Richard L. W.

Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

1 HAYDEN WHITE, METAHISTORY (1973)

White, Hayden. Metahistory: the Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1973. Introduction: the Poetics of History White begins by pointing out that this book is a history of historical consciousness in the nineteenth century (1) at the same time that it is a contribution to the discussion of the problem of historical knowledge (1). It offers an account of the development of historical thinking during a specific period of its evolution and a general theory of the structure of that mode of thought which is called historical (1). He asks, [w]hat does it mean to think historically, and what are the unique characteristics of a specifically historical method of inquiry? (1). These were questions debated by a whole host of thinkers at that time who assumed that there were unambiguous answers (1), history being considered a specific mode of existence, historical consciousness a distinctive mode of thought, and historical knowledge an autonomous domain in the spectrum of the human and physical sciences (1). By the twentieth century, there was a growing feeling that definitive answers . . . may not be possible (1). White points out that a variety of Continental thinkers (1) have cast serious doubts on the value of a specifically historical consciousness, stressed the fictive character of historical reconstructions, and challenged historys claims to a place among the sciences (1-2). Moreover, Anglo-American (2) Analytic philosophers questioned the epistemological status and cultural function of historical thinking (2) and cast doubts on it as either a rigorous science or a genuine art (2). The thrust of much of this critique was to view historical consciousness as a specifically Western prejudice by which the presumed superiority of modern, industrial society can be retroactively substantiated (2). White intends his own analysis of the deep structure of the historical imagination of nineteen-century Europe (2) as a new perspective on the current debate over the nature and function of historical knowledge (2) by investigating the works of the recognised masters of nineteenth-century European historiography (2) as well as those of the foremost philosophers of history of the same period (2). His goal is to determine the family characteristics of the different conceptions of the historical process (2) which actually appear in the works of the classic narrators (2). His goal is to consider the historical work as what it most manifestly is that is to say, a verbal structure in the form of a narrative prose discourse that purports to be a model, or icon, of past structures and processes in the interest of explaining what they were by representing them (2). His method is, in short, formalist (3) but not with a view of saying whether a given historians work is a better, or more correct account of a specific set of events or segment of the historical process than some other historians account of them (3-4). In this book, White discusses the work of the historians Jules Michelet, Leopold von Ranke, Alexis de Tocqueville and Jacob Burckhardt, as well as the philosophers of history G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche and Benedetto Croce. Their representative models of historical representation or conceptualisation [do] not depend on the nature of the data they used to support their generalisations or the theories they invoked to explain them (4) but, rather, upon the consistency, coherence, and illuminative power of their respective visions of the historical field (4). Their claims cannot be refuted (4) or disconfirmed (4) because their status as models of historical narration and conceptualisation depends . . . on the preconceptual and specifically poetic nature of their perspectives on history and its processes (4). Their works represent alternative, and

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

seemingly mutually exclusive, conceptions both of the same segments of the historical process and of the tasks of historical thinking (4). Considered purely as verbal structures, the works they produced appear to have radically different formal characteristics and to dispose the conceptual apparatus used to explain the same sets of data in fundamentally different ways (4). Some works may be diachronic or processionary in nature (stressing the fact of change and transformation in the historical process) (4), while others may be synchronic and static in form (stressing the fact of structural continuity) (4). One may seek to reinvoke . . . the spirit of a past age (4), while another may seek to penetrate behind the events in order to disclose the laws or principles of which a particular ages spirit is only a manifestation or phenomenal form (4). Some may conceive their work as contributing to the illumination of current social problems and conflicts (4), while others downplay such presentist concerns (4) in favour of stressing the extent to which a given period differs from their own, in what appears to be a predominantly antiquarian frame of mind (4). In short, considered purely as formal verbal structures, the histories produced by the master historians of the nineteenth century display radically different conceptions of what the historical work should consist of (4). To this end, White will make clear what the ideal-typical structure of the historical work might consist of (5) and thus fashion a criterion for determining what aspects of any given historical work or philosophy of history must be considered in the effort to identify its unique structural elements (5). By tracing transformations in the ways historical thinkers characterise those elements and dispose them in a specific narrative in order to gain an explanatory affect (5), White hopes to be able to chart the fundamental changes in the deep structure of the historical imagination for the period under study (5) and thereby categorise the different styles of historical thinking . . . possible (5). The Theory of the Historical Work White distinguishes the following levels of conceptualisation in the historical work: (1) chronicle; (2) story; (3) mode of emplotment; (4) mode of argument; and (5) mode of ideological implication (5). By chronicle and story, White intends primitive elements in the historical account (5) which represent processes of selection and arrangement of data from the unprocessed historical record in the interest of rendering that record more comprehensible to an audience of a particular kind (5). The historical work (5) mediate[s] among what I will call the historical field, the unprocessed historical record, other historical accounts, and an audience (5). The elements in the historical field (5) are organised into a chronicle by the arrangement of the events to be dealt with in the temporal order of their occurrence (5). Then, the chronicle is organised into a story by the further arrangement of the events into the components of a spectacle or process of happening (5) thought to possess a discernible beginning, middle, and end (5). The transformation of chronicle into story (5) is effected by the characterisation of some events in the chronicle in terms of inaugural motifs, of others in terms of terminating motifs, and of yet others in terms of transitional motifs (5). When a given set of events has been motifically encoded, the reader has been provided with a story; the chronicle of events has been transformed into a completed diachronic process, about which one can then ask questions as if he were dealing with a synchronic structure of relationships (6). Chronicles are in principle openended (6) in that they have no inaugurations; they simply begin when the chronicler starts recording events (6), and have no culminations or resolutions; they can go on indefinitely (6). By contrast, [h]istorical stories trace the sequences of events that lead

