Incomplete Secularization of History: Ethan Kleinberg and Hayden White

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-46
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Gustafsson Chorell
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Realism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
Displacement Model ◽  
Historical Theory

Abstract According to the displacement model of secularization, religious-theological concepts, themes, and values have been reinterpreted in non-religious contexts without fully dispensing with the religious content. Secularization is thus incomplete. The incomplete secularization argument can be used as a lens through which to read Ethan Kleinberg’s deconstructive approach to the past. In his narrative, as reconstructed here, deconstruction promises to bring us closer to a secular relationship to the past than the ontological realism Kleinberg says still dominates contemporary historical theory. By contrasting Kleinberg’s analysis with Hayden White’s, whose oeuvre can be read as structured by the idea of incomplete secularization and a wish to liberate history from religious themes in order to enable a direct confrontation with meaninglessness, I argue that Kleinberg’s deconstructive approach does not fulfill its promise. Rather, it opens up a post-secular historiography in which religious themes might find a place at the very heart of historical reasoning.

Claiming History in Religious Conflicts

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Peace Building ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Religious Conflicts ◽  
History Play

In what way did or does the past lend credence to religion and how did or does the formation of and departure from tradition affect claims to religious truth? How does historical reasoning contribute towards the unravelling of religious conflicts and what role does history play in concrete peace building processes? The contributions to this volume tackle these questions. Collectively, they take a decidedly multidisciplinary and diachronic perspective, throwing light upon an important subject with significant contemporary reverberations.

scholarly journals Other Stories: Experimental Forms of Contemporary Historying at the Crossroads Between Facts and Fictions

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-15
Author(s):  
Małgorzata Sugiera
Keyword(s):  
New Wave ◽  
Main Argument ◽  
Historical Discourse ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic History ◽  
The Future ◽  
Rhetorical Dimension ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
Experimental History

Summary The process of questioning the authority of academic history—in the form in which it emerged at the turn of the 19th century—began in the 1970s, when Hayden White pointed out the rhetorical dimension of historical discourse. His British colleague Alun Munslow went a step further and argued that the ontological statuses of the past and history are so different that historical discourse cannot by any means be treated as representation of the past. As we have no access to that which happened, both historians and artists can only present the past in accordance with their views and opinions, the available rhetorical conventions, and means of expression. The article revisits two examples of experimental history which Munslow mentioned in his The Future of History (2010): Robert A. Rosenstone’s Mirror in the Shrine (1988) and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s In 1926 (1997). It allows reassessing their literary strategies in the context of a new wave of works written by historians and novelists who go beyond the fictional/factual dichotomy. The article focuses on Polish counterfactual writers of the last two decades, such as Wojciech Orliński, Jacek Dukaj, and Aleksander Głowacki. Their novels corroborate the main argument of the article about a turn which has been taking place in recent experimental historying: the loss of previous interest in formal innovations influenced by modernist avant-garde fiction. Instead, it concentrates on demonstrating the contingency of history to strategically extend the unknowability of the future or the past(s) and, as a result, change historying into speculative thinking.

Historische Meinung

Rhetorik ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Gert Ueding
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Hayden White

Abstract Shortly before his ninetieth anniversary, one of the most pre-eminent American theorists of historiography in the second half of 20th century died: Hayden White (1928–2018). This article confronts White’s ideas on metahistory and the fundamental narrativity of historiography, which at least for the decades to follow have revolutionized the theory of history, with important scholarly sources from German intellectual history, such as Nietzsche, Bloch, Kracauer und Blumenberg, to conclude that the central focus of White’s thought-provoking theoretical experiment, to conceive of historiography as an interplay of four directional literary forms – romance, satire, comedy and tragedy –, grounded in the epistemology of the basic tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony), inadvertently induced a neglect of rhetoric in the scholarly enterprise of understanding the past and of finding argumentative plausibility and consensus in the dialogue of historiographic negotiation.

