical periodo The momenr
favors a synll1l'sis Ih.lt will IVClid all forms ofreductionism and reificarion
(wherher eco JI o 111 11 , l ulrJlL11. lll' linguistic), that wil! nor lose sighr of rhe
articularion bcl\vt.'lO I I Ilw lI1it:'ro- :1I1d macrophysics of power, thar wil! recognizc rhar hUIll,111 ',uilICll1viIV is :.It rhe same rime constitured by and
constirllriw nI SIIt'l.iI 1"(';11111''', 01 synrhl:sis rhar wil! resulr in borh a new
hisroriogr.1phy ,llld IlrW plllilil.il sll.lIcgicsY
Ler us hopc Ih;ll. ill I he: IICXI Cl:JlnIIY, i1isrori;lI1s wilJ be able to pick up rhe
pieces in this 11l:IJ hlll'll'ti WillJ rl;lf~ll1enIS :nd create a richer and less
chaoric vi s i()) Ih.IIIl1,IY ltlll' liJl'lll (:IIt! Cllill'l"s) In free themselves from rhe
strairjacket nf' 1l;1Il j:i;j',ll1, ,,, Il'f1Vl'llI IlCIV fi,rms of wlidarity, and ro find
new roads 10:1 IIIPll' "Il'n .\ntl Illily dCI"ucrJLic warld, where al! people
of differcnl gClItiVI.:i. (LI'.:>t'S, l'thnicities. rcligions, and nationaliries wil!
come rOJ:!ctlll.:r lo p.rllllp.lll: l'lPI;i1ly jll rhc wealrh ofrhe world.

Note.s
A slir:htly lhjkr~ lit VtlllC'll ,,1 rlll ~",lY \Vas presented as the keynote speeeh at the
sev~llth I"h"r '1IId,,. 1 UIiI~"'Il'''', A[jama, Georgia, Oetaber 199I.
1 Citel! by l'I,lloru 1 .""1/ , I'hr Inl:rprelllon oJCullures (New York: Basie Books, 1973). 22I.
2 RCldlcal IlnltJTI RrUI"W 1 11IIl]i'll)-Ql.
This i< wh.IIII.111 IlId 1101111 1'utrJarul1are lrying ta do in amhropology. See, for example,
Of !<torlntloll ulld 1l.J'l'lIlull~n: U1MllunilY Llnd Consciousness in Soutn Afriea, 2 vols. (Chieago:
Uni ver81ry nfl'h .. 1f!1J I'r~"'''' 19')1, 1997).
4 E. 1'.. h'1lIlI1'''II. I ",.l'lI~mll11rTh,"ry and Olner Essays (London, Merlin, 1978).
5 RaY111t111t\ Wtll'IIn&. Munlsm unJ Litaature (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977.) See
.JI~(l Wdli~m' .. l'mblrml of MOlUl"ltsm and Culture (London. Verso. 1980) and Kt]jwards: A
Vnlllbulllry I~ (.uh'lrr Jnd ~oeirty lLondon: Fontana. 1988).
6 t .<')r,11I Iherilll' n. Ihr Itlrolu.9Y uJPower and tne Pawer afldealogy (London: Verso, 1980).
7 I i.1}'dell WllIlr. "111<' V:c1u~ ofNarrativity in the Representation ofReality," Critieal lnquiry
1.11111111111 IIRo): h -17; "The StrueLUre of HistOriea! Narrative o " Clia 1 (1972): 5-20; and
"'1 he I ti.I'''Il'.t1 e~1 '5 Lirrary Artifaer," Clio 1 (1972): 41-62.
8 I h.IVl .I'IIll1pl'" Ihis ~ynthesis in Crowns ofGlory, Tears ofBlood: The Demerara Sla", Rlbellion
uJ JI!! TI N.olV Yllrk, Oxford Universiry Press, 1994).
9 1).1I1i~1 i.llllr'., ill "Me'.Jrpackers. Peronists. and Collective Memory: A View from the
SUIIII,." 1I1l1i~es ll,:lr there is a new boom in che academy "eentered on the production of
II:Xr, .tI""11 rncmory. eommemoration, and forgening." He points our thar "there is
SOIIl~ ~lJIIl'ergence between rhe themaries of the aeadem)' and the wider popular culIlJr~." Amrrrwn Ilinorieal Review (Dec. 1997): 1404' For che ptoblems involved in working
o

New Pubtics, New Potities, New Histories

29

ro

Il

with memury~' hi,rnri~ 11 ,,,urce. ~,., ).1111"'. "TJles Told Out ofthe Borderbnds: Doa
Mara', Story. or.,1 IIi'lor}', .lIld h511C' ..,fGcnder," 31.-52, and John D. French, "Oral
H;sturl', Idenlll}' JiI!ttI1.1I 1"11 , .1,,,1 W"rkillg-Cl.1ss Mubilizatiun," in French and James,
eds .. The ritnrlrrrd World.l uf l.tJtin Ameritan Women Workm: From Household and Faetory to the
Union l/aH unO Ii<tllullJox IDurh~m: Duke University Press, 1997), 297-313.
Steven W..ITh. " Che [J.iocy nf American Studjes: Pos1structuralism, Language, and Polilic, In lhe I\CC of ~cl:FulfilJmem,"American Quarterly (Dec. 1991): 652. For a sweeping
crtiqu~ llfpostlTlodernism's influences on historical writing, see ElIen Meiksins Wood
JI1d Iohn Bcl1:unl' Fuster. eds., [n Difen.se of History: Marxism and the Postmodernist Agenda
(New York: ,vlonthly Review Press, 1997).
See ml' commems abour Perer Winn, Weavers ofRevolution: The Yarur Workm and Chile's Road
to Soria!ism (New York: Oxford University Press, I986) in Viotti da Costa, "Structures
versus Exper;ence: What Do We Gain, Whar Do We Lose?" Internationa! Labor and Working-

Class History 36 (fall '989): 3-24.

