The Work of History

Since the appearance of Hayden White’s seminal work Metahistory in 1973,

constructivist thought has been a key force within theory of history and has
at times even provided inspiration for historians more generally. Despite
the radical theoretical shift marked by constructivism and elaborated in
detail by its proponents, confusion regarding many of its practical and ethi-
cal consequences persists, however, and its position on truth and meaning
is routinely misconstrued. To remedy this situation, The Work of History
seeks to mediate between constructivist theory and history practitioners’
intuitions about the nature of their work, especially as these relate to the
so-called fact–fiction debate and to the literary challenges involved in the
production of historical accounts. In doing so, the book also offers much-
needed insight into debates about our experiential relations with the past,
the political use of history and the role of facts in the contestation of power.

Kalle Pihlainen is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Humanities at

Tallinn University, Estonia, and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Cul-
tural Theory at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.
Routledge Approaches to History
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

15 Theoretical Perspectives on Historians’ Autobiographies

From Documentation to Intervention
Jaume Aurell

16 How History Works

The Reconstitution of a Human Science
Martin L. Davies

17 History, Ethics, and the Recognition of the Other

A Levinasian View on the Writing of History
Anton Froeyman

18 The Historiography of Transition

Critical Phases in the Development of Modernity (1494–1973)
Edited by Paolo Pombeni

19 The Emergence of Historical Forensic Expertise

Clio Takes the Stand
Vladimir Petrović

20 Historical Mechanisms
An Experimental Approach to Applying Scientific Theories to the
Study of History
Andreas Boldt

21 Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography

Tor Egil Førland

22 The Work of History

Constructivism and a Politics of the Past
Kalle Pihlainen
The Work of History
Constructivism and a Politics
of the Past

Kalle Pihlainen
First published 2017
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To the still points, ever present
Contents

Foreword by Hayden White ix

Preface xiii

1 Narrative Truth 1

2 Rereading Constructivism 18

3 An End to Oppositional History? 38

4 Communication and Constraint 62

5 History in the World 82

6 Reforming Representation 99

7 The Confines of the Form 115

Bibliography 133
Index 140
Foreword
Hayden White

I commend this book as a lucid, pertinent and sophisticated treatment of

some principal issues currently debated by philosophically interested schol-
ars in a wide variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences. It uses
some of my own work as exemplary statements of these issues, less to pro-
mote them than to complicate them through critical scrutiny. The kind of
reader of histories served by mainstream book review periodicals is not
likely to find such philosophically interested discussions either engaging or
particularly relevant to his or her daily concerns. In other words, this is a
book written by a professional critic-scholar-philosopher, not for the com-
mon reader, but for others of his kind.
This brings me to an important point about current discussion of the
humanities in the Western educational enterprise. History—like liter-
ary studies, linguistics, philosophy and certain branches of the social sci-
ences, such as anthropology, and sociology and psychology—has moved
further and further away from its traditional readers’ interests the more
it has tried to turn itself into a science on the model of modern biology,
physics, neurology and so on. For: the transformation of a field of study
formerly serving group interests (education, identity, ideology, genealogy)
into a scientific discipline inevitably raises a host of meta-interests, such
as the nature of the object of study, the appropriate modes of representing
this object and explaining changes in it over time, the difference between
conventional interpretational strategies and newer, more scientific modes
of explanation, the nature of the codes used in preliminary descriptions of
the object and the competences required for participation in discussions of
topics such as these.
For a long time, history was regarded as the study of the past as it was
known by way of documents and monuments and in the extent to which it
could provide credible stories of the formation of a nation’s (or some other
group’s) identity and development over time. Any educated person was con-
sidered to be competent to read such stories, derive a moral from thought-
ful reflection on them and gain insight into the group’s nature and ends on
the basis of which a “realistic” grasp of “historical reality” could be com-
posed. And so too for those who wrote history: any educated person with
x Foreword
the necessary languages and “experience” (in public affairs) was regarded as
competent to study history and write about it authoritatively.
But all this changed with the effort in the early nineteenth century to
transform history into a science and locate the proper practice of it in the
university. Henceforth, a wedge was driven between the professional his-
torian and the amateur and beyond both, the common reader of histories.
Often, this wedge consisted simply of the possession of an advanced degree
attesting to the expertise of the person possessing it. But it also consisted of
the creation of a new primary audience for historians, namely, other profes-
sionals competent to pronounce on the propriety of any study or account
of the past claiming the title of a “history.” Finally, the professionalization
of history created a wedge between those historians concerned to create a
scientific account of the past and those who continued to favor the older,
traditional mode of storytelling (or narrative), considered to be a mode of
explaining history particularly suited to the needs and interests of the “ordi-
nary, educated” citizen of the modern nation-state, religious denomination
or member of a distinctive social class.
Now, this brings us to the peculiar situation of the audience, context or
milieu into which Kalle Pihlainen’s book has been launched. Although this is
a book about the study of history, it is less concerned with history (that part
of the past that can be studied by professional historians); it is much more
a book about the kind of knowledge we can derive from the study of his-
tory, the ontological status of the historiological object, the different ways
this history can be presented or represented and the kind of audience that
historians and their critics can realistically envision for their work. Thus,
Pihlainen leads us through current states of the questions of narrative (sto-
rytelling) as a “realistic” (or, conversely) fictionalizing mode of discourse;
how a narrative or other kind of figurative device “refers”; whether histo-
rians can avoid fictionalizing their objects of study and telling stories about
them; whether certain kinds of events in the remote or near past require
specific kinds of representational strategies for the proper presentation of
their substance or essence—their meaning; and whether there is currently a
“yearning for the past” pervading our cultural moment and, if so, whether
this “desire” is a realistic one or not.
So anyone who is looking for another “history of,” even a history of
“history” itself, will not find it in this book. It is a critic’s book which, inso-
far as it uses my critical work as an object of criticism, could even be called
a meta-critical enterprise. Which raises the question, what is the use of criti-
cism and especially meta-criticism in a field of study like history?
One answer to this question is suggested by the late great British critic
Frank Kermode’s response to the question of why do we need literary crit-
ics? After all, literary works are written for the educated laity, the so-called
common reader, and should not require any special training for a competent
reading. Kermode’s response was that, first, “literature” is an important
area of modern cultural production and element of society’s educational
 Foreword xi
enterprise (aside from being a business of considerable size and import),
and while many people read literature for entertainment or diversion, just
as many consume literature as an element of self-cultivation and social
identification. Furthermore, since modern societies tend to be multicultural
in composition, the audience for literature is not the kind of homogeneous
public that linked an author to a public in earlier times. Finally, govern-
ments have an interest in regulating the production and consumption of
such cultural products as literature, as witnessed by institutions for cen-
soring literary production, distribution and consumption. Therefore, it is
imperative to have cadres of scholars and intellectuals who specialize in
what might be called the social import of fields of creative production like
literature and the rest of the arts. Not in order to regulate them, but to
provide informed opinion on the nature and consequences of their prod-
ucts. Thus, Kermode concluded, literary critics and theorists do the serious
reading for a community.
Much the same things can be said of scholarly fields such as philosophy,
linguistics, law and historical studies, all of which contribute to a given
culture’s conceptions of its identity, nature and prospects for future develop-
ment. The fact is that fields which comprise the humanities never fell from
heaven whole and sound and fixed forever in their contents or their meth-
ods. All of these fields of work have histories, which is to say, have been
subjected to interested criticism, have changed and developed over time and
are “free” in the sense that no one person or institution can claim supreme
authority over how they ought to develop, what topics they should or
should not treat and what kinds of recommendations they should make for
future development. Unlike the physical sciences, these fields of inquiry and
scholarship do not have agreed-upon experimental procedures for deciding
among contending theories and protocols. How a community thinks about
its past, the value it attaches to it and the uses it wishes to make of it are all
up for grabs for every generation. And this is why we need critics and criti-
cism in these fields in a way that we do not for the physical sciences.
Kalle Pihlainen remarks a number of times on practicing historians’ gen-
eral disinterest in the kinds of epistemological, ontological, ethical and aes-
thetic issues discussed by theorists of history and historical writing. Many
historians feel that historical studies have no need of a theory or theories of
history because “history” is what historians do. Since historians are licensed
or otherwise authorized to study the past and to represent it to any constitu-
ency capable of reading their findings, their practice constitutes sufficient
“theory” for their work. So, while most historians would not claim that
history is a science like physics or chemistry, they still reserve the right to
decide what will count as a legitimate or illegitimate representation of his-
torical reality or a rightful use or misuse of the past.
But who owns the past? Many disciplines claim the right to use the past
as a source of “data” or a locale of “value” without even a nod at what
establishment historians consider to be proper historical method. Why
xii Foreword
should the past not be subject to responsible critical treatment in the way
that the law, philosophy, language or literature itself may be?
Kalle Pihlainen has taken as his topic a version of historiological reflec-
tion which he calls “narrative constructivism,” of which I am supposed to
be one representative, and what he calls a “yearning for the past,” which he
views as a kind of cultural malady peculiar to our times.
He distinguishes between constructivism and constructionism, which is
the doctrine that not only is “history” an invention having no basis in real-
ity, but that the very notion of “the past” is an invention as well. It is con-
structionism that is responsible for the postmodernist belief that the past
does not exist, that the past can never be an object of study because every-
thing comprising it is a construction of human imagination and that “his-
tory” therefore is a delusion, to be made of as one wishes, and little more
than a pseudo-science. He analyses the function of narrative or storytelling
in historical writing and asks whether, if stories can only be “made up” and
never found already constituted in things, they can be validly used to pres-
ent real states of affairs in history. He asks whether having an element of
“construct” in an account of real-world phenomena opens such accounts
to charges of “fictionalization” and goes on to throw new light on the old
fact–fiction dichotomy, asking whether facts may not be as much a con-
struction as “fictions.” Pihlainen also dips into the problem of reference and
referentiality in history, whether if fiction is a discourse without a referent,
does the absence of the historian’s referent—its status as “past”—render it
more “fictional” than “factual.”
These and many more questions are raised by Pihlainen in terms that
make him eminently qualified to claim the title of a critic of historiography,
even if he would reject the appellation “philosopher of history.”
Preface