scholarly journals Quando Hayden White encontra Sebald: Austerlitz entre o fardo da história e o passado prático | When Hayden White meets Sebald: Austerlitz between the burden of history and the practical past

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-135
Author(s):  
Edmo Videira Neto
Keyword(s):  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Historian ◽  
Hayden White

O objetivo deste ensaio é promover um encontro entre as ideias sobre a história de Hayden White e os caminhos históricos e traumáticos traçados por Sebald em Austerlitz. Neste sentido, partimos do pressuposto de que o personagem homônimo ao título do livro do escritor alemão funciona como um pêndulo entre o fardo da história e o passado prático, não coincidentemente, dois dos principais textos do historiador norte-americano. Para que possamos chegar minimamente a esse objetivo, abordaremos Austerlitz enquanto uma saga em busca de uma estética da representação do passado e de uma ética do conhecimento histórico, colocando como pano de fundo central em nosso texto os debates teóricos e metodológicos oferecidos pela obra de White.Palavras-chave: Hayden White. Sebald. Austerlitz. Fardo da história. Passado Prático AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to promote a meeting between the ideas about Hayden White's history and the historical and traumatic paths traced by Sebald in Austerlitz. In this sense, we assume that the homonymous character to the title of the German writer's book works as a pendulum between the burden of history and the practical past, not coincidentally, two of the main texts of the American historian. So that we can minimally reach this goal, we will approach Austerlitz as a saga in search of an aesthetics of the representation of the past and an ethics of historical knowledge, placing as a central backdrop in our text the theoretical and methodological debates offered by White's work.Keywords: Hayden White. Sebald. Austerlitz. Burden of History. Pratical Past.

scholarly journals European Perspectives on Recent Tonal Theories, their Models, and Analytical Tools

2018 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christophe Guillotel-Nothmann
Keyword(s):  
Music Analysis ◽  
Hierarchical Organization ◽  
Tonal Language ◽  
Research Traditions ◽  
Specific Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
Historical Theory

The articles collected here were part of a one-day thematic session held during the7th European Music Analysis Conference(Leuven, Belgium, September 17–20, 2014). The session was dedicated to current understandings of tonality, particularly recent European perspectives and their connections to historical theory. Despite differences in methods and aims, the contributions here engage in dialogue by identifying specific research traditions and approaches—ranging from hermeneutical philosophy to neostructuralism—and by addressing characteristics of tonality. Three main threads run throughout: (1) the directional tendency of chord progressions; (2) centricity; and (3) hierarchical organization. Together, the perspectives adopted suggest that progress in the understanding of tonal language depends on a continuing dialectic between the theoretical discourse of the past and modern tools and models—including analysis of large corpora.

scholarly journals BNCC e o passado prático: Temporalidades e produção de identidades no ensino de história

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Nilton Mullet Pereira ◽  
Mara Cristina de Matos Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous People ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
History Teaching ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
African Descendants ◽  
Hayden White

The year 2016, in Brazil, was marked by an intensive discussion about the National Common Curricular Basis (BNCC) for history teaching. Above all, the debate focused on the narratives that should or should not be in the document, since the first version attempted to both break away from decades of Eurocentric history teaching and highlight the histories of Brazil, Africa, African descendants, Latin-Americans and Indigenous people. This investigation has approached the three versions of BNCC made available by the Ministry of Education as well as the competition of narratives in the fields of history and history teaching. From an approach situated between history and history teaching theories, this paper problematizes the basis by regarding the issue of identities and temporalities. In a theoretical dialogue with thinkers like Hayden White and the notion of practical past, among others that have enabled us to think about the processes of narrativization of the past, as well as in a dialogue with the field of history teaching, we have shown how both versions that followed the first one represent the return of an old continuing history, one that is European and disconnected from the social and identitary demands of the present time.

