Philosophy of History After Hayden White

Robert Doran

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781474248860
• eBook ISBN: 9781441147479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: North American History

This anthology of new essays by an international group of preeminent scholars explores the ground-breaking work of Hayden White, whose thought, beginning with his seminal Metahistory (1973), has revolutionized the way we think about the philosophy of history, historiography, narrative, and the relation between history and literature. Representing a variety of disciplines and approaches, the contributions to this volume testify to the far-reaching effects and significance of White's philosophy of history. Individual essays relate White's ideas to contemporary art, cognitive studies, Heideggerian hermeneutics, experimental history, Kant's transcendental philosophy, analytic philosophy of history, Marxist cultural theory, the Kantian sublime, and American academic historiography. A substantial introduction by the editor traces the genesis of White's philosophy of history, situating it with respect to both the Anglo-American and Continental traditions. The volume also features a previously unpublished essay by White, which offers a concise overview of his later thought, and a "Comment" written specifically for this volume, in which White revisits the question of the philosophy of history.

Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy

Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy presents cutting-edge scholarship in both the history of and contemporary movements in American philosophy. The wholly original arguments, perspectives and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and stimulating resource for students and academics from across the field.

America’s First Women Philosophers, Dorothy G. Rogers

Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism, Alexandra L. Shuford

John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality, Joshua Rust

The Legacy of John Rawls, edited by Thom Brooks and Fabian Freyenhagen

Nozick, Autonomy and Compensation, Dale F. Murray

Peirce, James, and a Pragmatic Philosophy of Religion, John W. Woell

Peirce’s Philosophy of Communication, Mats Bergman

Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry, Elizabeth Cooke

Pragmatist Metaphysics, Sami Pihlström

Quine on Meaning, Eve Gaudet

Quine’s Naturalism, Paul A. Gregory

Reality and Its Appearance, Nicholas Rescher

Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy, Timothy M. Mosteller

Richard Rorty, edited by Alexander Gröschner, Colin Koopman and Mike Sandbothe

Richard Rorty’s New Pragmatism, Edward J. Grippe

Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution, James A. Marcum

Varieties of Pragmatism, Douglas McDermid

Virtue Ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre, Stephen Carden

Philosophy of History
After Hayden White

Edited and with an Introduction
by Robert Doran

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square	175 Fifth Avenue
London	New York
WC1B 3DP	NY 10010
UK	USA

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2013

© Robert Doran and Contributors, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978–1–4411–4747–9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Philosophy of history after Hayden White / edited by Robert Doran.

p. cm. -- (Bloomsbury studies in american philosophy)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4411-0821-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-4822-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-4747-9 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-4553-6 (pdf) 1. White, Hayden V., 1928- 2. Historiography. 3. History--Philosophy. 4. Literature and history. I. Doran, Robert, 1968-

D15.W46P55 2013

901--dc23

2012046568

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Contents

Editor’s Note

Contributors

Illustrations

Editor’s Introduction: Choosing the Past: Hayden White and the Philosophy of History

Robert Doran

1 History as Fulfillment

Hayden White

2 A Plea for a Cognitivist Approach to White’s Tropology

F. R. Ankersmit

3 Deliver Us from A-Historicism: Metahistory for Non-Historians

Mieke Bal

4 Hayden White’s Hope, or the Politics of Prefiguration

Karyn Ball

5 Hayden White and Me: Two Systems of Philosophy of History

Arthur C. Danto

6 Uneven Temporalities/Untimely Pasts: Hayden White and the Question of Temporal Form

Harry Harootunian

7 Hopeful Monsters or, The Unfulfilled Figure in Hayden White’s Conceptual System

Hans Kellner

8 Rhetorical Theory/Theoretical Rhetoric: Some Ambiguities in the Reception of Hayden White’s Work

Gabrielle M. Spiegel

9 Hayden White and Non-Non-Histories

Richard T. Vann

10 From the Problem of Evil to Hermeneutic Philosophy of History: For Hayden White

Gianni Vattimo

11 Comment

Hayden White

Notes

Index

Editor’s Note

I would like to thank Hayden White for his support during the preparation of this volume and for his “Comment,” which appears at the end. I would also like to thank the University of Rochester, where I currently teach, for its generous sponsorship of the 2009 conference, “Between History and Narrative: Colloquium in Honor of Hayden White,” where the early versions of five contributions to this volume were first presented. Many thanks to Margaret Brose, for her elegant translation of Gianni Vattimo’s essay, and to Ana Torfs, for permission to reproduce photographs of her work. Finally, I am grateful to Camilla Erskine, my editor at Bloomsbury, for her kind and careful attention to this project.

Contributors

F. R. Ankersmit is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and Historical Theory at Groningen University, The Netherlands, and a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Ghent and is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Philosophy of History. His most recent book is Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (2012), published by Cornell University Press. His other books include: Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis of the Historian’s Language (1983); History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (1994); Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value (1996); Historical Representation (2001); Political Representation (2002); and Sublime Historical Experience (2005). He is the editor, with Hans Kellner and Ewa Domanska, of Re-Figuring Hayden White (2009).

Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic, has been a Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Professor. Her interests range from biblical and classical antiquity to seventeenth-century and contemporary art, modern literature, feminism, and migratory culture. Her recent books include: Of What One Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedo’s Political Art (2011), Loving Yusuf (2008), A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002), and Narratology (3rd edition 2009). She is also a video-artist, making experimental documentaries on migration. Her first fiction feature, A Long History of Madness, was made with Michelle Williams Gamaker. She is currently working on a series of video installations, later to be turned into a feature film, titled Madame B, based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. She occasionally serves as an independent curator.

Karyn Ball is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. Her areas of research and teaching interests include Holocaust studies, theories of memory, trauma, narrative, and film. She is the author of Disciplining the Holocaust (2008, paperback 2009) and the editor of Traumatizing Theory: The Cultural Politics of Affect in and Beyond Psychoanalysis (2007). She has also edited a special issue of Parallax (2005) on “Visceral Reason” and a special issue of Cultural Critique (2000) on “Trauma and Its Cultural Aftereffects.” Her current book project is entitled The Entropics of Discourse: Climates of Loss in Contemporary Criticism, which focuses on melancholic tropes in cultural theory.

Arthur C. Danto is Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Columbia University, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Criticism in 1990. His latest books are What Art Is (2013) and Andy Warhol (2009), both published by Yale University Press. His other publications include: Analytical Philosophy of History (1965); Nietzsche as Philosopher (1965); Analytical Philosophy of Action (1973); Jean-Paul Sartre (1975); The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (1981); Narration and Knowledge (1985); Encounters and Reflections: Art in the Historical Present (1990); Beyond the Brillo Box: The Visual Arts in Post-Historical Perspective (1992); Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy (1997); After the End of Art (1997); The Madonna of the Future: Essays in a Pluralistic Art World (2000); The Abuse of Beauty (2003). An anthology of essays on his work, edited by Daniel Herwitz and Michael Kelly, was published by Columbia University Press in 2007: Action, Art, History: Engagements with Arthur C. Danto.

Robert Doran is James P. Wilmot Assistant Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Rochester. He has edited two books: Mimesis and Theory: Essays on Literature and Criticism, 1953–2005, by René Girard (2008), and The Fiction of Narrative: Essays on History, Literature, and Theory, 1957–2007, by Hayden White (2010). He is also the editor of special issues of SubStance, “Cultural Theory after 9/11: Terror, Relig...

Table of contents

• Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy