The history ahead*
Carlos Barros
University of
Santiago de Compostela
The way
historians have been writing history
since the Second World War -
history understood as a science -
is a practice which has given rise to a socio-economic, structural and
objectivist history, advocating the ideal ambition of an all-embrassing history
and the need to study the past in order to understand the present and to
construct a better future. This practice has been seriously challenged over the
past decade just as the common philosophical project which upheld it - the
enlightened idea of progress - also began to enter into crisis.
So far all
of this would seem rather obvious. However, as many aspects of the way it has
evolved remain unclear, the intention of this article is to explore how the
community of historians has been formulating alongside the criticism new
concensuses concerning the way the profession is to be practiced. More often
than not, this rapprochement has come about quite unknowingly as a result of
practice rather than through open debate.
It is often said, and quite rightly so, that the crisis that history
finds itself faced with at the end of the century - and here we might like to
bear in mind the decreasing role played by historians and history in society
- is accompanied by a massive increase
in the production of historiographic material. This increase led to an enormous
renewal of both the subjects and the method, albeit in a rather haphazard
fashion. However, the absence of
sufficient reflexion and the ensuing lack of order or harmony1 have seriously limited it
and can still put pay to the possible end results. So then, our first proposal
involves the way the scientific communities in general reconstruct their common
heritage via the processes of criticism.
Here we
are more interested in finding out which history is being made and, above all,
which history should be written - hereby both knowingly and critically
overstepping the mark of the function of observer - than the crtiques levied
against the "new histories"
which have been quite generalized on certain fronts and have been a constant
running through 20th Century historiographies. Putting
any spirit of numantism to one side, we do however still accept still a
large part of their validity, whenever we find it to be acceptable, everything
which has been superceeded by scientific practice in general and by the
practice of the historians in particular, together wih the new social, cultural
and generational needs to which both history and science are bound to respond
in this rapidly approaching end of the century. This process began in 1989 and was initially given a great
boost by Post-modernist criticism - and even more so by Pre-modernist criticism
- which meant that it was able to breathe life into a renewed rationality
within a very short space of time. This involved a new enlightenment, a rethinking of the idea
of progress which takes into consideration errors and failures and we feel that
we can identify ourselves with this is an intellectual effort.
We shall
now go on to present 16 theses and argued propositions in order to state those
criteria which we feel to be of fundamental importance in achieving a
burgeoning historiographic concensus. Whilst never loosing sight of the fact that we still have some way to go
inasmuch as the historiographic paradigm common to the 20th Century
has not as yet finished its transition, nor indeed is this an inevitability,
this new concensus should aim to spur on the debate by helping to recentre it
and foster dissidence.
1
Historiography
advances by leaps and bounds and not by simple accumulation, according to the
decisions agreed upon by concensus at any one time by the community of
historians
Any book
on historiography worth its salt explains how the advances of historical
knowledge are punctuated by breaks in the way history is written2. The following breaks have
been of particular importance: the traumatic swing away from metaphysical
history, be it sacred or literary, towards 19th Century Positivist
history and the 20th Century
historiographic revolution led by the Annales school and Historic
Materialism, flying in the face of the Positivist concept of history. This very
concept of the history of history seen through disciplinary revolutions is
itself a hang-over of the Materialist conception of history.
So then,
from the 60's onwards a physicists turned historian, Thomas S. Kuhn3, revolutionized the philosophy
of science by applying in his own way the method of history to the future of
scientific knowledge, and more particularly to the natural sciences. Those
Neopositivist conceptions dominant at the time led by Popper thus found
themselves in a grave predicament which stunted the development of the early
historiographic programme to a greater extent than one might think. This early
programme was the forerunner to both Historic Materialism and the Annales.
Unlike
both the early and later Positivists, Kuhn established the origin of scientific
certainties more in successively decisions arrived at by concensus arising in
the aftermath periods of crisis and rivalry between different theories. These
concensual decisions were arrived at by
the scientific community of any given discipline rather than via the
empirical verification (or indeed, falsification) that the former held to be
indispensable. The application of Kuhn´s discoveries to the social sciences and
human sciences can be deduced from his
own open doubts concerning history - and also with sociology, social psychology
and epistemology4 - by the
study of the history of the physical sciences, and even more so the study of the
very experience of historiography. Today, rather unsurprisingly, this is
arousing growing interest on the part of the historians. It has, then, gone as
far as Kuhn himself by setting down to theoretically systematize the historical
evolution of science or in our case, the
science of history.
In decades
gone by, the interest in history shown
by Kuhn and other scientists did not meet with a reciprocal interest in the
history of science and the philosophy of science on the part of the historians.
The underlying reason for this is the division, often tainted with hostility,
which exists between the arts and the sciences5,
between the "hard" sciences and the social and human sciences. And
this division meant that the later "softening" undergone by the
physical sciences went unnoticed. Any
quite exceptional relationship
that has at some time existed linking history and science per se has
arisen out of Neopositivists science, eg. by importing quantitative methods,
and inspite of Karl Popper's open hostitility towards historicism. For the
rest, however, the lack of spontaneous interest on the part of the professional
historian regarding theory serves to round off
this décalage between historical and historiographic research and
the philosophy of science which is ultimately the most productive branch of
philosophy.
2
There does exist a
paradigm common to historians but today it finds itself plunged into a deep
crisis which can only be completely surmounted by replacing the old paradigm
with a new one.
We
understand a common paradigm to be the ensemble of commitments shared by any
one scientific community, ie. those theoretical, methodological and normative
elements, beliefs and values which enjoy the concensus of the specialists at
any one time. In turn, a global paradigm is
made up of a series of partial paradigms. The way a common paradigm
works is inherent to the existence of a unified discipline. They mutually
justify each other whilst not excluding the plurality of approaches, even the plurality of different
schools. Quite the contrary indeed; we are never to find any completely
homogeneous theory and methodology shared by the members of any established
community, nor is this desirable in the name of
the healthy functioning of a scientific discipline. The historiographic
concept of the paradigm was created by the self-same Kuhn in order to explain
the real mechanisms of learning and concensus at work within any of the mature
scientific communities, being necessarily more flexible and open than those of
a particular school with its own theory, leaders and hierarchy. Going way
beyond the different historiographic schools and the national historiographies,
scientific history would never have been able to take root without a common
paradigm.
From the
very outset, the subjective recognition of the paradigm shared by 20th
Century historians runs into two problems: one the one hand, the relative
rivalry existing between the two great historiographic schools, Annales and
Marxist historiography6.
For the very first time, this gave structure to the common historiographic
paradigm towards the mid 20th Century, thereby successfully fighting
off traditional history, ie. history geared to events, politics, narrative and
biography; and on the other hand, the
persistance of a third Positivist element. Although this element is all but
rarely admitted by the new historians,
it is nevertheless reflected in the manifestly empirical character which has
continued to imbue the work of the historian. This has both positive effects
(its critical nature and use of sources) and its negative effects (disregard
for reflexion and theory).
The
paradigm shared by historians exists and functions independently of the level of
awareness of any given historian and also independently of the level of
acceptation of the said concensus on the part of any particular school or national
historiography. We must include the following among the shared partial
paradigms which make up the already old general paradigm of the 20th
Century we know as scientific history: total history, past/present/future,
history-social sciences, explicative history, socio-economic history,
non-narrative sources, quantitativism, regional monographies and the multiplicity
of times.
Be that as
it may, the putting into practice of the Annales-Marxism paradigm
towards the mid 20th Century suffered from a series of limitations
and deviations due to its own defects as well as owing to the survival of
Positivism in its method and theory. This brought with it an objectivism which
was very swiftly bolstered by Marxist economism and Structuralism (the
Structuralist paradigm held sway to a great extent in the social sciences until
at least as late as 1968).
The
current crisis was awakened and fed by three successive and inter-related
failures within the 20th Century common paradigm combined with the
way the historians occasionally reacted to the crisis:
1) Objectivist,
economicist, quantitativist and structural history. In the Seventies this made
way for a gradual return of the subject; firstly with a social subject
(Anglo-american Marxist historiography), later a mental one (the French history
of Mentalities) and finally returning to
the traditional subject (biography, political history).
2) Total history,
disgarded as an approach for research, is stated be something quite out of reach yet something
which should be maintained as the historians'
"utopian horizon".Whilst total history was ignored in the
theoretical field, at the same time - by then already in the Eighties - history
was developing in exactly the opposite direction by splitting itself up a
myriad of themes, genres and methods.
