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Abstract
This text deals with issues which for the past decade preoccupied Hayden White's reflection. These are issues such as the practical past, the social role of history, global capitalism, the modern state, anarchism, utopia and the emancipatory role of the humanities. White has repeatedly stressed the ambivalent connections between utopia and history, the reductive and disciplinary character of science, as well as the oppressive nature of the state. This, among other things, constitutes the reason why the cutting edge of his critical thought is aimed at professionalized, academic history which is marked and burdened by those topoi. While calling White's approach ‘liberation historiography’ does not seem adequate, the author reflects on the liberating role of historiography (one that leads to an ultimate emancipation from the very discipline of history) which is desirable in the contemporary world.
Notes
1. By this Hayden White has joined an esteemed group of holders of the said honorary degree among whom one finds political leaders (Lech Wałęsa, 1990; Richard von Weizsäcker, 1992; François Mitterrand, 1993; Madeleine K. Albright, 2000) as well as historians, philosophers, writers, and literary scholars (Gerard Labuda, 1985; Günter Grass, 1993; Maria Janion, 1994; Norman Davies, 2000; Andrzej Wajda, 2005; Maria Bogucka, 2006; Tadeusz Różewicz, 2006). See: University of Gdansk homepage: http://en.ug.edu.pl/en/honorary_doctorates/ (accessed on 16 May 2014).
2. White v. Davis, 13 Cal.3d 757, L.A. No. 30348. Supreme Court of California. 24 March 1975. In the court ruling, we read:
The inherent legitimacy of the police “intelligence gathering” function does not grant the police the unbridled power to pursue that function by any and all means. In this realm, as in all others, the permissible limits of governmental action are circumscribed by the federal Bill of Rights and the comparable protections of our state Constitution.
3. The concept of ‘liberation historiography’ occurs earlier, in John Ernest's book title Liberation Historiography. African American Writers and the Challenge of History, 1794–1861. Ernest suggested an analogy with liberation theology. According to this author, a liberation historiography constructed in response to needs of Afro-American individuals and collectivities was meant to help understanding the historical conditioning of oppression and reinforce their sense of historical agency through building their proper vision of the past.
Like liberation theology – Ernest writes, what I am terming liberation historiography is a mode of historical investigation devoted to praxis, a dynamic process of action and reflection, of historical discovery in the service of ongoing and concrete systemic reform. (Ernest Citation2004, 18)
4. It is different with analogous terms such as “militant historiography” which is used in reference to Indian postcolonial historians (Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Shahid Amin and David Hardiman among others) who rewrite India colonial-era history in order to reclaim the repressed past of subaltern groups, and to include it in structuring the social consciousness of resistance and as a basis for emancipatory politics (Singh Citation2002, 91).
5. In another place, White points out at Adam Mickiewicz, Jules Michelet or Victor Cousin as those who proposed progressive visions of history (Sierakowski Citation2005, 227–229).
6. The act of choosing one's ideal ancestry, mostly specific to periods just after historical break-throughs, is described by White (Citation2010b) as ‘retroactive ancestral constitution’.
7. It is a paraphrase of an expression White (Citation2010a, 10) ascribes to Michel de Certeau, that ‘Fiction is the repressed other of history’. Such an expression is not to be found in de Certeau's (Citation1986, 219) work, although White agrees with the French scholar's intentions when the latter writes: ‘In order to grant legitimacy to the fiction that haunts the field of historiography, we must “first” recognize the repressed, which takes the form of “literature”, within the discourse that is legitimated as scientific’.
8. Muchowski claims drawing inspiration from Roland Barthes's essay ‘Writing and the Novel’ in which Barthes reflects upon using the simple past tense or third person as characteristics of novel writing. Such representational strategy is also proper to history. It creates an effect of familiarity and credibility of represented events and at the same time it gives readers a sense of security as it shows the past as somehow closed and well defined. ‘The narrative past is therefore a part of a security system for Belles-Lettres’ – Barthes (Citation1981, 32) writes.
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Ewa Domanska
Ewa Domanska is Associate Professor of theory and history of historiography in the Department of History, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poznan, Poland and Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Stanford University. Her teaching and research interests include contemporary theory and history of historiography and comparative theory of the humanities and social sciences. She is the author of four books: her recent publications include Existential History. Critical Approach to Narrativism and Emancipatory Humanities (in Polish, 2012) and History and the Contemporary Humanities (in Ukrainian, 2012), and she is the editor and co-editor of many books including: Re-Figuring Hayden White (ed. with Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner, 2009); French Theory in Poland (ed. with Miroslaw Loba, 2010, in Polish); Theory of Knowledge of the Past and the Contemporary Humanities and Social Sciences (in Polish, 2010); and History – Today (ed. with Rafal Stobiecki and Tomasz Wislicz, 2014, in Polish).