Historical Film

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Trafton
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Film ◽  
Historical Films ◽  
Successive Generations ◽  
Hayden White

From the advent of cinema to the present day, history has been brought to life on screen in many striking ways that have advanced motion picture technology and forged new relationships between viewers and the historical past. Historical films offer a privileged site for scholars of cinema, media, history, and many other disciplines to interrogate a nation’s relationship with the past. How cinema engages with the past, whether recent or distant, provides interesting case studies for how successive generations renegotiate cultural memory and understandings of how the past shapes the present. Historical films can bring into relief hidden or competing histories that either challenge or compliment prevailing narratives and authoritative accounts of the past, asking the viewer to consider the present as being shaped by multiple histories, rather than by one history. Historical films also suggest new ways of understanding the past, and, as a consequence, they also present new ways of understanding the present. Lastly, historical films can perform thought experiments about the past, deliberately departing from the historical print record in order to pose a different set of questions about a nation’s relationship with history. As such, historical films have garnered a tremendous level of scholarly interest, covering a broad range of research foci and subjects that are very useful in expanding discourses on national identity and historical memory. This article seeks to provide academics with ample resources and theoretical frameworks for conducting research on historical films or incorporating aspects of historical film studies into other disciplines. Starting with a general overview and scholarly approaches to historical films, the seminal works of Hayden White, Robert Rosenstone, and Vivian Sobchack are considered alongside newer approaches and scholarly journals, offering the scholar with an array of methodologies for bridging film studies to other fields. The article then examines in greater detail texts and studies concerned with a variety of questions and subissues pertaining to historical film studies—first with how film engages with memory (historical, cultural, personal, and national), then how historical films either interrogate or compound notions of national identity, and then how these ideas are explored in a variety of national and regional contexts. Next, the article turns toward the issues that stem from the scholarly approaches: how historical films can be used as a teaching tool, issues of genre and subgenre taxonomy, and how films themselves act as moments in history. Lastly, the article considers notions of authorship in historical cinema. Since many historical films are helmed by world-renowned filmmakers, the article ends with a section that explores repeated directorial engagements with history as a strong component of auteur cinema.

Historische Meinung

Rhetorik ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-17
Author(s):  
Gert Ueding
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Theory Of History ◽  
Hayden White

Abstract Shortly before his ninetieth anniversary, one of the most pre-eminent American theorists of historiography in the second half of 20th century died: Hayden White (1928–2018). This article confronts White’s ideas on metahistory and the fundamental narrativity of historiography, which at least for the decades to follow have revolutionized the theory of history, with important scholarly sources from German intellectual history, such as Nietzsche, Bloch, Kracauer und Blumenberg, to conclude that the central focus of White’s thought-provoking theoretical experiment, to conceive of historiography as an interplay of four directional literary forms – romance, satire, comedy and tragedy –, grounded in the epistemology of the basic tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony), inadvertently induced a neglect of rhetoric in the scholarly enterprise of understanding the past and of finding argumentative plausibility and consensus in the dialogue of historiographic negotiation.

THE SHAPE OF HISTORY: ON READING LI WAI-YEE

Early China ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 579-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Vogelsang
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Literature ◽  
Narrative History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Text ◽  
Chinese Historiography ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Zuo Zhuan ◽  
Hayden White

Ever since Hayden White declared that as a literary artifact the historical text is indistinguishable from fiction, the study of historiography has ceased to be the prerogative of historians. It is thus no accident that we owe some of the finest recent works on theZuo zhuan, China's oldest narrative history, not to historians but to scholars of Chinese literature. In her splendid book onThe Readability of the Past in Early Chinese Historiography(Cambridge 2007) Li Wai-yee demonstrates just how fruitful it is to treat Chinese historiography from a literary perspective. She puts to rest the “idea that kernels of historical truth can or should be separated from the rich verbal fabric” in favor of “what is more germane to the sense of history,” namely “the conscious formulation of patterns and principles to understand the past” (Li 2007, pp. 2–3).

Tropes for the past: Hayden White and the History / Literature Debate

2007 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 831
Author(s):  
Ruth Glynn ◽  
Kuisma Korhonen
Keyword(s):  
The Past ◽  
Hayden White
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document