PART I:
THE HAD FORUM AND MOVEMENT
Chapter 1
The Return of History
Carlos Barros
Remember the saying âYou can't have your cake and eat it tooâ? For those of us on the organizational committee of the conference History Under Debate (HaD or Historia Ă Debate), our efforts have seemed limited to solving logistic problems rather than contributing to the debates themselves. Although not participating fully in this conference, it is only reasonable that we put forward some of the key issues in and strategies for History Under Debate. The conference convener should take a leadership role. Likewise, some of our reflections on the development of these conferences are colored by, not only three days of presentations and discussions, but six months of intense preparations. During this time we had the opportunity to verify your enthusiastic response to this new forumâyour attendance and participation are the living proof of thisâas well as, of course, some reticence which indicates the challenge to our work so far, which itself suggests work to be done in expanding our debate.
While important roundtable discussions and presentations remain, and debate continues, I would like to comment on some expectations from such an international macro gathering of historians, when a lack of historical perspective during the conference itself could, depending on how you view it, be either a hindrance or a benefit.
Let us first consider our âimmediate history,â or the evolution of contemporary events when scarcely half a year remains of the twentieth century. Then, let me speak of the immediate History by historians or, in other words, âimmediate historiography,â and finally to conclude with some proposals regarding a new paradigm gaining some consensus among those who practice in this profession (Barros, 1999b), the construction of which some of us have been involved in, one way or another, for some time (Barros, 1995 [1997]).
HISTORY ACCELERATES
The last decade of the twentieth century has proven to be unexpected, to say the least. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, taking us unaware with an occurrence that precipitated what Francis Fukuyama (1992) has called âthe end of Historyâ as we have known it. As noted already in 1994 during a roundtable about Chiapas, Mexico, âHistory recommences for someâ (Barros, 1995a). This seems evident when, ten years later in 1999, the first NATO war in fifty years broke out. Just when it seemed that, with the disappearance of military blocks and the end of the cold war, the world under the auspices of the UN (thanks to its âblue helmetsâ) would be in a position to safeguard a new world order based on peace, a war broke out in Europe with dis-proportional violence for the first time since World War II, instigated by Western powers. War remains, therefore, in the continuation of politics, regardless of other means, not just for the small countries of the former Soviet bloc or the third world with their internal or border conflicts, but for the great powers of the world as well. What better indication at the threshold of the new millennium that History indeed has not ended?1
We have gone from one surprise to the next during the 1990s. The old as well as new contradictions continue to show and push history forward.2The teleological predictions that followed the collapse of the so-called socialist regimes in Eastern Europe have not occurred. Obviously, history continues to exist and we historians know only too well that it is hardly possible to âguaranteeâ any given future on the basis of today's prevailing interests and mentalities. This leaves room for alternative futures: the Future is open-ended. That is the way it has been in the past. But the words of historians like us, who have not forsaken speaking about the present and of the future, are not enough. Only when immediate history confirms that history continues to exist can social-action agents recover their full capacity to think historically. Historical thought is often blurred by currently biased attitudes caught in the present that paradoxically prevail among some historians.
The acceleration of history we are witnessingâsymptom, cause, and effect of globalization in all its aspects, as well as the development of information technologiesâis typical of the periods of rapid historical transition. It is resulting in society demanding that History be rewritten. History, therefore, pulls History along. New and old social, cultural, and political subjects seek at the threshold of the new millennium their legitimization in Historyâethnic groups and states; ideologies and religions; social and nationalist movements; the local and the regional; the national and the global. The speed of the present expansion and integration processes we call globalization generates confusing tendencies, the full comprehension of which proves unattainable if we ignore the time factorâif we do not relate Past, Present, and Future.
The fast change from 1989 onward compels us to find out where we have come from to understand better who we are, and especially where we are going.3 Of course, the coming century will not be like Orwell's 1984. It will probably need History, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities to the same extent, if not more so, than the twentieth century.4 As globalization advances, it turns everything upside down in all spheres (society, politics, culture, and mentalities), upsetting the identities of ethnic-national communities and social groups at every level, as well as their relationships with the economy, with the state, and, in sum, with History. This process of breaks and discontinuity, reconstruction in time and space, no doubt, will become even more common in the century just beginning.
In this framework, what is the responsibility and role of History? Of historians?
So far, it is not historians who are taking advantage of this growing social demand for History, but novelists and, at some distance after them, journalists. The widespread success of the historical novel, which affects every historical epoch, is apparent in every country on all continents.5 To a certain extent, the social crisis of History is both a cause and a consequence of the âoccupationâ by novelists and other nonprofessional historians in the sphere that âbelongsâ to historians as official intermediaries between the Past, Present, and Future.6Such a preoccupation does not solve in the least the fundamental problem; rather it aggravates the situation. The relationship between the citizens of the global village and History cannot be based on fiction (less so in the case of old states and nationalities, whose identities reemerge and are reshaped with globalization, unless we have learned nothing from History). The invention of a past creates the risk of politically motivated manipulation of History and, consequently, paves the way to totalitarism.
Rigorous History is needed now more than ever, but it is also more feasible than ever because now we accept more readily the influence of observers upon their object of observation; of the historian upon the issue being researched; and of the community of specialists upon what is and what is not scientific truth. It is now when History can be conceived as a valid science in accord with today's Natural and Social Sciences, which certainly does not compromise their responsibility toward the Present and the Future.7
THE POSITIVIST TURN
In contrast to the great paradigms of the twentieth century, and the pressure by readers, publishers, and the media as a whole in favor of the historical novel, novelists, literature theoreticians, and philosophers, which put History and Literature on an equal plain, professional History is being taken back to its prehistory. This is not a self-serving attack on Literature, or pitting History against Literature, but just recognizes another episode in the everlasting interdisciplinary struggle for knowledge, and the relationship between academe and the reading public. How are professional historians reacting to this?
One track in this conference followed by a large section of the international community of historians combines reflection on and debate about methodology, historiography, and the theory of History in relation to empirical work, academe as a whole, and the social usefulness of our discipline.8 They seek jointly and explicitly to influence the construction of the new paradigm of History without pretending to wield a magic wand or considering themselves in possession of the absolute truth.9
Some colleagues, however, think that the answers to the current historiographic uncertainties are in the âsecurityâ of archives; sources and source criticism; and individual work independent of any group, school, or historiographic trend, except to adhere to a proclamation 100 years ago that the role of the historian was to reconstruct the past âas it was.â10 In other cases, what could be called a âstand-byâ attitude is apparentâone which waits for the historiographic field to be cleared by those in the profession immersed in debate and experimentation, without realizing that the practice of each and every one of us influences, by omission as well as action, the writing of History. Obviously, a mere âreturn to the archivesâ is the circumstantial fruit of the crisis, but it makes no sense as a historiographic alternative for the future. Only if we had returned to the society, the culture, and the policy of the nineteenth century would it be possible for History to go back to the nineteenth century, as some seem to suggest without ever really admitting it. We should not, nonetheless, underestimate this âtraditional turnâ because it could, whether one likes it or not, hamper or distort the opportunity for History to jump ahead as a final conclusion of the turn-of-the-century historiographic transition. Let us not forget that the most notorious failures by ânew historiansâ in the Annaliste, Marxist, and neo-Positivist traditions originated in underestimating the weight of the negative postulates of nineteenth-century tradition in communities of historians, including their own ranks.
How has this âgreat returnâ tendency come about (a minority on the increase), and is it not to be halted?
First, we have had a return to traditional historiographic themes, notably biography and political history. This was discussed by Jacques Le Goff at the First International History Under Debate Conference (1993). He advocated both a theoretical and practical reformulation of such themes along with other classical genres using the approaches of new History to advance into a new/old History synthesis, which in our view should also include narrative history (Le Goff, 1996). However, the substitution of the great socioeconomic research topics for the âgreat men,â and the political and military events in which they were involved, has continued to gain ground, but it has seldom brought about new methodological approaches. The traditional subject matter drags along the old methodology, especially in the case of biographic History. Thus the fatalism, which we do not share, of some historians who specifically affirm that the object of research of the âold Historyâ is inseparable from Positivism and its corresponding ideological conservatism (which are not always the same, given our use of these terms), at least momentarily. Something not usually said is that this has been the case thus far because we have failed to develop sufficiently a historical account or a biographic History from any advance in methodologies. Are we in time to change this?
The second phase of a return to what some of us continue to call âold Historyâ is more of an epistemological nature: the complex certainties of the 1960s-1970s are sustained by the old reliance on the sources and their criticism as the main foundation, and virtually the only one, of the historical profession. This is a historiographic retreat that distances us from the cultural demands which society imposes. The demand for historical heroes and myths in the old-style historiography (favored by totalitarian regimes and fundamentalist ideologies) is now confined to a minority among cultured circles. Nor is it enough to provide dates and marshal data, refer to names and present bare facts. It is necessary to preâ and re-elaborate documentary information for the cultural background to be understood and to address the inquiries of the average turn-of-the-century reader who is very different from the nineteenth-century Romantic reader of History then written.11
The âgreat returnâ to traditional History, with its topics, methods, and theories, hits rock bottom in this new era, but this begins to generate debates and sporadic responses, which should be promoted even further.12 By exposing the looming historical involution at History Under Debate we hope to be in a better position to face the dangers we deplore. This âPositivist turnâ is not an organized movement and is not always deliberate on the part of its protagonists. We ask the following question: Why do we not returnâsince we are dealing with returnsâto the definition of the profession made by Jacques Le Goff in the preface to Time, Work, and Culture in Medieval Europe (Sp. trans., 1978, p. 7)? âHistory is done with documents and ideas, with sources and imagination.â No doubt we would be thankful for such History, and we would then be more congruent with our own histo-riographic trajectory. Actually this may not be enough, however, because the return to History requires a âreturn to the future,â even if it means taking one step backward to take two steps forward later âŚ
The ongoing âPositivist turnâ is not reflected adequately in our second conference. The haste in its organization contributed to its underexposure, but it is represented in contemporary Spanish historiography. This tendency, however, is readily apparent also in French historiography, historically linked to the Annales, and, no doubt, can be found elsewhere.13 We might encourage readers to look around criticially, and to join in constructive criticism about this worrisome regression in our historiographic movement. We have noted in the organizational committee that some Spanish colleagues and friends, who in 1993 were willing to debate, reflect, and âstruggleâ for a new kind of History, are no longer interested in such problems in the discipline but maintain individual research agendas increasingly colored with more classical and less critical tones.14 At the same time, in contrast to the first conference, note in the second HaD gathering regenerated interest by contributors, especially among the Spanish participants (30 percent of attendees), in such debate. This unavoidable cross-generation renewal, which will probably be more evident in 2004, does not automatically confront the challenge that the âPositiv-ist turnâ poses for our discipline. Some of the young historians are also historiographically conservative and have no advantage, like the 1968 generation, of having experienced such an innovative stage in both methodology and historical commi...