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Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism: Implications for Historians Author(s): Thomas C. Patterson Reviewed work(s): Source: Social History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 83-88 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285738 . Accessed: 05/10/2012 06:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social History. http://www.jstor.org

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Page 1: Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism: Implications for Historians

Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism: Implications for HistoriansAuthor(s): Thomas C. PattersonReviewed work(s):Source: Social History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1989), pp. 83-88Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4285738 .Accessed: 05/10/2012 06:34

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social History.

http://www.jstor.org

Page 2: Post-Structuralism, Post-Modernism: Implications for Historians

ARGUMENT

Thomas C. Patterson

Post-structuralism, post-

modernism: implications for

historians

The newly established Centre for Research in the Humanities at Copenhagen University sponsored a two-day conference on the construction and representation of history in November I987. The participants included fourteen social anthropologists, archaeol- ogists, historical ethnologists, historians and literary critics from Denmark, England and the United States. Their theoretical perspectives ranged from Marxist to Annales school, from structuralist and semiotic to post-structuralist, from empiricist and idealist to materialist. Some advocated theoretically coherent positions; others adopted more fluid and eclectic viewpoints that defied easy characterization. Some of the papers discussed will appear in Culture and History, a journal published by the Centre. 1

The conference was both rewarding and important. It brought the spectre of post- structuralism and post-modernism into sharp focus. A variety of topics were discussed. The writing of history in the context of class and nation, hegemony, orientalism, historians as state and oppositional intellectuals, and the constitution of world history were the more central ones. However, lurking behind the debate, just out of sight for the most part, were the issues raised by post-structuralism and post-modernism. These surfaced when phrases like 'history is narrative', 'narratives are texts', or 'meaning is encoded in language' were seized as a point of departure. Those who pursued the metaphor were arguing, in effect, that, since life is narrative, it must have a language and, if it has a language, then it can be deconstructed. This line of reasoning bracketed alternative explanations of history, excluding them from consideration.

It also raised questions about the bases for privileging one narrative or author at the expense of others. The proponents of this view argued that it was impossible to privilege one text over another. Different authors could construct alternative narratives of the same events; and there was no way to choose among them. The various narratives, they contended, were constructed from data that were independent of and existed prior to any theoretical explanation of history. This appeal to classic empiricism yielded a theoretical

I Subscriptions to the journal can be obtained from the Museum Tusculanum Press, Copen-

hagen University, Njalsgade 94, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark.

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84 Social History VOL. 14: NO. I

pluralism that neither challenged nor engaged in any critical way conflicting re- presentations or reconstructions of past societies. The juxtaposition of this reasoning with some of the views more conventionally held by historians produced surprising linkages and mixtures. It encourages highly individualistic interpretations; it implies that scholars could focus on their own narratives, keeping change to a minimum and within manageable bounds (Sims I986: io). Thus it serves to maintain the status quo.

The discussions also showed clearly that historians cannot summarily dismiss post- structuralism and post-modernism as nuisances, nor can they uncritically adopt their arguments. The two terms refer to distinct but overlapping terrains of discourse. What I propose to do here is to examine each, to consider the contexts in which they develop and thrive, to point to their interconnections, and to consider the implications they have for writing socially and politically informed history.

The early development of post-structuralism was centred in France during the I96os

and I970s.2 The various strands of post-structuralist thought build on the tension between structuralism and phenomenology (Macksey and Donato I970; Merquior I986). Two currents, whose foundations were laid respectively by Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, are especially prominent.3 During the I970s, Foucault focused on three interrelated issues: (i) the subjugation of the individual to suprapersonal authority; (2) the will to knowledge and power; and (3) the location or role of the author (Rabinow I984). His analyses of the first issue dealt with the interplay between modes of domination and various dividing practices and processes of self-formation that isolate, classify and constrain individuals, giving them social and personal identities. With regard to the second, he argued that all kinds of knowledge are thoroughly enmeshed in struggles for domination in western society; in fact, the will to knowledge cannot be disconnected from the will to power. Furthermore, he suggested, the emphasis on abstract theorizing about power mystifies rather than clarifies how it actually functions in western society. In considering the third issue, Foucault pointed to the complex relations between authors who construct historical accounts, their position of dominance vis-a-vis their readers, and the roles they play in wider struggles over power.

Derrida, by contrast, has been concerned with the elusiveness of texts, with how inscriptions become literature, and with what takes places between literature and philosophy, literature and science, literature and theology (Derrida i983). Between I967

and I975, he argued that there were certain long-standing constraints in western philosophy, that constituted hidden contracts between bodies of knowledge, institutions and power; these were inscribed in and demonstrated by texts. This meant that philosophy could not be separated from cultural, political or other forces contending for power. The continued authority of certain texts through time, Derrida suggested, was not valorized by these outside forces but rather by misreadings of the texts themselves. Misreadings were and are possible, because texts contain opposed, undecidable meanings. This is their real power. Deconstruction, the method he advocated to unpack the undecidable meanings in texts in order to grasp their contradictory determinations,

2 Vincent Descombes (1980), Peter Dews (I987) and Richard Harlan (I987) provide exceptionally clear discussions of the circum- stances and contexts in which the various

strands of post-structuralist thought formed and developed.

