[Reader-list] Non-archival history? Here it is.
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Sun Jan 13 23:08:27 IST 2008
Ah, what fools these mortals be!
A
Message: 4
> Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:42:02 +0000 (GMT)
> From: ARNAB CHATTERJEE <apnawritings at yahoo.co.in>
> Subject: [Reader-list] Non-archival history? Here it is.
> To: reader-list at sarai.net, mahmood.farooqui at gmail.com,
> sadan at sarai.net, prem.cnt at gmail.com, 0supplement at gmail.com
> Cc: shuddha at sarai.net, jeebesh at sarai.net
> Message-ID: <653957.70140.qm at web8504.mail.in.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> [This post and the subsequent series -- is dedicated
> to Partha Chatterjee, Gautam Bhadra and Tapati
> Guhathakurta who taught this odd and unworthy student
> of theirs -historiography in 1997-98 and to Mahmood
> Faruqui, Sadan Jha, Prem Chandavarkar and Ritwik
> Bhattacharya who have pursued –even while
> disagreeing-- an energetic discussion on the subject
> on this List and outside.)
>
> As all of you know --but because this mail is also
> being sent to many others ( not at one go to manage
> the number of CC or there will be mail errors) who may
> not have been aware of what was going on here at the
> SARAI-CSDS Reader's List, let me preface the present
> offering by saying a few introductory words.
> For quite some years –in my engagement with
> the Neo-Hegelians of the 19th century I confronted and
> studied in some detail what is known as the Hegelian
> mode of 'philosophical history.' The relevance was
> further accentuated by the ravaging postcolonial
> critiques of Hegel staged by Ranajit Guha to Gayatri
> Spivak—which were –though mistaken on many counts ( I
> shall show that in the second part of this post) were
> enough to show how much of this Hegelian heritage
> lives. But while contemporaneously, philosophical
> history has been perverted to stand for intellectual
> history or the history of ideas ( though some like
> Alisdair MacIntyre still practice 'philosophical
> history') and is thus an accepted fact in its
> anonymity, the mainstream of disciplinary practice,
> pedagogy and research of history, knee deep in the
> positivistic, scientific sand of sources which have
> been museumised in the archives ( despite all
> critiques), has been reluctant enough to negotiate
> with the fact ( which is why the Subalterns were
> reproached of not going to the archives), that there
> was and there are still types of
> history/historiography which are not dependent on the
> archives. Simply put, there are non-archival concept
> based histories. And may I reiterate that this kind of
> history is dangerous to say the least ( in the portion
> quoted below don't take Hegel's use of the word
> tyranny too lightly). It is this kind of history
> where the worldly reality ( if there is one) is forced
> to conform to the concept; it fashions the future
> accordingly. Marx's eternal threat that the world has
> to gain a certain form of consciousness whether it is
> willing or not is a demonstration of the above
> approach. I show—elsewhere in the main text—Marx is
> the best example of a philosophical historian and whom
> (if not Hegel) the newspapers ( as today's archival
> elements) are compelled to remember—whether they are
> willing or not. And in all this, where does Hegel
> live? Isn't it in Marx himself?
>
> As a question –and in pursuance of a
> conversation with Mahmood Faruqui –I had submitted
> this as an agenda to the list readers and some of my
> friends. With reference to that discussion pursued on
> the List and to be fair to it, it must be acknowledged
> that there is a fresh breath of air and which, I
> think, is very very significant. A brand of
> brilliant, young and emerging historians, architects
> are trying to suggest an other way. They seem to be
> vouching for a phenomenological transformation of the
> historical archival object by relating to them as a
> part of experiencing it in a different way and
> interrogating whether this relating is at all
> separate, in terms of essence, in other forms of
> collections ( Sadan Jha), or invoking the
> phenomenological version of historical time ( Ritwik
> Bhattacharya) and thus a subjective vigil or alertness
> ( Prem Chandavarkar) in the use of the archives
> merging in the grand suggestion of Mahmood Faruqui
> that conceptual labour of the negative and the
> positive labour of the archive may both be
> accommodated, because, he might say now-inspired by
> his friends, the fracture does not happen in the
> experiencing subject and the time of the archive ( or
> the archival objects) may not be a separate time.
> Now, what I see in the above is a
> 'reconstruction' of the archive and the attendant
> problems of the above I shall again address and argue
> in the article being drafted. But what Hegel could
> have said while he was pitting philosophical thought
> and historiographical facts as antagonistic and
> marrying them in philosophical history—unaware of
> Prem, Sadan, Ritwik and Mahmood of 2007, I can guess,
>
> "My dear friends, this reconstruction or
> transformation that you are attempting to, is
> achieved by thought itself. Only in the realm of pure
> thought or notion that these distinctions (
> experiencing subject and experienced object) are
> erased. So if you acknowledge this and Arnab calls you
> a band of ashamed but clever and cunning philosophical
> historians entering through the back door [ because
> debunking archives (currently as they are named,
> claimed, used and enforced by the establishment)
> publicly might be a problem to your career], I'll not
> object."
