UNMAKING HISTORY-AS-FICTION: Decoupling the Two Incompatible Principles of Language in Hayden White’S Linguistic Turn, 1970S–2000S
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Helsingin yliopiston digitaalinen arkisto UNMAKING HISTORY-AS-FICTION: Decoupling the Two Incompatible Principles of Language in Hayden White’s Linguistic Turn, 1970s–2000s Lisa Muszynski ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be publicly discussed, by due permission of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University Main Building Lecture Hall 5 (Fabianinkatu 33, 3rd floor) on Saturday, 20 May 2017 at 12 o’clock noon. University of Helsinki 2017 Supervised by Professor Matti Peltonen (retired) Department of Political and Economic Studies University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland and Docent Kalle Pihlainen Department of Philosophy Åbo Akademi University Turku, Finland Reviewed by Associate Professor Ewa Domańska Department of History Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan, Poland and Professor Wulf Kansteiner The School of Culture and Society Aarhus University Aarhus, Denmark Opponent Research Fellow Eelco Runia Centre for Metahistory Groningen Department of History University of Groningen Groningen, Netherlands Cover image: Wake Vortex, NASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC), Edited by Fir0002. Image in the Public Domain. 978-951-51-2593-4 (print) 978-951-51-2594-1 (pdf) Unigrafia, Helsinki 2017 Truth is process, not object. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract .............................................................................................................9 Tiivistelmä (Abstract in Finnish) .....................................................................11 Preface and Acknowledgments .......................................................................14 List of Figures ..................................................................................................19 Chapter One 1 Introduction .............................................................................................. 20 1.1 The Finding that came as a Surprise .................................................. 20 1.2 What is Fiction? ...................................................................................26 1.3 Guaranteeing Linguistic Freedom ......................................................32 1.4 The Problem of Knowledge ..................................................................35 1.5 The Power of Nonliving Metaphor inhistory-as-fiction ..................... 40 Chapter Two 2 Problematizing History-as-Fiction ........................................................... 48 2.1 The Gap in Research .............................................................................50 2.1.1 Paradigm shift to dynamic, ecological form ..............................53 2.1.2 Dissipative structure, both living and nonliving........................54 2.1.3 When metaphorical models are misused ...................................57 2.2 Coupling Lloyd’s “Methodological Structurism” to AE .......................61 2.2.1 In search of autopoietic enactive embodiment (AE) ..................63 2.2.2 Capra’s “systemic” synthesis: Embodiment, structural coupling, and language .............................................................. 68 4 2.2.3 AE is the synthesis of pattern, process, and structure ..............78 2.3 Unmaking History-as-Fiction: The Nature of the Separate Debates .......................................................................... 82 2.3.1 Core and frame as key orientations underpinning this analysis ............................................................................... 83 2.3.2 Laying out the analytical strategy: Separating the debates ...... 90 Chapter Three 3 The Historical Contingencies of White’s Linguistic Turn .........................96 3.1 Structuralism and/or Tropology: Which White? .............................. 101 3.2 The Interrelation between History and Philosophical Thought .......107 3.3 White’s Syncretic Model: A Tropological Core within its Structuralist Frame ............................................................109 3.4 The Hidden Tension between Structuralism and Tropology .............111 3.5 The “Metaphysics of Presence”: Philosophy’s Deepest Presupposition ............................................... 116 3.6 Conclusion ..........................................................................................124 Chapter Four 4 The Historical Contingencies of Saussure’s “Modern” Linguistics ........ 127 4.1 Saussure’s Modern, Nineteenth-Century World: 1880–1913 ...........129 4.2 Saussure’s Swiss Education ...............................................................132 4.3 Antiquity’s Legacy: Saussure Inherits the Problem of Meaning ....... 135 4.4 Perception’s Problematic Role in Language .....................................140 4.5 Conclusion ..........................................................................................145 5 Table of Contents Chapter Five 5 The (Binary) Arbitrariness of the Static System of Linguistic Value ......148 5.1 Stories Are Not Lived But Told .......................................................... 153 5.2 From Old to “New” Tools of Thought: Ermarth’s Discursive Condition ........................................................ 157 5.3 Whitney’s Role in Saussure’s Innovations on Ancient Sign Theory ........................................................................... 161 5.4 Semiology as a “Science” of Signs ......................................................164 5.5 Ermarth on Saussure’s “Systemic Value” ..........................................166 5.5.1 The “master key” of political economy: Léon Walras ..............169 5.5.2 History-as-fiction as the “unfinished business of structuralist thought” ............................................................... 174 5.5.3 Greek metaphysics supplanted by cognitive linguistics ......... 179 5.6 Conclusion ..........................................................................................182 Chapter Six 6 Vico beyond the Metaphors at the Core of Greek Metaphysics ..............185 6.1 The Greek Legacy of Conditioned, Disembodied “Knowing” ..........................................................................................188 6.1.1 The designer’s blueprint: Plato’s metaphor of the “Divine Architect” .............................................................. 191 6.1.2 Misunderstanding Vico’s verum-factum as an epistemological principle .........................................................196 6.1.3 From “image of God” to quasi alius deus, “like another God” 200 6.2 White’s Greek Inheritance: The Fictive Techniques of Historical Representation ............................................................ 203 6.3 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 205 6 Chapter Seven 7 Vico’s New Metaphor for our “Systemic” Condition after Technology ...................................................................................... 209 7.1 The Shift of Verum-Factum from Philo of Alexandria to Vico .........214 7.2 The New Metaphor coupling Living Structure and Methodological “Structurism” ...........................................................219 7.3 Hebraic, Unconditioned, Originary Sense-Making: Davar .................................................................................................223 7.3.1 Secularization of a divine thesis: Creation ad intra vs. creation ad extra ..................................................................... 224 7.3.2 The originary as “hermeneutic” sense-making: Walter Benjamin ...................................................................... 226 7.3.3 Originary sense-making as “self-organizing” (autopoiesis): Dissipative structure................................................................ 228 7.4 Originary Sense-Making in the Real World ......................................232 7.5 Conclusion ..........................................................................................235 Chapter Eight 8 The (Binary) Arbitrariness of History-as-Fiction .................................. 238 8.1 Tropicizing Saussure’s Binary Sign .................................................. 242 8.1.1 Saussurean language as dichotomous, reductive: word decoupled from deed .......................................................243 8.1.2 Vichian language as eventful, “violent”: Word-as-deed ..........247 8.2 The Tropics of (Post)structuralist Discourse .................................... 251 8.3 Modeling Coins as Units of Value: Pattern and Process Decoupled .............................................................................256 8.4 The Systemic Distinction between Static/Nonliving & Dynamic/Nonliving, Living .............................................................. 262 8.5 Conclusion ..........................................................................................267 7 Table of Contents Chapter Nine 9 Beyond the Linguistic Turn .................................................................... 269 9.1. The Venatic (Hunting) Paradigm: Signs of Prey in the Landscape ..........................................................270 9.2 “Argument” within the Venatic Conjectural Paradigm .....................272 9.3 More than mere Rhetoric: Embodied Metaphorical Language ........277 9.4 A New Set of Tools beyond History-as-Fiction .................................281 9.5 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 284 Chapter Ten 10 Conclusions: Historian-as-Reader of Past Movement ............................287 10.1 Introduction: