Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner, Kevin Passmore (eds.), Writing
History: Theory and Practice,
London, Hodder Arnold H&S, 2003
[ISBN 0 340 76176, Hardback £50.00;
ISBN: 0340761768, Paperback £16.99]
Roger Spalding
Edge Hill College
R.Spalding, "Review of S.Berger, H.Feldner, K.Passmore (eds.), Writing History: Theory and Practice",
Cromohs, 9 (2004): 1-10
< URL: http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/9_2004/spalding_writhist.html >
1. In recent years academic historians in Britain have felt themselves to
be under pressure, from a number of sources. Many within the profession felt
that Tony Blair’s Labour government regarded history as a low priority
subject, and one that did not fit in with its desire to increase the directly
vocational element of higher education. Another, different but equally potent
threat to the subject was, for many, if not all, historians, the development
and spread of post-structural practices in the humanities within British universities.
Post-structuralism, although espoused by some high-profile historians like
Patrick Joyce and Gareth Stedman-Jones, called into question, for other, equally
high-profile historians, like Arthur Marwick, the very existence of history
as a viable academic subject. It was in response to this perceived threat
that Richard J. Evans published his In Defence of History (1997). For
historians like Evans and Marwick the very idea that the past could not be
accessed and, in some senses recreated through the examination of evidence
entirely undermined what they regarded as the essence of the discipline.
This sense of threat and the bitter disputes between those, from a variety
of historical traditions and political positions who, nevertheless all shared
a belief in the possibility of accessing an externally existing past, and
those who have taken the ‘linguistic turn’ (that is espoused Post-Structuralism)
has produced a heightened state of reflexivity within the subject in British
academic life. That reflexivity is also, as previously suggested, promoted
by the academic- vocational agenda of the Blair government. Those who directly
address that agenda often do so in a rather simplistic and instrumental fashion.
Hence, Mary Abbott (History Skills, 1996) claims that one of the principal
reasons for history undergraduates writing essays is because it is an activity
that promotes the development of a range of ‘transferable skills’ that are desirable commodities in the employment market. Such instrumental
views are deeply alarming to many academics.
This book relates directly to ‘the threat’ of post-structuralism,
and to the heightened state of disciplinary reflexivity that has developed
as a consequence of the perception, by some historians, of such a threat.
The editors however, down-play concerns about post-structuralism, ironically
referring to this as a belief that these new developments were ‘...a
devilish plot by literary critics to destroy the discipline...’ (p.xii).
The language used by the editors clearly demonstrates their lack of concern
about this ‘devilish plot’. However, given that they deny that
this work is concerned with these issues, but is rather an introduction to
the development of the discipline and its sub-branches, how is it possible
to claim that the book is a product of the ideological turmoil produced by
the development of post-structural practices within the discipline?
2. One of the stated objectives of the book is to provide: ‘succinct
critical introductions to the ideas, techniques and institutional practices
that made possible the establishment of history as an autonomous discipline.’
To put that another way: one might see the objective of the book as being
to demonstrate the processes by which History’s disciplinary integrity
as an academic subject was established. To achieve this objective the book
is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the historical
development of the discipline. In the second section the editors set out to
‘...deal with single theoretical traditions....’( p.xiii) Although
one might quibble with the idea that Comparative History represents a ‘single
theoretical tradition’ – it seems more like an approach –
this section, like the first makes a good job of outlining the key features
of the theoretical approaches dealt with: Marxist; Social-Scientific, Annales
School, Psychoanalytical and Post Structuralist. It is the third section that
raises key issues for discussion. This section, we are told, ‘reflects
the extent to which engagement with post structuralism’ (p. xiii) has
shaped historical writing in recent years. The effect of presenting this section
in this way is to ‘normalise’ the relationship between History
and post-structuralism. By not engaging with the debates around the question
of the relationship between post-structuralism and the subject, the editors
act to legitimise that relationship in a positive way. To recognise this is
not to challenge it, but is to simply make readers aware that the book has
an implicit agenda beyond that of introducing students to the development
of history as a subject, and the subsequent development of a range of theoretical
and methodological approaches.
The rest of the review will be taken up with assessing the success with which
the contributions to the third section of the book outline the development
of the subject’s relationship with post-structuralism.
3. The last contribution in the selection ‘Voices from below: doing people’s history in Cardiff Docklands’, by Glenn Jordan, will be considered first, because it seems the most out of kilter with the stated objection of considering the impact of post-structuralism. In this, Jordan describes a community history project that has been running in the Butetown area of Cardiff since the late 1980s. The objectives of the project as stated are: ‘...to ensure that the social and cultural history of Cardiff dockland is carefully collected and preserved for posterity...’ This formulation, of course, assumes that there is some external entity, a past, a history that can be preserved. This, of course, runs entirely counter to the view of many post-structuralists, who claim that such a past cannot be accessed. Indeed the outlook that underpins this chapter seems to owe rather more to the History-from-below perspectives that characterised the work of many left-leaning historians in the 1970s. Take this claim, for example: ‘Ours is history with a social purpose, a conscious attempt to link historical knowledge to social practices, including critical, interventionist practices.’ (p.303) Does it not sound very similar to this claim, made by Paul Thompson, for Oral History, in 1978: ‘Oral history gives history back to the people in their own words. And in giving a past, it also helps them forward towards a future of their own making.’ (Thompson, The Voice of the Past, OUP 1978, p. 226) To put this another way: it is claiming that a radical vision of the past can lay the basis for a radicalised future; as Thompson makes clear elsewhere, by this he means a socialist future. What is also strongly implied by the claims of both Jordan and Thompson is that ‘the people’ need to gain access to their long narrative of struggle, in order to fully understand the nature of their present struggle. Here, too, then, are ideas that are alien to post-structuralism: that history can be construed as a grand narrative(s), and that it is possible to draw lesson from the past for the present, that can in turn shape the future. Thompson makes explicit that for him that radical future (in 1978, at least) was socialism. What does the future hold for Jordan? This is much harder to determine. Jordan claims that the Butetown History and Arts Centre is committed to ‘radical intellectual work’, and goes on to define that as involving ‘...a commitment to writing in a form that is both intellectually rigorous and – in terms of vocabulary, syntax and mode of presentation – accessible to a broad audience...’ (p.315) This is radical intellectual practice in the 21st century? Writing in clear accessible English and following rigorous intellectual practices? What, of course, these rather limited ambitions reflect is the unacknowledged political retreat of the whole history-from-below tendency. In the changed political context of the late 20th, early 21st centuries an explicit political link between history and political commitment no longer seems either viable or desirable. An example of this change is the decision by the journal History Workshop to jettison the sub-title: ‘A Journal of Socialist and Feminist History’. In the case of this particular project the process seems very similar, in that what started as a project designed to create popular involvement in historical research has shrunk into a process of professionals producing historical works for the people of the Butetown area. In other words, an activity that it would be difficult to characterise in any meaningful sense as radical at all. Similarly, it would be difficult to see this as a convincing example of post-structuralist practice.
4. The project appears to come closest to such a practice in its work using
visual images. Jordan states that: ‘People’s history as we practise
it, includes ways of seeing - i.e. an engagement with images that goes beyond
any assumption that they simply provide ‘evidence’ or a window
on to reality’. (p.314). However, the author does not give any examples
of this approach to images. Indeed where examples are given the approach to
images seems much less complex. The comment made on a 1989 exhibition of photographs
seems to indicate that it was seen as providing a ‘window on the past’.
‘The exhibition became a site of memory. Why? Because, to echo Roland
Barthes, those photographs reminded local viewers that what they saw - their
friends, their streets, their community, their selves - was no longer but
“has indeed been”.’ (p. 313) This was probably, in its own
right, a very valuable experience but it would hardly stand muster as post-structuralist
practice. One might argue that the interaction with mounted photographs in
an exhibition, some years hence from the scenes depicted would lead to the
generation of reactions and narratives that were specific to 1989, not to
events and experiences in the past. Black and white photographs of industrial
scenes have become, in Britain, at least, decorative items, conjuring up narratives
of past glories and virtues; they do not conjure narratives of hardship, struggle
and poverty, one suspects. Jordan makes no comment on the nature of the process
of the interaction with images. It may be objected that the practice of the
project may have changed since 1989, but Jordan quotes from a recent publication
of theirs, which is a combination of texts and photographs, to the effect:
‘These are photographs of the present, imprinted with traces of the
past.’ Implicit within this claim is the idea that the past has some
kind of external reality, which can be captured photographically. This work,
which appeared in 2001, seems particularly problematic in that it was a collaboration
between a photography student and someone with a deep personal attachment
to the area. Almost inevitably that second person, touring the re-developed
sites of her youth will produce a personal narrative of her life, which has
more to do with her shaped memories than with any external remains.
This contribution is, in itself interesting and describes what was, no doubt
a valuable project, but it neither gives a satisfactory account of the development
of such work in recent times, nor does it really provide an example of the
influence of post-structuralism.
5. Beverley Southgate’s contribution, ‘Intellectual history/history
of ideas’, provides a useful outline of the development of this area
of work, up to the present-day. Included within this is an interesting account
of the difficulties posed by the problem of extracting meaning from texts;
an issue dear to the hearts of post-structuralists. However difficulties arise
when Southgate cites examples post-structuralist history in practice. These
difficulties are particularly acute in relation to his second and final example,
Annabel Patterson’s Early Modern Liberalism, which Southgate
describes as a work that provides: ‘a very positive model for postmodern
historical study’. (p.258)
I should at the outset say that my comments here are not intended to reflect
on Patterson’s work, but on the claims that Southgate makes for it.
At the beginning of his comments Southgate tells us, and this is presumably
endorsed by Patterson, that ‘Liberalism’ was ‘a word not
actually used at the period in question’. This comment, actually made
in parenthesis, surely goes to the heart of post-structuralist critique of
previous historical practice? Over recent years Patrick Joyce and Gareth Stedman
Jones, linguistically-turned historians have developed a multi-faceted critique
of the use of the concept of ‘class’ as a tool for understanding
the social politics of the 19th century. ‘Class’, it
is argued, was not used in the 19th century in the way that it
was used, particularly by Marxists, in the 20th century; and it
was, therefore an illegitimate imposition on the texts of the past. Here though,
apparently, Beverley Southgate does not feel that calling certain political
positions in the 16th and 17th centuries ‘Liberal’
will give them a meaning they did not possess at the time.
6. Southgate also makes much of the fact that Patterson adopts an explicitly
partisan approach to her subject. Indeed, readers are told: ‘That immediately
set her apart from the traditions of modernist history, with its insistence
on authorial detachment...’ (p.255). It is difficult to believe that
anyone, with, perhaps the exception of G.R. Elton, the British Tudor historian,
has ever really believed that such detachment actually existed. Historians
may well have claimed that their conclusions were based on the evidence, but
in the vast majority of cases the evidence would support conclusions in line
with their individual convictions. As E. H. Carr told his readers in 1961
(What is History?) knowing the background of a historian is often the
key to understanding the interpretation offered in any work. In this context
the partisanship that Southgate refers to does not seem that much of an innovation.
Southgate also tells readers that Patterson presents Liberalism as a political
current that developed through conflict and struggle, creating, as a result,
a political tradition that needs to be carefully maintained and preserved
in the present. To many of us this sounds very familiar because it sounds
exactly like the ‘Whig Interpretation’ of English history. This
was an interpretation that viewed English History as a constant process of
constitutional and political improvement. It was first elaborated in the 19th
century, and then revamped in the 1930s as the Communist Party of Great Britain
used a version of it in an attempt to incorporate themselves into the British
political tradition, as part of their Popular Front campaign. The most recent
manifestation was, perhaps, the first draft of the National Curriculum in
History for secondary schools which appeared in the early 1990s. This sought
to persuade pupils that the point to which all British history had been moving
was the establishment of 20th century parliamentary government.
In other words the ‘grand narrative’ that Southgate describes,
does not seem that new either.
7. Southgate claims that two other features make Patterson’s book distinctive.
One is her readiness to use a variety of sources, including ‘poetry,
engravings and writings of lesser known people, as opposed to what are called
‘conventional literary texts’ (p.256) The other feature is Patterson’s
location of the liberal tradition within the lives and experiences of real
people. In response to this one might cite the work of one historian, E. P.
