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Revising the Past/Revisiting the Present: How Change Happens in Historiography

Author(s): Gabrielle M. Spiegel
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 46, No. 4, Theme Issue 46: Revision in History (Dec., 2007), pp.
1-19
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History and Theory,ThemeIssue 46 (December2007), 1-19 C Wesleyan University 2007 ISSN: 0018-2656
REVISINGTHE PAST / REVISITINGTHE PRESENT:

HOW CHANGE HAPPENSIN HISTORIOGRAPHY
GABRIELLE
M. SPIEGEL
ABSTRACT
This article investigates the various forces that may help to explain the ongoing historio-
graphicalphenomenonof revision. It takes as its point of departureMichel de Certeau's
understandingof the writingof historyas a process consisting of an unstableand constant-
ly changingtriangulatedrelationshipamong a place (a recruitment,a milieu, a profession),
analyticalprocedures (a discipline), and the constructionof a text (or discourse). For de
Certeau,revision is the formal prerequisitefor writing history because the very distance
between past and presentrequirescontinuousinnovationsimply to producethe objects of
historicalknowledge, which have no existence apartfrom the historian'sidentificationof
them. The specific natureof revision at a given moment is determinedby the specificities
of the process as a whole, that is, by the characteristicsof place, procedure,and text and
their contemporaryrelationalconfiguration.
Taking the rise of "linguistic-turn"historiographyas exemplaryof the process of his-
torical revision in its broadestpossible meaning, the article seeks to discover the possible
"causes"for that turn. It begins with an analysis of the psychological roots of poststruc-
turalism as a response to the Holocaust and its aftermath,and then proceeds to explore
the possible economic and social transformationsin the postwarworld that might account
for its reception, both in Europe but also, more counterintuitively,in the United States,
where postmodernismproved to have an especially strong appeal. Added to this mix are
the new patternsof social recruitmentinto the historicalprofession in the "sixties."The
essay suggests that, to the extent that revision is understoodas the result of the combined
effect of psychological, social, and professional determinations,it is unlikely that there
will ever be genuine consensus aboutthe sources of revision in history, since all historians
bring to their work differing congeries of psychological preoccupations,social positions,
and professionalcommitments.
A call to examine the natureand role of revision in history must strike readers
of this journal as an odd venture in that it would seem to addressthe most rou-
tine aspect of historiographicalwork in force since the discipline's professional
inceptionin the nineteenthcentury,and to be a topic manifestly lacking theoreti-
cal dimensions. Indeed, my first reading of the "call" unconsciously converted
the term to "revisionism,"which at least possessed the suggestion of systematic
characterone normally associates with theory. Fortunately,this turnedout to be
a misreadingof the invitation,for it quickly emerged that even the most cursory
search via Google for a standarddefinition of "revisionism"offers up a seem-
ingly endless stream of references to a movement dedicated to the denial of
the reality of the Holocaust, which seems to have capturedthe term for its own
2 GABRIELLEM. SPIEGEL
use (in the process displacing its earlier strong link to Marxist revisionism in
the traditionof EdouardBernstein, understoodas a recurrenttendency within
Communistthought"to revise Marxisttheoryin such a way as to providejustifi-
cation for a retreatfrom a revolutionaryto a reformistposition"')."Revisionism,"
or what the Frenchmore aptly, if awkwardly,call "negationism,"appearsto be
a phenomenonoccurringwell outside the precinctsof normalhistoricalactivity,
however pervasive its presence in the ether.
What, then, motivates the currentinvestigation of the concept of revision in
history, its character,meaning, frequency, and reach? After all, revision, in its
most anodynesense of revising error,has been at the core of all historiographical
practice since the rise of Rankeanpositivism and historicism.As is well known,
the classical historicism of the early nineteenth century arose in opposition to
Enlightenment philosophical beliefs that human behavior and development
obeyed observable and universal laws of development from which their truth
could be deduced.Takingits standagainstboth the metaphysicsof Enlightenment
philosophy and the sociological positivism of thinkerslike Comte, who similarly
believed in the law-like characterof human behavior, historicists insisted that
humanpersons and events should be understoodin relationnot to extra-temporal
metaphysicalprinciples or naturallaws but to their particularhistorical being.
Historicalinquiry,therefore,should be directedtowarddescribingthe particular-
ity of past humanbehavior,itself explicable in terms of an understandingof the
total natureof a given historicalperiod, however defined.
FriedrichMeinecke, in his classic work on Die Entstehungdes Historismus
(1936), saw the essence of historicism as the "substitutionof a process of indi-
vidualizing observation for a generalizing view of human forces in history."2
Historicism thus combined a focus on the distinctive individualityof historical
phenomenawith an appreciationthat such individualitywas both conditionedby
and could only be understoodin terms of a succession of events and "regulari-
ties." These regularities,however, were historical,not law-like, andthus required
a method of inquirydistinct from that governing the naturalsciences, a method
adapted,rather,to the "humansciences." Inevitably, this meant that the search
for new knowledge of those particularitieswas the central task of the historian.
Supplementingthe store of knowledge about history and correctionof errorlay
at the core of what made history a "science" in the nineteenthcentury, marking
at one and the same time the progressof knowledge and the progressof society.
Incrementalrevision of the historicalrecord was the normalby-productof such
activity; it was both expected and welcomed and, to a large extent, justified the
enterpriseas such. To be sure, we have long since distancedourselves from the
pursuitof that "nobledream"of an objective, positivist basis for historicalinves-
tigationwhich, as PeterNovick has so ably demonstrated,3is no longer sharedby
1. TheAmericanHeritage Dictionaryof the English Language,4th ed., 2000. I would like to thank
Robert Stein and David Bell for their extremely helpful suggestions and criticisms of this article. I
should point out that neitherwholly shares the view presentedhere concerningthe "causes"for the
emergence of poststructuralismand postmodernism.
2. FriedrichMeinecke, Die Enstehungdes Historismus [1936] (Munich: R. OldenbourgVerlag,
1959).
3. Peter Novick, That Noble Dream: The "ObjectivityQuestion" and the American Historical
REVISINGTHE PAST / REVISITINGTHE PRESENT 3
most historians,however much we respect and insist on the empirical basis for
all historicalinvestigation.Yet to the extent that we still believe in the documen-
tary function of historical research,"revision"hardly seems to be an analytical
category worth exploring.
If we take "revision"to refer to a more thoroughgoingshift in the natureof
historical practice and its conceptual underpinnings,without at the same time
systematizingthe terminto its currentsad usage as Holocaust"revisionism,"then
the possible reasons for an examinationof its meaningbecome more intelligible.
What constitutes"revision"in this broadersense? What range of activities must
take place to qualify as revision? Does it occur naturallyas part of the normal
processesentailedin doing historyor is it stimulatedby extensive shifts in patterns
of social recruitmentinto the profession that mandatenew arenas and forms of
investigation to discover the historicalroots of presentconcerns, whether social
or intellectual?Is it forced upon historiansfrom outside by developmentsin other
disciplines or in the largerworld in which they live, or does it occur as a result of
interior,psychological shifts within individualhistorianswhose work, because of
its excellence and compelling character,attains exemplary status and generates
widespread imitation?How thoroughgoingdoes revision need to be to qualify
as a "paradigmshift," to use Kuhn's terminology applied to scientific practices,
including historiography?4Since all of these sorts of elements are presumably
presentin the profession most of the time, what accountsfor the fact that certain
periods seem content to operatewithin the normalframes that socialization into
the profession inculcates in historians, while other periods bear witness to a
widespreadrevoltagainsttheperceivedlimitationsimposedby routinedisciplinary
and conceptualstandards,whateverthey may be?
These are some of the questionsthatarise from the enlargedsense of "revision"
as it approachesthe threshold of a paradigm shift, and anyone who has lived
throughthe last four decades of change in historiographicalpraxiscan appreciate
the need to investigate how such a profound transformationin the natureand
understandingof historicalwork, both in practiceand in theory,could have taken
place. The motive for doing so now, I would guess, is that we all sense that this
profoundchange, which variously took place underthe bannerof the "linguistic
turn," "poststructuralism,"or "postmodernism,"has run its course, wrought
whateverchanges the discipline is likely to absorb--while rejectinga significant
number of others--and is effectively over. Whether this change amounted, as
some historianshave claimed, to an "epistemologicalcrisis" in history5remains
an open question, but no one can doubt that it constituteda wholesale revision
of the ways that historiansunderstoodthe natureof their endeavor,the technical
and conceptualtools deemed appropriatefor historicalresearchand writing, and
the purpose and meaning of the work so produced.One potentialavenue for the
Profession (Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988).

4. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structureof Scientific Revolutions(Chicago and London, University of
Chicago Press, 1970).
5. See, for example, Joyce Appleby's PresidentialAddresson "ThePower of History,"readbefore
the AmericanHistoricalAssociation at its meeting in Seattle,Washington,January9, 1997. Published
in the AmericanHistorical Review 103, no. 1 (February1998), 1-17.
examination of "revision" as a historiographicalprocedure, then, is via some

explanationof how andwhy this sea change in historyoccurred,whatmotivatedit
and what governedthe rhythmsof its acceptance,dissemination,and decline.6An
appreciationof the determiningconstituentsof this ratherextremecase of historical
revision may offer some insight into the more usual, less thoroughgoingsorts
of revision that accompanyhistorical work in all periods. But before broaching
the question of what "caused"-in some sense still to be discovered-the rise of
linguistic-turnhistoriography,we would do well to considermore generallywhat
historical practice consists of, for any change in practice, even one as startling
and deep-rootedas the linguistic turn,perforceoccurs initially within the confines
of "normalscience," to borrowKuhn's phrase,and thus must be seen againstthe
backgroundof its routines.
One of the most significant characteristicsof the contemporarypractice of
history, importantfor the points I wish eventually to make, derives from the
central paradox of historical writing as analyzed by Michel de Certeau. In de
Certeau's opinion, modern Western history essentially begins with a decisive
differentiationbetween the present and the past. Like modern medicine, whose
birth is contemporaneouswith that of modern historiography,the practice of
history becomes possible only when a corpse is opened to investigation, made
legible such thatit can be translatedinto thatwhich can be writtenwithin a space
of language. Historiansmust draw a line between what is dead (past) and what
is not, and thereforethey posit death as a total social fact, in contrastto tradition,
which figures a lived body of traditionalknowledge, passed down in gestures,
habits, unspoken but nonetheless real memories, borne by living societies. For
de Certeau, the modem age entertains an obsessive relation with death, and
discourse about the past has as the very condition of its possibility the status of
being discourse about the dead, a discourse with which historiansfill the void
between past and presentcreatedby history's foundinggestureof rupture.7In that
sense, the very postulate of modern historiographyis the disappearanceof the
past from the present,its movementfrom visibility to invisibility. The historian's
task becomes, therefore, what Hofmannsthaldefined as that of "readingwhat
was never written."8It is in this moment that the past is saved, "not in being
returnedto what once existed, but instead, precisely in being transformedinto
something that never was, in being 'readas what was never written."'9From this
6. I should acknowledgethatthe extent to which the profession as a whole adoptedthe "linguistic
turn"is probably exaggerated here, although I think the prevalence of studies of "discourse,"the
spreadof feminist concepts of gender, and the rise of postcolonial theory and history bear witness to
the fact that its impactwas far wider than might be thoughtmerely from examiningthe work of those
directly engaged with debating "theory"or doing intellectual history. However, it remains true that
the actual numberof historiansactively engaged with these questions probablyremainedrelatively
small in comparisonto the field as a whole. Nonetheless, it did representa significant challenge to
historians' traditionalways of conceiving history and had a discernible impact on the natureof the
truth-claimsand epistemological objectivity that historiansfelt comfortablein asserting.
7. Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, transl. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia
UniversityPress, 1988), 5.
8. Hofmannsthal'sphraseis cited in WalterBenjamin,GesammelteSchriften,ed. Rolf Tiedemann
and HermannSchweppenhiiuser(Frankfurtam Main: Suhrkamp,1972-1989), I, pt. 3, 1238. I am
indebtedto Daniel Heller-Roazenfor this reference.
9. See the discussion of this in Daniel Heller-Roazen, "Introduction,"Giorgio Agamben,
REVISING THEPRESENT
THEPAST/ REVISITING 5
perspective, the principalrelation of the historianto the past is an engagement

with absence.
At the same time, the historian's specific labor is to fill the space of the void
created by the division of the present from the past with words, language (or
discourse) generated from and within the present place of the historian. As de
Certeaunotes,
Historiography canencompassthe past:it is
tendsto provethatthe site of its production
anoddprocedure thatpositsdeath,a breakageeverywhere in discourse,andthat
reiterated
yet deniesloss to the the of
by appropriating present privilege recapitulating thepastas a
formof knowledge.A laborof deathanda laboragainstdeath.'?
This paradoxicalprocedureis, precisely, what de Certeaumeans by "writing,"an

act that replaces the traditionalrepresentationthat "gave authorityto the present
with a representativelabor that places both absence and productionin the same
area.""'The criticalconcept here for de Certeauis thatof the "site of production,"
which for him constituteshistoriography'squasi-universalprinciple of explana-
tion, since, he asserts,"historicalresearchgraspsevery documentas the symptom
of whateverproducedit,""'2 and representsit throughits own productivelabor of
writing.
Historicalwriting, therefore,is performedthroughand by means of a constant
paradoxicalmovementbetween absence and presence-the presence of the pres-
ent place from which the past has been excluded by the defining gesture of rup-
turethat constitutesit, and the site from which the past will be recreated.Inherent
in this double movement between past and present,absence and presence, is the
constantrewritingof the past in the terms of the present,since
foundedon a rupturebetweena pastthatis its objectanda presentthatis theplaceof its
practice,historyendlesslyfindsthe presentin its objectandthepastin its practice....
Inhabited by theuncanninessthatit seeks,historyimposesits lawuponthefarawayplaces
thatit conquerswhenit fosterstheillusionthatit is bringingthembackto life.
In the realmof history,an endlesslaborof differentiation (amongevents,periods,
dataor series,andso on) formsthe conditionof all relatingof elementsthathavebeen
distinguished,andhenceof theircomprehension. Butthislaboris basedon thedifference
betweena presentanda past.Everywhere it presupposes
theactadvancingan innovation
by dissociatingitself froma traditionin orderto considerthis traditionas an objectof
knowledge."3
What de Certeau suggests here is that revision is the formal prerequisitefor

writing history, not in the sense of the supplementationof the historical record
with formerly unknown knowledge, as classical historicism had it, but because
the very distancebetween past andpresentrequirescontinuousinnovationsimply
to produce the objects of historical knowledge, which have no existence apart
from the historian's identificationof them. History, then, plays along "the mar-
Potentialities,ed. and transl.with an introduction

