History & Criticism PDF
Preview History & Criticism
H ist o r y & C r it ic is m BY THE SAME AUTHOR Emile Durkheim: Sociologist and Philosopher A Preface to Sartre Madame Bovary on Trial Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language CO-EDITOR Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives H & istory C riticism Dominick LaCapra CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON Copyright © 1985 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 1x4 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1985 by Cornell University Press. Published in the United Kingdom by Cornell University Press Ltd., London. International Standard Book Number 0-8014-1788*0 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-16990 Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of the book. The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. When a man has his mouth so full of food that he is prevented from eating, and is like to starve in consequence, does giving him food consist in stuffing still more of it in his mouth, or does it consist in taking some of it away, so that he can begin to eat? And so also when a man has much knowledge, and his knowledge has little or no significance for him, does a rational communication consist in giving him more knowledge, even supposing that he is loud in his insistence that this is what he needs, or does it not rather consist in taking some of it away? When an author communicates a portion of the knowledge that such a well-informed man has, in a form which makes it seem strange to him, it is as if he took his knowledge away from him, at least provisionally, until by having overcome the opposition of the form he succeeds in assimilating it. . . . The comical is always the mark of maturity; but it is important that the new shoot should be ready to appear under this maturity, and that the vis comica should not stifle the pathetic, but rather serve as an indication that a new pathos is beginning. So ren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript Contents Preface 9 1 Rhetoric and History 15 2 The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Twentieth-Century Historian 45 3 Is Everyone a Mentalité Case? Transference and the “Culture” Concept 71 4 Writing the History of Criticism Now? 95 5 History and the Novel 115 6 Conclusion 13s Index 143 Preface This book does not argue one dominant thesis, but it is acti vated by a number of related concerns: the complex nature of history as a “dialogical” exchange both with the past and with others inquiring into it; the role of critical theory in historical understanding; the relation of historiography to other disciplines; and the need for historians to respond creatively to newer chal lenges in contemporary thought. From a long-term perspective on problems, I try to revive a Renaissance ideal of historiography that is largely out of favor at present—one in which scholarly research is intimately linked to “rhetorical” and ethicopolitical discourse. In more contemporary terms, I am especially interested in the relations between intellectual history, which must develop modes of critical and self-critical interpretation, and social history, which has been preoccupied with the attempt to elaborate methods to investigate the contexts of interpretation. I continue to believe that historians have much to learn from disciplines such as literary criticism and philosophy where debates over the nature of in- Preface IO terpretation have been particularly lively in the recent past. I would like to help bring historiography to the point at which it is able to enter those debates in a more even-handed way—not simply as a repository of facts or a neopositivistic stepchild of social science, and certainly not as a mythologized locus for some prediscursive image of “reality,” but as a critical voice in the disciplines address ing problems of understanding and explanation. Given pronounced tendencies in other subdisciplines of histo riography at the present time, it may be little more than an anach ronism that intellectual history still finds itself in departments of history. It might more plausibly be situated, along with com parative literature and Continental philosophy, in something like a department of comparative studies or a humanities center. In institutional terms, the problem is a familiar one: divorce or the transformation of a questionable situation. I would like to believe that this option is overdrawn, although there may be good reasons for overcoming institutional inertia and shifting the lines between certain existing disciplines. I would also like to believe that the bonds holding intellectual historians to departments of history are not limited to personal ties to colleagues and the comforts of the silken cords of tradition. In any event, the intellectual task is to turn what may be anachronistic into a source of new possibilities in historiography itself—to make the trope linking history and crit icism an acceptable oxymoron. For a very long time, intellectual historians have tried to adapt to procedures in other sectors of historiography, and, for a briefer time, they have defensively looked to social history for guidance. The very idea of a “total history” has often been little more than a blind behind which social history could be transformed into the mother hen of historiogra phy in general. As the following essays will show, I do think that there is much room for interaction between intellectual history and social history. But for that interaction to be viable, it must take place between perspectives that are relatively well matched in strength and urgency—perspectives that can pose stimulating challenges to one another. Beyond these disciplinary matters, how-
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