The Intelligible versus the Real: Barthes’s Historiographical Option

2020 ◽  
pp. 58-71
Author(s):  
Stephen Bann
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Stated Preference ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Real ◽  
Political Stance ◽  
English Translations ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Historical Writings ◽  
The 1960S

Roland Barthes’s ‘Le discours de l’histoire’ was first published in France in 1967, in a journal sponsored by the École pratique des hautes études where he was teaching at the time. It appeared in English translations in 1970 and 1981, and soon came to rank as a source comparable to Hayden White’s Metahistory (1973) in so far as it proposed a radically new mode of analysing historical writings. This chapter explains the broad international context in which the article was initially produced, and subsequently gained its reputation. Although critical approaches to the language of historiography were hardly practised at all in France in the 1960s, a fellow member of the Hautes Études such as Le Roy Ladurie was already coming forward as a spokesman for the new methods of ‘quantitative history’. Barthes’s own critical procedure was, however, notably indebted to the discourse analysis of the French linguistician, Émile Benveniste. It is argued that Barthes’s stated preference for the ‘intelligible’ as opposed to the ‘real’ as a criterion for historical analysis is a logical outcome of his cultural and political stance at the time. His seemingly perverse categorisation of the approach of the nineteenth-century historian Augustin Thierry is an unfortunate consequence.

scholarly journals The Making of the CAP: Towards a Historical Analysis of the EU’s First Major Policy

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. PIERS LUDLOW
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Agricultural Policy ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
International Context ◽  
Treaty Of Rome ◽  
Support Policy ◽  
The 1960S

This article seeks to explain the emergence of the CAP between 1958 and 1968. It draws attention to four particular political factors that made the policy’s birth possible, despite the vagueness of the Treaty of Rome commitment to an agricultural policy and the unpromising precedents of earlier attempts to integrate Europe’s agriculture. These were the strength of the coalition pushing for the CAP’s emergence (primarily composed of France, the Netherlands and the European Commission), the weakness and inconsistencies of their opponents (Germany and Italy), the favourable international context, and the incremental nature of the policy’s development. The article further argues that the complexity of the bargaining over the farm support policy, and the manner in which CAP discussions often became entwined with other seemingly unrelated aspects of EEC decision-making, illustrate how even the early Community of the 1960s was sufficiently complex to require a radical change of approach from those who wish to study its historical development.

The Revival of Quantification: Reflections on Old New Histories

2021 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Steven Ruggles
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social History ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second Wave

AbstractQuantitative historical analysis in the United States surged in three distinct waves. The first quantitative wave occurred as part of the “New History” that blossomed in the early twentieth century and disappeared in the 1940s and 1950s with the rise of consensus history. The second wave thrived from the 1960s to the 1980s during the ascendance of the New Economic History, the New Political History, and the New Social History, and died out during the “cultural turn” of the late twentieth century. The third wave of historical quantification—which I call the revival of quantification—emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century and is still underway. I describe characteristics of each wave and discuss the historiographical context of the ebb and flow of quantification in history.

Nature and Nurture Lessons from Swedish Adoption Surveys

1997 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Bohman
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Development Theory ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
World War ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Nature And Nurture ◽  
Genetic And Environmental Factors ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

The following article by Professor Michael Bohman begins with a brief historical analysis of child development theory in relation to adoption and fostering after the end of the Second World War. The author goes on to review research findings from a series of Swedish adoption surveys which began under his supervision in the 1960s and continue to this day. Much attention is given to the significance of genetic and environmental factors towards shaping the development of adopted children into adulthood. Problems of social and psychological adjustment are discussed, as are the genetic aspects of criminality and alcohol misuse in a group of adult adopted people.

scholarly journals Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines

2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Círculo De Linguística aplicada a la Comunicación
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Approaches

scholarly journals Critical Discourse Analysis of News Discourse

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qin Xie
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Real Situation ◽  
The Real ◽  
Critical Awareness ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Foundations

News discourse is one of main analysis subjects of critical discourse analysis. People can know the opinions implied by the author and grasp the real situation of the events described in the discourse by critical discourse analysis. Furthermore, it is beneficial for the audience to establish the critical awareness of News discourse and enhance the ability to critically analyze news discourse. Based on the discussion of the concept of news discourse and critical discourse analysis, the theoretical foundations and steps of critical discourse analysis, the paper illustrates the method of the critical analysis of news discourse. The author also puts forward issues that needed to pay attention to in order to improve the ability of news discourse analysis.