by DanielHeller-Roazen
(Stanford:Stanford
UniversityPress,1999),1.
10. de Certeau,The Writingof History, 5.
11. Ibid., 5.
12. Ibid., 11.
13. Ibid., 36.
gins which join a society with its past and with the very act of separatingitself
from the past."14
As the preceding passage from de Certeau indicates, the fact that historians
must construct the objects of their investigation does not mean that they are
free of the past or that the findings so generated are merely fictive postulates.
Historiansescape neither the survival of former structuresnor the weight of an
endlessly presentpast--an "inertia"that traditionalistswere wont to call "conti-
nuity."But it does mean that, in contemporaryhistoriography,the sign of history
has become less the real than the intelligible, an intelligibility achieved through
the productionof historiographicaldiscourse according to narrativistprinciples,
and hence always flirting with the "fictive" that is intrinsic to the operationof
narrativity.In this process, the historical"referent"(or what used to be called the
"real,"the "true,"the "fact")is not so much obliteratedas displaced.No longer a
"given"of the past that offers itself to the historian's gaze, the referentis some-
thing constantlyrecreatedin the recurringmovement between past and present,
hence ever-changingas that relationshipitself is modified in the present.
As an operationof the present upon the past, moreover, historical writing is
always affected by determinismsof varying kinds, since it necessarily depends
upon "the place where it occurs in a society and [is] specified . . . by a problem,
methods and a function which are its own."" Indeed, envisaging history as an
operation, de Certeau argues, is equivalent to understandingit as "the relation
between a place (a recruitment,a milieu, a profession etc.), analyticalprocedures
(a discipline) and the construction of a text."'6This triangulatedrelationship
among place, procedure,and text (or production)means that the sources of the
determinationsthatgo into the makingof historyare heterogeneousand possess a
numberof constraintsthat delimit the activity of individualhistorians,outside of
which they cannotoperate.Whetherviewed as a productof historians'discursive
formationa la Foucault, their social embeddedness in a time and place, or the
protocols of professionalpracticeat any given moment,what this suggests is that
genuine revision of the kind representedby the linguistic turnin historiography
of the last several decades is in principleextraordinarilydifficult to achieve, since
the impulses behind such revision must arise from and be consonantwith needs
and desires that are variously social, professional, and personal in inspiration.
Only, perhaps,when change occurs in all three domains is it likely that a trans-
formationin the systemic conditions within which the historicaloperationtakes
place-a "paradigmshift"in Kuhn's sense-will occur.
All this suggests that the writing of history cannot be entirely divorced from
the psychology of individual historians,whatever the degree to which that psy-
chology is shaped by the intellectual (read ideological7-)currentsof the world
14. Ibid., 37.

15. Ibid., 37-38.
16. Ibid., 57.
17. "Ideological"here can be usefully understoodin Althusserianterms as "the representation
of the imaginaryrelationshipof individuals to their real conditions of existence," a definition that
captures the asymmetricalrelation between conceptual frames or images and the objects toward
which they are directed,as opposed to more mechanicalnotions of "reflection,""correspondence,"or
transparencyof any kind. It is in this sense that,for Althusser,"ideology is the system of the ideas and
they inhabit or is channeled throughprofessional avenues of expression. If we

acknowledge that history is the productof contemporarymental images of the
absent past that bear within them strong ideological and/orpolitical imprints-
and it seems unlikely that any historianwould today disagree with this, whether
framed in terms of discourse, social location, or some other form of the histori-
an's fashioning-then it seems wrongheadedto deny the impress of individual
psychological forces in the coding and decoding of those socially generated
norms and discourses, although the degree to which individual motivation (or
what used to fall underthe rubricsof consciousness and intentionality)operates
"freely"remains subject to debate.'8
I assertthis belief in the psychic roots of the historian'spracticein full aware-
ness of the fact that one of the founding principlesof poststructuralismtrumpets
the "deathof the author"and replaces the former humanistconcept of the indi-
vidual "subject,"or the individual tout court, with the notion of malleable and
ever-changing"subjectpositions,"constitutedby and within discourse, a charac-
teristic poststructuralistexchange of depth (hence depth psychology) for spatial
relations (or "positions").19 But this effacement of the individual as centered
subject-as psyche, as agent, and as historicalinterpreter--alwaysseemed to me
to be the most problematicaspect of the poststructuralistcritiqueof the so-called
humanistsubject.What tendedto get lost in poststructuralism'sconcentrationon
the discursive constitutionof the subjectwas any sense of social agency, of men
and women struggling with the contingencies and complexities of their lives in
termsof the fates thathistorydeals them, and of the ways in which they transform
the worlds they inheritand pass on to futuregenerations.20
representationswhich dominatethe mind of a man or a social group."See Louis Althusser,"Ideology
and Ideological State Apparatuses,"in Lenin and Philosophy and OtherEssays (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1971), 162, 158.
18. For a recent attempt to rehabilitatethe notion of individual intentionality,see Mark Bevir,
"How to Be an Intentionalist,"History and Theory41 (2002), 209-217, as well as the more extended
discussion in his The Logic of the History of Ideas (Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniversity Press,
1999).
19. On this development generally see Elizabeth Deeds Ermath, "Agency in the Discursive
Condition,"History and Theory, ThemeIssue 40 (2001), 34-58 and the now classic essay by Joan
Scott, "The Evidence of Experience,"reprintedin The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences, ed.
TerrenceJ. McDonald (Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press, 1996), 379-406. See also David
Gary Shaw, "Happy in Our Chains? Agency and Language in the Postmodem Age," History and
Theory,ThemeIssue 40 (2001), 1-9, which serves as an introductionto the extremely useful set of
essays on the questionof agency in historyto which this issue of Historyand Theorywas dedicated.It
might be noted in passing that for FredricJamesonthe opposition normallyposed between "agency"
and (linguistic) "system"is a false opposition "aboutwhich it would be just as satisfactoryto say
that both positions are right; the crucial issue is the theoreticaldilemma, replicatedin both, of some
seeming explanatorychoice between the alternativesof agency and system. In reality,however, there
is no such choice and both explanations or models--absolutely inconsistent with each other-are
also incommensurablewith each other and must be rigorously separatedat the same time that they
are deployed simultaneously."See his Postmodernism,Or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism,
11th ed. (Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 326. For this reason, perhaps,most of the cur-
rent revisions to poststructuralisttheorizingof the subject and its capacity for agency seeks to retain
the systematic force of discursive regimes while modifying the totalizing effect of such regimes on
individualbehavior and consciousness. See the discussion that follows.
20. For a more extensive argumenton this point see GabrielleM. Spiegel, "History,Historicism,
and the Social Logic of the Text," Speculum65 (1990), 59-86, reprintedin idem, The Past as Text:
The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
It is hardly surprising,then, that currentdebates about poststructuralismand

linguistic-turnhistoriographyare taking aim at the notion of the linguistically
constructednatureof subjectivity, one aspect of a revised understandingof the
mastercategoryof discoursethatstresses less the structuralnatureof its linguistic
constructsthanthe pragmaticsof theiruse. Thus practiceand meaninghave been
at least partiallyuncoupledfrom the impersonalworkings of discursive regimes
and rejoinedto the active intentionsof humanagents embeddedin social worlds.
Ratherthanbeing governedby impersonalsemiotic codes, historicalactors-both
past and present--are now seen as engaged in inflecting the semiotic constituents
(signs) that shape their understandingof reality so as to craft an experience of
thatworld in termsof a situationalsociology of meaning,or what might be called
a social semantics.21This shift in focus from semiotics to semantics, from given
semiotic structuresto the individualand social construalof signs, in short, from
cultureas discourseto cultureas practiceand performance,entails a recuperation
of the historical actor as an intentional(if not wholly self-conscious) agent, and
thus foregroundsonce again questions of individualmotivationand behavior.22
All of which brings me, at last, to a considerationof the possible causes for
the emergence of "linguistic-turn"historiographywithin the frameworkof what
is more generallytermed"postmodemism,"and its widening professionalaccep-
tance in the period roughly covered by the last four decades, with allowances
made for varying degrees of its penetrationover time in different domains of
historicalinquiry.23
This is not the place to rehearsethe characteristicsof either the linguistic turn
in historical writing or postmodernismmore generally, understoodhere as the
encompassingphenomenonwithin which the changes in historiographyoccurred.
By now - and certainlyamongreadersof Historyand Theory--it is hardto imag-
ine that a shared sense of what we mean by these terms does not exist, even as
considerable disagreementpersists concerning their significance and utility for
historiography.Moreover,to the extent thatthis turnin historiographicalpractice
is seen here merely as exemplary, as an instance of a process of revision that is
ongoing in historical LaCaprain his most recentbook calls "history
work--what
University Press, 1997), 21.