3) Being reduced by the new history, geography and economy to
the study of the control of nature through work, or by the prevailing
geographic conditions of the society in question, the past/present/future
relationship led to the break down, for instance, of the sensitivity of the
historian towards feminism or the relationship of Man to the environment. Above
all at the outset, women's history which flourishes today (and the same could
also be said of ecological history) developed then on the fringes of the Annales
and Historical Materialism, going against the pre-theoretical habits of the
persisting Positivist influence. However, the defeat of history, as a part of
the social sciences, has been most flagrant in its incapacity to comprehend,
and even less foresee, the revolutions of 1989-1991 and the transition from
socialism to capitalism in Eastern Europe which upset the progressive meaning
of 20th Century history. Whilst scientific history was able to take
on board historiographic Marxism, it was nonetheless completely incapable of
analyzing and explaining the historical realisations of political Marxism.
Combined
with other anomolies, these factors challenged the paradigm common to history
as a social science and give rise to a variety of internal and external
reactions. From the Seventies onwards these reactions both directly and
indirectly contributed to the shaping of a new historiographic concensus. This
involved a process of gestation and dispersion and uncertainty which offered no
guarantee of a happy final outcome. There is also the alternative of marginality,
ie. a history which is ever more distanced not only from the social sciences
but also from the natural sciences and closer to fiction and the erudite
interest of a select few. This marginal history finds it increasingly difficult
to demonstrate its social usefuleness as well as its capital role in the
education of the citizenry and for research.
In the
chapter dealing with the internal reactions to the crisis of the common paradigm,
we will take the following to be the most significative reactions: a) a return
to the traditional genres (political history, historical biography, history as
a tale). This "historicising history" which was thought to have been
overcome by Bloch, Febve and Bruadel had been considered alien to scientific
history as from the period between the Wars; b) various kinds of academic
conservativism which acts as if nothing had happened and seeks to maintain the
20th Century historiographic paradigm. In its defence this
conservatism argues that its is better to repeat accumulated knowledge ad
infinitum rather than to fall prey to fragmentation and nothingness; c)
historiographic revisionism. This revisionism took advantage of the ideological
climate of the Eighties and sought to reverse the historiography of the social
revolutions of Modernity (mainly the French and English social revolutions) and
that of the dictatorships which sprang up in Germany, Italy and Spain in the
period between the Wars.
Turning now
to the external factors, we can see how the Post-modernist ideology had an
overwhelming bearing on latterday historiography. The savage criticism of the
idea of progress - the philosophical basis common to the paradigm of
contemporary historians - and the "anything goes" methodology
encouraged a significant number of historians to settle down comfortably into
the current fragmentation of history, considering the current freedom of
subject matter, genres and theories to be incompatible with the validity of any
"unifying paradigm". Post-modernism has a destructive character
rather than a postive one and this leads to the slowing down of its effects and
renders it useless as a historiographic alternative7.
Intially ,
the events of 1989-1991 seemed to have proved right those who preached the end
of the modern attempts to transform the World in order, in some way, finding
themselves left with the paradoxal
return to power of the ex-communists in practically all of the former Eastern
Bloc countries via the ballot box. This swift and contradictory process was
reproduced with the announcement made by Francis Fukuyama in 1989 of the
"end of history" with the fall of the Berlin Wall, when he assured us
that Modernity had fulfilled its destiny,
leaving the generalization of liberal democracy as the only alternative
possible. The rightly irate reply of the professional historians to a proposal
which is at odds with that which we know of history and therefore questions the
very continuity of our profession should not prevent us from learning the most
important lesson contained in the debate revolving around the "end of
history" (and which is also deducible from Post-modernist criticism),
namely, the fact that the progressive
theory of history, a fatalistic concept of history, advancing towards a set and
happy ending has run dry.
3
To say that the fact
that history cannot be an "objective" and "exact" science
means that it cannot therefore be a science at all is an unacceptable
alternative.
Over the
last twenty years, the slow discovery among the ashes of the old objectivist,
economicist and structuralist history the role of the subject matter in history
and the free will of the historian in his work, once more sowed the seeds of
doubt in the profession regarding the scientific nature of history as a
discipline capable of reproducing the past "as it actually happened".
According to Ranke, this emminently Positivist concept of science and history
held by those historians with a Annalist and/or Marxist background is
rendering the extraordinary retreat of history all the more easy . And this is
true whether history retreats towards
literature, thereby heightening the subjectivity of the historian, or towards a
new Presentism lacking in any scientific claims, which means pitting the
historian's social committment against his work as a researcher.
The
historians' practical doubts regarding the old objectivism combined with their
certainties regarding the relative nature of historical knowledge, in reality
approaching the ultimate philosophy of science, are paradoxically perceived by
the community of historians - brimming with Positivism - as a drift away from the natural sciences, and as a return to
the classical humanities, thereby sweeping away the fundamental steps forwards
made by 20th Century historiography. Because trying to work guided
by relative concepts is always far from easy, at least in theory this
contradiction can easily be overcome by
reformulating historical science in line with the latest epistemological
advances made by the social sciences and, more importantly, by the natural
sciences.
4
Redefining history as
a science and the new physics
Should the
concept of history change along with
changes in the scientific concept of reality ? We believe that it
should. Although the onset of quantum physics and the theory of relativity in
the 20th Century put pay to Newtonian mechanics, the objectivism and
absolutism of the old mechanics have nonetheless continued to condition the
fledgling historical science to a great extent. The principle of
indetermination (Heisenberg), the principle of complementarity (Born) and the complexity of chaos all serve to bring
the subject back into the process and into the result of the research in such a
way as to relativize scientific truth
and thereby clearly showing up all of the prejudices of the historians
and of the other social sciences towards the weight of subjectivity in their
works. For the time being, the genuine coming together of the natural sciences
and the social sciences (and also between the physical sciences and the
humanities) which are much more compatible with one another now than they were
at the turn of the century, has been
more openly recognized by the "hard" sciences (the success of Kuhn's
relative objectivism can also be explained in the same way) than by the
Humanists. From the times of Positivism (Compte) the humanities had searched
for and indeed found a safe scientific epistemological and methodological reference
point in the natural sciences.
Towards
the end of the century, a concept of science took hold which put an end to the
separation between the Positivist subject/object8.
Can history remain a stranger to this scientific revolution when its own practice
has led it to conclude that there exists no absolute truth beyond the current
observer and the historical subject? History is, or could be, as objective as
the new physics is. The new science with its subject is not less scientific
than the old (objectivist) science of Positivism but rather all the more so.
The historiographic consesus concerning an objectivist definition and practice
of our discipline has been split apart for some time and can only be recomposed
if the historians taking on board the new scientific Rationalism. And the new
Rationalism which is set to characterize the 21st Century is
characteristically both relativist and transdisciplinary. For history to be able to overcome the
current crumbling in order to take up once more its role in society the
historians' common paradigm must be reconstructed. This calls for the paradigmatic changes in the
ensemble of the social sciences to be heeded as well as the changes in the
conception of science in general. Then as now, this is dictated by the natural sciences, thus also
proving that science has not abandoned its basis of a material and realist starting point. The paradigmatic
concensuses become ever more inclusive
as the epistemology and methodology of the "hard" and
"soft" sciences move closer and closer together.
5
The history of
humanity does not advance towards a previously set goal, nor does it turn back
on itself.
The study
of the past in the light of the problems
of the present is a criterion shared by the historians and serves to justify
the social usefulness of history in the struggle of Humanity for a better
future. This naïve and optimistic enlightened idea of undefined progress which
states that scientific and technological development give rise to a series of
continually improving social forms initially came up against the two World Wars
and the political atrocities of Auschwitz and the Gulag. More recently it came up against a
generalized awareness of the irrevesible deterioration of the environment and
the obvious fact that social well-being only favours a minority of
industrialized countries whilst condemning the rest of humanity to misery. The
countries which practiced so-called Real Socialism put the last nail in the
coffin of the secular religion of undefined progress. And here we are refering
to those countries which claimed to be an ultimate communist society and which
are, albeit rather unsuccessfully,
currently searching a social pre-revolutionary régime within
capitalism to put an end to their economic and social problems.
Just as
there exists not set and permanent scientific truth, the history of humanity
has no preestablished goal as was believed for centuries (the final judgement of
providentialist history, the liberal democracy of Hegel-Fukuyama, Marx's
classless society). Nor is there any guarantee that social evolution goes from
bad to better as economy, science and technology develop. The subject of
history is freer and the future is more open-ended that one would ever imagine.
