The Work of History

Constructivism and a Politics of the Past

Kalle Pihlainen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781315521596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Teaching History
• Index: History

Since the appearance of Hayden White's seminal work Metahistory in 1973, constructivist thought has been a key force within theory of history and has at times even provided inspiration for historians more generally. Despite the radical theoretical shift marked by constructivism and elaborated in detail by its proponents, confusion regarding many of its practical and ethical consequences persists, however, and its position on truth and meaning is routinely misconstrued. To remedy this situation, The Work of History seeks to mediate between constructivist theory and history practitioners' intuitions about the nature of their work, especially as these relate to the so-called fact–fiction debate and to the literary challenges involved in the production of historical accounts. In doing so, the book also offers much-needed insight into debates about our experiential relations with the past, the political use of history and the role of facts in the contestation of power.

1
Narrative Truth

The qualification of “truth” with “narrative” in the chapter title is intended as a provocation. When the question of history’s status as a kind of literary knowledge was introduced to mainstream discussions of history by Hayden White—in the 1960s and 1970s’ context in which aspirations that history be taken seriously as science still largely dominated the discipline—all such ideas certainly seem to have provoked strong reactions. Today, after four or five decades of debate, some vague attachments to an unqualified truth may still linger on in the minds (or at least hearts) of history practitioners, yet less rigorous ideas like that of “narrative truth” appear by-and-large to have become acceptable. There still exist, however, limiting biases that are easily incorporated into discussions of such thinking—perhaps to curb radical readings and to control the damage, as it were. Against any attempted domestications of White’s thought, I will present an argument for “narrative truth” in what I take to be the spirit of White’s constructivism. Although the possibility and definition of such truth raises issues that are not exclusive to the practice of history, I will here tackle things from the standpoint of that discipline as well as of related discussions within the theory of history. In spite of this narrower focus, the significance of “narrative truth” beyond the boundaries of history should be obvious.

The first bias that the prefacing of truth with any qualifier suggests is that there is something that “truth” alone somehow unproblematically marks, that there is, so to speak, a genus that “narrative truth” is a subspecies of. Given the ways in which we generally use language this is a justified prejudice. The pairing of the words here marks a contested space, however: “Narrative truth” is a useful concept precisely because it also questions the possibility of truth plain, beyond the introduction of a certain level of discursive complexity, beyond, that is, the point at which we enter into the sphere of more complex linguistic representations. The same does not necessarily hold for qualifiers such as “partial,” “subjective,” “perspectival” and so on. Or at least, not in a similar way. Any such epistemologically and hermeneutically oriented qualifiers still hold out the possibility of an objective or at least determinable truth.

The first thing to understand, then, is the idea—familiar from White as well as other pioneering (dare I say “scepticist”?) thinkers—that truth, in the sense of meaning, is not “out there” (an issue that I already discuss in the Preface; for more on that, see, for example, Rorty 1989, especially 4–5; Jenkins 2009, 256). Meaning is not something that can be discovered. And nor is it—and this follows—something that can be independent of construction. This position is presented well in relation to history in one of White’s undoubtedly best-known statements—and one that has caused a great deal of controversy. In “The Historical Text as Literary Artefact,” White exhorts us to “consider historical narratives as what they most manifestly are: verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences” (White 1978b, 82).

Importantly, this problematic of truth does not—maintains White, along with like-minded theorists of history, such as Frank Ankersmit and Keith Jenkins, for instance—present quite the same challenges on the level of what can be termed “singular existential statements,” on the level of facts, that is, since these are not in the same way subject to complex narrativization. The main focus of narrative theorists of history or narrative constructivists like White is, then, on the meaning-making processes of histories.¹ Rather than stopping at discussions of language and reference on a fundamental level, these narrative constructivists quickly move on to problems specific to the kinds of more involved discursive practices to which history too belongs. Thus, even though it would at points be possible to criticize them from the perspective of philosophy of language—to focus on how they refuse to appreciate that the question of reference is equally problematic on the level of individual facts—such critique misses the main drive of their arguments.² For them, agreeing to operate on terms of straightforward truth-value and reference makes sense on the level of singular statements but is not a valid way of relating to narratives and representation. Here, something else is needed. (Other biases that interfere with understanding the somewhat poetic idea of narrative truth relate more to the notion of narrative as explanation than to the question of truth in this narrower sense of knowledge. I will explore these further below.)

