[Reader-list] archives and history : break the singular question dear

[sadan at sarai.net]

"The question of Experience can be approached nowadays only with an
acknowledgement that it is no longer accessible to us. For just as moience
has likewise been expropriated(13)".Agamben's language is seductively
simplistic. Both Agamben and Foucault (Agamben is here with Foucault as he
is considered as post-Foucauldian scholar and also because he himself has
acknowledged Foucault a lot) have declarations. However, while Focault's
declarations are at the cost of human experiences, Agamben places the
experiential at the centre stage of his scholarship.
These days I am reading  Giorgio Agamben, "Infancy and History: Essays on
the Destruction of Experience" and found some relevance for our ongoing
dialogue on archives that is going on on the reader-list.
After reading yesterday's post by Arnab, I actually wanted to write about
self-obsession but that will wait for some time. I am also not going to
summerise Agamben's argument but would liket o cite him without engaging
with him here. He writes that "the expropriation of experience was implicit
in the founding project of modern science( 17)". He argues that "the idea
of experience as seperate from knowledge has become so alien to us that we
have forgotten that until the birth of modern science experience and
science each had their own place"(18).He further writes that "in its search
for certainty, modern science abolishes this sepration and makes experience
the locus--the 'method'; that is, the pathway-of knowledge"(19). We may
walk with Agamben but not now. Agamben is referred here as he strikes at
the core, breaking the singularity of the question , something I have
learned from his earlier book, "Witness and the Archives"a dn something
that I am trying to when engaging with the question of memory and the
archives. Namrata was deadright when she pointed that I am trying to meet
both ends and also rightly observed that I go wild. This is where I wanted
to reflect on self-obsession. this is important if I lack it I will lack
the experience of listening ( something that remains my anchor while
engaging with the issue of archives and the memory). Again I am not going
into details demonstrating the relevance of self-obsession or whether this
is the right word to deploy as a methodological tool when like me all the
researchers go back almost mechanical way to recordings and experiences of
listening to recover details. The key difference lies in experiencing our
own attempts of recovering details and the manner in which detailing
influence the self of the researcher. Self-obsession is an obsesseed
engagement with the self. it is experiencing the self at specific moment
and for specific purpose. But how does it help to understand the
relationship between memory and the archives. Something I keep working on
and I do not have any readymade answer to it.
I would again like to To remind Arnab about my project. This is because he
is also self-obsessed in a different way. He is interested in philosophical
history but I often wonder how he fathoms out that disassociating archives
from history will effect my career. For the clarification please find below
my specific concerns( So far I have been clarifying my concerns only and my
sincerre apology to readers who do not see it as a fruitful excercise):

For some time I have been thinking on the relationship between memory and
the archives. This concern is an outcome of my earlier work, documenting
lives of those who underwent the trauma of partition of Indian subcontinent
during 1946-1950. The project was aimed at documenting lives and making an
archive (the project was initiated by Ashis Nandy at CSDS, Delhi). I worked
as field researcher in that project.
At this point, I am interested to understand
a. how ideas and notions of the archives circulate and practised outside
the disciplinary domain of history;
b. linkages between the domains of experience and the archives;
c. how archives are perceived and parctised in non-western pasts.
any suggestion, comment, reference is welcome.

warmly in disagreement and opening up the debate beyond the omnipresent
history,
sadan.



On 3:12 pm 01/13/08 ARNAB CHATTERJEE <apnawritings at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
> [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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