21. "Semantics"here would pertain not only to " meaning" or "signification"as such but also
would include the relationshipof propositionsto reality.
22. For a fuller discussion of this currentmovementof "revision"in linguistic-turnhistoriography,
see my Introductionto Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writingafter the Linguistic
Turn(New York and London:Routledge, 2005), 1-31.
23. I say this advisedly as a medieval historian, a field in which there has been an extremely
uneven receptionof the basic tenets of poststructuralism,despite the fact that one could argue thatthe
medieval understandingof language and its opaque characterand significance lies closer to a post-
structuralistview than to the modernbelief in the transparentand rationalcharacterof linguistic acts,
a point made early and often by medievalists such as Eugene Vance, Nancy Partner,Robert Stein,
and others. It is perhapsuseful to rememberhere that Hayden White, whose Metahistory,published
in 1973, marks one of the importantmoments for the introductionof poststructuralistperspectives,
began his professional life as a medieval historian.The same unevenness doubtless marks the pro-
fession as a whole, although I think it is fair to say that as one moves to more recent professional
generations,acceptanceof the importanceof concepts such as "discourse"and the like becomes more
or less automatic.
THEPAST/ REVISITING
REVISING THEPRESENT 9
in transit"24-theprecise elements thatmake up the linguisticturn,poststructural-

ism, and postmodernismare perhapsless importantthanthe fact of the profound
change in the conception and doing of history that they implied.
There is, to be sure, little agreementabout the motives and causes that stand
behind these phenomena.Perhapsthe most negative assessment of postmodern-
ism's sources and prevailing cachet in the academy comes from the collective
work of Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and MargaretJacob, who, in Telling the
Truthabout History, proclaimthat
In ourview,postmodernists aredeeplydisillusionedintellectuals
whodenounceen masse
Marxismandliberalhumanism,communism andcapitalism,andall expectationsof lib-
eration.Theyinsistthatall of theregnantideologiesarefundamentally the samebecause
theseideologiesaredrivenby the desireto disciplineandcontrolthe populationin the
nameof scienceandtruth.No formof liberationcan escapefromtheseparameters of
control.
In manyways,then,postmodernism is an ironic,perhapsevendespairingview of the
world,one that,in its extremeforms,offerslittleroleforhistoryas previouslyknown.25
Interesting in its focus on the individual, ideologically conditioned character

of those espousing postmodernism,the passage fails to take us very far toward
understandingthe roots of the disillusionmentthat, the authors aver, so colors
the postmodernistapproachto the world and to history. Nor does it specify the
place from which such an ironic perception might have been generated.If we
agree with de Certeau that the site of history's production, including in that
notion prevailingdiscourses as well as the social conditions that discourses both
construct and live within, then we must look elsewhere for an explanation of
postmodernism'semergence and appeal.
I would like to begin with what I have elsewhere arguedare the psychic roots
of poststructuralism,and of Derrideandeconstructionin particular(which I con-
sider to have been the basic articulationof poststructuralism'smost important
principles.26)We may legitimately take, I believe, the hallmarkof deconstruc-
tion (and hence of poststructuralism)to be a new and deeply counterintuitive
relationship between language and reality, counterintuitivein the sense that
deconstruction's understandingof that relationship interposes so many layers
of mediation--indeed, proffers little but mediation-that one is left enclosed
within a linguistic world that no longer has a purchase on reality. Moreover,
deconstructionproposes an inherentinstabilityat the core of languagethatplaces
24. For LaCapra,history is "always in transit,even if periods, places, or professions sometimes

achieve relative stabilization.This is the very meaning of historicity.And the disciplines that study
history ... are also to varyingdegrees in transit,with their self-definitionsand bordersnever achiev-
ing fixity or uncontested identity." Dominick LaCapra,History in Transit: Experience, Identity,
Critical Theory (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2004), 1. If one accepts this
formulation,then once again, as in the case of de Certeaualthough on a differentbasis, revision is
seen as intrinsicto the natureof history, an understandingof historicity,and the practicesthat create
and study it.
25. Joyce Appleby,Lynn Hunt,andMargaretC. Jacob,Tellingthe Truthabout History(New York
and London:Norton, 1994), 206, 207.
26. See my "Orationsof the Dead/Silences of the Living: The Sociology of the Linguistic Turn,"
in Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography
(Baltimore:Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 29-43.
the determinationof meaning ultimatelybeyond our reach, for every text, in the
broadsense that deconstructionunderstandsthat term, foundersultimatelyon its
own indeterminacy,its aporia, the "impassebeyond all possible transaction"as
Derridadefines it, "whichis connectedwith the multiplicityof meanings embed-
ded within the uniqueness of textual inscription.""27 The psychic destabilization
produced by such a problematizing of the relationship between res et verba,
togetherwith the decenteringof languageand thus, perforce,of those who author
and authorizeit, suggests that deconstructionrepresentsnot only a rupturein the
traditionsof Western philosophy and history, but a psychic response to those
traditionsthat is itself founded in rupture.28
It is my belief that Derridaalchemized into philosophy a psychology deeply
markedby the Holocaust--markedby but not partof its experientialdomain--in
which the Holocaust figures as the absent origin that Derrida himself did so
much to theorize. This is to argue that, living at a moment burdenedwith the
inescapableconsciousness of the Holocaust, Derridaemerged into the history of
philosophy as a theoreticianof linguistic "play,"and to contendthat the articula-
tion of "play"is centralto thatprocess of alchemizationthatmakes writing "after
Auschwitz"(in the famous phraseof Adorno29)possible. Indeed, in a highly dis-
placed form, this is precisely the startingpoint of Derrida's critique of what he
calls the "structuralistthematicof brokenimmediacy":
This structuralistthematicof brokenimmediacyis thereforethe saddened,negative,
nostalgic,guilty,Rousseauisticside of the thinkingof play whoseotherside wouldbe
Nietzscheanaffirmation,thatis thejoyousaffirmation of theplayof theworldandof the
innocenceof becoming,the affirmation of a worldof signs withoutfault,withouttruth,
andwithoutoriginwhichis offeredto anactiveinterpretation. Thisaffirmationthendeter-
minesthenoncenterotherwisethanas loss of thecenter.30
For Derrida,acknowledgmentof the "structuralityof structure"is synonymous

with the "momentwhen languageinvadedthe universalproblematic,the moment
when, in the absence of a center or origin, everythingbecame discourse."31
Derrida belonged both by birth and by self-conscious identification to that
"second generation"of the post-Holocaust world on whose psyche has been
indelibly inscribed an event in which it did not participate,but which nonethe-
less constitutesthe underlyingnarrativeof the lives of its members.32Theirs was,
27. JacquesDerrida,"Shibboleth,"in Midrashand Literature,ed. Geoffrey Hartmanand Sanford

