HISTORY AS WONDER History as Wonder is a refreshing new take on the idea of history that tracks the entanglement of history and philosophy over time through the key idea of wonder. From ancient Greek histories and wonder works, to Islamic curiosities and Chinese strange histories, through to European historical cabinets of curiosity and on to histories that grapple with the horrors of the Holocaust, Marnie Hughes- Warrington unpacks the ways in which historians throughout the ages have tried to make sense of the world, and to change it. This book considers histories and his- torians across time and space, including the ancient Greek historian Polybius, the medieval texts by historians such as Bede in England and Ibn Khaldun in Islamic Historiography, and more recent works by Martin Heidegger, Luce Irigaray and Ranajit Guha among others. It explores the different ways in which historians have called upon wonder to cross boundaries between the past and the present, the universal and the particular, the old and the new, and the ordinary and the extra- ordinary. Promising to both delight and unsettle, it shows how wonder works as the beginning of historiography. Accessible, engaging and wide-ranging, History as Wonder provides an original addition to the field of historiography that is ideal for those both new to and familiar with the study of history. Marnie Hughes-Warrington is a professor of history at the Australian National University. She is the author of several historiography books, including Fifty Key Thinkers on History (three editions), History Goes to the Movies (2007) and Revisionist Histories (2013). HISTORY AS WONDER Beginning with Historiography Marnie Hughes-Warrington First published 2019 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Marnie Hughes-Warrington The right of Marnie Hughes-Warrington to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, author. Title: History as wonder : beginning with historiography / Marnie Hughes- Warrington.Description: London ; New York, NY : Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2018030489 (print) | LCCN 2018031025 (ebook) | Subjects: LCSH: Historiography. Classification: LCC D13 (ebook) | LCC D13 .H7517 2019 (print) | DDC 907.2–dc23LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018030489 ISBN: 978-1-138-84621-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-84622-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-42716-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books Thank you to the person who threw out the multi-volume Child’s Book of Wonder from St Brendan’s Primary School Library, Flemington, in the early 1970s. It was a remarkable gift. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Introduction xi 1 Sense and non-sense in Ancient Greek histories: Plato | Herodotus | Thucydides | Phlegon | Polybius | Aristotle 1 2 Wonderful and curious histories in pre-modern Europe: Gerald of Wales | Bede | Gervase of Tilbury | Augustine of Hippo | Thomas Aquinas | Roger Bacon 21 3 The wonders of history in the pre-modern Islamic world: Al Tusi | Al Qazwini | Al Tabari | Ibn Khaldun | Ibn Sina | Ibn Rushd 42 4 Wonder against ritual: strange Chinese histories: Sima Qian | Confucius | Duan Chengshi | Pu Songling | Yuan Mei | Ji Yun 62 5 Historical cabinets of curiosity in early modern Europe: Jean Bodin | Francis Bacon | Walter Ralegh | Nathaniel Wanley | René Descartes | Thomas Hobbes 81 6 Spirited histories in modern Europe: Immanuel Kant | George William Frederick Hegel | Daniel Defoe | William Howitt | Sarah Josepha Hale | Leopold von Ranke 100 7 Seeing the wonder trick in histories of the moving image: Lynne Kirby | Tom Gunning | Walter Benjamin | Roland Barthes | Jonathan Crary | Mary Anne Doane | 120 viii Contents 8 History’s others, history’s ethics: Joan Wallach Scott | Lynn Hunt | Merry Wiesner-Hanks | Luce Irigaray | Jacques Derrida | Hélène Cixous | Marguerite La Caze 139 9 Renewing wonder in postcolonial histories: Ranajit Guha | Gayatri Spivak | Romila Thapar | Rabindranath Tagore | Kalidasā|̄ Abhinavagupta 158 10 The banality of history: Martin Heidegger | Hannah Arendt 178 Conclusion: I wonder as I wander: everyday historiography, everyday metaphysics? 189 Bibliography 192 Index 206 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Books are carried to publication with thanks to the caring and thoughtful hands of many colleagues, friends and family members. I would like to acknowledge the opportunity to write this book in my role at the Australian National University. In particular, I would like to thank Roxanne Missingham and the staff of the ANU libraries for making it possible for me to explore so many ideas from around the world, and for standing with such resolve in favour of open access. Their resilience at the destruction by flood of copies of many of the texts that I used to shape this book has been an inspiration to me. I would also like to acknowledge the support of colleagues and students from the ANU Research School of History and beyond both because of their wise advice in seminars, and because of all the annotated draft chapters that are a his- toriographer’s delight. Karen Downing and Tania Colwell gave me a great head start on the literature review. Frank Bongiorno was an insightful reader and gen- erated much thought with his own writings. Rae Frances and Bruce Scates were generous with their support for the ideas in the book and eagle-eyed in spotting opportunities for improvement. Jennifer Frost at the University of Auckland pro- vided wise thoughts on chapters seven and eight. Merry Wiesner-Hanks at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was both gracious and enormously helpful with suggestions for chapter eight. Troy Larkins read the manuscript in speedy and thorough fashion and helped with the identification of opportunities to be clearer. Thanks go also to Paul Kiem at the History Teacher’s Association of Australia for responding to my ideas all the way along, and for so tirelessly promoting the value of studying the past. Mark Donnelly and Claire Norton at the Centre for the Philosophy of History at St Mary’s Twickenham were patient with early ideas about this book, and I am immensely grateful to both of them and to the audience of my first talk about it. Towards the end of writing, I felt fortunate to be able to share some of the ideas in x Acknowledgements the introduction at a seminar organised by Anna Clark at the University of Tech- nology Sydney. I am thankful to her, Tamson Pietsch, Mary Spongberg, Stuart MacIntyre and Stefan Berger for the opportunity to play with ideas in the midst of days that are often dominated by one meeting after another. I also owe great thanks to Robbert Dijkgraaf, Marian Zelanzy and the staff at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton for their generosity in hosting me at the beginning and end of this book project, in 2014 and 2018. Quiet, punctuated by lunches buzzing with ideas, are priceless, as are the digital copies of many of the histories from chapter six they were able to make with the generous support of the Hathi Trust. As always, I am grateful for the help of everyone above, but acknowledge responsibility for any errors in the book. I would also like to thank Rita, Ewan and Felicity for the everyday ways in which they have helped to make this book possible. Finally, as always, it is family that make research possible. Thank you to the Hughes and the Warrington families, and to A and B, my heroes. INTRODUCTION Beginning with history as wonder The idea of history is weird. It seems odd, and perhaps even paradoxical, that we use a general label to describe the study of particular phenomena and change over time. An interest in individual people, events and things is hard to square with an abstract concept. Yet despite this, the idea of history has been with us for a long time, and it persists. It does so for reasons that are not always appreciated. This book offers an appreciation of the idea of history told through a history of history, and it is an unsettling story. Iamnotthefirstpersontooffer a history of history. Far from it. Credit for that rests with people who long ago wrote, sang or drew acknowledgements of other people’s stories about the past. But I do want us to think again about how we might have settled into particular ways of telling the story of history’s past. To start that journey, I want you to think of a thaumascope, a nineteenth-century label given to an object that has been with us for arguably thousands of years. It’s a small disc that you can cup in the palm of your hand. One side depicts one image—a deer with legs extended, for example—and the other another image such as a deer with legs contracted. Suspend the disk with two pieces of deer gut, string, or wire, and then spin it. Spin the disk fast enough and the images com- bine to suggest movement or synthesis.