scholarly journals Mythopoetics of the Were-Dragon (The Way of the Dragon by B. M. Yulsky and the Literary Context)

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-135
Author(s):  
Guanqiong Lin
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Far East ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Mountain Forest ◽  
The Real ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
History Of ◽  
Frontier Mythology ◽  
The Way

As a Russian mountain-forest policeman and writer of the Harbin diaspora, B. M. Yulsky combined in his prose the experience of the police service and ideas about the ethnoculture of the Chinese who inhabited the territory of the Far East. This article contains a hermeneutic and comparative historical analysis of the short story The Way of the Dragon (1939) by B. M. Yulsky. The artistic morphology of the dragon is built on the comparison of its image in Chinese, Amur, Slavic and European cultures. One of the key images in the Russian heroic epic, in the Christian legend of Saint George, in Western and Northern European mythology, the dragon is actualized in modern literature. The analysis involves a philosophical treatise and a Chinese classic novel. It is shown that in the Chinese mythopoetic consciousness the temper and morphology of the dragon is different from its interpretation in European and Russian texts. The content of the short story by B. M. Yulsky speaks about his acquaintance with the understanding of the dragon, which is more characteristic in Chinese culture. The writer integrated the archaic image of the werewolf dragon into the real situation and brought a legend to the history of Honghuzi. The facts set forth in the monograph by D. V. Ershov are the real confirmation of the story described by B. M. Yulsky. The Way of the Dragon is an example of the artistic ethnography and the authorial frontier mythology that have developed in Russian literature in Harbin.

Legacies of the 1960s: The American “Rights Revolution” in an Era of Divided Governance

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Davis Graham
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Science Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Temporal Perspective ◽  
The 1960S

Scholarship on the political development of the United States since the 1960s is dominated, not surprisingly, by social scientists. Such recent events fall within the penumbra of “contemporary history,” the standard research domain of social scientists but treacherous terrain for historians. Social scientists studying American government and society generally enjoy prompt access to evidence of the policy-making process–documents from the elected and judicial branches of government, interviews with policy elites, voting returns, survey research. Historians of the recent past, on the other hand, generally lack two crucial ingredients–temporal perspective and archival evidence–that distinguish historical analysis from social science research. For these reasons, social scientists (and journalists) customarily define the initial terms of policy debate and shape the conventional wisdom. Historians weigh in later, when memories fade, archives open, and the clock adds a relentless and inherently revisionist accumulation of hindsight.

Folktales and Civil Rights

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Real World ◽  
Strategic Thinking ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real World Applications ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Brer Rabbit

This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.

Expulsion Litigation and the Limits of in Loco Parentis, 1860-1960

2014 ◽  
Vol 116 (12) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Scott Gelber
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Student Rights ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
American Higher Education ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
In Loco Parentis ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Faculty And Administrators

Background/Context Legal scholars often contrast the litigiousness of contemporary American higher education with a bygone era characterized by near-absolute respect for academic authority. According to this account, a doctrine of “academic deference” insulated colleges until the 1960s, when campus protests and new federal regulations dramatically heightened the intensity of legal oversight. This study tests that conventional wisdom, and its underlying assumption about the origins of student rights, by analyzing expulsion suits during the 100 years before 1960. Purpose Faculty and administrators tend to question if external legal pressure can play a constructive role in debates about higher education. This predisposition tempts us to invoke an earlier era of in loco parentis in order to portray institutional autonomy as a time-honored source of academic achievement. By highlighting overlooked state statutes (especially regarding public institutions) and contractual obligations (especially regarding private institutions), this study examines whether the power to discipline students in loco parentis actually triumphed prior to the 1960s. Research Design The study presents a historical analysis of the 44 college expulsion cases that were reported between 1860 and 1960. Examination of reported decisions was supplemented by archival research regarding landmark cases. Conclusions/Recommendations This study concludes that courts regularly reinstated expelled students during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These cases indicate that the power to act in loco parentis was limited by a countervailing tradition that emphasized college access and compelled institutions to provide due process prior to dismissal. This early strain of decisions laid the groundwork for the more expansive view of student rights that emerged during the 20th century. This finding encourages faculty and administrators to recognize the legal traditions and student dissenters that helped to enshrine accessibility as a defining feature of American higher education.

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