Budick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 323.
28. As Derridahimself noted, deconstructionproposes the notion of a "decenteredstructure,"that
is, a structurewhose decenteringis the result of "the event I called a rupture,itself, in turn, an effect
of the coming into consciousness of the "structuralityof structure."See "Structure,Sign, and Play
in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," in Writingand Difference, transl. Alan Bass (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), 292. Derridadoes not, however, specify the "event"he calls a
rupture,he merely- and somewhattautologically- presentsit as an effect of an emerging awareness
of structure'sstructurality,or constructednature.One is temptedto see this as a compelling example
of the intellectualdisplacementof a psychological phenomenon.
29. Adorno's phrasewas: "AfterAuschwitz it is no longer possible to write poems." TheodorW.
Adorno,Negative Dialectics, transl.E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum,1973), 362.
30. Derrida,"Structure,Sign, and Play," 292.
31. Ibid., 289.
32. Technically, of course, Derrida,having been born in 1930, was a bit old to be properlyclas-
sified as a member of the second generation.Indeed, in 1942, Derridawas expelled from school as
first and foremost, a world of silence, a "silence,"as Frenchpsychologist Nadine

Fresco tells us in her brilliantevocation of the psychology of the second genera-
tion," "thatswallowed up the past, all the past."33The parentsof these children
transmitted onlythe woundto theirchildren,to whomthe memoryhadbeenrefusedand
whogrewupin thecompactworldof theunspeakable, [amid]litaniesof silence.... What
the Nazishadannihilated overandaboveindividualswas theverysubstanceof a world,
a culture,a history,a way of life.... Life was now the trace,moldedby death.... The
pasthasbeenutterlyburntawayat thecenterof theirlives.34
They feel themselves to be "Jews deportedfrom meaning, their residentpermits

withdrawn,expelled from a lost paradise,abolishedin a death in turndissolved,
dissipated... deportedfrom a self thatought to have been that of another.Death
is merely a matterof substitution.""35
From their parents,this generationreceived
only, in ErikaApfelbaum's words, "un h6ritageen formes d'absences"(a legacy
in the form of absences).36Linked to the notion of absence in the work of French
writers of the second generation, as Ellen Fine has demonstrated,are repeated
evocations of void, lack, blank, gap, and abyss. "La mimoire absente," in the
novels of Henri Raczymow is "la meimoiretroude":hollowed out, fragmented,
ruptured.37
Perhaps most striking of all in the work of these writers is the sense of the
utter inadequacy of language. "The world of Auschwitz," in George Steiner's
famous remark,"lies outside speech as it lies outside reason."38Language"after
Auschwitz" is language in a condition of severe diminishment and decline,
and no one has argued more forcefully than Steiner the corruption-indeed the
ruin-of language as a result of the political bestiality of our age.39And yet, for
those who come after, there is nothing but language. As the protagonistin Elie
Wiesel's novel The Fifth Son, states: "Born after the war I endure its effects. I
suffer from an Event I did not even experience .... From a past that has made
History tremble,I have retainedonly words."40Both for those who survivedand
for those who came after, the Holocaust appearsto exceed the representational
capacity of language, and thus to cast suspicion on the ability of words to con-
vey reality.41And for the second generation, the question is not even how to
a result of the lowering to seven percentof the numerusclausus of Jews allowed to attend.Between
then and the end of the war, he attendeda school run by Jews in Algiers, experiencingin that sense
the war and the anti-Semitismof the P6tain regime. Nonetheless, in relation to the Holocaust and
the experiences of EuropeanJews, Derrida'schildhood in Algiers, I believe, maintainsa comparable
position of marginalityand belatednessthat informsthe psychology of the second generation.
33. Nadine Fresco, "Rememberingthe Unknown," InternationalReview of Psychoanalysis 11
(1984), 419.
34. Ibid., 420-421.
35. Ibid., 420-423.
36. Quoted in Ellen S. Fine, "The Absent Memory:The Act of Writingin Post-HolocaustFrench
Literature,"in Writingand the Holocaust, ed. Berel Lang (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1988), 44.
37. Ibid., 45.
38. George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature,and the Inhuman
(New York: Atheneum, 1986), 123.
39. Ibid., 4.
40. Quoted in Fine, "The Absent Memory,"41.
41. The "unrepresentable" natureof the Holocaustis the subjectof a considerableliterature,begin-
speak but, more profoundly,if one has a right to speak, a delegitimizationof the
speaking self that,turnedoutward,interrogatesthe authority,the privilege, of all
speech. Which, of course, is precisely what Derridaand deconstructiondo in the
attackon logocentrism.
Moreover, the "Auschwitz model," Jean-FranGoisLyotard concludes, desig-
nates an experience of language that brings speculative discourse to a halt. The
latter can no longer be pursued "'after Auschwitz."'42Thus intimately bound
up with the paralysis of language is the death of metaphysics--itself, perhaps,
merely the displaced sign of the death of God in "l'universconcentrationnaire."
Whatthe Holocaustwrought,accordingto Steiner,was "theexit of God from lan-
guage."43 In Paul Celan's poem Psalm, God is apostrophizedas "No One." "No
One bespeaks the dust of the dead." "After Auschwitz," metaphysicalpresence
became, like writing itself, a term sous rature, undererasure.
It is not difficult to see the parallelsbetween this psychology of the "second
generation"and the basic tenets of poststructuralism(and/orpostmodernism):the
feeling of life as a trace, hauntedby an absent presence; its sense of indetermi-
nacy; a belief in the ultimateundecidabilityof language (its aporia,in Derrida's
sense); the transgressiveapproachesto knowledge and authority;and, perhaps
most powerfully, the conviction of the ultimately intransitive, self-reflective
characterof language, which seems to have lost its power to representanything
outside itself, hence to have lost its ability, finally, to signify. In its profound
commitmentto a fractured,fragmented,and endlessly deferred,hence displaced,
understandingof languageand the (im)possibilitiesof meaning,poststructuralism
shares with the "second generation"the anguish of belatedness, the scars of an
unhealedwound of absentmemory, and the legacy of silence.
If, as I have argued, deconstruction,poststructuralism,and some varieties
of postmodernismin their psychic impulses enact a philosophy of ruptureand
displacement,one particularlyacute for the "second generation"of the postwar
world, then the questionbecomes why it resonatedso powerfully for the genera-
tion that came to maturityin the 1960s and 1970s, not only in Europebut even
more widely in the United. States. As Derridahimself recognized,
of a certaindecon-
Fromthe beginning(1966)44thereexisteda certainAmericanization
I meana certainappropriation,
struction.By Americanization an institu-
a domestication,
ning with the essays collected in Saul Friedliinder,Probing the Limits of Representation:Nazism
and the "Final Solution" (Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1992). See also his Memory,
History,and the Exterminationof the Jews of Europe (Bloomington:IndianaUniversityPress, 1993),
as well as Lang, ed., Writingand the Holocaust, and Dominick LaCapra,Representingthe Holocaust:
History, Theory,Trauma(Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1994).
42. Jean-FranqoisLyotard,"Discussions or Phrasing 'after Auschwitz,"' in The LyotardReader,
ed. Andrew Benjamin(Oxford:Blackwell, 1989), 364.
43. George Steiner,"The Long Life of Metaphor,"in Lang, ed., Writingand the Holocaust, 157.
44. The date 1966 refers to the conference on "The StructuralistControversy"held at Johns
Hopkins University, the papers for which were later edited and published in The Languages of
Criticismand the Sciences of Man: The StructuralistControversy,ed. RichardMacksey and Eugenio
Donato (Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress, 1970). The date certainlymarksthe introduction
of poststructuralisminto America.It is interestingthatDerridahimself believed that 1966 inaugurated
deconstructionas an identifiablephilosophicalconfiguration,indebtedin many ways to the structural-
ist movementin its deploymentof Saussureanlinguistics but markingits own place by the critiqueof
structuralismand revisions to Saussure.
THEPAST/ REVISITING
REVISING THEPRESENT 13
chieflyacademic,thattookplaceelsewherein otherformsas well, buthere

