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Let's Talk About Postmodern History Ewa Domanska. Encounters: Philosophy of History After Postmodernism. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998. xii + 293 pp. $65.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8139-1766-5. Reviewed by Daniel Wickberg Published on H-Ideas (July, 1999) Ewa Domanska's Encounters is a collection of spell the turning point in historical thought for interviews with prominent fgures in that broad Domanska. study generally referred to as historical theory or The text consists of the transcription of ten in‐ theory of history. The subtitle is somewhat mis‐ terviews, plus Domanska's concluding "self-inter‐ leading since philosophy of history, understood in view," conducted in 1993 and 1994, and arranged either its Anglo-American analytical sense or its chronologically. Domanska is Assistant Professor Continental sense, is the concern of neither Do‐ of Theory of History and History of Historiogra‐ manska nor most of her interviewees. While some phy at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland, of the issues addressed by this volume are broad‐ where some of these interviews took place, al‐ ly philosophical (e.g. the status of truth in histori‐ though a number were conducted in the Nether‐ cal accounts, the epistemology of historical knowl‐ lands or elsewhere in Europe. The interlocutors, edge, the relation of historical fact to meaning), with a couple of exceptions, will be well known to many are more historiographical, literary, and anyone who follows modern European cultural cultural (e.g. the poetics of written history, history historiography and historical theory or is familiar as a cultural practice, the turn to anthropology in with the journal History & Theory. They can be di‐ historiography). vided into four categories (my division, not Do‐ And given the multiple notions of "post‐ manska's): 1) historical theorists proper, that is, modernity" at work in this volume along with the those who have applied a kind of literary or lin‐ uncertainty of what it might mean to be "after guistic set of concerns to written history, a group postmodernism," perhaps a more accurate subti‐ that includes the initial three interviewees--Hay‐ tle might have been "The Theoretical Conditions den White, Hans Kellner, and Frank Ankersmit, of History After Metahistory." In fact, it is Hayden and perhaps Jorn Rusen; 2) cultural and intellec‐ White's 1973 volume, Metahistory, that seems to tual historiographers, a group represented by George Iggers and Peter Burke that tends to be H-Net Reviews much more grounded in the concrete practices of tinctive set of issues through conversations with contemporary historians and less concerned with the "masters," picking up ideas along the way, be‐ the literary and theoretical questions that ani‐ coming enamored of certain notions, exposing mate the frst group; 3) literary humanists, whose her own preoccupations by returning to the same concerns seem to be with the broader cultural sta‐ themes with different interlocutors, and fnally tus of history as both a form of literature and a revealing herself in the confessional self-inter‐ mode of consciousness, represented here by Li‐ view; the text is Domanska's intellectual autobiog‐ onel Gossman and Stephen Bann; and, 4) erst‐ raphy in the form of a series of interviews. while analytical philosophers of history, that is, Because Encounters is not designed as a se‐ those who developed an approach to history dom‐ ries of formal contributions or arguments, it dif‐ inated by notions of explanation, causation and fers greatly from what readers might expect in a the conventions of nineteenth-century historical work of philosophy or historical theory. The con‐ realism. Both Arthur Danto and Domanska's men‐ versational quality of the text--touching on nu‐ tor at Adam Mickiewicz University, Jerzy Topolski, merous topics, but not connecting them in any se‐ were at one time (in the 1960s and 70s) concerned rious or rigorous way--is both the central problem with analytical philosophy; since that time, the re‐ with Encounters and its chief virtue. In fact, be‐ cently deceased Topolski had been influenced by cause the text touches on so many issues in an ex‐ the writings of White and Ankersmit, while Danto ploratory way that is largely non-technical, it has moved away from the philosophy of history might very well be a good book to introduce stu‐ and toward the criticism and philosophy of art. dents to some of the issues at stake in contempo‐ English-speaking readers who do not follow His‐ rary historical theory. Domanska's voice, the style tory & Theory closely may be unfamiliar with and content of her questioning, strikes me as very Rusen and Topolski, whose primary work has much the student's voice--exploratory and en‐ been in German and Polish respectively, but the gaged, alternatively sophisticated and then sur‐ others will be known to anyone who has a passing prisingly naive. But her naivete, the lack of any familiarity with historical theory and European consistent definition of terms ("postmodernism," historiography. "crisis in history," "narrative turn," "experience" In what appears to be an attempt by the pub‐ are some of the more prominent recurring ex‐ lisher to bring this volume to a larger theoretical‐ pressions), and the idiosyncrasy of Domanska's ly-inclined audience of cultural and intellectual own frame of reference (she is a member of the historians, the interviews are bracketed by an in‐ generation of Polish intellectuals who came of age troduction by Allan Megill and a postscript by in the 1980s as many ideas from the West were Lynn Hunt. Megill's introduction stresses the rela‐ first fnding root in Poland) makes Encounters tionship between aesthetics and history found in less than ideal as a serious exploration of post‐ these interviews; Hunt's postscript considers the modernism in historical theory. I would recom‐ form of the interviews as evidence of a personal‐ mend it for curious undergraduates and for histo‐ ized postmodernism on Domanska's part. Despite rians who have an interest in learning more Hunt's claim that Domanska's text (or is it her about theoretical issues, but have little back‐ text?) is untraditional by virtue of its fragmenta‐ ground in the field. tion and its philosophy in the form of everyday di‐ Encounters had its origins in an interview alogue, Encounters does not read like a series of that Domanska conducted with Hayden White; fragments. There is a unity to the text as a whole, that frst interview sets the tone for the entire and, in fact, it is a narrative unity. The text takes text, particularly in its confusion over what con‐ the form of a quest, as Domanska pursues a dis‐ 2 H-Net Reviews stitutes postmodernism. Metahistory, according to its claim to represent the actual past. Metahistory White, and to Hans Kellner as well, is not post‐ as a work of literary and linguistic-based analysis modernist at all; White's approach, he claims, is is highly modernist; as a contribution to historiog‐ formalist and structuralist in nature, concerned raphy and historical theory, it represents the post‐ with fnding the deep poetic structure of histori‐ modernist turn. It is the blurring of boundaries ans' texts rather than showing how the texts between spheres of knowledge, rather than a destabilize those structures and categories of change in orientation within those spheres, that analysis (pp. 26, 51-55). But it is equally clear that seems to be indicative of the shift from mod‐ Domanska envisions Metahistory as the moment ernism to postmodernism. But this is nowhere ac‐ of history's postmodern turn, because it is the mo‐ knowledged in Encounters; instead a kind of con‐ ment of her own intellectual liberation from what fusion about postmodernism runs through these she calls "scientism"--in particular the Marxist pages. Domanska means one thing by it (a turn and realist conceptions of historical truth. When away from "scientific history" and a turn toward she read Metahistory for the frst time in 1989 she aesthetics and narrative in the analysis of histori‐ found "precisely what I was looking for; a depic‐ cal writing); her interlocutors often something tion of the literary and artistic face of history and else entirely. ... the legitimation of the historian's subjectivity as This is most evident, almost comically so, in she strives to create her vision of the past" (p. Domanska's interview with Arthur Danto. Post‐ 259). In her personal narrative, her encounter modernism, for Danto, is a general cultural condi‐ with White takes on the significance of the post‐ tion that is manifest as an art world phenomenon modern moment: "Living in the state of postmod‐ (pp. 171-76). And Danto is simply not in touch ern suspension, of intellectual weightlessness, I with historical theory or historiography, but in‐ was looking for a master, for a heretic; I was stead of acknowledging that he and Domanska ob‐ hunting for a postmodernist. In February 1993, viously have different frames of reference, he an‐ Hayden White arrived at Groningen ..." (p. 261). swers her questions as if they were operating in Besides indicating something of Domanska's pen‐ the same conceptual universe (pp. 181-85). His is a chant for self dramatization, this passage fxes world of analytical philosophy circa 1965 and art White as a kind of heretic from modernist ortho‐ criticism of the past forty years. When Domanska doxy. How do we reconcile this vision of White as asks him about microhistory, his answer indicates postmodernist rebel with White's own claim that that he doesn't know anything about it; when she the approach exemplified by Metahistory is mod‐ refers to a crisis in history she obviously means a ernist at its core? crisis in the discipline, whereas Danto takes her to Domanska doesn't face this issue head on, al‐ mean a crisis in the object "history." Given the though one answer seems to be that the later cross purposes of this dialogue, from an editorial White of The Content of the Form (1987) is post‐ point of view it would probably have been best to modernist while the White of Metahistory re‐ exclude the Danto interview from the fnal vol‐ mains determinedly modernist.
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