However, this does not imply that progress has come to an end, that Humanity
should not set itself ambitious aims - motivations. Nor does it mean that the
project which came about about with Modernity has reached its end, either
because it has been fully fullfilled (Fukuyama) or because it can never be
achieved (Postmodernism) or because we are walking in the shadow of the
"New Middle Ages"9.
History
has taught us that feelings of confusion and uncertainty go hand in hand with
periods of transition and that sooner or later these periods end up with the
implantation of new realities and new paradigms. On the other hand, the only
historical progress that there has been has been a relative one and it is neither
absolute, nor linear nor
inexorable. This progress takes the
present and not the future as its yardstick (barring the exception of
time-travellers) thus offering a future
which remains open to a variety of alternatives and a past which never comes again.
This is a new, non-theleological, rational idea of progress which will continue
to include political, social, cultural and scientific interuptions and
revolutions; an idea which places the subject at the core of history and
recognizes the role of utopias as a driving force, whilst never mistaking them
for science.
6
Objective history is
impossible without the subject, both of
the past and of the present
The
redefinition of scientific truth which includes the observing subject enhances
the function of the historian in the process of historical research. It serves
to demonstrate the correctness behind determined historiographic paradigms of
the 20th Century, such as the history-problem of the Annales or
the key function of theory in Historical Materialism which have never been
applied due to their remained blocked by the Positivist belief which has
continued to linger on amongst the historians. In epistemological terms,
by fusing together the object and the
subject, the individual and the collective, by working with data to explain and
to interpret, to search for the cause and the meaning of historical facts, in
order to theoretically construct its object and to practice empirical research
as the "hard" scientists and many of the social scientists have been
doing, the new concept of relative objectivism goes beyond even the old
explicative history by resinstating the strong subject as a source of objectivity (Kuhn's scientific
community as a defining factor of that which is not objective). The bad habits
of Positivism linger on and result in the illusion that the subject-observer
fades away, contradicting the most audacious and unprecedented contributions made by the founders of the 20th
Century historiographic paradigm, the prevailing scientific practice
which involves fully winning back the scientificness of history.
From the
Seventies onwards, written history has tended towards making a history of the
mental, anthroplogical and cultural subject and, more recently, towards a history of the individual subject.
What this has meant is that the collective, social subject, the subject of
Anglo-american social historiography has been forgotten, relegating it to
historical investigation10.
Primarily, this can be laid at the door of the ideological depression which set
in after 1968, and later due to the "conservative wave" of the
Eighties, until it was rescued by the revisionists' historiographical debate
and also by recent history from the opposite point of view. Once again, the key
date is 1989, the year marking the 200th Anniversary of the French
Revolution as well as the democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe.
The return
of revolution and the leading political role played by the masses in Eastern
Europe between 1989 and 1991, seen live by the entire world on their televison
screens, marked a return to the strong subject of history. This strong subject
had been finally swept to one side by
the old historiographic paradigm, be it Annalistic or Marxist, to the
beat of the intellectual climate, remaining faithful to a structural
socio-economic history or to a history of Mentalities (and its successors)
quite alien to social history11.
The
emergence of the strong subject of the new scientific epistemology combined
with the strong subject of recent history is by no means accidental. It warns us that we are entering upon the era
of Post-postmodernism, heralding in the prior conditions for a new
Enlightenment. What is it that links the collective revaluation of the
researcher on the one hand and the historical agent on the other? The answer to
this question lies in another point of the Annalist-Marxist agenda which
went unfulfilled, namely the "human history" of Bloch and Gramsci
whereby Man makes and decides on his own
history, be it scientific history or the history of facts.
Whilst it
is easy enough to state the principle of
considering the subject and the object as one and the same reality, the
legacy of the methodological and ontological schemas means that it remains
difficult to put into practice. And this constitutes a whole challenge for the
historians of the future.
7
From the simple
economic determination to the complex and global, concrete and revisable, determination of historic facts
When it
comes to explaining historical facts, the active objectivist and stuctural
paradigm - according to Kuhn no paradigm
ceases to be valid until its has been completely replaced by another - has
dominated the determinism of economy, and even of geography, to the detriment of the subjective causality of the
social struggle. It skirts around
dimensions which condition both the reality of the past as well as mentality
and culture, politics and power, individuals and institutions. And these are
factors which the historian encounters every day in the course of his research.
Although not necessarily always12, following the law of the
pendulum, the subjectivist reaction against the priority given to economic -
infrastructural - history has generally led
to the undelining of the indetermination
of historical events, to the point where history would be the realm of absolute
contingency: a subject with no object. So then, historiography started out with
no interest in investigating causes and explanations and later went on to deny the fact that they are
knowable, whilst at the same time returning to a more traditional approach to
history and a renewal of another idea of Neopositivist origin involving
the impossibility to comprehend reality
beyond discourse (the linguistic turn in its most radical version).
Our aim is
to overcome the argument between determination versus indetermination by
undertaking a "concrete anaysis of each concrete historical
situation" in order to discover, with no rigid a priori positions, the possible degree of
determination of a historical fact. As
we are all aware, this depends upon the preserved sources, the research
methods, knowledge not deriving from any sources, and the hypotheses and
theories employed by the historian. Of course, the result is open to revision
depending upon the variability of the subjective factors of the research.
Giving
priority to the search for the causes of history in its material basis has
shown itself to be clearly wanting and even at times a mistaken approach. Any
non-reductionist methodology must then pursue the global determination of the
historical facts, going above and beyond the simplifying and divisive schemas
(object/subject, basis/superstructure, economy/politics/culture) which belong
to the objectivist, economicist and structuralist paradigm. Specific research will tell the level of
complexity of the combination of the determinations for any given case.
Historical
reality tends to be more complex than our mechanical metaphores. Thus, by
applying the latter we are distancing ourselves
from the object to be studied. True as this may be, things are not
always like that inasmuch as simple schemas can, in certain cases, render
plausible a description, or even an explanation, because complexity includes
simplicity13. This, then,
is how the economic determination of social, political and cultural reality
manages to maintain some level of validity, as demonstated all but infrequently
by history and other social sciences in the course of concrete research. In
each case, the problem posed involves a global coordination of ecomony as
regards the remaining dimensions which not only interact with it but also live
within it. Politics and mentality also make up a part of economic and material
life, and vice versa, and this explains the invariable inability of the rigid
three-tiered metaphore of economy/culture/culture14 when trying to fully come to grips
with, and most of time even in order to properly describe, the World of the
past. Economic determination also usually involves a global and a complex
determination.
8
It is the
contribution of the historian which determines what is and what
is not a valid subject for research or a valid histriographic genre:
problems arising, methods applied and results
obtained
The
objectivist paradigm endowed the object, the subject of research, with an
overbearing function, even a "magic" function, concerning the legitimization of the scientificity or the social usefulness of a work of
history. Above all else, the great innovations made by 20th Century historiography were thematic ones. Every historiographic era favoured a particular
kind of history: political history was followed by economic and social history,
which was in turn followed by history taken from the subject (Mentalities,
historical anthropology, new cultural history), rounding the circle and the
century with a return to political history (in many cases with new approaches).
Generally speaking, each of these thematic genres of history has yielded good
results, under the influence brought to bear by the corresponding social
sciences: political science, psychology, anthropology, sociology, economy, etc.
It would be wrong then to give priority to
a historiographic theme or genre or to disgard it a priori or
without first analyzing the problems to be dealt with, the methods applied and
the results obtained15. By way of a
résumé and a recapitulation, we can say that the majority of the
historiographic fields on the historian's desk at the turn of this century
gained their credentials in the world of professional history.
This
unprecedented scope of objects constitutes an irreversible victory for
contemporary historiography. The opening up of the sources used (from written
documents to "all documents" in the words of Febvre) was followed up
by such a broadening of the historian's thematic territory that today it
becomes difficult to discover new historiographic spots. And, whilst the
present - and the future - will continue to yield new study material, we can
only conclude that the centre of gravity of the historiographic revolution will
shift towards more methodological and theoretical approaches.
The first
problem to be overcome with the innovative spirit is the question of the
fragmentation of history into a myriad of unrelated objects16. The incapacity of 20th
Century historiography to offer an explanation of the unified ensemble of the
past of mankind has become manifest in the very area of thematic diversification
where the advances are most visible. It is a paradox that below the surface of
the growing variety of specialities and subspecialities, there somehow lies a
search for a total history (taken as a utopian horizon); the idea that
"everything" must be studied.
The price we have had to pay for this has been the fact that we have
been left without the one crucial thing, ie. a global investigation of the
history of facts, periods of time and bygone civilisations.