Thompson, who, in his biography of William Morris, published in 1955, used
a great variety of materials including poetry and visual art to develop his
analysis. In his Making of the English Working Class, published in
1963, he again used literary sources, including material from John Bunyan
and William Blake, to re-construct the social and political culture of the
English working class. Furthermore, in his famous preface to this work, he
pledged to rescue the various struggling members of the working class from
the ‘enormous condescension of posterity’. As a consequence this
work, more than 30 years before Patterson’s book appeared, also sought
to locate the process of social and ideological change within the life experiences
of ‘real people’.
As I have already said my concern is not with the merits of Patterson’s
book, but with the claims that Southgate makes for it, in relation to post-structuralism.
In that respect Southgate does not appear to offer any examples of, either
how the approaches of this book represent significant new departures, or what
post-modernist historical practice might look like.
8. To be fair to the book other contributions do, reasonably successfully explore ways in which post-structuralism has brought positive benefits to areas of the subjects. This is the case, for example, with Jon Lawrence’s piece ‘Political History’. Lawrence welcomes the examination of the processes by which language shapes ‘popular political identities’. However, it is interesting to note that Lawrence wishes to integrate this approach with a consideration of the State ‘as a force for transforming social structures and for redefining perceptions of identity.’ What this means, therefore is that he believes that there is life beyond the text. Lawrence is, therefore, advocating a limited engagement with some of the analytical practices of post-modern analysts and ignoring, by implication rejecting, the essential element, as many would see it of post-structuralism, that is the confinement of human experience within texts.
9. A similarly limited engagement is apparent in Mila Rosenberg’s ‘Race,
ethnicity and history’. Rosenberg’s essay is both interesting
and informative, giving a clear exposition of the development of different
approach to the construction of ethnic identity. One of the works that she
cites with approval is Matthew Frye Jacobson’s, Whiteness of a Different
Colour, a work which explores, in Rosenberg’s words, ‘the
ways in which language serves in the fabrication of race.’ (p.294).
However, like all of the books that Rosenberg cites, this is firmly related
to an external historical context. The changes explored by Jacobson are related
to American industrialisation between 1840 and 1924, and the mass immigration
that this process, at least partly, engendered. The analyses that Rosenberg
cites with approval combine the techniques of post-structuralism with an acceptance
of the role of non-textual developments. It is easy to understand why a historian
might opt for this approach, as it obviously avoids the difficult question
of causation, raised by the analyses advanced by some thorough-going post-structuralists.
It also avoids a difficulty raised by Deborah Lipstadt in Denying the Holocaust.
There Lipstadt argued that the view that all human experience is expressed
in texts none of which can be seen as more valid than another, created an
intellectual climate within which the claims of Holocaust deniers could be
seen as being as valid as any other. ‘In academic circles some scholars
spoke of relative truths, rejecting the notion that there was one version
of the world that was necessarily right while another was wrong.’ (p.18)
Rosenberg’s limited engagement with post-structuralism means that she
does not have to deal with this issue, or the argument, that could be made
for the validity of racist texts within a post-structuralist framework. However,
while Rosenberg does not directly deal with this question, it is clear from
a statement that she makes at the beginning of her piece that she comes down
on the Lipstadt side of the fence: ‘...we must distinguish the use of
racist categories to explain history, from the analysis of the ways
in which race has been used by historical actors...to make sense of the world.’
(p.282). The significant point being that Rosenberg clearly does not believe
that all texts are of equal merit; some narratives are, on the basis of moral
judgement, superior to others.
10. On one level this is an extremely useful book. As a work of exposition it is usually lucid and informative and could be profitably read by students, academics and general readers. Where it is perhaps less successful is in its engagement with post-modernism. In this area, and, it should be noted that this engagement is the stated purpose of more than one third of the book, the treatment is at best limited, and, at its worst, unhelpful. This is possibly because the editors, in their anxiety to ‘normalise’ post-structuralism do not engage with those elements of that practice that do call into question History’s claim to be a distinctive academic discipline.
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