Inevitable Historicity

The key point of congruence between postcolonialism and postmodernism seems to be the desire to question hegemonic and prevalent historical discourse and to promote the voices of those not yet represented. Other points of congruence ultimately seem less important than this one – without the desire to upset the apple cart, the primary impetus for challenging narratives about modernity and colonialism would be missing. For instance, a lesser point is made by Talat Ahmed in distinguishing postcolonialism and subaltern studies when he states, “The distinction between Subaltern Studies and postcolonialism is that postcolonial theory expressly rejected Marxist analysis as every bit as Western and European as the colonial project.”[1] Implicitly, Ahmed points out here that postcolonialism resembles postmodernism in its rejection of Marxism – or at least the orthodox form.

The key difference between postcolonialism and postmodernism is the specific concern of postcolonialism with colonialism and its legacies, compared to postmodernism, which covers fare more. Ahmed enunciates this point most clearly when he writes, “Postcolonial theory’s chief concern was the cultural legacy of the colonial project and the ongoing impact of imperialism in post-independent societies.”[2] Postmodernism, in contrast, at least in the abstract, concerns itself with the relationship (and rejection) of modernism and what that entails. What is rejected can run the gamut from so-called “high art” to, more historically speaking, the idea the “grand narrative” or meta-narrative. In this regard, at least until the 1970s, when the collision of poststructuralism with postmodern occurs, postmodernism is a far less specific term that postcolonialism.

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[1] Talat Ahmed, review of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, by Vivek Chibber, International Socialism, no. 144 (2014): https://isj.org.uk/theories-of-difference-the-subaltern-project-examined/, para 15.

[2] Ibid, para 14.

Dane Kennedy very nicely summaries the contributions of postcolonialism to history as threefold: “identities, geographies, and epistemologies.”[1] The clearest of these three factors is identities, and it’s here that we see reverberation with other historical approaches, particularly those “from below,” and with postmodernism generally. The second, geographies, addresses “the spatial assumptions or geographies that informed how most historians plied their trade.”[2] Here, among the big names is Edward Said, whose Orientalism began a dialogue about how western historians have typically imagined and thus constructed “the east” in their works. Although Said was primarily a literary scholar, with the context of postmodernism, in which historical “texts” could include novels and poetry, the spread to history was apparent.

The concern with geographies also contributed to giving a voice to the subaltern in so far as it de-emphasized the metropole and its people in favor of the native viewpoint. Finally, the emphasis on epistemologies seems to by and large be concerned with reconsidering colonialism and imperialism from historical contexts other than Enlightenment-era liberalism. Here, the subaltern scholars in particular draw on Marx, although the postmodernists are also fodder here since decontextualizating colonialism similarly requires detaching it from modernity and modernization.

The text I decided to include here as an example of postcolonial history is the collection Genocides by the Oppressed, edited by Adam Jones and Nicholas Robins. Here, the authors elaborate on the phenomenon of “subaltern genocide,” in which the formerly colonized exterminate the previous colonizers and settlers, as well as cases like Rwanda and Cambodia, in which the formerly colonized turn on their own populations, inspired by western ideas like Marxism or racial supremacy. What’s curious about this subspecialty, to me, are two things: first, that so few of the authors are themselves from postcolonial societies; and second, how the very notion of genocide as a concept, created by a European Jew (Rafael Lemkin), continues the imposition of western modes of thinking on the postcolonial world. Perhaps this can be expanded to a larger comment on postcolonial history, but I don’t really know enough about it to say for sure.

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[1] Dane Kennedy, “Postcolonialism and History,” in The Oxford Handbook of Postcolonial Studies, edited by Graham Huggan (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford UP, 2013), 467.

[2] Ibid, 474.

This question is a bit of a poser for me because I’m frankly not sure whether one can use the term “contribution” when one considers the effect to have been ambivalent. I feel this way for two reasons: first, I was a literature graduate student in the 1990s, so I felt the full brunt of the influence of postmodernism in that discipline, for better or worse; and second, I have spent the last two decades combating Holocaust denial, so I know how postmodernist historians have insufficiently addressed the issue with which Kevin Passmore opens his essay.

That said, I think it’s fair to say that there are some positive effects, primarily those related to the instinct to challenge established narratives. That structuralism and poststructuralism undergird the collision of postmodern literary theory and historiography is, I think, ultimately incidental. Although we might be more comfortable with this collision with the notion of multiple truths of the absence of grand narratives, the underlying importance of facts has persisted, as noted by Passmore: “We cannot go to the past to confirm that the First World War took place, but we do have plenty of evidence […] It is theoretically possible that this evidence could have been fabricated, but more probably it was not.”[1]

If there is one text that stands out in this context for me, it is Jean-François Lyotard’s The Differend, which directly engages the most visible Holocaust denier of the time, the Frenchman Robert Faurisson. There, Lyotard addresses directly the impossibility of meeting Faurisson’s demands for evidence directly: “The only acceptable proof that [gas chambers were] used to kill is that one died from it. But if one is dead, one cannot testify that it is on account of the gas chamber […] according to my opponent, there is no victim that is not dead; otherwise, this gas chamber would not be what he or she claims it to be. There is, therefore, no gas chamber.”[2] In this way, Lyotard demonstrates that the whole demand is made in bad faith and therefore does not warrant historical engagement. In some ways, this is more successful than attempting to meet Faurisson’s challenge.

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[1] Kevin Passmore, “Poststructuralism and History,” in Writing History: Theory and Practice, edited by Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner, and Kevin Passmore (London: Oxford UP, 2003), 132, emphasis in original.

[2] Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, translated by George Van Den Abbeele (St. Paul, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 3-4

There seems to be little question that social history and cultural history intersect, but perhaps it is more accurate to say that they form complement one another and together form a coherent whole – much like yin and ying together form a complete circle. The difference, as I wrote in another post, has mainly to do I think with the focus. Whereas social history focuses on the institutions of society and how they shape events, cultural history focuses on the artifact itself or the “text,” whether literary, visual, or otherwise. To a certain text, social and cultural history provide visions of events from above and below, respectively.

To provide an example, in the last term, a key text in the course I took was Steven Hoch’s Serfdom and Social Control in Russia, which provided a very detailed case study of a Russian village to fully explain the institution of serfdom in Russia. While it included significant aspects of economic and political history, it seems to me to be based mainly in social history in that it concerns itself with a social institution, rather than the specific lives of actual people in the village. A cultural history of such a village, in contrast, would focus on the cultural artifacts produced by the serfs themselves, e.g., their folk songs, religious traditions, marital practices (not limited to a discussion of the economic implications and consequences thereof), etc. Neither Hoch’s book nor our putative cultural history of the same village that Hoch examined would provide a complete picture of the village; rather, only both could afford the perfect circle of yin and yang and thus a complete picture of life in a Russian agricultural village.

I think that the thing that is primarily new about the “new cultural history” is the focus on the cultural artifact, or perhaps more precisely on the “text.” On the one hand, cultural history seems to be concerned with many of the same underlying questions and concerns of earlier approaches. That there is such considerable overlap between these earlier approaches and cultural history would seem to support the notion that cultural history is not all that new. For example, in her introduction to the 1989 volume that she edited, Lynn Hunt evokes E.H. Thompson in her consideration of “history from below” while certainly cognizant that much of Thompson’s analysis of the middle class concerned the class’s culture, rather than the institution of class per se, writing, “The turn toward culture in Marxist-inspired history was already present in Thompson’s work.”[1] Similarly, Allen Megill has written that “the new cultural history has strong roots within the Annales tradition, and even when such connections do not exist there remain significant affinities, of substance and situation, between the original Annales school program and the programmatic side of cultural history today.”[2]

On the other hand, although, as noted, Thompson concerned himself primarily with culture and cultural history owes some of its approach to the Annales school, the singular approach on the text seems genuinely new. In this regard, it does seem to fulfill the promise of “history from below” to a greater extent than social history did. Since social history tended to focus on institutions, including but not limited to those of government and civil society, there often remained a tendency toward a top-down approach. By focusing on cultural output, including by the rank and file, cultural history can offer a picture of what below actually looks like, even as it abides by the longer-term approach from the Annales school. In so far as we might see social history as a complement to social anthropology, we can see cultural history as the same to cultural anthropology.

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[1] Lynn Hunt, “Introduction,” in The New Cultural History, edited by the author (Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Press, 1989), 4.

[2] Allan Megill, “Coherence and Incoherence in Historical Studies: From the “Annales” School to the New Cultural History,” New Literary History, 35, no. 2 (2004): 209-210.

Is “Saidism” useful or even evident in diplomatic history?