9
On the necessary
plurality of methodological innovation
The
historiographic paradigm of the 21st Century must be more global and
more transnational than was the historiographic paradigm of the 20th
Century. A greater inter-relationship between those cultivating distinct types
of history and also a tighter bond between national historiographies will do
away with that academic prejudice that brushes to one side those paths which
lead to different kinds of historiographic renovation. It is not merely a
question of preaching tolerance, although this
is an intellectual virtue which
should set off all the alarm bells when absent. Rather, the question is that
the innovative plurality of the method is at this moment wholly necessary for
the recomposition of a paradigm common to all historians in order to leave
behind the multiple varieties of historiography and go forth once more towards
a common terrain. This is the only way to ensure that the discipline finally
manages to reconstruct its features of
unitary identity.
At the
time of objectivist hegemony, quantitativist methodology was considered to be
the paradigm of exactness17
and scientificness. Now, however, the return of the qualitative methods means
that we risk drifting to the other extreme. Without a doubt, the most advanced
thing would involve a combination of
both the quantitative and qualitative methods, should this be demanded and/or
allowed by the theme, the questions posed and the sources.
Narrative is the historians' qualitative
method par excellence. Reviled -
and to some extent justifiably so - as
the paradigm of traditional history, it
was accused of being superficial,
descriptive and geared to events. But for the new Annalist-Marxist
history, the return of narrative history
in the mid-Seventies was taken as an indication of the crisis of scientific
history (Stone), going on to be swallowed up in the latter at full speed. Some
time ago, such representative authors as Georgers Lefebvre and Jerzy Topolsky
defended an explicative history cum tale18which
goes beyond the vulgarizing infra-history. Philosophers such as Paul Cur have
also argued in that same line, saying that history is nothing but a tale,
including Fernand Braudel's long-winded paradigmatic work on structural
macro-history, Méditerranée.
Setting
prejudices to one side, if the truth be told, all historians employ the tale or
the narrative connexion in one way or another to give shape to their research.
How often have the conclusions had to wait until the drafting of a report for
them to take shape? Whether history is good or bad, either from the point of
view of the quality or the bent, depends more upon the deep down contents than
on the form: a global and socially useful, non-positivist, narrative history is
all but impossible. A narrative form need not necessarily imply a background of
conservative history.
One of the
last paths leading to the historiographic renovation of the objectivist,
economicist and structural paradigm which denies neither explicative history
nor the historical account involves a reduction in the scale of observation,
ie. microhistory (not to be confused with the very different old local
history). However, running parallel to this, via comparative history - that
longstanding critical project spurred on by Bloch but which never managed to
incorporate itself into the common paradigm of the post-war period - one is
able to approach macrohistory from a different angle. Just as, in general
terms, truly global historical research going beyond the mechanical charicature
of the three levels has not yet to come about, the same can also be said of the
connexion between microhistory and a renewed macrohistory. The shift in scale,
micro/macro and the structured organization of spaces (and of times) could be
excellent ways of achieving the methodological and theoretical globalization of
history, thereby setting to rights one
of the most negative aspects of the rich -
because it is complementary - evolution of history at the turn of the
Century which lies ahead, namely the fragmentation of both the objects and the
methods.
10
The successfulness of
the new paradigm will depend upon its ability to generate and apply global
research strategies.
The
biggest anomaly that the concensus of 20th Century historiography
has come up against is the impossibility to put into practice the principle of
total history. Chanted like a ritual by the historians, it has become the most
abstact shared paradigm: the more it has drifted away from historiographic
practice, the more total history has become absolute and unattainable, in other
words, more idealistic. It is of prime importance to break this vicious circle
in order to get out of the current
crisis involving the growth and disintegration of history.
As time
goes by we know increasingly more about fewer things.Together with the failure
on the part of total history, this general trend of scientific knowledge has
chanelled the creativity of the historians into a heightened specialization. In
the end, however, the opposite trend emerges, tending towards a global and
disciplinary convergence. A good example of this would be the research
undertaken by philopsophers and physicists alike regarding a unified theory of
physical forces, and this trend is also makes itself felt in professional
history. After careful examination, many of the most recent, novel
contributions can be seen to be the result of cross-breeding between
genres and methodologies19.
The current context of the paradigmatic transition provides us with both the
problem and the solution.
It is a
question of turning total history around, setting it squarely back on its feet
and transforming its contents (and possibly also its name). It is necessary to
bring about that old paradigmatic concept of the absolute to the relative, from
the ideal to the practical, from theory to methodology, from certainty to
experimentation, from the point of arrival of research to its starting point.
For this to happen, the synthesis of he historiographical genres, convergences
in the lines of work, global approaches, views of ensembles must be encouraged.
In other words, global research strategies are called for. Barring a few
notable exceptions, everything which the failed shared paradigm of total
history has neither boosted nor allowed to be boosted throughout the 20th
Century and which never managed to become anything other than global
approaches.
20th
Century history has become a huge archipelago, but one without are bridges,
paths of communication and other inter-historical connexions which would allow
for the islands to be brought together in order to create historiographic
continents, thus allowing us to forget our passive waiting for the advent of a
completely sacrosanct total history. Following an initial process off
secularization and relativization, the putting into practice of a new notion of
global history would require a continual effort of historiographic renewal
which would have to cross academic superspecialization. Taking as a basis the
collective experience of the global approaches
regarding the past of Humankind, one must undertake to theoretically
reconstruct a concept of historical "totality" free of any remains of
the Kantian shell. Free too of the positivist and mechanical dividing lines of
the type object/subject or infrastructure/suprastructure, this would involve a
new concept better suited to the new general scientific paradigm: it would be
more relative and therefore all the more true.
History as
a scientific discipline cannot allow itself the luxury of giving up the global
understanding of the past. The role of history in society, in education and in
research is inversely proportional to is disciplinary crumbling. We can
conclude then that one of the touchstones of this new historiographic paradigm
will be its ability to create and apply global strategies for investigating and
divulging the facts of history.
11
In order to
strengthen the cooperation between history and the other sciences, it is
necessary to advance along the path of
its internal unification as a science of Mankind through time.
One can
all but ingore the need for interdisciplinariness in order to grasp the
innovative potential of the 20th Century historiographic paradigm.
Many themes and methods have emerged out
of geography, economy, demography, sociology, anthropology, pyschology, and political science and they have been
successfully applied by the new historians of the Annales and of western
Marxism whilst at the same time continuing to move within a common historiographic
paradigm, where its interdisciplinary nature is one of its most relevant
components. A similar thing could also be said of the abovementioned
disciplines which have turned to history in order to come to grips with their
temporal dimension, thus giving rise to hybrid subdisciplines, often with
researchers with double origins, eg. historical geography, economic history,
historical demography, historical sociology, historical anthropology,
historical psychology20,
new political history. The need we highlighted at the beginning of this essay
on historiography for historians to go out and find the history/philosophy of
science serves to demonstrate that history cannot afford to turn its back on
interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary dialogue, be it in the field of
historical epistemology or vis à vis its relationship with the physical sciences21. On the contrary, it should seek
instead to boost it, as a sign of the times, on a par with the other natural
and social sciences.
It follows then that the cooperation between
history and the social sciences, even with the natural sciences, must be both
maintained and strengthened in order to avoid history as an academic and social
discipline becoming marginalized. The rapid changes in label from
interdisciplinary (cooperation) to pluridisciplinary (convergence), from
pluridisciplinary to transdisciplinary (crossing over and transcending) clearly
reveal a scientific attitude geared to ridding itself of the classical academic
pigeon holes, whilst at the same time steering clear of the old Positivist
dream of a "unified science".
History is
not impervious to the transdisciplinary climate which came about as the direct consequence of the peak of both
pure and applied scientific knowledge at the turn of the century. This explains
why the Annales chose 1989 as its
tournant critique (critical turning point) with the renewed alliance of
history and the social sciences and a reshuffle of its steering committee and
by incorporating a group of young people who were not historians it regained
the interdisciplinary and pluridisciplinary cut it had at its outset. In the
field of university education, the new Humanities degree in Spain stands to
illustrate this general trend towards the coming together of disciplines,
offsetting the centrifugal tendencies of the Eighties and which continue to
linger on within each of the different disciplines.
In the
Eighties, agreement and dispersion and the downfall of the 20th
Century historiographic paradigm together with an increased collaboration with
the neighbouring sciences caused a reaction on the part of several historians
against the risk of history being swallowed up in the other social sciences.