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

from inaugurations to (provisional) terminations of social and cultural processes (6). They have a discernible form . . . which marks off the events contained in them from the other events that might appear in a comprehensive chronicle of the years covered in their unfoldings (6). White does not completely agree with the view that the aim of the historian is to explain the past by finding, identifying, or uncovering the stories that lie buried in chronicles (6) or that the difference between history and fiction resides in the fact that the historian finds his stories, whereas the fiction writer invents his (6). This view obscures the extent to which invention also plays a part in the historians operations (7). This is because the same event can serve as a different kind of element of many different historical stories, depending on the role it is assigned in a specific motific characterisation of the set to which it belongs (7). In the chronicle, an event is simply there as an element of a series; it does not function as a story element (7). By contrast, the historian arranges the events in the chronicle into a hierarchy of significance by assigning events different functions as story elements in such a way as to disclose the formal coherence of a whole set of events considered as a comprehensible process with a discernible beginning, middle, and end (7). The historian is engaged in constructing his narrative (7) via the arrangement of selected events of the chronicle into a story (7). Questions concerning the connections between events (7) such as What happened next? How did that happen? Why did things happen this way rather than that? How did it all come out in the end? (7) shape the narrative tactics the historian must use in the construction of his story (7). These questions are to be distinguished from others such as What does it all add up to? What is the point of it all? (7) which concern the structure of the entire set of events considered as a completed story and call for a synoptic judgment of the relationship between a given story and other stories that might be found, identified, or uncovered in the chronicle (7). These latter can be answered in a number of way (7) which White calls (1) explanation by emplotment, (2) explanation by argument, and (3) explanation by ideological implication (7). Explanation by Emplotment Providing the meaning of a story by identifying the kind of story that has been told is called explanation by emplotment (7). If in the course of narrating his story, the historian provides it with the plot structure of a Tragedy, he has explained it in one way, if he has structured it as a Comedy, he has explained it in another way (7). Emplotment is accordingly the way by which a sequence of events fashioned into a story is gradually revealed to be a story of a particular kind (7). Following Northrop Fryes Anatomy of Criticism, White posits that there are at least four different modes of emplotment: Romance, Tragedy, Comedy, and Satire (7). He acknowledges that there may also be others, such as the Epic (7). Moreover, a given historical account may contain stories cast in one mode as aspects or phases of the whole set of stories emplotted in another mode (7). However, any historian is forced to emplot the whole set of stories making up his narrative in comprehensive or archetypal story form (8). For example, Michelet cast his histories in the Romantic mode (8), Ranke in the Comic (8), Tocqueville in the Tragic (8), and Burckhardt Satire (8). Epic plot structure would appear to be the implicit form of chronicle itself (8). Whites point is that every history, even the most synchronic or structural of them, will be emplotted in some way (8). He contends that stories cast in the Ironic mode, of which Satire is the fictional form, gain their effects precisely by frustrating normal expectations about the kinds of resolutions provided by stories cast in other modes (Romance, Comedy, or Tragedy, as the case may be) (8).

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

The Romance is fundamentally a drama of self-identification symbolised by the heros transcendence of the world of experience, his victory over it, and his final liberation from it the sort of drama associated with the Grail legend or the story of the resurrection of Christ in Christian mythology (8-9). It is a drama of the triumph of good over evil, of virtue over vice, of light over darkness, and of the ultimate transcendence of man over the world in which he was imprisoned by the Fall (9). The archetypal theme of Satire is the precise opposite of this Romantic drama of redemption (9) in that it is actually a drama of diremption (9) and dominated by the apprehension that man is ultimately a captive of the world rather than its master (9) and the recognition that . . . human consciousness and will are always inadequate to the task of overcoming definitively the dark face of death, which is mans unremitting enemy (9). Comedy and tragedy suggest the possibility of at least partial liberation from the condition of the Fall and provisional release from the divided state in which men find themselves in this world (9). These provisional victories are conceived differently in the mythic archetypes of which the plot structures of Comedy and Tragedy are sublimated forms (9). In comedy, hope is held out for the temporary triumph of man over his world by the prospect of occasional reconciliations of the forces at play in the social and natural worlds (9). These reconciliations are symbolised in the festive occasions which the Comic writer uses to terminate his dramatic accounts of change and transformation (9). These are reconciliations of men with men, of men with their world and their society (9). The condition of society is represented as being purer, saner, and healthier as a result of the conflict among seemingly inalterably opposed elements in the world (9) which are revealed as ultimately harmonisable with one another, unified, at one with themselves and the others (9). In tragedy, there are no festive occasions (9) but intimations of states of division among men more terrible than that which incited the tragic agon at the beginning of the drama (9). The fall of the protagonist and the shaking of the world he inhabits (9) is compensated for by a gain in consciousness for the spectators of the contest (9) which consists in the epiphany of the law governing human existence which the protagonists exertions against the world have brought to pass (9). The reconciliations at the end of tragedy are more sombre (9) than those in comedies, more in the nature of the resignations of men to the conditions under which they must labour in the world (9) which are in turn thought to be inalterable and eternal (9) and within which men must learn to work. They set the limits on what may be aspired to and what may be legitimately aimed at in the quest for security and sanity in the world (9). Romance and satire seem to be mutually exclusive ways of emplotting the processes of reality (9). (The very notion of a Romantic Satire [9] is a contradiction in terms [9], though a Satirical Romance [9] is a form of representation intended to expose, from an Ironic standpoint, the fatuity of a Romantic conception of the world [9].) One can speak of a Comic Satire (10), a Satirical Comedy (10), a Satirical Tragedy (10) and a Tragic Satire (10), but these are different from a Comic Romance or a Tragic Romance: Comedy and Tragedy represent qualifications of the Romantic apprehension of the world . . . in the interest of taking seriously the forces which oppose the effort at human redemption naively held up as a possibility for mankind in Romance (10). It is possible for the Romantic writer to assimilate the truths of human existence revealed in Comedy and Tragedy respectively within the structure of the drama of redemption which he figures in his vision of the ultimate victory of man over the world of experience (10). Satire, by contrast, represents a different kind of qualification of the hopes, possibilities and truths of human existence revealed in Romance, Comedy and Tragedy (10). It views these Ironically in the atmosphere generated by the apprehension of the ultimate inadequacy of consciousness to live in the world happily or to comprehend it fully (10). It

