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Postmodernism and Historiography Durham E-Theses 'How warped the mirrors': postmodernism and historiography Olson, Ryan Scott How to cite: Olson, Ryan Scott (2002) 'How warped the mirrors': postmodernism and historiography, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/3971/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 'How Warped the Mirrors' Postmodernism and Historiography Ryan Scott Olson The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 2 1 JAN 200~l Submitted for the Master of Arts degree University of Durham Department of Theology 2002 The Copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation of its contents should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. How warped the mirrors where our worlds are made ... W. H. A uden, 'In Sickness and In Health', 1940 The illusions of science and the fashions of the academic tend to transform the young historian into a grey, lean ferret gnawing at the minute fact or figure. He dwells in footnotes and writes monographs in as illiterate a style as possible to demonstrate the scientific bias of his craft. George Steiner, 'The Retreat from the Word', 1966 Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake. Robert Penn Warren, Brother to Dragons, 1953 Table of Contents Table of Contents 4 Abstract 5 1. The Fair 9 Postrnodernism and history 13 Historiographical issues today 19 2. Concretising theory: Thucydidean speeches as generative example 29 Why the speeches of Thucydides? 32 The speeches of Thucydides 38 The varieties of historical-philosophical interpretation in Thucydides 40 History as progressive 42 History as cyclical 46 The method of the speeches of Thucydides 51 Some conclusions 67 3. Jenkins, Rorty, and the Postrnodem 'Mind' 72 Jenkins' Rorty 73 Rorty and the mirror of nature 80 4. Conversation, polarities, and interpretation 90 Rorty and the western epistemological tradition 91 Freeing ourselves from the tradition: the problem of unarbitrability 94 The abyss between correspondence and relativism 102 The problem of polarities: falling back into epistemology 107 5. The fair revisited: conclusion and theological reflections 110 Summation of argument 110 Conclusion 112 Hermeneutics as a theory extending beyond texts, to human understanding 112 A third way 115 Theological reflections 119 Bibliography 130 4 Abstract RyanS Olson 'How Warped the Mirrors': Postmodernism and Historiography Master of Arts Thesis 2002 Postmodernism, though it may be described in many ways, may be thought essentially to be captured by Lyotard's phrase, 'incredulity towards metanarratives'. The first chapter of my thesis attempts to define both 'postmodernism' and 'historiography', and then surveys historiographical discourse today. Because it is often ancient history that most frequently may be open to radically differing interpretations, I take in chapter two a 'generative' example, namely the speech compositions of Thucydides. This example I consider as 'generative' in the sense that it opens up questions, not only about the History of Thucydides itself and about how Thucydides is conceived in the ancient historiographical tradition, but also about what it means for an historian to disclose the 'truth' of an historical situation. My third chapter takes up the suggestion by Keith Jenkins that postmodern philosophy, particularly the conception of 'truth' and 'knowledge' proffered by Rorty, is a good way for history to acclimatise itself in the postmodern era. I survey Jenkins' proposals, and then discuss a work Jenkins largely ignores, i.e. Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. I demonstrate not just the familiar point that Rorty attempts to overturn 'foundationalist epistemology', and proposes 'new vocabularies' that involve 'hermeneutics' which set up. I discourse as 'conversation'. This overturning involves for Rorty an assertion of 'unarbitrability', i.e. that it is impossible to argue that one view is better or more true than another. Thus Jenkins wishes to enter a world of a plurality of interpretations. In chapter four, however, I draw upon the work of Charles Taylor who argues for the necessity of 'arbitrage' in human discourse, whilst still wishing to overturn epistemological foundationalism. I therefore wish to_, advocate in my fifth chapter a 'third way', drawing on Taylor's theory of·\ interpretation that requires neither a correspondence theory of truth, nor unarbitrability. Throughout the chapter I demonstrate how my conclusions regarding Thucydidean speeches and my discussion of postmodern philosophy may serve as a way of thinking about the task of historians, and 'not just ancient historians. I conclude with some theological reflections on the arguments offered. 5 To my grandfather George Olson Acknowledgements The author wishes to thank his supervisors, Canon Professor David Brown FBA and Professor Ann Loades CBE, for their very able supervision; in particular, Prof Loades for energetically picking up the work at Easter Term when Prof Brown went on sabbatical, and Prof Brown for taking him on late, patiently allowing him to work out the arguments as new vistas appeared, and for many kindnesses. In addition to his dear friend Prof James Houston of Vancouver and the many other friends who deserve mention, he should like to thank the community of Durham Cathedral, particularly its residentiary canons with whom he enjoyed so many services that have given such rich texture to his time in Durham. He is thankful beyond expression to his whole family, and especially to his parents for their indefatigable support in so many ways; and also to his Grandpa and Grandma Olson for their support; it is to this grandfather, a decorated veteran of the Second World War, that his thesis is dedicated. Pentecost 2002/ All Souls' Day 2002 'How Warped the Mirrors' Postmodernism and Historiography 1 The Fair The idiot goes round and around With his brother in a bumping-car At the fair. The famous idiot Smile hangs over the car's edge, llluminating nothing ... 1 THis thesis does not seek to lay out a prescriptive historiography, that is to say a particular method of doing history, whereby applying its principles an historian might favourably respond to the so-called 'postmodern condition', a situation, at least in the fields of history and theology, that has (or should have, perhaps) members of the guilds walking round on methodological eggshells. Rather, I work conceptually further away from that specificity of application with the assumption that history writing is a task that draws on particular theoretical understandings. Those understandings are what are so contested today among philosophers, theoreticians, and historians. The 'incredulity toward metanarratives', as Lyotard so famously has said in that characterisation of postmodernism often invoked by those attempting to summarise this sprawling discourse, is just such a critique levelled at an understanding of human knowledge. History writing, or more accurately, historiographical discourse, has been largely consumed with the QUestion of the extent to which an 'objective' account can be given of a particular period of time, a group, a biography, and so on. The move by (often self-proclaimed) postmodern historians (or theoreticians) to repudiate objective knowledge has met with vehement opposition. This is, I suggest, because the very existence of 'history' is on the line-that is to say that such 'hard historians' reason that if objective facts are turned out onto the street, as they have been in so many disciplines, they too will be left without an home. But the concern goes beyond this personal interestedness, which is also to say that it goes beyond the survival of history as a particular, valid mode of discourse: if all 1 R. S. Thomas, 'The Fair', in Collected Poems 1945-1990 (London: Phoenix, 2nct ed. 2000}. 9 history is open to 'interpretation' so that no account can measure up to things as they 'really were', and no such idea of 'correspondence' is valid to any extent, we might even question whether an event happened at all. This is to point up the danger not only of the loss of history as a discipline, but now to history, as in an event-in-the-past. Lest this be thought an extreme representation of the problematic potentialities involved, we can note that this is precisely the state of discussion in studies of the Holocaust of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis in the twentieth century.2 The problem, of course, is illustrated well by the statement that looms largely not only on the wall but also, somehow, in the air of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.: 'Never Again'. The point of the elaborate, three-story historical display in that building is that if members of the public among the national and international' communities' are so impressed with the absolutely (and I use this word intentionally) horrific events that took place in Germany from the late 1930s until1945, no one will ever stand idly by and allow such destruction and desecration of human life to happen again.
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