The most radical of these historians
rejected interdisciplinarity and even went so far as to refuse to define
history as a science at all. However, the inequitable exchange between history
and the social sciences cannot be overcome by the involution of history,
retreating into a pre-pragmatic history of a more traditional cut. What is
really needed, on the contrary, is to get to the root of the problem. History
is weak vis à vis the other disciplines because it has been, and still is, much
more worried about theory (sociology, anthropology or literary criticism). This
concern with theory has meant that it has been able to act in an
"imperialistic" fashion within the system of the social and human
sciences, exporting methods and concepts, problems and theories with the
intention of assimilation. There is only one way out of this problem which is
as old as the discipline of history itself: we historians must keep our sights
firmly set on the ensemble of problems
faced by latterday sciences and societies and develop the theoretical and
methodological consequences of historical research. This task is involves
nothing more difficult than ceasing to lay criticism at the door of the others
(their theories) and being more self-critical (developing our own reflexions)
instead. Things have reached such a point that the interdisciplinariness we
have been practicing can be taken no further22
if professional history does not regain a minimum of internal unity and
globality in its working practice.
Within the
ensemble of the sciences, the one thing that renders history most vulnerable is
its internal fragmentation. A well thought out interdisciplinariness should
begin, then, with ourselves. The historical subdisciplines (of academic,
thematic and/or methodological origins) would have to come together in a common
terrain in order for history to make a greater contribution to the social and
human sciences with which it usually works together - particularly in the field
of avant-garde research. In other words, what is needed is a recomposition of
the paradigm shared by historians. This shared paradigm would not oppose the
indispensible cooperation and convergence between the social sciences to the,
perhaps more pressing, cooperation and convergence between the branches of the
historical trunk itself which are falling apart one after the other. The kind
of interhistory that we are proposing here, within the framework of
interdisciplinary collaboration between history and the social sciences, would
bring about a greater concern on the part of the historians of all persuasions
for historical methodology, for historiography, for the theory of history and,
ultimately, for the common heritage of history. The growing demands for
interdisciplinariness can only be satisfied by a historical discipline which is
conscious of its unity and its inalienable particularity.
12
The future of history
is conditioned by that which is of concern to history as regards the future.
Following
on from the Enlightenment which placed its trust in reason to change the World
and therby achieve the well-being of Mankind, the predominant historiography of
the 20th Century declared itself to be objective. It studied the
past in order to understand the present and to construct a brighter future.
Historical Materialism placed greater emphasis on the contribution history could make to a project of social
transformation, towards a society which was bound to be socialist whilst the Annales
school placed the accent more on the epistemological relationship between
past and present (understanding the present through the past, understanding the
past through the present, as Bloch once wrote). Be that as it may, all of them
shared in the wide-held belief in the social usefulness of the new historical
science.
The line
of progress used by the members of the historiographic community, and by social
scientists in general, to link the past with the present and to the future was
broken by the events of 1989 which marked the onset of the Eastern European
transitions from real socialism to capitalism. This threw into crisis all of
the roads to historico-social progress deriving from the Englightenment as a
whole and which had already been undermined by the harmful effects which these
gave rise to throughout the 20th Century in the survival of the
species and nature. Worse still, scientific history had not warned of this.
The loss
of in history on the part of the public
increases as the progressive evolution towards human happiness is no longer
guaranteed. This phenomenon leads to the historian being pushed to the fringes
of society. The criticisms levied 50 years ago against the underpinnings of the
20th Century historiographic revolution to the historian cum
antiquarian, far removed from life and out of touch with reality (Bloch) may
soon take on a renewed meaning. Disenchantment with the present leads one to
seek refuge in the past in two different ways: as fiction, from the point of
view of the public (this reached its apex with the historical novel) and
academically, from the point of view of the researchers (erudition). Both paths
call for history to be "freed" of the weight implied by a science
concerned with the present and the future of mankind - and the same could also
be said of the other social and natural sciences.
However,
while the Postmodernist ambiance led historians into subordination, the
intellectual debates which seek to draw conclusions from the traumatic events
of 1989-199123 make wide
use of historical dates and of the philosophy of history in order to shed light
on and create debate around the uncertain future of humanity. This is the case
of the worldwide controversies set in motion by Francis Fukuyama in his The
End of History? (Summer, 1989) and by Samuel P. Huntington in The Clash
of Civilizations (1993). The latter brilliantly refuted the finalistic
"capitalist and liberal peace" of the former, heralding an imminent
world war provoked by of religious fundamentalisms. However, it is not always
essayists - in the two cases mentioned above, political philosophers- who turn
to history in order to have an influence on the immediate future. Historians
such as Paul Kennedy have also done the same thing. In his The Rise and Fall
of Great Powers (1987), Kennedy gives over seven chapters to analysing the
rise and fall of the national powers of each period over five hundred years. He
then goes on to conclude with a chapter entitled "Towards the 21st
Century" where he suggests the "most probable outcomes"
regarding the evolution of each government and of the system of the great powers
as a whole.
We are
faced with references to the past and historical analyses which aim to have a
bearing on the present... via the future. This is not, however, what most
worries people today. As a result, there is a tendency to replace the old
paradigm of past/present/future with a different formula of past/future/present
whereby that which is yet to come is brought to the fore. In the face of the
new Presentism which wants to have
nothing to do with the future and which freezes that which we already have and
in the face of the uncertainty about the world which lies in wait us at the
turn of the millenium, the diligent intellectuals - the optimistm of the
intellectuals- dredge around for alternative prospects by dipping their hands
into the past, into that which we already know about the historical evolution -
or involution - of societies and mentalities.
We have
already stated that history must help us to live better, to transform society;
to make us free. In a word, free of an ominous future. But today the terms that
the problem is couched in have altered dramatically, especially as far as the
new generations are concerned. The present is no longer the worst thing, but
rather the lack of a future, of any future. We know that scientific and
technological development will continue to grow until they have dominated the
entire planet, but we also know that the avantages that this brings with it to
the West are not available to the so called Fourth World. And there are growing
masses of young people - many of them with a university education, and ever
more so - who will never have access to a job. In the South the excluded ones
are entire countries doomed to hunger and over-population. Everywhere nature is
rebelling against the galloping productivism, questioning the meaning of a
scientific and technical development which shows itself to be in contradiction
with human interests time and time again.
Today,
history is faced with the task of demonstrating that there have always been multiplefutures;
that nothing is certain beforehand, that everything changes, and sometimes
quite surprisingly so; that in several millenia humanity has managed to
overcome so many problems and of a much greater difficulty - and with less
means at its disposal - than those we are faced with today. The future exists,
then, because there is history. And furthermore, they are alternative futures.
There is hope because there is history. Indeed, in order for us to be able to
make the others understand this, we must first of all convince ourselves of it
in order for us to be able to go on towards a freer, and therefore all the
stronger, historical subject (which should not forget its conditioning) in the
past as in the present.
To think
historically of the future is, then, to transform the present, and beginning
by preventing the great mistakes of the
20th Century from ever being repeated: fascism which is sprouting up
again in Italy and racism which is on the increase everywhere; socialism
without freedom, which died a catastrophic death in 1989; tribalism, aggressive
nationalism and religious fundamentalism whose myths and irrationalities it is
the duty of the historian to stay off and which are at the root of so many of
the wars which are threatening world peace today. A new rationalism is in
order, a new Enlightenment, which would allow us to continue progressing and
history and we the historians cannot stand on the fringes of this intellectual
and social demand.
When,
following the Second World War, the scientific paradigm of history was set
down, it was not as necessary as it is today to defend it in the face of the
scientific and technical disciplines which, at different paces and to a
different extent depending on each country, displacing the historical and
humanistic knowledge of teaching and research; we are at the dawning of an
alaming process involving the deprofessionalization of history. In the same way
as the foremost commitment of any historian
concerned about the future is to be concerned about his own discipline, it is
essential to go back to demonstrating the critical and social usefulness of
history. In order to be able to stand up to technocratic and out of synch
philosophical, albeit politically active, thinking one must distinguish between
history-science and history-fiction and fight to win back the place of history
within the education system, in the priority research projects and in the
social means of communication. Without history and the social science, the
global village that lies ahead will be the future of things, but never that of
men.
13
The historian of the
future with reflect upon methodology, historiography and the theory of history
if he is to exist at all
Whether it
be epistemology (Piaget, Habermas), sociology (Durkheim) or structuralism, it
was very widely held belief that history was not a theoretical discipline, but
rather the simple provider of empirical data for the social sciences and
philosophy. And although it hurts to admit as much, this is a division of work
which the historian tends to except quite happily, spurred on by a long-standing empirical
tradition which began in the 19th Century.
