New Questions, Recent

Theories and Global History

Posthistoire, Postcolonialism,
Subaltern Histories

Copyright: Martina Kaller-Dietrich 2006

The offer

Constructivism
Linguistic turn
Postmodernity and Posthistoire
Postcolonialism

Subaltern Histories

Constructivism in Historiography

In its basic understanding a

constrictivist apprache was first
expressed by Giambattista VICO
in1710 :

Verbum ipsum factum = Saying the

truth is identical with acting
G. Vico, De Antiquissima Italorum Sarpientia, Neapel
1858

System Theories in Constructivism

as Epistemology

Truth always is constructed and so it may

be called the invention of a liar

Selffulfiling Prophesy

Heinz von Foerster

Paul Watzlawick

The congruency of what has been said and

what has been understood is statistically an
exception

Niklas Luhmann

Consecuences of constructivist
theoretical approaches

The fading away of the idea of an

inmediatly percievable truth

Niklas Luhmann: There is no metarcit

[= master narration], because there is
no external observer status.

N. Luhmann, Beobachtungen der Moderne, Opladen

1992, 8

linguistic turn

critical backslash in the

field of the philosophy
of language lable
Since 1987

New cultural history

appraches apear in:
American Historical
Review
The common goal
consists in redefining
the content of what
could be called a
history of ideas

The debate
concentrates on the
term reality
concevieng it wheter
to be a linguistically
constructive or
linguistically
representative
phenomena

Postmodernism, Posthistoire

Jean-Francois Lyotard
The post-modern knowledge. (1979)

Modernity ends with the end of the modern

meta-narrations
Metanarrations are ...
... conducted by a main and leading idea. Knowledges
and life practices of a certain time seem to be
reflected in it.
Postmodernity desmantles this kind of history writing by
reexamining their preconditions.

La condition postmoderne

Values and visions external to the scientific act

of historical writinig prefigure different aims of a
meta-narration,
e.g.

Emancipation of mankind, teleology of the spirit in

idealism, hemeneutics as the sense of historism, the
promiss of wellfare by capitalism, the liberation of
mankind through revolution (Marxism) etc.

Martina Kaller-Dietrich, Gibt es eine historische Methode?

Vom Umgang mit Geschichte/n. In: Theo Hug (Hg): Wie
kommt die Wissenschaft zu ihrem Wissen? Bd 3: Einfhrung in
die Methodologie der Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften,
Hohengehren 2001, 246-254

La condition postmoderne

All those who live later do not know it

better. With this result a specific historical
experience concluded. It forced history to
shwo itself by honoring progress as a truth.
With this experience it was proved, that the
later generation with its more recent
knowledge could not any longer be sure
about the superiortiy of its findings.

Peter Sloterdijk, Nach der Geschichte. In: Welsch,

Wolfgang (Hg): Wege aus der Moderne.
Schlsseltexte der Postmoderne Diskussion. Berlin
21994: 263)

Postcolonialism

Postcolonial theories cannot be

reduced to any kind of universal or
leading cultural pattern.

Martina Kaller-Dietrich, Postkoloniale

Kultur-Geschichten sind die Antwort. Was
aber war die Frage? In: Wiener Zeitschrift
zur Geschichte der Neuzeit 2/1 (2001), 3-6

Effects of Globalisation became an

every day experience

Reducing culture to technology causes a

kind of cultural homogenisation spreading
out to every corner of the world.

Elmar Altvater, Feinde, Konkurrenten und

Netzwerke oder die sozialen und politischen
Konsequenzen der konomischen
Globalisierung, in: Wolfgang Dietrich (Hg.),
Schlaininger Schriften zur Friedens- und
Konfliktforschung, Bd. 1: Is small beautiful? Die
Leopold-Kohr-Vorlesungen. Wien 1998, 100124.

The adjective postcolonial ...

... can describe the status of a country, which

concluded its process of independence vis vis the
metropolis. In this sense postcolonial refers to
economic, political, social and cultural characteristics
typical for a decolonised country. Hence
postcolonialism deals with the way in which the
colonial heritage is assumed or receted.
In the same historical moment the former empires
accomplished their postcolonial stage. They had to
redefine their historical existence recognizing that
they had and would not any longer expropriate their
former colonies, be it economically or culturally.

Kaller-Dietrich 2001, 4

postcolonialism also

refers to the actual form of repression, originated in

direct colonialism and demands to assume the
responsability for it..
Nevertheless progress and the increasing ressource
vasting in the tecno-industrial complex reforces
traditional colonial privileges and deepens historically
unequal economic exchange relations.

Wolfgang Neurath, Regierungsmentalitt und Policey.