If Saidism can be defined as the extension of Said’s theories about colonialism (orientalism) into the foreign policy realm, then I think it’s a foregone conclusion that it is both useful and evident. Andrew Rotter’s essay on the history of U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis south Asia demonstrates how an orientalist conception of Hinduism caused many diplomats and intelligence officials to favor a close relationship with Muslim (though predominantly secular) Pakistan vs. predominantly Hindu India: “Most critical was the Western view that Hindu polytheism, indicating as it did an unwillingness to settle on a single source of authority, laid India open to political temptations of every description.”[1] Ironically, the last decade, during which affinities between the American right and the Hindutva-influenced government of Narendra Modi have emerged, belies the false beliefs of the 1940s and 1950s, just as Pakistan has become a far graver security concern.

How can we factor in the ‘sensory’ experiences of Empire as a category relevant for diplomatic history?

Naoko Shimazu’s essay on the Bandung Conference shows how theatrical staging of events can render sensory (primarily visual) experiences relevant to diplomatic history. This ability is rendered most vividly in Shimazu’s description of Asian and African leaders marching along the Freedom Walk wearing their native dress. Particularly pointed is how Zhao Enlai “wore the Mao suit when he was conferencing, but when invited to meet the local Chinese population, he dressed in a Western suit.”[2] In this way, Zhou demonstrated how this theatricality worked in both directions: while the international audience would see the Mao suit, the local Chinese population – constituting a traditional merchant class – would see Zhou wearing Brooks Brothers.

What is so postcolonial about diplomatic history? How does Bandung exemplify this?

In so far as such a large proportion of the area of the world was once under colonial rule of one kind or another between 1492 and today, it’s difficult to imagine diplomatic history without postcolonialism coming into consideration. Based on the readings, it seems this process is bidirectional. On the one hand, formerly colonized people emerge as political elites and leaders in their own right, including Nehru, Nasser, Sukarno (host of Baudung), and others. On the other hand, the heritage of colonialism continues to exert an influence, whether in the choices of some of the trappings of the theatricality of Baudung are relics of colonialism (Freedom Building as the Dutch-built Concordia Society Club building) or in the mere fact that cold war politics informed much of the tension surrounding the conference, both internally and externally.

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[1] Andrew Rotter, “Christians, Muslims, and Hindus: Religion and U.S.-South Asia Relations, 1947-1954,” Diplomatic History, 24, no. 4 (2000): 605.

[2] Naoko Shimazu, “Diplomacy as Theatre,” Modern Asian Studies, 48, no. 1 (2014): 245.

Of the two descriptions of the Chippendale tea table, I like the second one better because it links the object to the sort of person who might have used it. What’s interesting about the comparison to me is how little of the same information is contained within the two descriptions. I was able to find only one example; i.e., they both mention that the table was fashionable for its time. Beyond that similarity, they are very different. The first is almost entirely visual in its description. There is really only one clear example of the utility of the table being described: “A mechanism under the pie crust surface allows it to be turned up so the table could be placed against a wall when not in use.”[1]

In comparison, the second description provides greater detail about the utility of the detail by providing context for the table’s use. Not only are the other objects that would be used along with the table included, but so are the servants who would move the table and the companions with whom the woman in the vignette would have tea. From Barbara Carson’s standpoint, the difference between the two descriptions is that the second description is better because, in responding to questions beginning with the 5 famous words beginning with W (and 1 with H), it “connect[s] people to the tangible survivals or to technological processes.”[2]

It’s hard to argue against that viewpoint. The last thing to say about it is that the two passages are also just good examples to compare writing that tells (the first) to writing that shows (the second) – and as those of you familiar with the craft of writing know, this is the second lesson of writing pedagogy, the first being to write what you know.

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[1] Barbara Carson, “Interpreting History through Objects” Journal of Museum Education, 10, no. 3 (1985): 4.

[2] Ibid.

According to Kuriyama, strings are resonant because, in his own words, they “defined the meaning – and demonstrated the importance – of tension.”[1] This tension that he speaks of is both actual and figurative. On the one hand, the string is commonly used as a device, the tension of which provides some utility, whether violence (as in the bow) or pleasure (as in music). On the other hand, as Kuriyama shows etymologically, among other ways, the theme of tension emerges in multiple cases with words based on the word for “string” in any number of languages.