Inspite of
the efforts made by historical materialism and the Annales school, contemporary
historiography continues to be Positivist in one essential point: its sincere
disdain for theory and also, albeit to a lesser extent, for historiography and
methodology. These scientific activities
were held to be of a secondary nature and it would be right to say that
these qualities are practically completely absent from the works of many of the
historians whom we hold to be sacred. Comparison never managed to be put into
practice (until it was picked up anew by historical sociology); the history-problem
was left to one side in favour of thematic innovation and interdisciplinary
collaboration: theoretical work was all but wholly absent. Only a few
philosophers have been concerned about the theory of history and, generally
speaking, they failed to take into consideration the contributions made by the
historians, ie. without relating the theory of history to the practice of
history, thus further aggravating the dead-end dialogue between philosophy and
history whereby neither listens to the other.
We have
already seen how inductism and pragmatism on the part of the historians, their
lack of reflexion on the history that is made, the lack of debate concerning
their methods, their hypotheses and interpretations have led to a series of
consequences, ie. the fragmentation of the themes, methods and specialities.
They have lagged behind the other social sciences and been dependent upon them.
they have cut themselves off from the
society which those of us involved in history should be supplying with ideas,
proposals and perspectives regarding its problems.
However,
this international Congress, History under Debate, stands as living
evidence that something is in fact changing. There is growing interest on the
part of the historians for methodology, historiography and the theory of
history as we stand on the brink of the complicated new century. Perhaps
because "as science grows, so then does the hold of empirical proof
decrease"24 a growing
number of questions arise which no other discipline, no matter how advanced it
may be, can anwser for us, because these problems are peculiar to history. A
professional history which is able to approach a reflexion concerning the
method or the history of history with greater ease than fabrication and the use
of hypothesis, synthesis and generalizations in the course of the research. And
this is no doubt due to the inherited background and the partial failure of the
Marxist-Annales paradigm, as both questions are tightly
inter-linked. The only way to bring
history to a level on a par with the other sciences is to introduce the
subjects of methodology, historiography and the theory of history into the
curriculum25 as early on
as the first years of the history degree in order to get the historians of the
future used to thinking about their subject.
The
historian of the future finds himself faced with a quandry: he will succumb
completely to marginalization within science and within society should he fail
to give over part of his working time26
to knowing and producing works on methodology, historiography and the theory of
history27, competing (and
working together) with the neighbouring disciplines.
It may
well be far from easy for the historian to switch between his empirical work
and theoretical work, but this does not mean that it is quite beyond his reach
because most of the social and human sciences28
have aleady been practicing this combination between theory and practice for
some time. Given that to a great extent thematic innovation has run dry, all
that remains for history is methodology and, above all, theory - that
continually ignored continent - if it is to continue to progress and in order
for it to be able to fulfill its scientific and social responsibilities.
More
thinking about what it is the historian actually does would have the effect of
raising the level of historical investigation, in a deeper global understanding
of the past, in a better relationship with the other sciences (an equitable
exchange), in an increase in the direct contribution made by historians to the
theory of history (and therefore also to society) which are called for by the
events of the 20th Century and the question marks hanging over the
impending 21st Century. It
used to be said that a historian who engaged in theory ceased be a historian.
If history is unable to refute this common premise, then it with never manage to break free of
its subordination vis à vis the other sciences and will be unable to go on
existing beyond the 20th Century
as a scientific discipline as we have known it and, moreover, as we have loved
it.
14
For a history
continually under debate.
From the
very outset, debate is not an academic habit. The new historians, be they Annalists
or Marxists, have reproduced the vertical system of the university
tradition which hands down knowledge in a hierarchical fashion. The way
doctoral theses are read out stands as a perfect example to illustrate what we
mean here. However, in its revolutionary beginnings, the Annales taught
that debate and heterodoxy were inherent to a scientific definition of history:
"non-conformism is always present at the beginning of any scientific
acquisition. The progresses made by science have been born out of discord, in
the same was as religions strengthen themselves thanks to the heresies which
they feed off"29. We must reclaim this non-conformist, critical
spirit and to breathe new life into the history-debate if we are to overcome
the crisis facing history at the turn of the century and, once this has been
achieved, in order to nourish the new common paradigm by learning from the
historiography of days gone by.
The time
has come for the community of historians to take a decision concerning the
historiographic problems that we are faced with and possible ways of resolving
them. But, how can this be done when the difficulties and the alternatives are
not freely presented and argued out? New
concensuses30 cannot be
arrived at if debate is not fostered and - as history has taught us - the
critical situations may rot way.
Kuhn once
stated that a change in the paradigms of any science - crisis, scientific
revolutions - is always goes hand in
hand with debate31. But, as it
is impossible to be continually rethinking the bases of a particular
discipline. In those periods which he refers to as periods of normal science,
the rivalry between theories dies down, rules and premises cease to be stated
explicitly, interest in theory dwindles and only those questions which do not
directly affect the investigators' practice are actually discussed32. Kuhn also excludes out of
hand the human and social sciences from
these periods of "normal" science lacking in debate because he
recognizes the creative function of confrontation and permanent criticism in
philosophy and history33
for instance, and this is a point that he agrees upon even with his old rival,
Popper34. Thirty years on
after the main works by Kuhn first came out, even the natural sciences still
have serious doubts as to whether it would be possible to draw such a sharp
diving line between normal science and extraordinary science35 when dealing with controversy.
What is more, the internal criticism which every discipline ought to make its
own has become a genuine must today when we consider the speed with which
scientific discoveries follow on one after the other (or this is true of
certain sciences at least.)
In the
case of the science called history, the actual experience of the historians
themselves over the last twenty years together with the urgency of a constant
debate, the history-debate as part of the paradigm to be set up, going beyond
the pressing urgency of the current crisis, give rise to the expansion of
history as a discipline. This has the peculiarity of being a science of a human
past, which is questioned and interpreted from shifting present and future -
thus rendering the investigated past equally shifting. The lack of an frank and
properly centred debate has meant that this deplorable situation of unstable
equilibrium has dragged on far too long. The new never manages to impose itself
and the old never quite fades away, positions become polarized or split up but
no-one ever actually performs and divulges successive syntheses capable of
reformulating the concensus. This disjointed situation is even more markedly
clear-cut when it comes to the historians' wide-ranging scope of
practice (fragmented yet fertile, innovative yet claiming back old genres)
versus a theory which continues to refer back to the 20th Century
Marxist-Annalist paradigm. What is needed to set this to rights is
wholehearted debate. such a debate would invovle admitting the crisis - without
trying to fool ourselves with moanings and large doses of good intentions - in
order to go on to draw conclusions which would resituate us within new
paradigmatic parameters. This would call for the reinstatement of the habit of
tolerance regarding positions contrary to our own which means being able to
accept that these other positions also have something to contribute to
recomposing the common paradigm36.
The dynamics of rivalry and cooperation between the Annales school and
Historical Materialism is what rendered the victory of the 20th
Century historiographic paradigm viable and stands as the best evidence of what
we are defending here, ie. that fertile divergences are a basic requirement for
a healthy historiography.
15
The maturity of any
paradigm is in the hands of the schools which foster it.
The crisis
of growth, together with that of the pradadigmatic crisis, that world
historiography went through in the Eighties led to the disintegration of its
common paradigm. This gave rise to the centrifugal tendencies which ripped
apart its component parts, causing a rift between the different national
historiographies and the various main schools of the 20th Century.
Not only
were the shared paradigms which endowed the Annales school and the
Marxist school of social history with their functionality, mutual bonds and a
joint authority challenged and debiliated, both schools also underwent internal
spilts over the last decade, in line with the prevailing climate - and indeed
encouraging it. They came under fierce criticism from both outside and in37, and grew further apart from one
another to the point where very few people today still uphold or even accept
that they continue to be historiographic schools as such with leading figures,
unified investigation programmes, discipline and organs of expression.
Today, there
reigns a rich diversity of
historiographic approaches within the collegial steering body of the Annales
review whose members are bound together by their ties to the outside, ie.
through interdisciplinariness. This lack of an internal bond becomes even more
obvious when we widen the circle to include the Centre de Recherches
Historiques of the École des Hautes Études Sociales and finally
extending it to cover the French universities. The split up of the Annales school
in 1929 was merely the result - and the cause - of the general dispersion of
history over the last third of this century and this also had a great influence
on historians with Marxist leanings. The birth of the History Workshop
in 1976, the debates between E.P. Thompson and Perry Anderson amonst other concerning structuralism
(1978-1980) and between Lawrence Stone and Eric J. Hobsbawm concerning the
return of the narrative (1979-1980) set the scene for a diversification which very quickly
turn into a critique of the social history represented by the Past
and Present38 review
and which never really had the characteristics of such a well-defined school as
the Annales. In both cases the results were the same: an initial big
bang followed by an expansion and ending up with fragmentation and the
confrontation of the parts.