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

presupposes the ultimate inadequacy of the visions of the world dramatically represented in the genres of Romance, Comedy and Tragedy (10). The Satirical mode of representation signals a conviction that the world has grown old (10) and prepares consciousness for its repudiation of all sophisticated conceptualisations of the world and anticipates a return to a mythic apprehension of the world and its processes (10). These four archetypal story forms (10) of Tragedy, Comedy, Romance and Satire provide us with a means of characterising the different kinds of explanatory effects a historian can strive for on the level of narrative emplotment (10). It allows us to distinguish between diachronic and synchronic narratives, the former stressing structural transformation (10) and the latter structural continuity (10) or stasis (10). These are not mutually exclusive ways of emplotting the historical field (10) but, rather, represent a difference of emphasis in treating the relationship between continuity and change in a given representation of the historical process (10). Tragedy and Satire are modes of emplotment (11) favoured by those historians who perceive behind or within the welter of events (11) an ongoing structure of relationships or an eternal return of the Same in the Different (11). By contrast, Romance and Comedy stress the emergence of new forces or conditions out of processes that appear . . . to be changeless in their essence or to be changing only in their phenomenal forms (11). In sum, each of these archetypal plot structures has its implications for the cognitive operations by which the historian seeks to explain what was really happening during the process of which it provides an image of its true form (11). Explanation by Formal Argument Another level (11) on which the historian seeks to explicate the point of it all or what it all adds up to (11) is that of explanation by formal, explicit, or discursive argument (11). Such an argument provides an explanation of what happens in the story by invoking principles of combination which serve as putative laws of historical explanation (11), that is, the historian explains the events in the story . . . by construction of a nomological-deductive argument (11). (According to the so-called deductivenomological or d-n model, scientific arguments are deductive in nature with at least one natural law statement among its premises.) The argument can be analysed into a syllogism (11), the major premise of which consists of some putatively universal law of causal relationships (11), the minor premise of the boundary conditions within which the law is applied (11), and a conclusion in which the events that actually occurred are deduced from the premises by logical necessity (11). The most famous of such putative laws is probably Marxs so-called law of the relationship between the Superstructure and the Base (11) and according to which the latter, comprised of the means of production and the modes of relationship among them (11) affects the former, consisting of social and cultural institutions (11), as well as other more banal observations (11) such as what goes up must come down (11). They are usually tacitly invoked (11) in the course of attempts to explain phenomena like the Great Depression. Whether or not they are valid claims, they function as the premises of nomological-deductive arguments by which explanations of events given in the story are provided (12) which are to be distinguished from the explanatory affect gained by his emplotment of his story as a story of a particular kind (12). In Whites view, this points to the protoscientific character of historical explanation (12). White distinguishes between the emplotment of the events of a history considered as elements of a story (12) and the characterisation of those events as elements in a matrix of causal relationships presumed to have existed in specific provinces of time and space (12). The historian is doing both art and science (12),

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

engaging in both investigative operations (12) and narrative operation[s] (12), seeking both to represent what happened and why it happened as it did (12) and to provide a verbal model, in the form of a narrative, by which to explain the process of development leading from one situation to some other situation by appeal to general laws of causation (12). However, in Whites view, history differs from the sciences . . . not only over the laws of social causation (12) used to explain a given sequence of events, but also over the question of the form that a scientific explanation ought to take (12). White points out that natural scientific and historical explanations (12) do not necessarily have the same formal characteristics (12). There is no consensus whether the kinds of laws that might be invoked in scientific explanations have their counterparts in the realm of the socalled human or spiritual sciences, such as sociology and history (12). Where the physical sciences appear to progress by virtue of the agreements, reached from time to time among members of the established communities of science, regarding what will count as a scientific problem, the form that a scientific explanation must take, and the kinds of data that will be permitted to count as evidence in a properly scientific account of reality (12-13), among historians no such agreement exists, or ever has existed (12). Historical explanations are based on different metahistorical presuppositions about the nature of the historical field (13) which generate different conceptions of the kind of explanations that can be used in historiographical analysis (13). Historiographical disputes on the level of interpretation are in reality disputes over the true nature of the historians enterprise (13). During the sixteenth century, . . . there were as many different conceptions of the scientific enterprise as there were metaphysical positions (13): each of the conceptions of what science ought to be ultimately reflected different conceptions of reality and the different epistemologies generated by them (13). Similarly, disputes over what history ought to be reflect similarly varied conceptions of what a proper historical explanation ought to consist of and different conceptions, therefore, of the historians task (13). White is thinking here of the alternative, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, interpretations of the same set of historical events, or . . . different answers to such questions as What is the true nature of the Renaissance? (13). These divergences are really reflective of different notions of the nature of historical reality and of the appropriate form that a historical account, considered as a formal argument, ought to take (13). White accordingly draws on Stephen Peppers World Hypotheses to distinguish between four paradigms of the form that a historical explanation, considered as a discursive argument, may be conceived to take: Formist, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contextualist (13). The Formist theory of truth aims at the identification of the unique characteristics inhabiting the historical field (13-14). The Formist considers an explanation to be complete when a given set of objects has been properly identified, its class, generic and specific attributes assigned, and labels attesting to its particularity attached to it (14). The task of historical explanation is to dispel the apprehension of those similarities that appear to be shared by all objects in the field (14) by stressing the uniqueness of the particular objects in the field or the variety of the types of phenomena which the field manifests (14). The Formist mode is found in the work of Herder, Carlyle, Michelet, in the Romantic historians and the great historical narrators, such as Niebuhr, Mommsen, and Trevelyan (14). Though some may make generalisations about the nature of the historical process (14), Formists stress the uniqueness of the different agents, agencies, and acts which make up the events to be explained . . . not the ground or scene against which these entities arise (14). Formism is essentially dispersive in the analytical operations it carries out on the data, rather than integrative (15). The

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

Formist explanatory strategy tends to be wide in scope ample in the kinds of particulars it identifies as occupying the historical field (15) and thus to lack conceptual precision (15). Such historians usually make up for the vacuity of their generalisations by the vividness of their reconstructions of particular agents, agencies, and acts represented in their narratives (15). By contrast, Organicist world hypotheses and their corresponding theories of truth and argument are relatively more integrative and hence more reductive in their operations (15). The Organicist depicts the particulars discerned in the historical field as components of synthetic processes (15). At its heart, there is a metaphysical commitment to the paradigm of the microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship (15) as a result of which there is a strong desire to see individual entities as components of processes which aggregate into wholes that are greater than, or qualitatively different from, the sum of their parts (15). Historians in general like Ranke, nationalistic historians (15) like Mommsen and Idealists (15) like Hegel all tend to structure their narratives in such a way as to depict the consolidation or crystallisation, out of a set of apparently dispersed events, of some integrated entity whose importance is greater than that of any of the individual entities analysed or described (15). Such historians are more interested in characterising the integrative process than in depicting its individual elements (16), which gives their accounts an abstract quality (16) as well as an orientation toward the determination of the end or goal toward which all the processes found in the historical field are presumed to be tending (16). Some (like Ranke) might resist the inclination to specify what the telos of the whole historical process might be, and content (16) themselves with certain provisional teloi, intermediary integrative structures such as the folk, the nation, or . . . culture (16). Organicists tend to eschew the search for the laws of historical process, when the term laws is construed in the sense of universal and invariant causal relationships (16) such as Newtonian physics (16) or Darwinian biology (16), tending to prefer to talk about the principles or ideas that inform the individual processes discerned in the field and all the processes taken as a whole (16) which are seen as imaging or prefiguring the end toward which the process as a whole tends (16) rather than as causal agents (16). Such principles function not as restrictions on the human capacity to realise a distinctively human goal in history . . . but as guarantors of an essential human freedom (16). Mechanistic world hypotheses (16) are similarly integrative in their aim (16) but tend to be reductive rather than synthetic (16). To use Burkes terminology, Mechanism is inclined to view the acts of the agents inhabiting the historical field as manifestations of extrahistorical agencies that have their origins in the scene within which the action depicted in the narrative unfolds (17). Mechanism turns upon the search for causal laws that determines the outcome of processes discovered in the historical field (17), the objects (17) thought to inhabit the historical field being construed as existing in the modality of part-part relationships, the specific configurations of which are determined by the laws that are presumed to govern their interactions (17). A Mechanist such as Taine, Marx (17) or even Tocqueville (17) studies history in order to divine the laws that actually govern its operations and writes history in order to display in a narrative form the effects of those laws (17). For this reason, an Organicist historical account has the same tendency toward abstraction as that of the Organicist (17), the individual entities (17) being less important as evidence than the classes of phenomena to which they can be shown to belong (17), which are in turn less important . . . than the laws their regularities are presumed to manifest (17). Ultimately, a Mechanist explanation is considered complete only when he has discovered the laws that are presumed to govern history in the same way that the laws of physics are presumed to govern nature. He then

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

applies these laws to the data in such a way as to make their configurations understandable as functions of those laws (17). The particular attributes of a given institution, custom, law, art form, or the like, are less important as evidence than the species, class, and generic typifications which, on analysis, they can be shown to exemplify (17) and which are in turn less important than the laws of social structure and process which govern the course of Western history, to whose operations they attest (17). Like Organicism, Mechanism is accused of being reductive of the variety and colour of the individual entities in the historical field (17). White argues that rather than take refuge in so impressionistic a conception of historical explanation (17) as that offered by Formism, one can embrace a Contextualist position, which as a theory of truth and explanation represents a functional conception of the meaning or significance of events discerned in the historical field (17). The informing presupposition of Contextualism (17) is that historical events may be explained by being set within the context of their occurrence (18). They are explained by the revelation of the specific relationships they bore to other events occurring in their circumambient historical space (18). The historical field on first glance appears to lack coherence and any discernible fundamental structure (18) but, unlike the Formists who consider entities in their particularity and uniqueness i.e., their similarity to, and difference from, other entities in the field (18), the Contextualist explains what happened . . . by the specification of the functional interrelationships existing among the agents and agencies occupying the field at a given time (18). The determination of this functional interrelationship (18) is effected by what philosophers such as Isaiah Berlin term colligation (18), that is, by picking out the threads that link the individual or institution under study to its specious sociocultural present (18). This is the dominant principle of explanation (18) found in the work of Jacob Burckhardt (18). Avoiding the radically dispersive tendency of Formism and the abstractive tendencies of Organicism and Mechanism (18), Contextualism strives instead for a relative integration of the phenomena discerned . . . in terms of trends or general physiognomies of periods and epochs (18). The rules of combination for determining the family characteristics (18) of the historical events portrayed are not equivalent to the universal laws of cause and effect postulated by the Mechanist or the general teleological principles postulated by the Organicist (18). Rather, they are viewed as the actual relationships . . . presumed to have existed at specific times and places, the first, final, and material causes of which can never be known (18). The Contextualist proceeds by isolating some . . . element of the historical field (18), whether it be as large as the French Revolution or as small as one day in the life of a specific person (18), and then proceeds to pick out the threads that link the event . . . outward, into the circumambient natural and social space within which the event occurred, and both backward in time, in order to determine the origins of the event, and forward in time, in order to determine its impact and influence on subsequent events (18). The Contextualist approach can be regarded as a combination of the dispersive impulses behind Formism . . . and the integrative impulses behind Organicism (19). Contextualism organises the historical field into different provinces of significant occurrence, on the basis of which periods and epochs can be distinguished from one another (19). The flow of historical time is envisaged by the Contextualist as a wavelike motion . . . in which certain phases or culminations are considered to be intrinsically more significant than others (19). Contextualist explanatory strategies incline accordingly towards structuralist (19) or synchronic representations of segments or sections of the process, cuts made across the grain of time as it were (19). To aggregate the various periods he has studied into a comprehensive view of the whole historical process (19), the Contextualist must move toward either a Mechanist reduction of the data in terms of the