tionalization,
(in US) a massivelyvisibleform.45
the in
Indeed, Franqois Cusset has recently suggested that the true destiny and, he
contends, the very creation of "FrenchTheory" finds its place and fulfillment
in the United States.46But, as I will try to show, it is not obvious why this
"Americanization"of deconstructionshould have taken place or what condi-
tions existed that favored the translationof "FrenchTheory"to this side of the
Atlantic.
By way of explanationit may not suffice to assert, as I have elsewhere,47that
the emblematic figure of the postmodernworld is the displaced person, or that
the receptivity to poststructuralismand postmodernismis in part a reflection
of the newly expanded recruitmentof Jews (many of them children of refugee
parents) into American universities. For the appeal of postmodernism,its abil-
ity to resonatethroughoutbroadsectors of the Americanacademy, suggests that
there must be a more profound, even structural,reason for its salience in the
United States compared to elsewhere, including (surprisingly)France, whence
so many of its basic elements were imported.Were poststructuralismand post-
modernism merely enactments of psychological responses to the Holocaust or
World War II in general,it is doubtfulthatthey would have achieved the kind of
purchasein Americanintellectuallife that has taken place over the last decades,
since America, it could be argued, was less directly affected by the atrocities
of the war48" and, more broadly, less indebted to the high culture of Continental
Enlightenmentthatcame underattackin postmodernism.If poststructuralismand
postmodernismrepresent,as I believe, a psychologically displaced response to
the aftermathof the Holocaust, the War, and its attendantdisillusionmentwith
Enlightenmentprinciplesand goals--that is (to returnto de Certeau),in a psychic
awarenessof loss, absence and, in that sense, a non-place-then what does their
widespread acceptance in the United States have to tell us about the place, the
social site, thatmay help to accountfor such an unexpectedlyfavorablereception
in North America?My premise here is that no matterhow profoundlyembedded
such revisions to historiographymight be in the psychology of those who initiate
changes, they will fall on barrengroundand fail to make a difference if they do
not also accord with a social situation or structurewhose naturethey somehow
articulate,albeit in highly displacedand mediatedforms.We need, then, to exam-
ine the social developmentsthat may explain how such a widespreadrevision in
the conceptual and methodological underpinningsof contemporaryhistoriogra-
phy could have taken root.
45. Jacques Derrida, "Deconstructions:The Im-possible," in French Theory in America, ed.

Sylvere Lotringerand Sande Cohen (New York and London:Routledge, 2001), 18.
46. FranqoisCusset, "French Theory":Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & cie et les mutationsde la
vie intellectuelleaux Etats-Unis (Paris:Editions La D6couverte,2003).
47. In "Orationsof the Dead/Silences of the Living,"42.
48. This is a point that Peter Novick has forcefully made with respect to AmericanJews and the
Holocaust. See his The Holocaust in AmericanLife (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), althoughhe
fails to take into account in that book the refugee communityin America and its second-generation
offspring.
Any "social explanation"for a phenomenon as complex and multiform as

postmodernismsurely will strike most historians as hopelessly reductive since,
in stipulatingthe social, economic, or demographicforces at work as "causes"for
transformationsin intellectuallife, one necessarilybypasses the shifting levels of
mediationbetween the social and the culturalthat linguistic-turnhistoriography
has taughtus to explore. Moreover,events are not necessarily any more logical,
less ridden with contradictionsand hidden intentions, than speech and writing.
One cannot, therefore, posit any simple one-to-one correspondence between
social "cause" and intellectual "effect."49 Still, to the degree that historians are
committed to the notions that language--or textuality in the very broad sense
postulatedby postmodernism--acquiresmeaning only when understoodagainst
the backgroundof its social context, or what I have called "the social logic of
the text," thatparticularinstancesof languageuse or textualityincorporatesocial
as well as linguistic structures,and that the aesthetic and intellectual character
of any given articulationis intimatelyrelated (either positively or negatively) to
the social characterof the environmentfrom which it emerges, then an inquiry
into the possible social roots of intellectual change seems not only possible but
imperative(all the while keeping in mind the reductivecharacterof the resulting
explanation,which would seem to be inescapableon some level).
One of the most powerful and comprehensiveargumentsconcerningthe social
and economic origins of postmodernismis set forth by FredricJameson in his
Postmodernism,Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.soAs the title sug-
gests, Jamesonarguesthat postmodernismas a socioculturallabel, with its atten-
dant literary,aesthetic,cultural,and historiographicalexpressions,representsthe
"logic of late capitalism."By "late capitalism"(alternatelycalled "third-wave"
capitalism)Jamesonsignals a postwarmode of capitalism'sexpansionon a multi-
national,ultimatelyglobal, scope, replacingthe former"monopoly"stage of capi-
talism associated with the age of Europeanimperialismbut supersededas those
imperial(colonial) monopolies were abandonedafter the war, without, however,
constitutinga discontinuityin the expansion of capitalismitself. For this reason
Jamesonprefersthe designation"latecapitalism"in order"to markits continuity
with what precededit, in contrastto the break,rupture,and mutationthat concepts
such as 'postindustrial'society wish to underscore."''51The impact of the advent
of "third-wave"or "late capitalism"was, he asserts, to "reorganizeinternational
relations, decolonize the colonies and lay the groundworkfor the emergence of
a new economic world system,"52one that we have relatively recently come to
recognize as the global economy. In Jameson's view, the fundamentalideologi-
cal work to be performedby the concept of postmodernism"mustremainthat of
coordinatingnew forms of practiceand social and mentalhabits..,. with the new
forms of economic productionand organizationthrownup by the modificationof
49. I am indebtedto David Bell for these cautionarynotes.

50. Jameson,Postmodernism,Or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism(see above, note 19).
51. Ibid., xix. Jameson relies for his understandingof "late capitalism"on the work of Ernest
Mandel, Late Capitalism, transl. Joris de Bres (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities
Press, 1975).
52. Jameson,Postmodernism,Or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism,xx.
capitalism-the new global division of labor-in recent years."53Therefore,the

task of the "postmodern"is
to be seen as the productionof postmodernpeople capableof functioningin a very
peculiarsocioeconomicworldindeed,one whose structureand objectivefeaturesand
requirements--ifwe had a properaccountof them--wouldconstitutethe situationto
whichpostmodernism is a responseandwouldgive us somethinga littlemoredecisive
thanpostmodern theory.54
It goes almost without saying that,in Jameson's Marxist-inflectedunderstanding
of history, a presuppositionfor the culturalemergence of "postmodernism"was
waning confidence in classical Marxism,culminatingin 1989, which in the realm
of historicalpracticewas accompaniedby a shift from social to culturalhistory,
especially among historianson the left. It is here that the experiences of the gen-
erationthat came to political and professionalmaturityin the 1960s is crucial as
a preparation,perhapseven a precondition,for the lateremergenceof postmodern
theory both in Europeand in America.
Confirmationof this basic point comes from two recent books by well-known
social historians: Geoff Eley's semi-autobiographicalA Crooked Line: From
CulturalHistoryto the Historyof Society, andWilliam H. Sewell Jr.'s TheLogics
of History: Social Theoryand Social Transformation,in particularthe chapteron
"ThePolitical Unconscious of Social History."55 Both of these historiansare left-
or
leaning avowedly Marxist, as is Jameson, but a not dissimilarunderstanding
of the relationshipbetween postmodernismand capitalismcan be seen in Joyce
Appleby's Presidential Address cited above (absent, however, the critique of
capitalismimplicit in the other three authors).
Like Jameson,Sewell sees the rise of culturalhistory in relationto fundamen-
tal changes in the economic order, in particularto worldwide transformations
of capitalism on a global scale. However, unlike Jameson, Sewell believes that
the explicit experiences of the "sixties"generationthat were responsiblefor first
the "culturalturn"and then the "linguisticturn"in historical writing should be
located in a "collapsing Fordist order, not the newly emergent order of global-
ized, flexible accumulation."As he explains it:
As 1960srebels[i.e.thelefthistorianswhobegantheirpracticeof historyin the1960sand
1970s]we thoughtof ourselvesas risingup againstthe interlocking andclaustrophobic
systemof socialdeterminations thatdominated contemporary corporateAmerica.... Most
of us wouldprobablyhaveagreedwithJirgenHabermas thatin contemporary societythe
possibilityof humanfreedomwasprogressively threatened
by an"escalating scaleof con-
tinuallyexpandedtechnicalcontrolovernatureanda continually refinedadministrationof
humanbeingsandtheirrelationsto eachotherby meansof socialorganization." ... When,
a few yearsora decadelater,we revoltedagainstthepositivistresearchstrategies of social
historyandundertook studiesof the culturalconstructionof the socialworld,I thinkwe
obscurelyfeltourselvesto be freeinghistoricalscholarship..,.froma mutesocialandeco-
53. Ibid., xiv.
54. Ibid., xv.
55. Geoff Eley, A CrookedLine: From Cultural History to the History of Society (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2005); William H. Sewell, Jr. The Logics of History: Social Theory
and Social Transformation(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 22-80. Sewell's use of
the phrase "political unconscious" alludes to Jameson's earlier book, The Political Unconscious:
Narrative as a Socially SymbolicAct (Ithaca,NY: Cornell University Press, 1981).
nomicdeterminism thatwas incapableof recognizinghumancreativity.... Thuscultural