I Edward Said (I983:178-225) contrasts the perspectives of Foucault and Derrida.

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January 1989 Post-structuralism and post-modernism 85

challenges their current axiomatic readings. It simultaneously maintains that un- decidability and disseminates meanings and interpretations that were not consciously intended by the author (Ryan I982 :9-42; Said I983:200-5; Smith I988:41-55).

In France, the various strands of post-structuralism were confined largely to academic philosophy. Since the mid-1970s, academic literary critics in the United States and, apparently to a lesser extent, in England have adopted and promoted post-structuralist thought, especially Derrida's concern with the text and textualism. Derrida (1983),

however, has distanced himself from the romantic practices of Americans who view the world as nothing more than a linguistic object and who have turned deconstruction from an attempt to rediscover the revolutionary force of modernism to an exercise in 'reveal[ing] the sameness and greatness of the major literary texts' (MacCabe I987:xii; Ryan I982 :xiv-xv). In the United States, Foucault's writings seem to have attracted the attention of scholars and technicians outside the field of literary criticism; so far, however, their impact appears to have been less profound than Derrida's. Their influence is also confined almost exclusively to the academy.

The debates concerning post-modernism have been waged on a different terrain.4 Post-modernism has been variously described as: (i) the cultural correlate of late capitalism; (2) the cultural correlate of post-industrial society in which knowledge is the principal force of production; (3) contemporary cultural production without reference to political economic determinants; (4) an aesthetic and philosophical production that transcends periodization and is not bound by specific political economic determinants; (S) a cyclical movement that appears before the emergence of new forms of modernism; and (6) an anti-intellectualism that threatens the humanism and enlightenment of modernist culture. This diversity of descriptions is further compounded, because the practitioners of one medium and their commentators often define post-modernism in terms that have little connection with those referring to other media, and because the contours of the debates over post-modernism differ significantly from one state to another (Bernstein 1987: 45-7; Huyssen I986:i6i; Jameson I984).

The various characterizations of post-modernism share a concern with the creation of cultural forms that are dialectically related and opposed to those of modernism. Several descriptions also seem to imply that cultural creation is both more explosive and diverse when political economic contradictions intensify; however, they disagree over whether this is historically specific to late capitalism or a more general phenomenon. They are also concerned with how the 'culture industries' of various countries have co-opted, commodified and reproduced culture, transforming it from something genuine that gives voice to the sensibilities of peoples with a sense of collective identity into a spurious exchange-value that satisfies the needs of consumer capitalism. They also point to the distinctive trajectories and contours of cultural production in different states, suggesting that what is politically reactionary in one country may still retain some of its subversive power in another (Huyssen I986:I60-22I; Jameson I984). How do we unpack and understand the oppositions that exist between various forms of cultural creation both

4Andreas Huyssen (I986:I60-2iI) and Frederic Jameson (I984) provide readily accessible discussions of post-modernism and

the controversies that have swirled around it in different capitalist states.

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86 Social History VOL. 14: NO. I

within the same state and between states that have traversed different roads of political economic development?

Post-structuralism and post-modernism become connected in an arena of discourse shaped by questions concerned with the creation of culture. Culture, in this sense, refers to forms of social consciousness that give meaning to the conditions and public expressions of human praxis. These forms of consciousness are bound up with the existing statement of affairs and with the conditions for changing them. In class-stratified societies, the creation of culture is contested terrain, especially when it threatens established forms of domination and hegemonic practices. The participants in the post-modernist debates have posed the question that has riveted the attention of the post-structuralists. They have also appropriated the writings of Derrida and Foucault to provide answers to them.

Historians, for the most part, have not yet directly confronted the issues raised by post-structuralism and post-modernism. They have tended to avoid the opening forays, dismissing them as philosophical tracts of interest to soft-headed theoreticians rather than the real practitioners of the profession. However, the spectre raised by post- structuralism and post-modernism will probably not go away. It will loom larger as they become more firmly linked with traditional avenues of historical enquiry. Two potential linkages, rich with possibilities, are with the old argument that history is narrative and with the more recent interest in culture (Burke I988; Hobsbawm 1980; Stone I979).

The post-structuralists and the post-modernists have drawn attention to the fact that historians are participants in the world, not passive voyeurs peering in from the outside. Consequently, they asserted the importance of human intentionality in the constitution of knowledge and acknowledge the role of non-objective sources - like the social and cultural milieu, audience, and power - in those constitutive processes (Dirlik I987).

This means that historians can no longer separate their practices from the shifting objectives and values of the wider society; they can no longer support the separation with claims about the necessity of maintaining objectivity and value-neutrality, as many conservative and neo-liberal proponents of American post-structuralism advocate. Historians must confront the politics of their actions rather than asserting that 'distance creates and maintains credibility' (Eley and Nield I980).

Post-structuralism and post-modernism bring into focus the fact that history, even when it is construed as a series of socially constituted texts, does not exist independently of the circumstances in which it is practised. To paraphrase an argument by Tony Bennett (I987:70-I), these circumstances and practices connect history as a text and historians as readers in specific relations. They prescribe that historians read in certain ways and that the texts be read in certain ways. The historian and the text are gridded onto one another in variable but historically specific ways. Historians are interpreters of those texts and critics who intervene in the interpretive process to move interpretation in different directions by viewing the texts through different lenses, so they take on a multiplicity of meanings which can be assessed in the light of current circumstances. This means that interpretive and critical practices of historians take place in the context of the shifting and variable calculations of social or political objectives and values rather than in accordance with the fixed calculations of a scientistically conceived objectivism.

While post-structuralism and post-modernism draw attention to how history interpenetrates and is deployed in the present, they say little about the accuracy or

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January 1989 Post-structuralism and post-modernism 87

legitimacy of historians' representations or reconstructions of the realities they study -

the everyday life and history of people who lived in the past. They suggest that the documents and testimony, which form the bases for historical enquiry, contained a number of undecidable meanings when they were written. These permitted misreadings, and continue to do so, even though the form and content of what is undecidable may have shifted significantly over the years. However, some post-structuralist and post- modernist writers either indicate or imply what should be considered and included in representations and reconstructions of past societies. Derrida has argued that un- decidability of texts has been and continues to be related to power; Foucault has added that the will to power is not confined to texts, but rather that it resides in the practices and social relations of the wider society. This is true of the societies in which historians practise their professions today, and it was also true of the past societies they study. Consequently, a critical analysis of power and how it is constituted in the particular societies being investigated is crucial. They must be a central element of any historical enquiry, even those that profess post-structuralist or post-modernist inspiration and orientation.

Dept of Anthropology, Temple University, Philadelphia

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank the Centre for Research in the Humanities for the opportunity to participate in its activities during the fall of I987. This summary has profited from the comments of Howard Bloch, Peter Gran, Russell Handsman, Michael Harbsmeier, Keith Nield, Michael Rowlands and Alison Wylie.

REFERENCES

Bennett, Tony (I987) 'Texts in history: the determinations of readings and their texts' in Derek Attridge, Geoff Bennington and Robert Young (eds), Post-Structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge), 63-8I.

Bernstein, Charles (I987) 'Centering the post- modern', Socialist Review, XCVI, 45-58.

Burke, Peter (x988) 'Bakhtin for historians', Social History, xiii, i, 85-9o.

Derrida, Jacques (1983) 'The time of a thesis: punctuations' in Alan Montefiore (ed.), Phil- osophy in France Today (Cambridge), 34-50.

Descombes, Vincent (I980) Modern French Philosophy ([979], transl. by L. Scott-Fox and J. M. Harding (Cambridge).

Dews, Peter (I987) Logics of Disintegration: Post-structuralist Thought and the Claims of Critical Theory. (London).

Dirlik, Arif (I987) 'Culturalism as hegemonic ideology and liberating practice', Cultural Critique, vi, I3-50.

Eley, Geoff and Keith Nield (I980) 'Why does

social history ignore politics?', Soial History, V, 2, 249-71-

Harlan, Richard (1987) Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post- structuralism. (London and New York).

Hobsbawm, Eric J. (I980) 'The revival of narrative: some comments', Past and Present, LXXXVI, 3-8.

Huyssen, Andreas (I986) After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism (Bloomington and Indianapolis).

Jameson, Frederic (I984) 'The politics of theory: ideological positions in the post- modernism debate', New German Critique, XXXIII, 53-66.

MacCabe, Colin (I987) 'Foreword' in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics, ix-xxi.

Macksey, Richard and Eugenio Donato (eds) (I970) 7he Stnrcturalist Contmversy: 7he Lan- guages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. (Baltimore and London).

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Merquior, Jacques G. (i986) From Prague to Paris: A Critique of Structuralist and Post- structuralist Thought. (London).

Rabinow, Paul (ed.) (I984) Introduction to The Foucault Reader (New York), 3-29.

Ryan, Michael (I982) Marxism and Decon- struction: A Critical Articulation. (Baltimore and London).

Said, Edward W. (I983) The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, Mass.).

Sim, Stuart (I986) 'Lyotard and the politics of antifoundationalism', Radical Philosophy, XLuV, 8-13.

Smith, Paul (1988) Discerning the Subject. Theory and History of Literature, vol. 55 (Minneapolis).

Stone, Lawrence (1979) 'The revival of narra- tive: reflections on a new old history', Past and Present, LXXXV, 3-24.