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

timeless laws . . . presumed to govern them or an Organicist synthesis of those data in terms of the principles . . . presumed to reveal the telos toward which the whole process is tending over the long haul (19). Though any of these four models of explanation may be utilised in a given history, they have not enjoyed equal authority (19) among professional historians. Formist and Contextualist models have tended to prevail as the main candidates for orthodoxy (19) among academic historians (19), for which reason Organicist or Mechanist tendencies . . . have been regarded as unfortunate lapses from the proper forms that explanations in history (19) should take and, in the case of Hegel and Marx, for example, as a fall into the nefarious philosophy of history (20). In short, Organicism and Mechanism are heterodoxies of historical thought (20) and often condemned, in works such as Karl Poppers The Poverty of Historicism, as being guilty of myth, error, or ideology (20). It has also been argued that scientism the duplicitous aping of scientific method and illegitimate appropriation of sciences authority (20) by Organicists and Mechanists can be avoided by excluding these two approaches in favour of empirical (20) historiography by which history can be elevated into a rigorous science (20). But, White argues, there are no apodictic epistemological grounds for the preference of one mode of explanation over another (20). The marginalisation of Organicism and Mechanism must be based on extra-epistemological considerations (20) and reflects only a decision on the part of historians (20) which would appear to rest on precritically held opinions about the form that a science of man and society has to take (20-21), opinions that are accordingly ethical, and specifically ideological, in nature (21). Radicals (21) contend that the professional historians preference for Contextualist and Formist explanatory strategies is ideologically motivated (21) as it is in the interests of established social groups (21) to reject Mechanism because the disclosure of the actual laws of historical structure and process would reveal the true nature of the power enjoyed by dominant classes and provide the knowledge necessary to dislodge those classes from their positions of privilege and power (21). It is accordingly, they also contend, in the interest of dominant groups . . . to cultivate a conception of history in which only individual events and their relations to their immediate context can be know . . . because such preconceptions of the nature of historical knowledge conform to the individualist preconceptions of Liberals and the hierarchical preconceptions of Conservatives (21). The claim by Radicals to have discovered the laws of historical structure and process (21) are thought by Liberals to be similarly motivated ideologically (21). They are usually advanced in the interest of promoting some programme of social transformation, in either a Radical or a Reactionary direction (21). The same applies to those principles by which Idealist philosophers of history purport to explicate the meaning of history in its totality (21): these are always offered in support of ideological positions that are retrograde or obscurantist in their intentions (21). There is, according to White, an irreducible ideological component in every historical account (21). This is because history is not a science, or is at best a protoscience with specifically determinable nonscientific elements in its constitution (21). This is because the very claim . . . to have determined some kind of formal coherence in the historical record brings with it theories of the nature of the historical world and of historical knowledge itself which have ideological implications for attempts to understand the present (21). The claim to have distinguished a past from a present world of social thought and praxis, and to have determined the formal coherence of that past world, implies a conception of the form that knowledge of the present world also must take, insofar as it is continuous with that past world (21). Commitment to a particular form of knowledge predetermines the kinds of generalisations which one can make about the

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

10

present world, the kinds of knowledge one can have of it, and hence the kinds of projects one can legitimately conceive for changing that present or maintaining it in its present form indefinitely (21). Explanation by Ideological Implication Defining ideology as a set of prescriptions for taking a position in the present world of social praxis and acting upon it (either to change the world or to maintain it in its present state) . . . attended by arguments that claim the authority of science or realism (22) (rather than as a synonym, as in the classic Marxian account, for the socially-moulded nature of human consciousness deriving from the individuals location in the classstructure), White follows Karl Mannheims Ideology and Utopia in arguing that there are four basic ideological positions: Anarchism, Conservativism, Radicalism and Liberalism (22). White acknowledges other possible positions for example, the Apocalypticist who bases his prescriptions for action on the authority of divine revelation, the Reactionary on that of a class or group practice which is seen as an eternally valid system of social organisation, and the Fascist on the unquestioned authority of the charismatic leader (23) but these others do not think it necessary to establish the authority of their cognitive positions on either rationalist or scientific grounds (23), for which reason their theories of society and history . . . are not regarded as being responsible to criticism launched from other positions, to data in general, or to control by the logical criteria of consistency and coherence (23). By contrast, the four basic ideological positions represent value systems that claim the authority of reason, science, or realism (23). They are committed to public discussion with other systems that claim similar authority (23) and to make sense out of data uncovered by investigators of the social process (23). These four labels function as designators of general ideological preference rather than as emblems of specific political parties (24) and represent different attitudes with respect to the possibility of reducing the study of society to a science and the desirability of doing so; different notions of the lessons that the human sciences can teach; different conceptions of the desirability of maintaining or changing the status quo; different conceptions of the direction that changes in the status quo ought to take and the means of effecting such changes; and, finally, different time orientations . . . toward past, present, or future as the repository of a paradigm of societys ideal form (24). White adds that there is no necessary correlation between choice of emplotment, formal argumentation and ideological position. With respect to the problem of social change (24), all four positions recognise its inevitability but represent different views as to both its desirability and the optimum pace of change (24). Conservatives are most suspicious of programmatic transformations of the social status quo (24). Where Conservatives view social change through the analogy of plantlike gradualisations (24), Liberals view it through the analogy of adjustments, or fine tunings, of a mechanism (24). Both see the fundamental structure of society (24) as sound (24) with some change (24) being inevitable (24), but change itself is regarded as being most effective when particular parts, rather than structural relationships, of the totality are changed (24). By contrast, Radicals and Anarchists believe in the necessity of structural transformations, the former in the interest of reconstituting society on new bases, the latter in the interest of abolishing society and substituting for it a community of individuals held together by a shared sense of their common humanity (24). With regard to the pace of the changes (24), Conservatives insist on a natural rhythm, while Liberals favour . . . the social rhythm of the parliamentary debate, or that of the educational process (24), whereas Radicals and