This is not intended as a book about Hayden White as much as one about
the politics of historical construction. Yet White is present on almost every
page. The reasons for that are obvious. His work provides the inspiration
for the majority of the arguments that I run here, and his writings offer emi-
nently quotable formulations of the central problems that any theorization
of the practice of history needs to address. In my view, he has said so much
of what there is to say about constructivism and history, and he has said
it elegantly and with such thoughtfulness and insight, that any discussion
of history as a representational practice must inevitably return to consider
these ideas. They remain centrally relevant and provide a solid foundation
for continuing to rethink the discipline.
In the present intellectual milieu, where debates within the theory and
philosophy of history, much like within the humanities in general, seem
to follow currents that have turned away from questions of language and
representation (and thus also from at least explicit articulations if not, hope-
fully, awareness of the challenges these present), historical construction and
particularly the kind of “narrative constructivism” that I advocate here are
far from fashionable or topical issues. What drives me to continue in the
directions taken in this book, nonetheless, is the experience that there are
fundamental concerns that have not been recognized in spite of the broad
and vocally expressed desire to move on. In other words, I am motivated by
a worry that something vitally important is about to be dismissed without
having been substantially understood. Given, however, that even this narra-
tive constructivism has been present for quite some time now in discussions
regarding history, the hope that it may yet be better received or appreciated
is perhaps a misplaced one on my part.
Despite the possibility of focusing on a cause that is taken as being passé
by a large part of the history profession, the point of view (the ideology, if
you will) that I defend in this book remains, then, the “old” one—and one
that I want to label poststructuralist in order to be precise. To say that I am
writing about poststructuralism and the ethics or politics of historical con-
struction may appear to be a strange combination or even a contradiction to
many readers. If so, that simply reflects the lack of philosophical clarity that
xiv Preface
has been present in the reception of constructivism even when “the linguistic
turn” still represented a fashionable and, to some, respectable cause. (And it
reflects, indeed, also a lack in the reception of poststructuralism and other
articulations of relativism in parts of the English-language debate at least.)
Within the discipline of history there has been much talk of both “post-
modernism” and the linguistic turn as if the generally accepted wisdom, yet
the content of that wisdom has often been something completely different
from such an ethical and political awareness. The expressly ethical impulse
of constructivism and poststructuralism has been neglected and replaced
with a watered-down view of reflexivity and “intersubjectivity.” With
that, practices have dragged on much as always, and history has continued
to be written in what can quite legitimately be termed its (very) conven-
tional mode, even during the professed height of the linguistic or discursive
moment. Although many of the “reflexive” and “new” histories created in
that “postist” environment led to significant changes with respect to what
is regarded as legitimate content, they seem to have had little lasting impact
on history’s practices and forms.
Naturally, I do not want to merely defend a lost cause with the essays col-
lected here, but also to make a contribution to the more involved theoretical
and critical debate—to present my own reading of constructivism, with a
decided emphasis on its ethical-political momentum. For the moment, an
important part of that is simply to say that there is so much more to be dis-
cussed and that it is far too early to pronounce any end to talk of construc-
tivism or “postmodernism” in history. While it may be that the usefulness of
some of the more provocative terms needs to be reconsidered, there are still
unaddressed and far-reaching consequences to the arguments put forward
under such rubrics.
To this end, my title, “the work of history,” intends to focus attention
on three core aspects of the term “history” and of the discipline of history
writing: the artefact, the practice and the effects or consequences of that
practice. The reference the title makes to Walter Benjamin’s famous essay
on art is also intentional, but there is no strict equivalence to his specific
points. In broad strokes, the entanglements it articulates parallel his con-
cerns, however: the core case is that the “historical” (situated) nature of his-
tory itself needs to be acknowledged. But this has less to do with its pedigree
than with disciplinary loyalties and with the challenges history faces with
respect to changing representational sensibilities and means. Within these
complex articulations, focusing on the nature of the artefact, the history
text or “work” inevitably connects to its writing—the work of producing
histories—as well as to the work that it does in the world. Beyond the rela-
tively straightforward and practical “effect” that this work is sold and con-
sumed (an outcome that leads to the consideration of audiences, alienation
and experimentation, for example), the ideational effects of history produc-
tion and consumption best fall under the umbrella of the ethics and politics
of history. A point not missed by Benjamin with respect to art, and a central
 Preface xv
one also for narrative constructivism: political tendencies are intimately tied
to form. If there is some “purpose” to “doing” history beyond what can be
conceived of as effects and consequences, it remains outside the purview of
my examination. As far as I can see, claims for the intrinsic value of study-
ing the past make no sense. There is no “in itself” to historical knowledge.
Regardless of this—undoubtedly to many, fairly obvious-sounding—claim,
the general desire to move away from an “excessive” focus on narrative,
representation and language and hence perhaps toward finding something
meaningful, has arguably been the strongest recent current even within the
theory of history. Regularly invoked formulations in on-going theory debates
today include Frank Ankersmit’s views on “experience” and “direct access”
to the past, Hans Gumbrecht’s and Eelco Runia’s various takes on “pres-
ence,” Michael Roth’s metaphor of the “ebb tide” of language, Jouni-Matti
Kuukkanen’s defence of “postnarrativism,” Herman Paul’s championing
of “epistemic virtues” and Marek Tamm’s arguments for an (empirically)
pragmatist “truth pact.” All of these are at times appealed to as means, in
one way or another, to bring “the real” back to a discussion from which it
has purportedly been absent for too long; to give voice to reality “again.”
Even Hayden White’s valorization of “the practical past” has already been
received by some readers as such a turn to reality, although White continues
to speak in distinctly discursive terms.
When one takes seriously the belief that the constructivist debate has
been “only” about language and thus somehow not about reality at all, it is
easy to understand why arguments for moving beyond it have been captur-
ing the hearts and minds of practicing historians as well as students coming
into contact with the theory of history in recent years. It can undoubtedly
be exciting to discover a more comfortable relationship with reality—if not
to be put in touch with it, as more extreme positions seem to say. And it is,
of course, also tempting to be on the cutting edge, which at the moment is
the rejection of talk of representation and language. (It must be noted that
this is a much wider-ranging phenomenon than that present in theory of