werekickingdownthedoorof Fordistsocialdeterminations
historians atthemomentwhen
suchdeterminisms. .. werecollapsing.56
Moreover, Sewell argues, the shift from Fordist or stated-centeredcapitalism

(monopoly capitalismin Jameson's terms) to the globalized capitalism (or "late
capitalism")of neoliberalismwas "characterizedall across the human sciences
by a general epistemic uncertainty--an uncertaintythat has a certain elective
affinity with the heightened 'flexibility' that is one of the hallmarksof the new
global economic order."In history,this uncertainty"tookthe form of the cultural
turn, flirtations with poststructuralismand a fascination with microhistoryand
subjectivity."57
Eley, as well, signals a decisive shift from the centralityof social history to
that of culturalhistory that took place, in his view, around 1980, a phenomenon
he attributesto Marxistsocial historians'relinquishingthe conviction that "class
relations are the constitutive element in the history of industrializedcapitalist
states, the Marxist social historian's axiomatic wish."58As Eley presents it, this
loss of confidence in class as the focus of historical causation was due primar-
ily to its diminishingexplanatorypower for social history, and he surely would
agree-although it is not an explicit partof his argument- thatthis occurredas a
resultof changes in the British and Europeaneconomic order.Less wide-ranging
in scope, due to its autobiographicalorientation,Eley's position is nonetheless
compatiblewith those set forthby Jamesonand Sewell in its linking of revisions
in historiographicalpracticeto social and economic changes and theirideological
and political consequences.
However one ultimately assesses the accuracy of these descriptionsof global
economic change in the aftermathof World War II to the present, on the whole
they strikeme as plausible,if somewhatdifferentlyinflected, accounts,especially
when readin theirentirety.Nonetheless, as explanationsfor the widespreadhisto-
riographicalrevision that effected the linguistic turnI thinkthey are not so much
wrong as incomplete. Although a more extended discussion of their arguments
would enable us to draw parallels between the "flexibility" characterizingthe
new economic order and the notion of destabilized "subjectpositions,"between
the expansionof commercialconsumerismand the dominanceof culture,togeth-
er with a "whole new cultureof the image or the simulacrum,"59 and to a weak-
ening sense of historicity and relationshipto the world of objects, the problem
remains of the intellectual and philosophical specificity of poststructuralistand
postmoderntheories,with theiremphasis on absence, fragmentation,and the loss
of metaphysicaland epistemological certaintyin the growing awareness of the
linguistically mediatednatureof perception,cognition, and imagination.I fail to
see how changes in capitalism lead to these developments-particularly the de-
56. Ibid., 60-61.

57. The quotationappearsin a forthcomingreview of Geoff Eley's A CrookedLine, to be pub-
lished as partof a "Forum"on Eley's book in the AmericanHistorical Review. Cited here with per-
mission of the author,William H. Sewell, Jr.
58. Eley, A CrookedLine, 110-111.
59. Jameson,Postmodernism,Or, The CulturalLogic of Late Capitalism,5 and passim.
materializationof history that is crucial to poststructuralistthought-although to

the extent that a case can be made for this argument,I think Jameson comes as
close as anyone to making it.6?
For me, the most convincing explanation for the development of poststruc-
turalism by the generation that matured in the 1960s and 1970s remains an
understandingof it as a displaced, psychological response to the Holocaust and
its aftermath,perhapsparticularlyits aftermath,in the sense that thereoccurreda
growing, and somewhat belated, awarenessof the ways in which it made belief
in the enlightened and progressive characterof Western Europeancivilization
impossible to sustain, a development subsequently strongly reinforced by the
emergence of postcolonial theory, which exposed the brutal and dehumanizing
aspects of Europeanimperial ventures. "FrenchTheory," after all, does origi-
nate in France among French thinkerscontemplating,and revising, the work of
German philosophers. However much the destiny of "French Theory" may
appearto some to be the United States, especially in the somewhatdomesticated
version (noted above by Derrida)that generally goes by the name of postmod-
ernism, the linguistic turn in historical writing in North America is unthinkable
apartfrom the influence of Foucault,Derrida,Lyotard,and all the others whose
thought and writing became the hallmarkof this revisionist turn.They were the
first to articulatethe sense of rupture,loss, and absence, whetherit took the form
of Derrideandeconstructionor Lyotard'sview of postmodernismas the passing
of "masternarratives,"or Foucault'sgenealogical refusalof origins and essences.
Their initial ability to give philosophicalform to what, in the end, can never have
been an exclusively Europeanresponseto the war, was critical in developing the
conceptualformulationsand tools thatlaterbecame generalizedin what we think
of as poststructuralismand postmodernism.That significant shifts in America's
economy and society (not to mention the disillusionmentwith American"impe-
rialism"in the Vietnamese war) laid the groundworkfor a remarkablesensitiv-
ity and receptiveness to these Continentalintellectual developments-in highly
mediatedand displacedforms, of course-may indeed explain theirlater implan-
tation in the United States. But both phenomenaare requiredto understandthe
nature of the revision in historical thought that occurred and the timing of its
disseminationin the United States.
It might be objected that this argumentworks only if one conflates, as I have
tended to do in the precedingparagraphs,poststructuralismwith postmodernism,
but I thinkthatduringthe periodof theirreceptionin the United States one would
have been hardput to distinguishbetween them. Only later(certainlyby now) did
an awarenessof theirdifferingconceptualbases and social groundsfully emerge.
60. Jameson's response to this criticism would probablybe that one of the hallmarksof postmod-
ernism is the colonization of natureby culture.For Jameson,"postmodernismis what you have when
the modernizationprocess is complete and natureis gone for good. It is a more fully humanworld,
but one in which 'culture' has become a veritable 'second nature."'The postmodernrepresents"an
immense and historicallyoriginal acculturationof the Real, a quantumleap in what Benjamincalled
the 'aestheticization'of reality... " (ibid, ix-x). Similarly,neitherhe nor Eley nor Sewell in any way
contests the concept of agency or of the human,psychological subject (in fact, Sewell's most recent
work is dedicatedto rehabilitatingit). But the force of their argumentsplaces its primarystress on the
workings of the economy and the social ramificationsthereof.
However we ultimately come to understandthese paired phenomena, it seems