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

11

Anarchists envision the possibility of cataclysmic transformations (24): the former are more aware of the inertial pull of inherited institutions (25) and are thus concerned with the provision of the means of effecting such changes (25). In terms of their respective time orientations (25), Conservatives tend to imagine historical evolution as a progressive elaboration of the institutional structure that currently prevails (25); Liberals imagine a time in the future when this structure will have been improved (25), though they project this utopian condition into the remote future . . . to discourage any effort in the present to realise it precipitately, by radical means (25); Radicals seize on utopia as imminent, which inspires their concern with the provision of the revolutionary means to bring this utopia to pass now (25); and Anarchists idealise a remote past of naturalhuman innocence from which men have fallen into the corrupt social state in which they currently find themselves (25). This utopia can be achieved on a non-temporal plane (25), that is, at any time . . . either by an act of will or by an act of consciousness which destroys the socially provided belief in the legitimacy of the current social establishment (25). The four positions are also distinguished by their orientation towards social congruence (25) or social transcendence (25). Conservatism is the most socially congruent; Liberalism is relatively so. Anarchism is the most socially transcendent; Radicalism is relatively so (25). Because all take the prospect of change seriously (25), they all share an interest in history (25) and a concern to provide historical justification for their programmes (25). But it is the value accorded to the current social establishment (25) which explains their different conceptions of both the form of historical evolution and the form that historical knowledge must take (25). They each construe the problem of historical progress . . . in different ways (25). What is progress to one is decadence to another (25), with the present age (25) functioning as an apex or nadir of development (25). They also honour different paradigms of the form that arguments meant to explain what happened in history must take (25), the different paradigms of explanation (26) reflecting the more or less scientistic orientation of the different ideologies (26). Though Radicals and Liberals believe in the possibility of studying history rationally and scientifically (26), they have different conceptions of what a rational and scientific historiography might consist of (26). The former seek the laws of historical structures and processes (26), the latter the general trends or main drift of development (26). For Conservatives and Anarchists, a distinctively historical knowledge requires a faith in intuition as the ground on which a putative science of history might be constructed (26), but the latter is inclined towards the essentially empathetic techniques of Romanticism (26), while the former is inclined to integrate his several intuitions of the objects in the historical field into a comprehensive Organicist account of the whole process (26). Arguing that there are no extra-ideological grounds on which to arbitrate among the conflicting conceptions of the historical process and of historical knowledge appealed to by the different ideologies (26), White contends that no model of historical knowledge favoured by a given ideology (26) is more realistic (26) or more scientific (26) than the others for it is precisely over the matter of what constitutes an adequate criterion of realism (26) or what a specifically historical or social science ought to be (26) that they disagree in the first place. He is not concerned, either, to analyse them as projections of a given ideological position (26) but rather with merely indicating how ideological considerations enter into the historians attempts to explain the historical field (26). White is of the view that the ethical moment of a historical work to be reflected in the mode of ideological implication by which an aesthetic perception (the emplotment) and a cognitive operation (the argument) can be combined so as to derive prescriptive statements from what may appear to be purely descriptive or analytical ones (27). A

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

12

historian may explain what happened in the historical field by identifying the law (or laws) governing the set of events emplotted in the drama as a drama of Tragic import (27). Alternatively, s/he may find the Tragic import of the story he has emplotted in his discovery of the law which governs the sequence of articulation of the plot (27). Either way, the moral implications (27) of a given historical explanation derives from the relationship which the historian presumes to have existed within the set of events under consideration between the plot structure of the narrative conceptualisation on the one hand and the form of the argument offered as an explicit scientific (or realistic) explanation of the set of events on the other (27). From this perspective, a set of events emplotted as a Tragedy may be explained scientifically (or realistically) by appeal to strict laws of causal determination or to putative laws of human freedom (27). In the former case, the implication is that men are indentured to an ineluctable fate by virtue of their participation in history (27), while in the latter the implication is that they can act in such a way as to control, or at least to affect, their destinies (27). The ideological thrust of histories fashioned in these alternative ways is generally Conservative and Radical respectively (27). The implications need not be formally drawn in the historical account itself, but they will be identifiable by the tone or mood in which the resolution of the drama and the epiphany of the law that it manifests are cast (27). Over pp. 27-29, White illustrates his argument above with reference to differences between the work of Oswald Spengler, Marx, Ranke and Burckhardt. The Problem of Historiographical Styles Here, White argues that a historiographical style represents a particular combination of modes of emplotment, argument, and ideological implication (29). The various modes cannot be indiscriminately combined in a given work (29): for example, a Comic emplotment is not compatible with a Mechanistic argument (29) while a Radical ideology is not compatible with a Satirical emplotment (29). This is because there are elective affinities . . . based on the structural homologies . . . discerned among the possible modes of emplotment, argument, and ideological implication (29) among the various modes. These may be mapped as follows: Mode of Emplotment Romantic Tragic Comic Satirical Mode of Argument Formist Mechanistic Organicist Contextualist Mode of Ideological Implication Anarchist Radical Conservative Liberal