In addition to being an expression of a non-reductionist worldview, the narrative constructivist choice is a practical one. Even if there is no “truth at the end of inquiry” (indeed, even if it turns out that there is no end to inquiry once we actually think things through), we need not give up on dis-cursive practices. And nor do we need to give up on trying to make socially useful contributions through engaging in those practices.³ The idea is that the availability of truth simpliciter is not a prerequisite for choices and action. And, obversely, that the flag of “truth” should not be used as an argument for the adoption of some specific values. I will go on to discuss all of this in more detail. For now, this rhetorical framing by White perhaps best prepares the way:

And as for the notion of a true story, this is virtually a contradiction in terms. All stories are fictions. Which means, of course, that they can be true only in a metaphorical sense and in the sense in which a figure of speech can be true. Is this true enough?

(White 1999, 9; my emphasis)⁴

The idea of narrative truth could equally well be presented in terms of “the content of the form” (which is arguably White’s best-known formulation of the general notion), “figurative truth,” “metaphorical insight” and so on. For me, the usefulness of the idea follows from its invoking constructedness and a process of formal closure in tandem with the idea of some level of broadly shared truth or insight. In other words, it best suggests both the idea of truth-creation and the simultaneous appeal to something already familiar. Hence, and while I do not claim that narrative truth can replace these other formulations, I will pursue that idea now, all the while intending narrative in a minimally restrictive sense.⁵ Indeed, as far as I can see, speaking of narrative in a narrow sense would not resonate at all with a reading of White’s theoretical intentions. And neither would it be very useful for discussing historical representation as a genre. What is more, although White does refer to the alternative forms of history that he is often after as “antinarrative nonstories,” he is still best understood as a “narrative” constructivist since that more focused terminology serves to separate his point of view—which centres on the form (and “the content of the form”) of history writing—from purely epistemological discussions concerning the construction of knowledge. As he reminds:

The notion of the content of linguistic form scumbles the distinction between literal and figurative discourses and authorizes a search for and analysis of the function of the figurative elements in historiographical, no less than in fictional, prose.

(White 1999, 4)

What Is History Not?

Implicit in White’s question “Is this true enough?”—which I will represent here as asking: “Is it enough that history can provide us with examples of ways of acting and thinking, with metaphorical insight and figurative truth?”—is also the whole of his epistemological argument regarding the nature of historical representation—of, that is, historical narrative and narrativization.⁶ The stance of narrative constructivism that this argument marks out concerns, then, in its first part, history’s epistemological standing. As such, it is equatable with general linguistic-turn, poststructuralist and “postmodern” positions advocating scepticism regarding truth and meaning. At the same time, however, with its refusal of essences and recognition of a general “discursive condition,” this critique questions the naturalness of history as a genre, too.

I will begin from this still broad yet now history-specific point: history (as a practice, and also, if so understood, as an orientation or “historical” worldview) is not in any way “natural,” and nor is it beyond itself being historicized. On this issue, White’s challenge to the discipline is at its greatest. For him, history is “a kind of historical accident,” the continued existence of which is not self-evident. It is worth quoting him at some length on this:

historians of this generation must be prepared to face the possibility that the prestige which their profession enjoyed among nineteenth-century intellectuals was a consequence of determinable cultural forces. They must be prepared to entertain the notion that history, as currently conceived, is a kind of historical accident, a product of a specific historical situation, and that, with the passing of the misunderstandings that produced that situation, history itself may lose its status as an autonomous and self-authenticating mode of thought. It may well be that the most difficult task which the current generation of historians will be called upon to perform is to expose the historically conditioned character of the historical discipline.

(White 1978b, 29, my emphasis)

So, although White mostly seems to want to offer opportunities for history’s continued existence, he certainly does not claim that there is some automatic privilege or position afforded to the discipline as we know it now. Indeed, this recognition of its “historically conditioned” character can be viewed as the central challenge to history today. At the very least, it means that history and historians would need to offer some reasons for engaging with the past in this specific disciplinary form. And that is what White’s critique has (most often) been directed at helping them do. But, despite White’s decision to choose to support history, it should be noted that alternative conclusions—like those recommending that we finish with history as a practice as presented by Keith Jenkins—would be equally valid according to this way of thinking. Since sensibilities regarding what is considered acceptable as “history” gradually change, it only makes sense that we might one day also simply choose to abandon the practice. (See especially Jenkins 2009; Pihlainen 2013a; cf. White’s turn away from the challenges of history to focus more on “the practical past” instead [White 2014b].)

As a consequence, choosing history in the disciplinary form in which it presently exists rather than assuming that such historical thinking is a necessary condition of human existence or a fundamental “cognitive category,” for instance, is a crucial step toward understanding the kind of truth that it might be able to provide. In addition, there are various “misunderstandings”—largely resulting from intuitive biases or unwar-ranted extensions of common sense and “experience”—relating to the necessity of history that easily appear in discussions of anything akin to narrative truth and that need to be taken into account. Here, in this section, I will attempt to articulate what I take to be the central challenges in terms of three specific (albeit closely interrelated) misunderstandings, saving a crucial fourth one for the final section of the chapter. Critique and clarification of these misunderstandings is more specifically focused on the question of what history as a narrative-making activity is and is not (as well as why it cannot be many of those things). While that discussion thus also still relates to the question of literal truth, it does so in more precise ways.