clear that any explanationof the rise of linguistic-turnhistoriographywill have to
consider both sides of the Atlantic, and thus both sides of the argument.
Added to this mix certainly must be the changing natureof recruitmentinto
the historical profession after the 1960s. Of obvious relevance here was the
experience of those new groups during the "sixties," when the combined forces
of the civil rights movement, the antiwarmovement, the early budding of femi-
nism, and the utopiancritiqueof Americanculturerepresentedby the growth of
the "counterculture"were all in full swing. As a generationraised and coming
to consciousness of its place in history in this atmosphereof (ultimately disap-
pointed) historical optimism about racial equality and social justice, but also of
deep ambivalencetowardauthorityand power--both political and cultural--it is
easy to see how, when its memberscame to develop their own, distinctive vision
of the past, they viewed it with the same profoundsuspicion of order,hierarchy,
authority,and patriarchythat had characterizedtheir earlierinvolvement in their
own contemporaryworld. Nor were Americans alone in this tendency, although
the openness of the American academy to new groups and new ideas may have
facilitatedthe pace and prevalencewith which they were acceptedin comparison
to Europe.61
Thus, not surprisingly,we have arrivedat the triangulatedpatternof explana-
tion, initially suggested by de Certeau,of "place"(social recruitment,hence the
social world from which historiansare recruited),"procedure"(the discipline of
professional history as such, and its changing conceptual resources), and "text"
(the revisions to historiographicaldiscourse effected by the linguistic turn as it
variously made itself felt with the adoption of poststructuralismand postmod-
ernism's consciousness of a general loss of epistemological confidence in older
paradigmsof history, most notably objectivism). It is worth noting how tied to
the experiences of a single generationthese transformationsappearto be. This
fact, in turn,helps to explain why the prestige of "linguistic-turn"historiography
seems to be on the wane, accompaniedby a growing sense of dissatisfactionwith
its overly systematicaccountof the operationof languagein the domainof human
endeavorsof all kinds, and an evident attemptto rehabilitatesocial history.62
61. From this perspective,one might argue, as David Bell suggested to me in commentingon this
article,that postmodernismrepresentsa retreaton the partof intellectualsfrom political engagement
since the efforts of those intellectuals to impose themselves on politics in the campaigns against
colonialism, against the Bomb, and against the gulag collapsed with remarkablespeed after 1968 in
France and somewhat later in America. As he sees it, postmodernismdenotes a set of ideas "which
inverts or denies the relationshipbetween ideas and history that earlier generationsof intellectuals
had so proudlyheld up, by denying the fixity of meaning, the stability of texts and so on. It seems to
explain the failures of earliergenerationsof intellectuals,while assertingthat such failure was inevi-
table because of the propertiesof language itself' (personal communication).My resistance to this
view stems from the fact that, feckless or otherwise, Foucault,Derrida,Lyotard,Blanchot, Deleuze,
etc. saw their efforts as profoundlypolitical in nature,a point on which Derridarepeatedlyinsisted
in the writings of his last years.
62. On this development see my introductionto Practicing History and Sewell, The Logics of
History, as well as Beyond the Cultural Turn, ed. Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (Berkeley:
University of CaliforniaPress, 1999), 1-32. Also of interestis AndreasReckwitz, "Towarda Theory
of Social Practices:A Development in CulturalistTheorizing,"EuropeanJournal of Social Theory
5, no. 2 (2002), 243-263.
It is to be expected that as our consciousness of the penetrationof global capi-

talism and its impact on all forms of social formationgrows, historical writing
will increasingly be influenced by intellectual agendas generatedby this devel-
opment and will, therefore,create new objects of investigation. This is already
apparent in the growing concern with questions of diaspora, migration, and
immigration.It is also apparentin the rapidly developing field of transnational
history, with its focus on what FrangoiseLionnethas termed"minoritycultures,"
an approachto historythatdeploys a global perspectivethatemphasizesthe basic
hybridity of global cultures in the postcolonial and postmodernworld through
which questions of home, community, allegiance, and identity are constantly
being revised.63In taking the hybridnatureof global societies and culturesas its
premise, such work seeks to make thathybriditythe core of its intellectualanaly-
sis, and doubtless will generatenew paradigmsfor the study of history that will
affect not only our understandingof contemporarydevelopments but will feed
back into our analyses of the past.
That the field of "transnationalism"should appear as the sign of this shift
in consciousness, a field in part promotedby the movement of new groups of
scholarsinto the profession-many of them membersof the second generationof
immigrantfamilies--is hardlyunexpectedand may be seen as one of the social
determinantsof this reorientationand revision in currenthistoriography.Perhaps,
therefore,it is also apposite to inquireinto the psychological losses experienced
in the process of migration, exile, and diasporic movement. Such a question
might interrogate,and seek to nuance,the rathertriumphalisttone of currentwork
on transnationalism,with its celebrationof fluidity and hybridity,by inquiring
into the sense of loss of culturalidentitythat often accompaniesthe loss of one's
homeland,language, and culture.In light of this, one might ask whethercultural
hybridityconstitutes a good in itself, or are there hidden costs to its expansion
over the globe, both in terms of personalidentities and culturalproduction?
The answers to such questions will doubtless come with time. They are not, in
any case, the point of a considerationof the natureand role of revision in history,
except insofar as they, like the linguistic turn,point to the overdeterminednature
of revision as on ongoing historiographicalphenomenon,one equally psychologi-
cal, social, and professionalin its constitutiveelements.
Johns Hopkins University
63. See Minor Transnationalism,ed. FranqoiseLionnet and Shu-mei Shih (Durham,NC: Duke
University Press, 2005).

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Wesleyan University

Revising the Past/Revisiting the Present: How Change Happens in Historiography

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REVISINGTHE PAST / REVISITINGTHE PRESENT:

Profession (Cambridge,UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1988).

examination of "revision" as a historiographicalprocedure, then, is via some

perspective, the principalrelation of the historianto the past is an engagement

This paradoxicalprocedureis, precisely, what de Certeaumeans by "writing,"an

What de Certeau suggests here is that revision is the formal prerequisitefor

Potentialities,ed. and transl.with an introduction

14. Ibid., 37.

they inhabit or is channeled throughprofessional avenues of expression. If we

It is hardly surprising,then, that currentdebates about poststructuralismand

University Press, 1997), 21.

in transit"24-theprecise elements thatmake up the linguisticturn,poststructural-

Interesting in its focus on the individual, ideologically conditioned character

24. For LaCapra,history is "always in transit,even if periods, places, or professions sometimes

For Derrida,acknowledgmentof the "structuralityof structure"is synonymous

27. JacquesDerrida,"Shibboleth,"in Midrashand Literature,ed. Geoffrey Hartmanand Sanford

first and foremost, a world of silence, a "silence,"as Frenchpsychologist Nadine

They feel themselves to be "Jews deportedfrom meaning, their residentpermits

chieflyacademic,thattookplaceelsewherein otherformsas well, buthere

45. Jacques Derrida, "Deconstructions:The Im-possible," in French Theory in America, ed.

Any "social explanation"for a phenomenon as complex and multiform as

49. I am indebtedto David Bell for these cautionarynotes.

capitalism-the new global division of labor-in recent years."53Therefore,the

nomicdeterminism thatwas incapableof recognizinghumancreativity.... Thuscultural

Moreover, Sewell argues, the shift from Fordist or stated-centeredcapitalism

56. Ibid., 60-61.

materializationof history that is crucial to poststructuralistthought-although to

However we ultimately come to understandthese paired phenomena, it seems

It is to be expected that as our consciousness of the penetrationof global capi-

Johns Hopkins University

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