Tension in particular is important, I think, because of the importance of conflict to the study of history. I really wracked my brain trying to find another object that was as resonant, specifically in the way that strings are to history, and I came up empty-handed, although I was reminded of a recent trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art that my wife and I made, where we saw an exhibit on dolls from 19th century America. It occurred to me that “doll,” like “string” is one that appears etymologically in several strange ways. The word itself comes from the name Dorothy, but the Latin word, pupa, ends up contributing to three separate meanings of words. First, there is the stage that an insect takes between a caterpillar and butterfly, in which its chrysalis looks (sort of) like a doll. The second is the word “pupil,” which tells one something about how pedagogy tended to view children in antiquity. Finally is the other word “pupil,” i.e., the hole in the eye through which light enters. It turns out that we use this word because, when one person looks at another person in the eye, the first person can sometimes see him- or herself in the pupil of the other, in which s/he resembles a doll.

Unfortunately, I can’t really say anything further about the resonance of these objects, although the theme of control obviously emerges with some of these.

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[1] Shigehisa Kuriyama, “The Resonance of Strings,” available at: https://www.learn.ed.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/pid-1230470-dt-message-rid-12210905_1/xid-12210905_1, page 12.

To determine the connection between Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s essay on a quilt and microhistory, it’s important to have a clear conception of the latter. Carlo Ginsburg, who wrote one of the most famous examples, The Worms in the Cheese, argues that, at least in an earlier iteration, “microhistory is synonymous with local history, written … from a qualitative rather than a quantitative perspective.”[1] The Icelandic historian Sirgurdur Gylfi Magnússon adds, “I take the view that microhistory is first and foremost an ideology combining both a methodological and a conceptual framework.”[2] As far as the methodology is concerned, it is the study of small, discrete units, whereas the conceptual framework is the connection of the micro topic of study to the macro framework in which this topic had its context. If we apply these two definitions, then it seems clear that Ulrich, in focusing on something quite small but connecting it to something much larger, is “doing” microhistory.

I don’t think that the “macro” to which she connects her “micro” of the quilt is quite as big as “nineteenth century America”; rather, I think it’s mainly to the larger history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and particularly the period following the death of Joseph Smith, when the church members immigrated to what eventually became the state of Utah and came into direct confrontation with the federal government. She does so most clearly when she writes, “Although there is no way of knowing when the quilters began to work on their squares, the nine squares that give a month or day indicate a flurry of activity in July and August. That was, of course, precisely the time when the threat of war became evident.”[3] What’s most interesting about her technique is in continually moving back and forth between the quilt and the events surrounding the women making it. In this way, she places the object in constant dialogue with its larger historical context.

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[1] Carlo Ginzburg, “Microhistory: Two or Three Things That I Know About It,” Critical Inquiry, 20, no. 1 (1993): 12.

[2] Sirgurdur Gylfi Magnússon, “The Singularization of History: Social History and Microhistory Within the Postmodern State of Knowledge,” Journal of Social History, 36, no. 3 (2003): 731, note 55.

[3] Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “An American Album, 1957,” available at: https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-history-and-archives/presidential-addresses/laurel-thatcher-ulrich.

There are two objects in my house that I thought could result in interesting investigations. The first is a photography of my grandmother, her four siblings, and her mother, posed at the back of a train called the “Atlantic City Express.” Since one of her brothers is an infant in the picture, I can date it to around 1915. The picture itself raises several question. E.g., where is my great-grandfather in the photo? I know he was still alive. Is he taking the picture? Further, was this a posed picture in a studio, with the train being just a set on which people posed, or were they actually in Atlantic City (they lived in Manhattan, so it’s not out of the question).

The second object is a Masonic lapel pin that belonged to my wife’s grandfather. What’s curious about it, other than the topic of freemasonry generally, is that my wife is Jewish and her grandfather was born in 1900, so when and under what circumstances Jews could become members of Masonic orders in the United States is a question raised by the object. Moreover, there is a large landmark Masonic temple in Philadelphia, where I live, so I know at least one possible destination for research immediately.

I’m unsure how a scholar might study either of these objects, although I suppose that some secondary research would be necessary to contextualize them. An art historian might be able to analyze the photograph in greater detail to determine some aspects of it that I might have missed. An expert in freemasonry could provide similar details, for instance, whether the pin indicates that the rite is York or Scottish. In both cases, interviews with family members could reveal yet more information.