So then,
the historians' belief in the great schools of the 20th Century is
generally held to be thing of the pas. They are traditions for reference39, but no longer active schools40. Positivism is the best reference
we have of a historiographic tradition not organized as a school. At the
present time, in the Nineties, both Marxism and the Annales resemble the
old Pre-pragmatic traditions: some kind of hazy tendencies, more than real schools
of historiographic thought and action. It is interesting to note how, as
rivalry takes over from cooperation between these two schools, very few people
are actually aware - and here we come to realise the importance
of the first two theses contained in our proposal - that the crises suffered by
Marxist historiography and the Annales are very closely bound up with
one another. They ran parallel to one another in their final phases and both
refer back to a general crisis within the common paradigm which is in turn
influenced by the changes in the overall scientific paradigm and by the
sociocultural and political transformations which came about at the turn of the
century.
Within a
context of the development of world historiography, the downfall of the common
paradigm and the great schools which upheld it have given rise to a variety of
phenomena which contradict one another to a certain extent: 1) historiographic
individualism. Spurred on by the need and/or taste for an academic curriculum
and for individualism as a collective mentalitiy this individualism came to a climax in the
Eighties; 2) stressing the "natural" historiographic traditions which
place the investigators above any prior paradigmatic point of reference or
school; a) the field of knowledge, in keeping with the conventional schemas of
classification practiced by the university (in Western Europe namely: ancient
history, medieval history and modern and contemporary history); and b) the
national historiographies and 3) the trend towards a worldwide view of
historiography based upon an increase in international contacts. This latter
point is being a process of
inter-relationships which affects only a minority although it tends to work in
favour of hurtling the World as we know it today towards the "global
village" in all areas of life.
Breathing
new life into history as a science wins back the active role played by the
historians around a historiographic programme, reclaiming collective projects which
go beyond both the academic and national frameworks. Both are obviously
unavoidable. It reclaims battles for history in keeping with the style
of the historiographic shools which weare heirs to. Inspite of the fact that
reality is by and large endeavouring to surpass the old schools, today the
"school spirit" of historiography so peculiar to the 20th
Century is more necessary than ever.
We have
written "schools" in the plural rather than "school" in the
singular because we do not believe that the "common paradigm" will be
synonymous with any "one particular
school" of historiographic theory and practice, neither in the past nor in
the future. In a word, the critical and self-critical tone, the history-debate
and the vitality of the paradigm are more surely guaranteed by a variety of
different schools, both great and small, international and national,
interdisciplinary and disciplinary, etc. So then, academic, national,
ideological, and generational diversity as well as the diversity within the
community of historians all mean that it is essential to effectively combine
plurality with concensus.
The
foremost task of 21st Century historiography is to reformulate and
to breathe new life into the valid aspects of the great schools of the 20th
Century and whilst some of these aspects have already been applied others
remain yet to be fulfilled. This task requires new focal points for
historiographic intervention, both inside and/or outside of these
aforementioned traditions, which not only seeks divergence but also aspires to
convergence: those successive syntheses which open the way to go forth, finally leaving behind the mire of the
paradigmatic transition. But we should never forget that the common paradigm
will not be, and is not yet, a repetition of the 20th Century common
paradigm born out of Annalist-Marxist thought.
In order
"for it to be able to assimilate the new, the old must be reassesed and
reorganized"41. At the turn of the century, the time has come
to take stock of Annalist and Marxist historiography, taken both
separately and together, whilst not forgetting Positivist historiography. This assessment should chart both the
successes and the failures as well as the internal and external limitations of
the goals attained and those points which remained unfulfilled. Urged on by the new scientific and social
needs, self-criticism would be the
greatest contribution that the 20th Century schools could make to
the new historiographic concensus. But getting down to the task of renewal and
cutting away its dead branches, this would not preclude a defence of its most
up-to-date and indispensable parts. We must be radical in both innovation and
in validity. We should make a stand against simplifying thinking which stops us
from undetaking of both operations at the same time as well as standing upto
Post-modernism which provides the criticism yet denies the synthesis: that
essential tension which exists between tradition and change, between divergent
thinking and convergent thinking42
and which is, after all, at the very
basis of scientific and social progress.
The Annales
review set a good example with its tounant critique43 of 1989 which only yielded a limited number of results four years later. And this stands to
illustrate the great difficulties involved when trying to promote change from
within the great traditions themselves, ie. a change involving a significant
generational renewal but with very few programmatic proposals. The scarcity of
debate to be found in the pages of the review together with the fact that the
French cut themselves off from the recent evolution of mainly Anglo-American
Marxism, meant that historiography served to contribute to the limited impact
of the Annale's tournant critique, which, all in all, marked a new phase
for the current founded by Bloch and Febvre, the shape of which remains yet to
be decided.
To date,
Marxist historiography has taken no steps in a similar direction. There do
exist attitudes of revindication and defence jostling with realistic attitudes
and harsh self-criticism but whilst both kinds of attitude are useful and
irremediable, they are tainted with pessimism and are lacking in alternatives
for the future. The greatest obstacle comes from "outside" the historians,
namely the paralysis which has gripped criticical Marxist thought since 1989.
We are convinced that the response is not far off because without the
contribution of Historical Materialism it is impossible to settle the accounts.
And this does not only apply to 20th Century historiography as we
stand on the brink of the 21st Century beacuse we will continue to
come up against social realities which in many ways will be worse than those
which gave rise to Marxism in the 19th Century and which served as
the context for the current social and human sciences. Nor should we forget, of
course, the dramatic refutations which the 20th Century is serving
up against the forecasts made by Marxism concerning the inevitability of the
historical transition from capitalism to socialism.
Whilst the
general, economicistic and structuralist paradigms which overwhelmingly
determined the paradigm common to 20th Century historians, killing
the subject, have on the whole been disgarded by the historians, the same thing
is not true of the Neo-positivist
paradigm, with its more pernicious yet equally effective influence. In order to
enter the historiographic 20th Century and be able to develop - in a
different context - those paradigmatical elements of the Annales and Historical
Materialism which enjoying the concensus of the historiographic community but
still ended up being submerged by the scientic objectivism with its Positivist,
economicistic and structuralist basis, it is our belief that we must take the
plunge and break away from "bad", anti-theoretical and
anti-historical Positivism whilst at the same time not dismissing out of hand
the "good" Positivism with its rigourous documentary criticism). What
all of this means is that it is advisable to go back to the origins of the
great 20th Century historiographic schools in order to gain a better
overall view. With our eyes firmly set on the future we will be better able to
judge what is and what is not useful, that which should be recuperated - and
reformulated - and that which should be disgarded.
When we
say that there are no set destined goals but rather continually revisable
objectives, what we mean is that it is impossible to know with all certainty
what the final shape of the historiographic paradigm which is taking shape will
be. Nor can we tell what role the 20th
Century traditions and the new schools which may well arise over the years to
come may play in this paradigm. In the final outcome, it is the community of
historians which decides which path to follow. The chosen path could lead us to
a new common paradigm with several schools (as happened in the latter half of
the 20th Century), to several contradictory paradigms with several
schools (the 19th century case of Romanticism versus Positivism) or
to a different set up specific to the 21st Century. Here, our
opinion is quite clear: a common paradigm with schools - possibly greater in
number but of smaller in size - promoting a historical science with a subject.
These should be tolerant and with debate, innovative yet traditional, empirical
and theoretical, unified, interdisciplinary and global and they should wage war
against the inhumane future which is said to lie ahead.
16
The socio-cultural
changes of the Nineties favour the history and the sciences of Mankind.
What we
are calling for is a new common paradigm which delivers history and the
humanities from the dark depths whre they have sunk. In this sense, the mental
context of the Nineties is more favourable than was the context of the Eighties
because the context of the Eighties was characterized by "yuppyism",
the adoration of wealth and power and the conservative wave of Thatcherism and
Reaganism which seemed to come to a brilliant climax towards 1989 with the
return Eastern Europe to capitalism. However, no sooner did this actually
happen than it showed itself up to be speculative, corrupt and run by maffias.