Technologien der Glckseligkeit im Zeitalter der
Vernunft, in: sterreichische Zeitschrift fr
Geschichtswissenschaften 11/ 4 (2000) 11-33, hier 11.

Maalouf, Amin (1996)

In the Name of Identiy.
Violence and the Need to
Belong.
New York: Penguin Books
2003

Colonialism

You could read a dozen large tomes

on the history of Islam from its very
beginnings and you still wouldnt
understand what is going on in
Algeria. But read 30 pages on
colonialism and decolonisation and
then youll understand quite a lot.
(Maalouf 2003, 66)

Identity is a reducing category

be it in a national or in the global

context
identity = the sum of various
affiliations and
Identity refers to a deep rooted need
to belong to

a social group and

a social time (age)

different responses

Social Times (Ages) History

Social Groups kingdoms,
empires, guildes, tribes, nations
etc.

Changing Historical Conditions in

the Arab Context
7th to 15th century
Arab colonisation

I.

From the banks of the Indus to the

Atlantic, the best minds could blossom
under the protection of Arab
civilisation. And this didnt apply only to
those who subscribed to the new
religion. (Maalouf 2003, 63)

Changing Historical Conditions in

the Arab Context
II. After Napoleons Egyptian campaign
1799
a period of institutional and economic
modernisation took place
e.g. King Mohammed Ali of Egypt 1815
France occupied Egypt
From this episode the Arbs concluded then and still
conclude now that the West doesnt want the rest of the
world to be like it; it just wants them to obey. (Maalouf
2003, 77)

Changing Historical Conditions in

the Arab Context
III. Beginning of the 20th century
The Muslim world of the Mediterranean
was ruled over in the name not of
religion but of nation. (Maalouf 2003,
81)
Personalities like Ataturk and Nasser
proclaimed themselfs as fathers of the
new nations. These regimes were often
secular and modernist

Changing Historical Conditions in

the Arab Context
IV. The end of the 20th century
The collapse of the communist world
Marxism has lost ist attraction and
Arab nationalism, annexed by
regimes that are authoritarian,
incompetent and corrupt, has lost
much of ist credebility (Maalouf
2003, 89)

Islamism in the Global Age

... all those who are not born with a

limousine at their disposal, all those
who want to shake up the established
order or are revolted by corruption,
state despotism, inequality,
unemployment and lack of
opportunity, all who have difficulty
finding a place in a fast-changing
world all these are tempted by
Islamism. (Maalouf 2003, 90)

Islamism in the Global Age

I see the religious communities as
global tribes [...] belonging to a faith
community is the most global and
universal kind of particularism
(Maalouf 2003, 93)

belonging to an age, e.g. the global age

BEING A COEVAL

Kants dynamics of explanation ...

human nature

human organism

needs

particular
interessts

wishes
human resaon

responsabilities

duties

dimension of
historical
development

culture
civilisations

law
morality

transcendental
bases of
history

Maaloufs dynamics of explanation

human nature

need to belong

to a social time

to a social group
human aim

To overcome
aspects of
community based
identitys in order
to balance these
with the global
community today

dimension of
historical
development

culture
civilisations

Transceental bases
of history =
acceptance
of historical
changes

Acceptance
of global
contemporarity

The Central Idea

Every individual should be able to

identify, at least to some degree, both
with the country he lives in and with
our present-day world. This involves
the adaption of certain habits and
types of behaviour, not only by the
individual himself, but also by the
people around him, whether groups
or other individuals. (Maalouf 2003,
159)

Eurocentrism: expression or false

understanding of universality?

= the specific way of ethnocentrism emanating together

with the European dominace in the World.

A set of scientifically proved criterias and categories for

dealing with the others, constituting their particular
inferiority

Examples for the comparision of world regions in the

18th century

America is inferior to Africa due to the comparative

short sature of the american flora and fauna

Asia is inferior to Europe, because it is old aged and

exhausted

Africa is inferior to Europe due to its lack of

civilisation
Gerbi, Antonello. Dispute of the New World: The History of a Polemic, 1750-1900. 1955. Trans. Jeremy
Moyle. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1973.

Subaltern Studies

Programme = the searching for the

reasons of the failure of national
selffinding processes in postcolonial
countries

Ranajit Guha, On some Aspects of the

Historiography of Colonial India. In: Ranajit
Guha/ Gayatri Spivak (ed), Selected
Subaltern Studies. N.Y./ Oxfort 1988, 43

Perspectives

refering to ones own subalternity

in the age of globalisation we are
invited to notify utopian thinking
without false shame.

Ileana Rodrguez, Rethinking the Subaltern,

in Jos Rabasa (ed), Subaltern Studies in
the Americas (= Disposito 46 (1994/1996)
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