history or even history; consider, for example, the enthusiasm generated
by the “material turn” in the social sciences or by so-called object-oriented
ontologies and speculative realism among some philosophers.) Such desires
rely on a rather caricaturized view of what constructivism with respect to
history is all about, however. As a result, many current attitudes involve,
from my point of view, an unnecessary exclusionary step when they sug-
gest that we could or should now “move on.” This is especially disturbing,
since they could more fruitfully position themselves within a constructivist
framework—if only that framework were more elaborately understood.
Not long ago, I was asked to give a talk about my take on theory of
history and, having agreed, promptly received a copy of the meeting’s pro-
gramme with my presentation announced as “Narrativism.” Despite the
initial surprise at this, I decided to work with it. The label offered a handy
way for making a case against “narrativism” and for urging participants to
xvi Preface
forget it—a sentiment that I wish to reiterate here. But why that particular
appeal? After all, from a general point of view, the theoretical ­questions I
discuss are “narrativist,” as is Hayden White’s position according to many
commentators. The problem is mostly with the term itself. This “not alto-
gether felicitous name” (as Herman Paul characterizes it in his Hayden
White: The Historical Imagination [2011, 109]), largely reflects resistance
and misconceptions that have been rehearsed in the discussions between
theorists and historians in the late 1970s, all throughout the 1980s and,
sadly, even to this day. By-and-large, dismissive views of what I would prefer
to call “narrative theory of history,” “narrative constructivism” or simply,
as White at times does, “constructivism” are what today appear to col-
lect together under this label. It is thus not a term that those who would
draw attention to what goes on in discursive meaning-making and history
texts broadly can always comfortably use. Instead, it is useful for detrac-
tors in brushing off such investigations. So, while I advocate forgetting the
ill-suited term itself, I am convinced that the theoretical position it relates to
continues to be centrally relevant.
In addition to being attached to a critical view of the discussion of history
texts and textuality from the outset, “narrativism” is misleading because
it focuses attention on a very narrow slice of contemporary constructivist
theory of history. Even worse, many critics present “narrativism” in accor-
dance with their intuitive reductive interpretation of this inappropriate
term. The central, classic text promoting this kind of reading may well be
David Carr’s “Narrative and the Real World: An Argument for Continuity.”
Although the essay dates back to 1986, the general position it presents con-
tinues to haunt views now, 30 years later (and it appears to have remained
much the same for Carr himself; see, for example, Carr 2014, especially 204
ff.). Because of the essay’s long-time centrality in the theoretical instruction
of historians (when such is provided), the claims of excessive textuality by
Carr offer up a useful straw figure to attack—in the same manner, I will
admit, that those of us on the “narrativist” side sometimes put together
our straw “conventional historians.” While this impoverished interpreta-
tion is a handy means for rebuffing unwelcome ideas, it does not lead to
much in terms of understanding history writing comprehensively, however.
Dismissing constructivist theory on the basis of a rejection of “narrativism”
and of what so many contemporary critics see as an excessive focus on lan-
guage misses the point. And this is a mistake that is not mitigated simply by
the fact that there is a great deal of the same rhetoric in circulation currently,
and on diverse fronts.
Criticism of “narrativism” is often based on a narrow and limited defi-
nition of what constitutes a narrative and of what the stories that histori-
ans focus on actually pertain to. First, the less combative formulation of
the shortcomings attributed to “narrativism”: this relies on the intuitive
assumption by critics that “narrative” implies merely a structure of “begin-
ning, middle, and end” (see Carr 1986, 120). This is clearly not the view
 Preface xvii
of White and (other) narrative constructivists, for whom the term signifies
a very broad figuration and presentation of historical facts. For them, for
us, it is storytelling and the complex process of “narrativization” that are in
focus, not some simplified narrative structure. Attempts to challenge con-
structivist theory as a mismatch between this schematic structure and the
stories that historians write are thus largely beside the point.
To the extent that the “discovery” of such a structure in reality justifies
refuting the claim by which stories are not found but constructed, this is a
crucial starting point for Carr, however; even though he is aware of some of
the difficulties: “It might be objected,” he says, “that structure is not neces-
sarily narrative structure. But is there not a kinship between the means-end
structure of action and the beginning-middle-end structure of narrative?”
(1986, 122) In order to avoid charges of running at windmills, let me note
that Carr has continued to justify his critique with this somewhat sketchy
observation of “kinship” to this day. According to his argument of relating
“narrative” to action: “What we encounter in the present has significance as
obstacle or instrument to our objectives. In fact, we can see a close kinship
between the beginning-middle-end structure of narrative and the means-end
structure of action. In both cases ‘end’ is not merely temporal but also teleo-
logical, and the same can be said for the related concepts of middle and
means.” (Carr 2009, 24)
While this makes perfect sense as far as it goes, it only works as a counter
to constructivist theory for those who also buy into the premise accord-
ing to which there is nothing outside language for “narrativism.” Since,
so the argument goes, there can be no narratives outside texts from this
“narrativist” point of view, things in the world simply happen in meaning-
less sequence, to the extent that people cannot (and this is the transition
that I find so hard to understand in Carr’s counterarguments) tell stories
about their lives in medias res, as it were, let alone experience them as being
storied while they act. The argument that can be made against this “nar-
rativism” is simple, then: merely gesturing to our experience of acting in
the world serves to invalidate its claims. (I cannot resist but note here the
similarity of this “logic” to that levelled against equally caricaturized read-
ings of “postmodernism” as antirealist. Whether the fact that this particu-
lar, equally overly literal interpretation seems to converge with an absurdist
interpretation of Jacques Derrida’s “there is nothing outside the text” justi-
fies or disqualifies it depends on one’s point of view, of course. For critics of
both “narrativism” and “postmodernism,” despite volumes of clarification,
“text” simply cannot seem to signify broader discursive context and hence
the decisive import of Derrida’s claim is not appreciated. Many historians
and historically minded critics still refuse to see it as an argument concern-
ing accessibility and mediation.)
Beyond such relatively ingenuous talk concerning the nature of narratives
and discourse, there is a second, closely related but far more damaging for-
mulation involved in this straw portrayal, which narrative theory of history
xviii Preface
and narrative constructivism have to contend with. This is the idea of “his-
tory as fiction”—a belief that continues to be attributed to Hayden White
by a great many historians. White’s (in)famous claims meant so much more
than is recognized by this polemical reading, however. In one of his most
controversial statements, White indeed says that:

By the very constitution of a set of events in such a way as to make a

comprehensible story out of them, the historian charges those events
with the symbolic significance of a comprehensible plot-structure.
Historians may not like to think of their works as translations of “fact”
into “fiction”; but this is one of the effects of their works.
(White 1978a, 53)

If it was originally intended as a provocation, it certainly succeeded among

historians, but, at the same time, the more urgent, considered sense of
“fiction” as “something fashioned” was completely lost in the reception.
Arguably as a result of the early, and careless, 1980s reception—White and
narrative theory of history have often been read as equating history writing
with literary fiction even on an epistemological level. Of course, White has
had other intentions in mind when presenting this idea, and those are still
highly relevant. Chief among them being to liberate historians from a belief
in realism and thus to permit a recognition of the ideological and political
components of narrativizing. But I will only come to that in a moment. First,
briefly back to the straw theory of “narrativism”: for the critics, all this talk
about narratives and fiction continues to prompt the (naive but, as noted,
once again fashionable) question, “What about reality?”
In Carr’s reading, “narrativists” like White—those whom he famously
called “discontinuity view” theorists—think that there is no “continuity”
between reality and narratives. This is the view that Carr positions himself
against so forcefully when he talks about structure (while already beginning
to blend structure with narrative with fiction). For him:

Narrative is not merely a possibly successful way of describing events;

its structure inheres in the events themselves. Far from being a formal
distortion of the events it relates, a narrative account is an extension
of one of their primary features. While others argue for the radical dis-
continuity between narrative and reality, I shall maintain not only their
continuity but also their community of form.
(Carr 1986, 117)

Yet the continuity he ultimately presents is not with “events themselves”

either but with identity constructions: “Neither the We nor the I is a physi-
cal reality; but they are not fictions either. In their own peculiar senses,
they are as real as anything we know” (Carr 1986, 131). In the kind of
“narrativism” that Carr criticizes, reality is thus first naively understood
 Preface xix
as physical reality and “actuality” and then excluded from the discussion.
Whatever is left is simply fiction. Hence, Carr assumes that he is discovering
a reality missed by the kind of thinking represented by White—the reality
of subjective and social constructions. This is largely because for him “fic-
tion” appears to signify “unreality” and “untruthfulness” rather than the
“fictionedness” and “discursivity” in fact elaborated in constructivist theo-
retical arguments at quite some length.
It is important to emphasize that all this is not based on simple misun-
derstanding. Despite the limited scope that he grants to “narrative,” Carr’s
summary of what it does from the point of view of the so-called discontinu-
ity theorists is quite accurate:

If the role of narrative is to introduce something new into the world,

and what it introduces is the synthesis of the heterogeneous, then pre-
sumably it attaches to the events of the world a form they do not other-
wise have. A story redescribes the world; in other words, it describes it
as if it were what presumably, in fact, it is not.
(Carr 1986, 120)

Even so, like numerous historians who follow his lead or have otherwise
come to the same conclusions, Carr simply chooses to deny this “narrativ-
ist” or “discontinuity” view by pointing to subjectively or collectively lived
narratives. (Ignoring, it seems to me, the fact that they are just as much
constructed.) Conflating history with personal experience, with personally
experienced relations and continuities with personal pasts, must somehow
just feel natural. I see no other way to explain this. Yet self-understandings
are not the focus (or at least not by any means the sole focus) of history as
a discipline. And this is the point on which there seems to be some running
together of different issues in Carr’s understanding of history as research
and as presentation too: “But stories, whether fictional or historical, focus
their attention on persons rather than anonymous forces, and human
actions are crucially important. Typically, the uncertainty of outcomes and
the drama of deliberation and choice for the agent are central to a narrative
portrayal” (Carr 2014, 194; it must be acknowledged that in this recent
book, Carr presents an incredibly sophisticated examination of phenomeno-
logical experience but even this account still begs the “hard” question for
talk of experience and history: How do you justify the jump from personal
experience or even experiences of historicity to historians writing about a
past of which they have no experience?).
One of the views that I promote throughout the book is that simplistic
debate about history’s being either fact or fiction seems (thankfully!) to be
depleted, at least in the sense of both sides having long stuck to the same
polarized positions, if not always when measured against their enthusiasm
for continuing to reiterate those. Sadly, however, talk about Hayden White
and constructivism continues to evoke the restrictive views of “narrativism.”
xx Preface
And critics are able to attack this proxy with much acceptance and relative
success because there is such a strong bias in our experience of the world to
attribute meaning to reality and even to assume that historical stories are
real and existing “out there,” ready to be discovered. My hope is that rec-
ognizing that there is nothing more to say about “Fact or fiction?” at such a
rudimentary level might finally let these critics consider the politics relating
to the controversy instead, something that has mostly been ignored in objec-
tions made in the name of “the real.” This is all the more important now,
when the assumed turn to the real only seems to further strengthen readiness
for ascribing an apolitical (and unproblematized) role to history in society.
Naturally, none of this is intended to say that the past cannot be used by
historians and in current “history talk” more broadly conceived to provide
comfort, bolster romantic worldviews or to feed the general entertainment
needs of consumers. The desire for a past that can provide the explanations
that people feel they need possesses tremendous cultural and psychological
force. At the same time, a situation where some imprecise “value” unreflec-
tively attributed to the past on the basis of a felt, “innate” historicity can
so effectively sideline questions of representational responsibility for profes-
sional historians should not be accepted.
For the past three or four decades, the simpler criticisms of “narrativ-
ism” seem to largely have obscured the core point regarding what it is that
historians and “narratives” actually do. Or, better, what it is that figura-
tions and presentations do. My concern here is to focus more on the under-
lying idea than on the populist surface conceptions about “narrativism.”
But, since these conceptions are the ones that are summoned up by the
term, they need to first be set aside, particularly as they are what many
history students appear to receive in their formation as (professional) histo-
rians. We need to forget about “narrativism” and embrace the more sophis-
ticated constructivist position from which it has been corrupted. To put
this suggestion in the form of a proclamation: “Narrativism is dead—long
live constructivism!” (While constructivism is indeed largely the same old
thing, it is far better attired.)
The sensitivity of constructivism with regard to reality “beyond lan-
guage” should be in no doubt to anyone who reads even some of the core
texts carefully. White certainly makes it clear at every turn:

The historian shares with his audience general notions of the forms that
significant human situations must take by virtue of his participation in
the specific processes of sense-making that identify him as a member of
one cultural endowment rather than another. In the process of study-
ing a given complex of events, he begins to perceive the possible story
form that such events may figure. In his narrative account of how this
set of events took on the shape that he perceives to inhere within it, he
emplots his account as a story of a particular kind.
(White 1978a, 49)
 Preface xxi
The fundamental claim of constructivism is simply that sense or meaning
is a construction. Meaning is not “out there” to be discovered, as some
kind of truth (as has been more than amply explained by Richard Rorty, to
whom this formulation also belongs). Which is not to say that we cannot
point out facts in everyday experiences or that historians could not similarly
establish facts. It is instead, and quite straightforwardly, to say that these
facts do not entail values. As Keith Jenkins has repeatedly tried to remind
historians, too: there is no entailment from fact to value, from is to ought.
And before someone yet again objects that this kind of Humean view of
the dichotomy between fact and value has been successfully dismissed, they
might want to reconsider their reading of Hilary Putnam rather than just
take him at his word.
Where Putnam was obviously correct was in pointing out that we cannot
really separate facts from valuations in many situations. But that is a far
cry from showing that the inability to distinguish between them in prac-
tical discourse does away with the dichotomy in the ethical. The core of
the original Humean claim is not to separate facts and values either in an
analytic or even a practical sense but to simply point out that there is no
way of establishing ethics on knowledge alone. As far as I can see, no-one
has yet provided a way around this part of the argument against entailment
even if much obfuscation has taken place. A fact does not carry a meaning.
Meaning is imposed on facts in their employment and figuration, whether
in history writing or in more everyday practices of understanding. Yet these
processes do not take place in a vacuum either, but always in a discursive
context, as so clearly stated by White above; they take place within a par-
ticular “cultural endowment” that defines the parameters for intelligibility.
In order to prime the reader for what follows, I want to present this more
robust view of constructivism in history in quite schematic form here as a
series of five smaller and, admittedly, somewhat overlapping declarations.
Firstly, constructivism is not and never has been about simplistic “narra-
tive” but about discourse and representation broadly conceived. (And this is
so even when it is presented under the labels of “narrative theory of history”
or “narrative constructivism.”)
Secondly, constructivism is not about “language” but about the general
process of meaning-making. This includes embroilment within sociocultural
codes and commitments, embodied meanings, culturally embedded values
and practices and so on, in addition to the more often explicitly mentioned
dimension of linguistic rules and literary tropes, for instance.
Thirdly, constructivism is not an antirealist or “anything goes” position
epistemologically and, in the case of history, is inextricably bound to the
discipline’s generic commitment to reference. In other words, it is limited
by historians’ commitment to writing about the actual past—despite all the
epistemological challenges involved. Historians’ reliance on substantiation
always guarantees the possibility of falsifying or vetoing (to invoke Reinhart
Koselleck’s classic formulation) a claim or even a complex representation by
xxii Preface
means of contradicting factual statements and sources. The reverse is not
true, of course, since meanings cannot be inferred from facts.
Fourthly, constructivism is not primarily concerned with epistemology
but with ethics, politics and consequence (the epistemological problematic
faced is too obvious to lead very far alone). To make the constructedness of
all sense and meaning visible is first and foremost an ethical-political issue.
Once we stop expecting meanings to somehow magically appear from facts,
the ideological nature of practices of figuration becomes foregrounded.
Lastly, and almost as a summary of the preceding points, constructivism
in history is not about the question of “Fact or fiction?” but about a politics
of the past, the politics of historical representation.
While such claims may not sit easily with the broadly received view of
narrative constructivism in history, I am by no means alone in defending
them, as will become evident from the many allies I enlist in the discussion.
Some of these textual allies have become “real” for me and deserve thanks
for their friendship and encouragement as much as for their inspiring work.
With respect to the essays included in the book, I especially want to thank
Robert Doran, Keith Jenkins, Alun Munslow, Nancy Partner, Verónica
Tozzi and Richard Vann for their extensive comments and valuable advice.
Many editors and anonymous readers involved at various stages have also
had a substantial impact. Thank you all for your feedback and assistance.
In addition, several funding agencies have been instrumental in enabling this
particular work: my thanks to the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation,
the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Academy of Finland for financial
support.
The essays collected here have been written over a number of years, and
I have benefitted greatly from the insight and generosity of countless other
people during that time too. Special thanks go to the wonderful colleagues
and friends engaged in the work of the International Network for Theory
of History as well as to those who regularly gather together at the research
seminar in Philosophy of History at the Institute of Historical Research in
London. I trust they are aware of their importance to me. If not, I will strive
to correct that when next we meet.
Finally, of course, I am immensely grateful to Hayden White for his kind-
ness and for articulating the rich world of ideas that this book hopes, in
part, to continue to relate.
1 Narrative Truth

The qualification of “truth” with “narrative” in the chapter title is intended

as a provocation. When the question of history’s status as a kind of literary
knowledge was introduced to mainstream discussions of history by Hayden
White—in the 1960s and 1970s’ context in which aspirations that history
be taken seriously as science still largely dominated the discipline—all such
ideas certainly seem to have provoked strong reactions. Today, after four
or five decades of debate, some vague attachments to an unqualified truth
may still linger on in the minds (or at least hearts) of history practitioners,
yet less rigorous ideas like that of “narrative truth” appear by-and-large to
have become acceptable. There still exist, however, limiting biases that are
easily incorporated into discussions of such thinking—perhaps to curb radi-
cal readings and to control the damage, as it were. Against any attempted
domestications of White’s thought, I will present an argument for “narrative
truth” in what I take to be the spirit of White’s constructivism. Although the
possibility and definition of such truth raises issues that are not exclusive to
the practice of history, I will here tackle things from the standpoint of that
discipline as well as of related discussions within the theory of history. In
spite of this narrower focus, the significance of “narrative truth” beyond the
boundaries of history should be obvious.
The first bias that the prefacing of truth with any qualifier suggests is
that there is something that “truth” alone somehow unproblematically
marks, that there is, so to speak, a genus that “narrative truth” is a subspe-
cies of. Given the ways in which we generally use language this is a justified
prejudice. The pairing of the words here marks a contested space, however:
“Narrative truth” is a useful concept precisely because it also questions the
possibility of truth plain, beyond the introduction of a certain level of discur-
sive complexity, beyond, that is, the point at which we enter into the sphere
of more complex linguistic representations. The same does not necessarily
hold for qualifiers such as “partial,” “subjective,” “perspectival” and so on.
Or at least, not in a similar way. Any such epistemologically and hermeneuti-
cally oriented qualifiers still hold out the possibility of an objective or at least
determinable truth.
2 Narrative Truth
The first thing to understand, then, is the idea—familiar from White
as well as other pioneering (dare I say “scepticist”?) thinkers—that truth,
in the sense of meaning, is not “out there” (an issue that I already discuss
in the Preface; for more on that, see, for example, Rorty 1989, especially
4–5; Jenkins 2009, 256). Meaning is not something that can be discov-
ered. And nor is it—and this follows—something that can be indepen-
dent of construction. This position is presented well in relation to history
in one of White’s undoubtedly best-known statements—and one that has
caused a great deal of controversy. In “The Historical Text as Literary
Artefact,” White exhorts us to “consider historical narratives as what they
most manifestly are: verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much
invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with
their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences”
(White 1978b, 82).
Importantly, this problematic of truth does not—maintains White,
along with like-minded theorists of history, such as Frank Ankersmit and
Keith Jenkins, for instance—present quite the same challenges on the level
of what can be termed “singular existential statements,” on the level of
facts, that is, since these are not in the same way subject to complex nar-
rativization. The main focus of narrative theorists of history or narrative
constructivists like White is, then, on the meaning-making processes of
histories.1 Rather than stopping at discussions of language and reference
on a fundamental level, these narrative constructivists quickly move on
to problems specific to the kinds of more involved discursive practices to
which history too belongs. Thus, even though it would at points be pos-
sible to criticize them from the perspective of philosophy of language—to
focus on how they refuse to appreciate that the question of reference is
equally problematic on the level of individual facts—such critique misses
the main drive of their arguments.2 For them, agreeing to operate on
terms of straightforward truth-value and reference makes sense on the
level of singular statements but is not a valid way of relating to narratives
and representation. Here, something else is needed. (Other biases that
interfere with understanding the somewhat poetic idea of narrative truth
relate more to the notion of narrative as explanation than to the question
of truth in this narrower sense of knowledge. I will explore these further
below.)
In addition to being an expression of a non-reductionist worldview, the
narrative constructivist choice is a practical one. Even if there is no “truth
at the end of inquiry” (indeed, even if it turns out that there is no end to
inquiry once we actually think things through), we need not give up on dis-
cursive practices. And nor do we need to give up on trying to make socially
useful contributions through engaging in those practices.3 The idea is that
the availability of truth simpliciter is not a prerequisite for choices and
action. And, obversely, that the flag of “truth” should not be used as an
argument for the adoption of some specific values. I will go on to discuss
 Narrative Truth 3
all of this in more detail. For now, this rhetorical framing by White perhaps
best prepares the way:

And as for the notion of a true story, this is virtually a contradiction in

terms. All stories are fictions. Which means, of course, that they can be
true only in a metaphorical sense and in the sense in which a figure of
speech can be true. Is this true enough?
(White 1999, 9; my emphasis)4

The idea of narrative truth could equally well be presented in terms of “the
content of the form” (which is arguably White’s best-known formulation of
the general notion), “figurative truth,” “metaphorical insight” and so on.
For me, the usefulness of the idea follows from its invoking constructed-
ness and a process of formal closure in tandem with the idea of some level
of broadly shared truth or insight. In other words, it best suggests both the
idea of truth-creation and the simultaneous appeal to something already
familiar. Hence, and while I do not claim that narrative truth can replace
these other formulations, I will pursue that idea now, all the while intending
narrative in a minimally restrictive sense.5 Indeed, as far as I can see, speak-
ing of narrative in a narrow sense would not resonate at all with a read-
ing of White’s theoretical intentions. And neither would it be very useful
for discussing historical representation as a genre. What is more, although
White does refer to the alternative forms of history that he is often after
as “antinarrative nonstories,” he is still best understood as a “narrative”
constructivist since that more focused terminology serves to separate his
point of view—which centres on the form (and “the content of the form”)
of history writing—from purely epistemological discussions concerning the
construction of knowledge. As he reminds:

The notion of the content of linguistic form scumbles the distinction

between literal and figurative discourses and authorizes a search for and
analysis of the function of the figurative elements in historiographical,
no less than in fictional, prose.
(White 1999, 4)

What Is History Not?

Implicit in White’s question “Is this true enough?”—which I will represent
here as asking: “Is it enough that history can provide us with examples
of ways of acting and thinking, with metaphorical insight and figurative
truth?”—is also the whole of his epistemological argument regarding the
nature of historical representation—of, that is, historical narrative and nar-
rativization.6 The stance of narrative constructivism that this argument
marks out concerns, then, in its first part, history’s epistemological standing.
As such, it is equatable with general linguistic-turn, poststructuralist and
4 Narrative Truth
“postmodern” positions advocating scepticism regarding truth and mean-
ing. At the same time, however, with its refusal of essences and recognition
of a general “discursive condition,” this critique questions the naturalness
of history as a genre, too.
I will begin from this still broad yet now history-specific point: history
(as a practice, and also, if so understood, as an orientation or “historical”
worldview) is not in any way “natural,” and nor is it beyond itself being his-
toricized. On this issue, White’s challenge to the discipline is at its greatest.
For him, history is “a kind of historical accident,” the continued existence
of which is not self-evident. It is worth quoting him at some length on this:

historians of this generation must be prepared to face the possibility that

the prestige which their profession enjoyed among nineteenth-century
intellectuals was a consequence of determinable cultural forces. They
must be prepared to entertain the notion that history, as currently con-
ceived, is a kind of historical accident, a product of a specific historical
situation, and that, with the passing of the misunderstandings that pro-
duced that situation, history itself may lose its status as an autonomous
and self-authenticating mode of thought. It may well be that the most
difficult task which the current generation of historians will be called
upon to perform is to expose the historically conditioned character of
the historical discipline.
(White 1978b, 29, my emphasis)