The Nineties' response to the savage and inhuman capitalism of Eastern Europe
and to the political and financial corruption of Southern Europe took the form
of the politically correct mouvement in the United States, the general
strikes by workers and students alike around Europe protesting against
unemployment and social cuts in the Welfare State, the uprising in Chiapas, the
boom of Non Governmental Organizations and solidarity with the Third World, the
search for a new ethical commitment in the physical sciences, biological
sciences and health and the opposition to Post-modernism. And the criticism
levelled against Post-modenism must be taken seriously into consideration. All
of these phenomena arose out of a new rationalism and are creating a very
different, less individualistic and more humanistic intellectual and moral
climate as we near the year 2000. The
final ecological, demographical, ethical
and social disaster brought about by the
third technological revolution and the First World will be a foregone
conclusion if humanity does not put Man
and his environment back at the centre of interest of political and economic activity.
History and the social sciences have their word to say, and they are going to
say it as long as the historiographic
paradigm satisfactorily manages to conclude the change currently underway and
which has no previously set goal but depends instead upon ourselves.
*Paper presented to the International
Congress "History under Debate", held in Santiago de Compostela
(Spain) between 7 - 11 July 1993, coordinated by the author.
1The International Congresses on Historical Sciences no longer play the central
and guiding role in the historic discipline that they did in the Postwar
period.
2Unlike physical science textbooks,
the books on the history of history tend to hide the elements of continuity in
favour of the various different historiographic schools and theories.
3Thomas S. KUHN, La estructura de las revoluciones científicas,
Mexico, 1975 (Chicago, 1962); La función del dogma en la investigación
científica, Valencia, 1979 (New York, 1963); Segundos pensamientos sobre
paradigmas, Madrid, 1978 (Illinois, 1973); La tensión esencial. Estudios
selectos sobre la tradición y el cambio en el ámbito de la ciencia, Mexico,
1983 (Chicago, 1977)
4La estructura de las revoluciones
científicas, p. 3;
Kuhn's remarks concerning the specificity of the social sciences have been
loosing force over the last thirty years, consisting in a greater relationship
with society when choosing themes for research, idem. p. 254; for example,
Today, certain branches of biology, physics, and chemistry related to health
and the environment are as tightly bound up with social needs as are the social
sciences, if not more so.
5C.P. SNOW, Las dos culturas y un segundo enfoque, Madrid, 1977
(Cambridge, 1959)
6The first of the two, of French
origin, developed early on (Annales was founded in 1929) and is mainly
made up of medieval and modern historians; the second, with Anglo-american beginnings, matured much later (Past and
Present was born in 1952) and holds greater sway with contemporary
historians.
7 To label all of new history as
Postmodernist is quite mistaken, as it forgets the the final philosophical
implications of Postmodernism and ignores the modernity of new history, be it Annalist
or Marxist.
8 For some people, this was the most
important paradigmatic revolution of the 17th Century, Edgar MORIN, Introducción
al pensamiento complejo, Barcelona, 1994 (Paris, 1990), p. 156.
9 Alain MINC, La nueva Edad Media. El gran vacio ideológico, Madrid, 1994 (Paris, 1993); the
use of the perjorative image that the
Renaissancists, Humanists and Enlightened people had of the Middle Ages
just serves to show up to what extent we are still thinking within the schemas
of Modernity, inspite of everything.
10 The lack of interest in conflicts,
revolts and revolutions has been more wide-spread among medieval historians and
modern historians than among contemporary historians.
11 Carlos BARROS, "Historia de las mentalidades, historia
social", Historia Contemporánea, Bilbao nº 9, 1993, pp. 111-139;
"Historia de las mentalidades: Posibilidades actuales", Problemas
actuales de la Historia, Salamanca, 1993, pp. 49-67; "La contribución
de los terceros Annales y la historia de las mentalidades. 19609-1989", La otra
historia: sociedad, cultura y mentalidades, Bilbao, 1993, pp. 87-118.
12 Other colleagues, still endebted to
the old simplifying schema, would propose replacing economic history with
political history or with cultural history, taken to be the main driving
factors behind history.
13 Newtonian mechanics stands as one
good example to illustrate this point
and is still of use between microphysics and macrophysics.
14 This three-tiered system which
arose out of the doubling up of the two-way superstructure system base /
superstructure has various different forms: economy / society / culture,
economy / society / politics, etc.
15 Raphael SAMUEL, Historia popular y teoría socialista,
Barcelona, 1984 (London, 1981), p. 64.
16 The great historical genres cited
above (economic history, social history, mental history and political history)
are in turn divisible and one should also further add others such as the
history of the genders, of the environment and of sexuality. The
historiographical transition we are immersed in and the decline of the old
common paradigm and its related schools, has boosted this trend of dispersion
even further.
17 There is, however, some slight
misunderstanding: quantitative history incorporates uncertainty, working as it
does with series which, dealt with statistically, can only be used to deduce
probable outcomes.
18 It is by no means an accident that
the concept of history used by Kuhn to revolutionize the philosophy of science
is narrative-explicative, vid. "Las relaciones enre la historia y la filosofía de la
ciencia", La tensión esencial. Estudios selectos sobre la tradición y
el cambio en el ámbito de la ciencia, Mexico, 1983 (Chicago, 1977), pp.
32-33 & 39.
19 For example, the fusioning of
social history with "superstructural" disciplines such as the history
of mentalities, cultural history and political history.
20 The history of mentalities in
France and psychohistory in the United
States.
21 For instance, ecological history
which requires the knowledge about the environment provided by physics and
biology.
22 On the contrary, it may well recoil
were it to lose the principle of interdisciplinary concensus as an integral
part of the historians' common paradigm.
23
More focused in the United States than in Europe where we have perhaps
as yet not left behind the "destructive" nihilist phase which began in
the Seventies and which was boosted over the following decade.
24 Imre LAKATOS, La metodología de los programas de investigación
científica, Madrid, 1983 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 33
25 This has begun to occur with the
setting up of the new syllabuses in Spain, although not for the theory of
history which continues to be regarded more as a philosophical task than a
historical one.
Of course, as with any other scientific
discipline, the greater part of the researcher's time is given over to and
linked with sources and data. We historians are in no danger whatever of
forgetting this.
27 The fact that they, ie. method,
historiography and theory appear together is the best guarantee against
slipping back into Empiricism and running into the arms of abstract theorizing.
28 This might call to mind the example
of de Saussure's linguistics, the pillar of structuralist theory.
29 Lucien FEBVRE, Combates por la historia, Barcelona, 1975
(Paris, 1953), p. 34.
30 Controversies and concensuses are already
springing up, although their historiographic effects are slowed down by the
very limitations of the debate itself, being as it is implicit and fragmented,
and which has as yet been unable to stir
the interest of the profession as a whole.
31 Thomas S. KUHN, La estructura de las revoluciones científicas,
Mexico, 1975 (Chicago, 1962), p. 87; La
función del dogma en la investigación científica, Valencia, 1979 (New York,
1963), p. 22; La tension esencial. Estudios selectos sobre la tradición y el
cambio en el ámbito de la ciencia, Mexico, 1983 (Chicago, 1977); p. 297.
32 Thomas S. KUHN, La estructura de las revoluciones científicas,
pp. 143, 276-277; La función del dogma en la investigación científica,
pp. 9, 19, 21.
33 La tensión esencial, p.
34 Idem.,
p. 296.
35 In any case, this distinction is
vital if we are to understand the progress of science, ie. the debate during
the periods of paradigmatic crises is distinct from the debate during the
periods of stability. However, one should neither underestimate nor eliminate
the latter, because, amonst other things, it serves to guarantee the former.
36 Reading - or indeed rereading -
what Hegel and Marx had to say about dialectical logic (which has resurfaced
again today in the theory of complexity and the repeated failures of the strict
determinisms) should allay any fears of falling prey to eclecticism.
37 Carlos BARROS, "La Nouvelle Histoire y sus
críticos", Revista d'Història Moderna. Manuscrits, nº 9, 1991, Barcelona, pp. 83 - 111.
38 Since the late Seventies it has
been criticised, even by Marxism, for loosing its innovative spirit and for
showing itself up to be conservative with regards tthe history of the family,
women's history and oral history; for giving up political history, its qualitative
approaches and the history-problem; and for being weak in the face of the
moralistic, liberal and positivist British whig tradition of
historiography.
39 "Conversaciones con Roger
Chartier", Manuscrits, 1993, p. 39.
40 In the new phase when the Annales
threw back the criticisms levelled against it, it didn't even define itself
as a school , but rather as an experimentation ground: "Histoire et
sciences sociales: un tournant critique", Annales, 6, 1989, p.
1317.
41 Thomas S. KUHN, La tensión esencial, p. 249.
42 Ibidem.
43 Carlos BARROS, "El tournant critique de Annales",
Revista de Història Medieval, Valencia, nº 2, 1991, pp. 193-197.