The dialectical tension which characterises the work of every master historian usually arises from an effort to wed a mode of emplotment with a mode of argument or of ideological implication which is inconsonant with it (29). This tension, however, evolves within . . . a coherent vision or presiding image of the form of the whole historical field (30). This coherence and consistency (30), this appearance of a self-consistent totality (30), gives to his work its distinctive stylistic attributes (30). The grounds of this coherence and consistency . . . are poetic, and specifically linguistic, in nature (30). Before the historian can bring to bear upon the data of the historical field the conceptual

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

13

apparatuses he will use to represent and explain it, he must first prefigure the field that is to say, constitute it as an object of mental perception (30). This poetic act is indistinguishable from the linguistic act in which the field is made ready for interpretation as a domain of a particular kind (30). In other words, before a given domain can be interpreted, it must first be construed as a ground inhabited by discernible figures (30) which must in turn be classifiable as distinctive orders, classes, genera, and species of phenomena (30) which bear certain kinds of relationships to one another, the transformations of which will constitute the problems to be solved by the explanations provided on the levels of emplotment and argument in the narrative (30). That is, the historian confronts the historical field in much the same way that the grammarian might confront a new language (30). His first task is to distinguish among the lexical, grammatical and syntactical elements of the field (30), after which he can undertake to interpret what any given configuration of elements or transformations of their relationships mean (30). The historians job is to construct a linguistic protocol, complete with lexical, grammatical, syntactical, and semantic dimensions, by which to characterise the field and its elements in his own terms . . . and thus to prepare them for the explanation and representation he will subsequently offer of them in his narrative (30). This preconceptual linguistic protocol will in turn be by virtue of its essentially prefigurative nature characterisable in terms of the dominant tropological mode in which it is cast (30). Historical accounts purport to be verbal models, or icons, of specific segments of the historical process (30). These models are necessary because the documentary record does not figure forth an unambiguous image of the structure of events attested in them (30). To figure what really happened in the past, . . . the historian must first prefigure as a possible object of knowledge the whole set of events reported in the documents (30). This prefigurative act is poetic inasmuch as it is precognitive and precritical in the economy of the historians own consciousness (31) and because it is constitutive of the structure that will subsequently be imaged in the verbal model offered by the historian as a representation and explanation of what really happened in the past (31). It is constitutive not only of a domain which the historian can treat as a possible object of (mental) perception (31) but also of the concepts he will use to identify the objects that inhabit the domain and to characterise the kinds of relationships they can sustain with one another (31). In the poetic act which precedes the formal analysis of the field, the historian both creates his object of analysis and predetermines the modality of the conceptual strategies he will use to explain it (31). White is of the view that there four principal types (31) of possible explanatory strategies (31) and these correspond to the four principal tropes of poetic language (31). The theory of tropes provides us with a basis for classifying the deep structural forms of the historical imagination in a given period of its evolution (31). The Theory of Tropes Drawing on Kenneth Burkes The Four Master Tropes, White identifies the four basic tropes for the analysis of poetic, or figurative, language (31) as Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecdoche, and Irony (31). These tropes permit the characterisation of objects in different kinds of indirect, or figurative, discourse (31-34). They are especially useful for understanding the operations by which the contents of experience which resist description in unambiguous prose representations can be prefiguratively grasped and prepared for conscious apprehension (34). In Metaphor (literally, transfer) (34), phenomena can be characterised in terms of their similarity to, and difference from, one another, in the manner of analogy or simile (34). Through Metonymy (literally, name change), the

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

14

name of a part of a thing may be substituted for the name of the whole, as in the phrase fifty sail when what is indicated is fifty ships (34). In the case of Synecdoche, which is thought by some theorists to be a form of metonymy (34), a phenomenon can be characterised by using the part to symbolise some quality presumed to inhere in the totality, as in the expression He is all heart (34). Through Irony, entities can be characterised by way of negating on the figurative level what is positively affirmed on the literal level (34). For example, blind mouths (34), as an illustration of catachresis (34), and cold passion (34), as an example of paradox (oxymoron) (34), are emblems of this trope (34). Irony, Metonymy, and Synecdoche are kinds of Metaphor (34) but differ in the kinds of reductions or integrations they effect on the literal level of their meanings and by the kinds of illumination they aim at on the figurative level (34). Metaphor is essentially representational, Metonymy is reductionist, Synecdoche is integrative, and Irony is negational (34). The metaphor my love, my rose, affirms the adequacy of the rose as a representation of the loved one. It asserts that a similarity exists between two objects in the face of manifest differences between them (34). The term rose is understood to be a figure or symbol of the qualities ascribed to the loved one (34) who is identified with the rose, but in such a way as to sustain the particularity of the loved one while suggesting the qualities that she (or he) shares with the rose (34). If the phrase were read Metonymically (34), the loved one would be reduced to a rose (34); if it were read Synecdochically, the essence of the loved one [would be] taken to be identical with the essence of the rose (34); and if it were read Ironically, the expression would be taken as an implicit negation of what is explicitly affirmed (34). In the Metonymical expressions such as the roar of thunder (35) or fifty sail (34), the term sail is substituted for the term ship in such a way as to reduce the whole to one of its parts. Two different objects are being implicitly compared . . . but the objects are explicitly conceived to bear a part-whole relationship to each other (34). It is suggested that ships are in some sense identifiable with that part of themselves without which they cannot operate (35). In Metonymy, phenomena are implicitly apprehended as bearing relationships to one another in the modality of part-part relationships, on the basis of which one can effect a reduction of one of the parts to the status of an aspect or function of the other (35). The reduction may take the form of an agent-act relationship (the thunder roars) or a cause-effect relationship (the roar of thunder) (35). This is an essentially extrinsic relationship (35). The same expression would be synecdochic, however, if the term sail were intended to symbolise the quality shared by both ships and sails (35). The key thing is to distinguish those parts which are representative of the whole and those which are simply aspects of it (35). Synecdoche consists of an intrinsic relationship of shared qualities (35). Where Metonymy implies a difference between phenomena construed in the manner of part-part relationships (35), Synecdoche construes the two parts in the manner of an integration within a whole that is qualitatively different from the sum of the parts and of which the parts are but microcosmic replications (35). Hence, the phrase He is all heart (35). At first glance, this appears to be metonymic in that the name of a part of the body is used to characterise the whole body of the individual (36), but the term heart is to be understood figuratively as designating, not a part of the body, but that quality of character conventionally symbolised by the term heart in Western culture (36), that is, not as a part of the anatomy whose function can be used to characterise the whole body, as in fifty sail for fifty ships (36). Rather, it is to be construed as a quality that is characteristic of the whole individual, considered as a combination of physical and spiritual elements . . . in the modality of a microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship (36). Read Metonymically, He is all heart would be reductive (36) and suggest the centrality