So, although White mostly seems to want to offer opportunities for his-
tory’s continued existence, he certainly does not claim that there is some
automatic privilege or position afforded to the discipline as we know it now.
Indeed, this recognition of its “historically conditioned” character can be
viewed as the central challenge to history today. At the very least, it means
that history and historians would need to offer some reasons for engaging
with the past in this specific disciplinary form. And that is what White’s cri-
tique has (most often) been directed at helping them do. But, despite White’s
decision to choose to support history, it should be noted that alternative
conclusions—like those recommending that we finish with history as a prac-
tice as presented by Keith Jenkins—would be equally valid according to this
way of thinking. Since sensibilities regarding what is considered acceptable
as “history” gradually change, it only makes sense that we might one day
also simply choose to abandon the practice. (See especially Jenkins 2009;
Pihlainen 2013a; cf. White’s turn away from the challenges of history to
focus more on “the practical past” instead [White 2014b].)
As a consequence, choosing history in the disciplinary form in which
it presently exists rather than assuming that such historical thinking is a
necessary condition of human existence or a fundamental “cognitive cat-
egory,” for instance, is a crucial step toward understanding the kind
of truth that it might be able to provide. In addition, there are various
 Narrative Truth 5
“misunderstandings”—largely resulting from intuitive biases or unwar-
ranted extensions of common sense and “experience”—relating to the
necessity of history that easily appear in discussions of anything akin to
narrative truth and that need to be taken into account. Here, in this section,
I will attempt to articulate what I take to be the central challenges in terms
of three specific (albeit closely interrelated) misunderstandings, saving a cru-
cial fourth one for the final section of the chapter. Critique and clarification
of these misunderstandings is more specifically focused on the question of
what history as a narrative-making activity is and is not (as well as why it
cannot be many of those things). While that discussion thus also still relates
to the question of literal truth, it does so in more precise ways.
The first of the more specific misunderstandings affecting views of the
nature of historical work follows closely on the heels both of the idea of a
truth “out there” and of the received assumption that history is somehow a
natural category for making sense of the world. This is the recurring intu-
ition that narratives themselves are “real,” as if existing somehow indepen-
dently outside or beyond processes of meaning-construction. Despite the
immediate counterintuitiveness of this way of thinking (to me at least), it
has found influential supporters—most prominently in Alasdair MacIntyre
and David Carr. Extending this point of view to historical work, narratives
could indeed be “discovered” by historians, and narrative truth would sig-
nify a particular aspect of the world in some more fundamental sense than
when that world is qualified as being “under description.” This idea can
be set against the far more understandable and general claim that narrative
as form and process is a way of “making sense” of things (a continuous
process of impositions of meaning and pragmatic engagements; see Carr
2008, for example, for a useful reading of what takes place in “narrative
explanation”).
Even Frank Ankersmit has recently presented an argument for real
aspects with respect to “representation as a cognitive instrument.” In
order to explain his position, he employs the (Heideggerian) idea of the
“self-revelation” of reality combined with a captivating metaphor of repre-
sentation as shining a light onto reality, bringing out particular aspects of it.
As he sees it, the kind of “representational truth” that this process can offer
“bridges the gap between language and the world by the representation’s
capacity to highlight certain aspects of reality” (Ankersmit 2013b, 182).
Although such truth indeed sounds perfectly placed to provide a working
compromise between purely linguistic construction and an unmediated
access to reality in terms of phenomenological experience, it still fails, I
would say, when one tries to extend it to historical representation. I will try
to explain this in some more detail.
The core difference between Ankersmit’s view of aspects and the idea
of narrative truth that I argue for here centres on his belief that the world
“reveals” representational truth about itself—or, as he also puts it, truth “is
to be found in the world” and, further, that this truth “announces itself.” As
6 Narrative Truth
he quite rightly points out, such a conception of truth needs to be a “radically
desubjectified” one. (Ankersmit 2013b, 183)7 But when “representation” is
used in the sense that it is when referring to literary artefacts—linguistic
constructions such as historical representations, for example—it seems that
the parameters for what we might quite acceptably claim when speaking
of mental representations in a philosophy of mind framework (or a phe-
nomenological framework relating to “lived experience” for that matter)
no longer apply. While Ankersmit does not appear to intend his idea of
representation to include the extreme idea of narratives “out there,” it can
feed into that argument too, unless care is taken to distinguish mental repre-
sentations and subjectively constructed and experienced “life” stories from
more elaborate linguistic representations.
With that distinction in place, however, the very idea that “narratives”
or “representation” are viewed as means for making sense of the world
already argues the constructivist side of things. For what else could it mean
to say that they are cognitive instruments, tools in our cognitive processes?
To put it bluntly: at a basic level, the appeal to cognition in itself seems to
preclude the idea of some immediate or direct avenue to aspects of the world
assumed by the kind of romantic materialism that arguments like these pre-
sented by Ankersmit now would otherwise imply. (This can be illustrated
with an analogy to perception: perceptual faculties are not, strictly speak-
ing, instruments of cognition although they may engage and involve cogni-
tive processing.)
Defending the idea that the narratives presented by historians are some-
how real would seem necessary only if we already had access to (or indeed
evidence of) such narratives in the first place. The practical fact—as presented
by Carr, and more recently still supported by, at least, Geoffrey Roberts
(1997) and, in a more nuanced way, Jonathan A. Carter (2003)—that peo-
ple had understandings, intentions and stories by which they conceived of
their own lives only serves to highlight the ubiquitousness of narrative as a
sense-making strategy and has no bearing on the discussion about histori-
ans’ narratives.8 Indeed, it is painfully misdirected when applied to historical
representation. I will return to the confusion that I think easily undergirds
all such views in the final section of the chapter and will thus offer only a
general conclusion concerning it here: while narrative form can be viewed
as an essential cognitive tool (and, by extension, narration, interpretation
or explanation as essential processes), it is a curious mistake to extend this
same centrality to historical narratives.9
Since we can have no direct historical experience (continuing to assume
that “history” refers to the non-subjective past under description), construct-
ing historical narratives for cognitive purposes does not count even as a
necessary existential condition—whereas the construction of interpretations
situating lived experiences on a phenomenological continuum clearly does.
The assumption of existential necessity would, after all, amount to saying
that there is something to the historical past (that is, to those parts of the
 Narrative Truth 7
past that require uncovering, collecting and representing rather than experi-
ence, memory and remembering to become available) that makes existential
demands, demands that would somehow have a hold on us irrespective of
our embeddedness in particular sociocultural discourses. And surely that
cannot be the case? To highlight this problem as clearly as ­possible: noting
that cognitive processing is engaged by reflection on historical narratives
(which seems to be a rather self-evident fact) does not mean that those types
of narratives are an essential aspect of cognition any more than the existence
of brick buildings would mean that bricks are needed in every construction
project. (The undeniable presence of “parahistorical” and popular under-
standings and representations of the past in our “actual,” everyday experi-
ences serves to confuse issues further, of course.)
As far as I can see, tilting at constructivism on this level is a lost cause.
This is best summarized by referring to the fundamental break between fact
and value generally invoked in the discussion. In Keith Jenkins’ customary
formulation: there is no entailment from fact to value (see, for example,
Jenkins 2009, 8). And, viewing things from the opposite direction, from
the perspective of the process of (historical) narration, there is no way
of remaining solely within the factual when complex constructions are
involved: “When it is a matter of recounting the concourse of real events,
what other ‘ending’ could a given sequence of such events have than a
‘moralizing’ ending? What else could narrative closure consist of than the
passage from one moral order to another?” (White 1987, 23). Narrative
closure necessarily introduces an element that transcends the boundaries of
the epistemological.
In spite of such basic and persuasive arguments, the expectation of facts
as being capable of constituting meaning “naturally”—without that mean-
ing always needing to be imposed—seems to me to be another persistent
confusion haunting discussions about history. Such faith in the derivability
of meaning from facts is the second of the misunderstandings that I wish to
draw attention to here.10
Although constructivist claims seem clear enough, there is a great deal of
confused opinion passing as theory in the contemporary debate. Much of
this confusion is, I would say, attributable to readings of the linguistic turn
as relating only to the use of language and to problems of reference rather
than to the recognition of a much more fundamental discursive (constructiv-
ist) condition.11 Hence, the present struggle for a number of historians and
theorists has become increasingly one of pointing out that there is a reality
beyond language (who are the antirealists that these historically preoccu-
pied individuals rail against, one wonders?)12 instead of simply acknowledg-
ing that there are limitations in accessing that reality in any meaning-full
way. (The claim of “no entailment” again.)
Just to ward off one final and common objection before moving on (the
third of the three misunderstandings that I set out to highlight in this sec-
tion, and one related more to how narrative constructivist claims are often
8 Narrative Truth
misrepresented than to any experience-based biases): none of the construc-
tivist “corrections” to the usual history-related misunderstandings makes
the claim that historical accounts could not still be falsified on the basis
of facts. This is so because falsification involves an altogether different
process to construction.13 Although an interpretation is not entailed by
facts—although, that is, complex interpretations cannot be extracted from
simple facts—any single contradicting fact can serve to disprove an overall
interpretation. (Such disproving need not empty an interpretation of value
in terms of its narrative truth or metaphorical insight, however.)
It should be remembered, then, that, in this fundamental respect at least,
historical research and facts play a crucial role in White’s overall view of his-
tory. The failure of historians to intuit and to remember that the construc-
tion of interpretations and the procedures for falsifying them engage distinct
mechanisms seems to be one of the final obstacles preventing many of them
from embracing narrative constructivist ideas.
This distinction between construction and falsification is perhaps easier
to keep in mind when one understands that narrative constructivism is con-
cerned expressly with the “writing phase” of history—with, that is, narra-
tivization and its end product: the narrative, ideologically implicated form.
The “research phase” is not problematicized to anywhere near the same
extent, which is why discussions concentrating mainly on reference and lan-
guage tend to speak past the core constructivist issues. At the same time, dis-
tinguishing between research and writing “phases” is—as both White and
Jenkins recognize—primarily a theoretical move, but a useful and necessary
one in focusing attention on definite questions (see, for example White 2000
and, especially, 2014a; Jenkins 2009).
So, where are we left regarding history, once we accept all these
qualifications?
It seems to me that the best (simple) answer to the problematics his-
tory is faced with is still to be found in the idea that historical narratives
are arguments for particular points of view or proposals for the attribution
of meaning to past events (see, for example, Ankersmit 1983). Whether
one takes this as a strictly epistemological issue (as an admission of the
ultimate meaningfreeness of facts as we can access them and the conse-
quent need to impose some meanings) or decides to poeticize it in terms
of a ­narrative truth that is somehow appealing as a result of some broader
“human” truths is then largely a matter of preference. At its strictest, the
idea can be presented in terms of “narrative substances” as Ankersmit has
done in his early work—not, that is, as metaphors or proposals that attempt
to capture truth but as descriptive constructions that confer meaning and
(pragmatic) coherence. As noted, however, Ankersmit has lately focused
increasingly on the idea of “representational truth,” with which he at least
in part hopes, I understand, to avoid falling back even to the weaker, poetic
conception of truth that I advocate here. White, on the other hand—at least
in my reading of him—appears to offer a workable alternative to taking the
 Narrative Truth 9
inevitability of meaning-construction as implying relativism in any simplis-
tic “anything goes” sense (the fear of which has fuelled the swing back to
more “realistic” and “materialist” theorizing for so many others). For him,
the appeal (and usefulness) of the kinds of truths and knowledge produced
by these “proposals” is firmly tied to their resonance with existing cul-
tural and discursive practices and understandings: tropological and figural
forms, literary and filmic traditions, folk beliefs, popular culture icons and
expectations and so on and so forth. (Remember, epistemology is not the
only criterion in play here.) The requirement of this resonance or level of
familiarity thus always sets clear limits on what makes sense as a historical
poetics too.14 Is this enough?