> Now, this is enough fuel for my friends and
> the Readers shall wait and shall see who wins ( not
> in terms of earthly gains ( Namrata) of course, that
> way you all are on the victory stands already).
>
> So, we start by giving a definition of philosophical
> history as proposed by Hegel and in the next part we
> shall address the postcolonial critiques of the same.
>
> I.
>
> " The subject of this course of Lectures is the
> Philosophical History of the World. And by this must
> be understood, not a collection of general
> observations respecting it, suggested by the study of
> its records, and proposed to be illustrated by its
> facts, but Universal History itself"(p.1)[1] .
> Hegel suggests a three pronged approach to history or
> "methods of treating History" (1) of which
> Philosophical History forms the third.
>
> 1. Original History, 2. Reflective History, 3.
> Philosophical History. Having gone through the first
> two, they being interesting in themselves, Hegel now
> reflects on his project : philosophical history--
>
> "The most general definition that can be given, is,
> that the Philosophy of History means nothing but the
> thoughtful consideration of it… To insist upon Thought
> in this connection with history may, however, appear
> unsatisfactory. In this science it would seem as if
> Thought must be subordinate to what is given, to the
> realities of fact; that this is its basis and guide:
> while Philosophy dwells in the region of
> self-produced ideas, without reference to actuality.
> Approaching history thus prepossessed, speculation
> might be expected to treat it as a mere passive
> material; and so far from
> leaving it in its native truth, to force it into
> conformity with a tyrannous idea, and to construe it,
> as the phrase is, " a priori." But as it is the
> business of history simply to adopt into its records
> what is and has been, actual occurrences and
> transactions; and since it remains true to its
> character in proportion as it strictly adheres to its
> data, we seem to have in Philosophy, a process
> diametrically opposed to that of the
> historiographer(Ibid., pp. 8-9)."
> Now, this kind of history—whose
> description we've had from the father's mouth have
> been critiqued from two directions :one, which was a
> 19th and early 20th century critique : that this is a
> speculative, theoretical and idealistic history;
> secondly, the contemporary post colonial critique
> which is here.
>
> II.
> The question can be stated in an other form : what
> happens when Hegel is taken to task for a kind of
> history/historiography he does not stand for? This can
> be had from the postcolonial critiques of Hegel with
> illustrative names running from Ranajit Guha, Dipesh
> Chakraborty to Gayatri Chakravory Spivak. It is only
> Partha Chaterjee who could be spared of this error.
> Because elsewhere I've elaborated on this premise,
> today I limit myself to quoting the relevant portion
> only ( excerpted from my 'Reading Hegel in the
> Colonial Night').
>
> "…The postcolonial critique of Hegel: The synopsis
> of that critique is – in the language of Spivak, Hegel
> is a strong moment in the " epistemic graphing of
> imperialism" [2] Apart from Gayatri Spivak, Ranajit
> Guha[3] and Dipesh Chakraborty [4] have approved of
> such a critique in their works. Now, it would not be
> correct to or even it is perhaps not possible to
> engage with Hegel in the colonies without referring to
> the above critique; but as it will be shown, I'll not
> require this critique at all. Not, because I think
> this critique, by and large, is misplaced. This
> misplacement emerges handy because its authors
> consider Hegel without his system[5].
> But the point is not whether Hegel belongs to this or
> that kind of historiography. If there is any thing
> that Hegel belongs to, it would be a philosophical
> history which some including Hegel have observed as a
> kind of apriori history i.e., Hegel is said to have
> provided the transcendental conditions by which the
> experience of history or us experiencing history
> becomes possible. Following Gilian Rose, the
> historical apriori is the precondition of the
> possibility of actual histoical facts or values; "it
> is an apriori, that is, not empirical, for it is the
> basis of the possibility of experience" [6]. This
> experience is not dependent on the empirical realities
> of factual history because the latter kind of material
> history itself draws its categories or becomes
> possible by such already present forms. For instance
> we would not be able to make sense of anything called
> social facts if we did not presuppose the concept of
> society; similarly historical facts are nothing
> without the [apriori] concept of history. "It cannot
> be a fact, because it is the precondition of"
> [historical] "facts and hence cannot be one of them:
> it is a 'transcendent objectivity [7]. '' Hegel is,
> infact, categorical on this: " the philosophy of
> history is nothing more than the application of
> thought to history" [8]. This thought in Hegel is the
> self-activity of the concept which is independent of
> empirical data :" Philosophy, …is credited with
> independent thoughts produced by pure speculation,
> without reference to actuality…[and]..forces it [
> i.e., the latter] to conform to its preconceived
> notions and constructs a history a priori" [9]. That
> endorses the perceptive remark made by William Stace
> that civil society is a logical derivation and not a
> historical derivation in Hegel [10]. And the
> justification of such a logical derivation, Hegel is
> very clear on this, cannot " come from the world of
> experience." Because-
>
> "what philosophy understands by conceptual thinking is
> something quite different; in this case, comprehension
> is the activity of the concept itself, and not a
> conflict between a material and a form of separate
> origin. An alliance of disparates such as is found
> in pragmatic history is not sufficient for the
> purposes of conceptual thinking as practiced in
> philosophy; for the latter derives its content and
> material essentially from within itself. In this
> respect, therefore, despite the alleged links between
> the two. The original dichotomy remains: the
> historical event stands opposed to the independent
> concept" [11].