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

15

of the heart to the functioning of the organism (36). Read Synecdochically, however, it is integrative rather than reductive (36), signalling not simply a name change but a name change designating a totality (He) which possesses some quality (generosity, compassion, etc.) that suffuses and constitutes the essential nature of all the parts that make it up (36). The three tropes discussed are paradigms, provided by language itself, of the operations by which consciousness can prefigure areas of experience that are cognitively problematic in order subsequently to submit them to analysis and explanation (36). Thought is thereby provided with possible alternative paradigms of explanation (36). Metaphor is representational in the way that Formism can be seen to be. Metonymy is reductive in a Mechanistic manner, while Synecdoche is integrative in the way that Organicism is (36). Metaphor sanctions the prefiguration of the world of experience in object-object terms (36), Metonymy in part-part terms (36), Synecdoche in objectwhole terms (36). Metaphor promotes languages of identity (36), Metonymy extrinsicality (36), and Synecdoche intrinsicality (36). These three tropes are naive (36) in the sense that they are deployed in the belief in languages capacity to grasp the nature of things in figurative terms (36-37). Irony is, rather, sentimental (in Schillers sense of self-conscious) (37). It is essentially dialectical, inasmuch as it represents a self-conscious use of Metaphor in the interest of verbal self-negation (37). Its basic figurative tactic . . . is catachresis (literally misuse), the manifestly absurd Metaphor designed to inspire Ironic second thoughts about the nature of the thing characterised or the inadequacy of the characterisation itself (37). The rhetorical figure of aporia (literally doubt), in which the author signals in advance a real or feigned disbelief in the truth of his own statements (37) is the favoured stylistic device of Ironic language (37). The aim of the Ironic statement is to affirm tacitly the negative of what is on the literal level affirmed positively, or the reverse (37). It presupposes that the reader or auditor already knows, or is capable of recognising, the absurdity of the characterisation of the thing designated in the Metaphor, Metonymy, or Synecdoche used to give form to it (37). The expression He is all heart becomes Ironic when uttered in a particular tone of voice or in a context in which the person designated manifestly does not possess the qualities attributed to him (37). Irony is, accordingly, metatropological, for it is deployed in the self-conscious awareness of the possible misuse of figurative language (37). It presupposes the occupation of a realistic perspective on reality, from which a nonfigurative representation of the world of experience might be provided (37). It represents a stage of consciousness in which the problematical nature of language itself has become recognised (37), pointing to the potential foolishness of all linguistic characterisations of reality (37). It is, as Burke notes, dialectical . . . in its apprehension of the capacity of language to obscure more than it clarifies in any act of verbal figuration (37). In Irony, figurative language folds back upon itself and brings its own potentialities for distorting perception under question (37). Characterisations of the world in the Ironic mode are often regarded as intrinsically sophisticated and realistic (37), signalling the ascent of thought in a given area of inquiry to a level of self-consciousness on which a genuinely enlightened that is to say, self-critical conceptualisation of the world and its processes has become possible (37). In short, Irony provides a linguistic paradigm of a mode of thought which is radically self-critical with respect not only to a given characterisation of the world of experience but also to the very effort to capture adequately the truth of things in language (37). It is the linguistic protocol in which skepticism in thought and relativism in ethics (37) are expressed. It is inherently hostile to the naive formulations of the Formist, Mechanist, and Organicist strategies of explanation (38). Its fictional

Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3301 Notes10

16

form, Satire, is intrinsically antagonistic to the archetypes of Romance, Comedy, and Tragedy as modes of representing the forms of significant human development (38). Irony appears transideological (38) in that it can be used tactically for the defence (38) of any position, speaking against established social forms or against utopian reformers seeking to change the status quo (38). As the basis of a world view, Irony tends to dissolve all belief in the possibility of positive political actions (38). In its apprehension of the essential folly or absurdity of the human condition, it tends to engender belief in the madness of civilisation itself and to inspire a mandarin-like disdain for those seeking to grasp the nature of social reality in either science or art (38). The Phases of Nineteenth Century Historical Consciousness The theory of tropes provides a way of characterising the dominant modes of historical thinking which took shape in Europe in the nineteenth century (38), allowing White to pinpoint the deep structure of the historical imagination of that period (38).