The first of the more specific misunderstandings affecting views of the nature of historical work follows closely on the heels both of the idea of a truth “out there” and of the received assumption that history is somehow a natural category for making sense of the world. This is the recurring intuition that narratives themselves are “real,” as if existing somehow independently outside or beyond processes of meaning-construction. Despite the immediate counterintuitiveness of this way of thinking (to me at least), it has found influential supporters—most prominently in Alasdair MacIntyre and David Carr. Extending this point of view to historical work, narratives could indeed be “discovered” by historians, and narrative truth would signify a particular aspect of the world in some more fundamental sense than when that world is qualified as being “under description.” This idea can be set against the far more understandable and general claim that narrative as form and process is a way of “making sense” of things (a continuous process of impositions of meaning and pragmatic engagements; see Carr 2008, for example, for a useful reading of what takes place in “narrative explanation”).

Even Frank Ankersmit has recently presented an argument for real aspects with respect to “representation as a cognitive instrument.” In order to explain his position, he employs the (Heideggerian) idea of the “self-revelation” of reality combined with a captivating metaphor of representation as shining a light onto reality, bringing out particular aspects of it. As he sees it, the kind of “representational truth” that this process can offer “bridges the gap between language and the world by the representation’s capacity to highlight certain aspects of reality” (Ankersmit 2013b, 182). Although such truth indeed sounds perfectly placed to provide a working compromise between purely linguistic construction and an unmediated access to reality in terms of phenomenological experience, it still fails, I would say, when one tries to extend it to historical representation. I will try to explain this in some more detail.

The core difference between Ankersmit’s view of aspects and the idea of narrative truth that I argue for here centres on his belief that the world “reveals” representational truth about itself—or, as he also puts it, truth “is to be found in the world” and, further, that this truth “announces itself.” As he quite rightly points out, such a conception of truth needs to be a “radically desubjectified” one. (Ankersmit 2013b, 183)⁷ But when “representation” is used in the sense that it is when referring to literary artefacts—linguistic constructions such as historical representations, for example—it seems that the parameters for what we might quite acceptably claim when speaking of mental representations in a philosophy of mind framework (or a phenomenological framework relating to “lived experience” for that matter) no longer apply. While Ankersmit does not appear to intend his idea of representation to include the extreme idea of narratives “out there,” it can feed into that argument too, unless care is taken to distinguish mental representations and subjectively constructed and experienced “life” stories from more elaborate linguistic representations.

With that distinction in place, however, the very idea that “narratives” or “representation” are viewed as means for making sense of the world already argues the constructivist side of things. For what else could it mean to say that they are cognitive instruments, tools in our cognitive processes? To put it bluntly: at a basic level, the appeal to cognition in itself seems to preclude the idea of some immediate or direct avenue to aspects of the world assumed by the kind of romantic materialism that arguments like these presented by Ankersmit now would otherwise imply. (This can be illustrated with an analogy to perception: perceptual faculties are not, strictly speaking, instruments of cognition although they may engage and involve cognitive processing.)

Defending the idea that the narratives presented by historians are somehow real would seem necessary only if we already had access to (or indeed evidence of) such narratives in the first place. The practical fact—as presented by Carr, and more recently still supported by, at least, Geoffrey Roberts (1997) and, in a more nuanced way, Jonathan A. Carter (2003)—that people had understandings, intentions and stories by which they conceived of their own lives only serves to highlight the ubiquitousness of narrative as a sense-making strategy and has no bearing on the discussion about historians’ narratives.⁸ Indeed, it is painfully misdirected when applied to historical representation. I will return to the confusion that I think easily undergirds all such views in the final section of the chapter and will thus offer only a general conclusion concerning it here: while narrative form can be viewed as an essential cognitive tool (and, by extension, narration, interpretation or explanation as essential processes), it is a curious mistake to extend this same centrality to historical narratives.⁹

Since we can have no direct historical experience (continuing to assume that “history” refers to the non-subjective past under description), constructing historical narratives for cognitive purposes does not count even as a necessary existential condition—whereas the construction of interpretations situating lived experiences on a phenomenological continuum clearly does. The assumption of existential necessity would, after all, amount to saying that there is something to the historical past (that is, to those parts of the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Narrative Truth
• 2 Rereading Constructivism
• 3 An End to Oppositional History?
• 4 Communication and Constraint
• 5 History in the World
• 6 Reforming Representation
• 7 The Confines of the Form
• Bibliography
• Index