>
> Therefore Hegel—given his project—should be judged for
> the correctness of the philosophical journey that he
> traces for autonomous concepts rather than being
> faulted for various cultural and ideological,
> anthropological reasons; we are perhaps forgetting
> his own objections made against such trials. The
> postcolonials have made Hegel –unlike Marx and for
> all the wrong reasons, stand on his head "requiring
> identity of the non-identical. Historic contingency
> and the concept are the more mercilessly antagonistic
> the more solidly they are entwined [12]. I think this
> last reprimand from Adorno forecloses the postcolonial
> critique[13] which prides itself by placing Hegel on
> the imperial theatre.
> With this I come to the end of this
> sample post where non-archival history no. 1( like
> hero no.1) has been referred to' next will come sample
> of non-archival history no. 2…and what is that?
>
>
> [To be continued]
>
> with regards
> yours in discourse and debt
> Arnab Chatterjee
>
> ENDNOTES
> [1] Hegel, G.W.F. The Philosophy of History ( transl.
> J. Sibree), New York, 1956.
>
> [2]Spivak, A Critique of Postcolonial Reason, p.65.
>
> [3]Guha, History at the Limit of World-History.
>
> [4]Chakraborty, Habitations of Modernity: Essays in
> the wake of Subaltern Studies, p.81.
>
> [5]A plain historical approach may be corrected in
> the following way: Take for instance `the observation
> that the Hegelian construct of civil society exhibits
> exhortations that express Hegel's fear of the
> rabble or the large mass of the poor people. Some
> with a historical nose smelled in this Hegel's fear of
> the future industrial proletariat and the communist
> revolution. It has been recently pointed out by those
> historians with a different positivist nose-- how this
> is mistaken. Hegel's face is rather turned towards the
> past. It is rather England's poor law that could be
> said to have had a remote thematic reference. For some
> such corrections see Jones, "Hegel and the Economics
> of Civil Society". The philosophical historical
> reading is offered by Stace above.
> [6]Rose, Hegel, p.14.
>
> [7]Ibid., p.15
>
> [8]Hegel, Lectures on the philosophy of World History,
> p. 25.
>
> [9]Ibid., p.25.
>
> [10]Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel, p. 412.
>
> [11]Hegel, Lectures on the philosophy of World History
> , p.26, (italics mine).
>
> [12]Adorno, Negative Dialectics,p.359.
>
> [13]Gayatri Spivak in her more deconstructive moods
> remarks that there is a lack of fit between morphology
> and narrative in Hegel ( Spivak, Outside in the
> Teaching Machine, p.209). But, if that is so, then
> Hegel's historical narrative should be assumed to have
> been belied by his abstruse and complicated logical
> machinery or morphology; in other words, Hegel could
> be shown to have been opposing his own historical
> conclusions. Among those who are known as
> "postcolonials" and have engaged with Hegel, it is,
> to my mind, only Partha Chatterjee (Chatterjee,
> 'Communities and the Nation,' pp.220-239) who has been
> able to avoid this trap by not trying to address Hegel
> historically.
>
>
> REFERENCES
>
> Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics ( trans. E.B.
> Ashton), London, 1973.
>
> Chakraborty, Dipesh. Habitations of Moderntiy: Essays
> in the wake of Subaltern Studies, New Delhi, 2004.
>
> Chatterjee, Partha. 'Communities and the Nation', in
> his The Nation and its Fragments. Delhi, 1994, pp.
> 226-239.
>
>
> Guha, Ranajit. History at the Limit of World-History,
> Delhi, 2003.
>
>
> Hegel, G.W.F.
> ---------------- Hegel's Philosophy of Mind,
> Translated from The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
> Sciences (transl. William Wallace), Oxford, 1894.
>
> --------------The Philosophy of History ( transl. J.
> Sibree), New York, 1956.
> ..
> ---------------Lectures on the philosophy of World
> History, Introduction : Reason in History (trans. H.B.
> Nisbet), Cambridge, 1987.
> ----------------Phenomenology of Spirit (transl. A.V
> Miller), Delhi, 1998.
>
>
> Jones, Gareth Stedman. 'Hegel and the Economics of
> Civil Society', in Sudipta Kaviraj & Sunil Khilnani,
> eds., Civil Society: History and Possibilities,
> Cambridge, 2002, pp. 105-130.
>
>
> Rose, Gilian. Hegel : Contra Sociology, London, 1981.
>
> Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Outside in the Teaching
> Machine, New York, 1993.
> ------------------------------------- A Critique of
> Postcolonial Reason: Towards a History of the
> Vanishing Present, Calcutta, 1999.
>
> Stace, William Terence. The Philosophy of Hegel: A
> Systematic Exposition, N.Y, 1955.
>
>
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