12

13
r4

'5

16
q
18

I9
20

2'

22

23
24
25
26

27

30

Bryan Palmer, Desrent into Discoursz: The Reijiration ofLanguage and the Writing ofSocia! History
(Philadelphia: Temple Universiry Press, I990).
See R. Gral', "The Deconsrrucng of the Working Class," Socia! History tI (I986): 363373, and J. FosreI, "The Declassing ofLanguage," New Ldt Review '50 (1985): 29-4.
Gareth Stedman-Iones, Languages of Class: Studies in Eng[ish Working-Class History, ,8321982 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press, (983): 90-q8.
Nevil!e Kirk, "In Defence of Class: A Cririque of Recem Revisionisr Writing upon the
Nineteenth-Cemury English Working Class," nternational Reuiew of Social History 37
('987): 2-47. See a[so P. A. Pickering, "Class without Words: Sl'mbolic Commun;cation
in rhe Chartist Movement," Past and Present U2 ('986): '44-,62, and l. Epsrein, "Rethinking the Categories ofWorking-Class History," in LabourlLe travail ,8 ('986): '95-208.
ILWCH 3I (spring I987): 1-14.
See the critiques oOoan Scott in the same issue, ILWCH 3' (spIing '987).
See Scott's repIl' to her critics in ILWCH 32 (fal! '987J: 39-45.
Lynn Hunt, Review ofPenser La Revolution Franaise in History and Theory 20 (r98I): 3I3323, cited in Palmer, Descent into Discourse, 97.
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Dliference (Chicago, Universiry ofChicago Press, (978), cited
in Palmer, 33.
Gal'atri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Cary Nelson and Lawrence
Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: Universiry of l1linois

Capital. Larget numbers traveJcd in rhe ,ompany nf [:. P. Thompson, E. J. Hobsbawm or

Amonio Gramsci." ("Dialogues among rhe I'r.lgIl1Cnts: Rerrospect and Prospect," in
Frederick Cooper tt al., Co'1fTonting HistorirrJl Paradigm" Peamnts, Labor, and the Capitalist
World System in .'\frita and Latin America [Nl~distJn: University ofWiseonsin Press, '993),
37 2 ). If we continue following her metaphor, we wou[d sal' rhar rhe present generaron
has gane to the field carrying Foucault and Derrida.
28

29

Ironicalll', in spite of their differences, these authors rend to be amihumanist and antihistorical in rheir approach. See Kare Soper, Humanism and Anli-Humanism: Problems of
Modern European Thought (London: Hutehinson, (9 86 ).
ILWCH (fal! '987): 4-S8.

30

Similar improvemenr is noticed in England in rhe two decades after World War n, as
James CIonin has indicated. Cronin and Jonathan Schneer, eds., Social Confliet and Politica!
Crisis in Modern Britain (London: Croom Helm, I9 82 ).

3I

Alf Ludrke tries to esrablish a bridge between new and oId in "The Historiographl' of
Every-Dal' Life: The Personal and the Political," in Raphael Samuel and Gareth SredmanJones, eds., Culture, Ideology, and 1'olit;cs (London: Rout:ledge and Kegan Paul, '9 8 3),
3 8-54.

32

"New Subjecrs, New Social Commirmems: An Imerview with Miehelle Perrar by Laura
Frader and Victoria de Grazia." This interview was condueted by de Grazia in Paris,
20 September r986. Radical History R~view 37 (I987): 27-40.
Radical History Revi,w 37 is devoted te the studl' ofrhe impact ofeonsl.lmerism.
Walter Adamson, "Leftisr Transformations: A CJash between the Feasible and the Desirable," Radical History Review 37 (I987): 94-100.

33
34

Press, '988), 27'-3'3.

See, for example, Lynne Phillips, "Rural Women in Latin America: Directions for Future
Research," Latin American Research Review 25.3 (1990): 89-I08.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, precede de question de methode, vol. 1, Theori, des
ensembles practiques (Paris: GallimaId, '960).
This is a free translation.
Another author of the '950S and I960s whose work was very influemial was Roland
Barthes, particularly his Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, I957).
In the Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir argued that ir was "by constructing the woman
as 'other' thar men in Western culture have constituted themselves as subjects." See
Frances E. ,'vlascia-Lee, Patricia Sharpe, and CoIleen BaIlerino Cohen, me Posrmodernist
Turn in Anthropology: Cautionsftom a Feminist Pmpective, Signs '5, Ir (1989): 7-33.
Commeming on the experience of her generation in the 1970S, Florencia MaIlon wrote
thar "sorne carried [to the field] vo!ume 1 of Capital under their arms, others, Reading

Emilia Viotti da Costa

New Publics.

Ni'lU

1'1!/ilil\. Nnu Ii~low.

~I