What Can We Do (with History)?

The affirmative answer embedded within White’s question “Is this true
enough?”—the question that I have interpreted as one concerning the suf-
ficiency of narrative truth as the end-product of history—introduces also the
second part of my discussion here. This answer itself is evident. (Rhetorical
questions include their answers, after all, and here the answer is, roughly:
“Yes, it certainly is enough that history can provide us with metaphorical
insights and figurative truth.” Especially, one might wish to add, since this
is the most that it can ever hope to do.)15 The further questions that it raises
lead away, however, from a discussion of what history is or is not—away
from questions regarding the nature of historical representation and narra-
tive, as it were—and toward the very practical one of “So what? What can
we do with this potentially free-floating discursive form?” Perhaps, even, to
the question: “What should we do?” (But now, crucially, with no illusions
of entailment.)
So, while scepticism and any consequent increase in theoretical aware-
ness or self-reflexivity already mark a significant improvement over
conventional, objectively oriented history, calling attention to the episte-
mological problems with narration as a process of truth-construction is
really only a stepping-stone to these more involved practical, ethical and
political issues. There should thus be substantially more to narrative truth
for it to be “enough” than its being the only feasible candidate for truth
once history’s epistemological challenges are considered. Yet, when his-
torians dismiss narrative constructivism or other parallel sceptical and
“postmodern” positions by claiming that they are already fully aware of
the fact that history always involves artificial constructions and closures,
choices and limitations of perspective, the use of various literary devices
and so on, they still seem to ignore the consequences. Indeed, they appear
to believe that their professional method (the still-so-often touted “histori-
cal methodology” and practices of source criticism) can insulate them from
sociopolitical responsibilities beyond the limited and supposedly neutral
commitments of the discipline.
10 Narrative Truth
To accept, however, that truth is not “out there” and that meanings can-
not be distilled from facts and from reality “as such”—that meanings are
instead always discursive constructions—implicates all those engaged in
authorizing discursive practices such as history equally. Responsibility for
consequences (ethical-political responsibility16) cannot be avoided, and nor
can it simply be claimed that the responsibility is shouldered by the institu-
tion as a result of its practitioners’ fidelity to some governing method.
In this move from epistemological difficulties to ethics, politics and
responsibility, White is at his most existentialist and practical,17 and these
claims can be denied simply by making opposing ones about the role of
science and rational thought in contemporary society. They follow on most
sensibly from the detachment of meaning from reality, however. (To avoid
any confusion, it should be emphasized that the ethical in this framework is
not a normative category that could somehow still attach itself to knowledge
in the epistemological sense, but, rather, belongs to a practical, consequen-
tial sphere. Hence, it introduces questions of valuation and responsibility in
a way that the attachment of meaning to truth cannot. The idea of narrative
truth marks this break while offering at least something in place of an epis-
temically naive derivation of morality from the way things are.)
As already mentioned, narrative closure inevitably effects a judgement
of value (the imposition of meaning) and a shift from the epistemologi-
cal to the aesthetic and the ethical-political. This interpretation of closure
can be viewed as another way of making the overall claim that mean-
ing is not “out there,” of course, but there is more. Improved awareness
of the effects of representation can also lead to a better appreciation of
the suasive nature of established forms, particularly those narratives—in
White’s reading especially—that are modelled following the example of the
nineteenth-century realist novel. In answering the question of “what can we
do with history?” the question of its form is thus a crucial one.
One solution that White offers to the problem of the ideological weight
of (what in history writing are still most often realist-type) narratives, and
one that has also been explored especially by Keith Jenkins, Alun Munslow
and Robert Rosenstone (see, for example, Jenkins 2009; Munslow and
Rosenstone 2004), is that of formal experimentation or, one might even
say, resistance. Resistance, that is, towards inherited, implicitly held val-
ues and assumptions through narrative form itself. In White’s work, this
often appears as an advocacy of the adoption of modernist literary forms
by historians. The adoption of such forms could, this argument goes, poten-
tially prevent the unreflective perpetuation of such values as come with a
faith in the possibility of transparent realist representation; including all
the associated, implicit valuations regarding the primacy of truth, objec-
tivity, rationality, clarity, non-contradiction and so on. Certainly, the very
basic mechanism of realist form in creating the illusion of truth would come
under scrutiny. (For recent examinations of this problem, see, for example,
Jameson 2013 and Pihlainen 2015a.)
 Narrative Truth 11
The connection between realist representation and closure needs perhaps
to be underlined further. For White, as I read him, the chief danger of realist
closure is in the presentation of past events “in such a way as to sublimate,
domesticate, or normalize them” (White 2012, 132). And it is that very
domesticating or normalizing activity that much “modernist and postmod-
ernist art” actively seeks to avoid. Or perhaps, here too: to resist.
The automatic association of closure and realism with truth is what also
makes realist forms so easily available to propaganda. If no closures are
carried out in the name of creating verisimilitude and convincing readers of
the fact that the interpretations offered are real and natural, then readers are
rather paradoxically left more open to the contingency and meaninglessness
of the contents. Lack of the kind of narrative truth that realist narratives
employ in their process of meaning-construction surprisingly highlights the
textual and constructed nature of a narrative, at least in a casual reading
experience. And this, to me, is why White can suggest—as he has in a fairly
recent interview—that the goal of historical representation should be “to
create perplexity in the face of the real” (Rogne 2009, 74).
A further elaboration may be useful here; certainly, there is an impor-
tant lesson to be learned. The association of realist form and its attendant
closure with truth influences readers as strongly as it does largely because
there is no moment of questioning called forth between the reception of
this particular kind of narrative truth—the convincing realist version in
which verisimilitude affirms the narrative’s values—and its acceptance. This
would not necessarily be the case with more experimental forms in which
any narrative truth becomes apparent only through a more engaged action
of questioning and sense-making. Meaning in these instances is thus not
an automatic companion of some unproblematic reality, but, instead, both
are presented to the reader already marked as clearly mediated and in need
of construction. In this way, “perplexity” prevents reliance on the habitual
responses and processes of meaning-making that we operate with in every-
day phenomenological experience.
The importance of viewing narration as a process of construction surfaces
also on the reading side—in what it is that we think and talk about when
we think and talk about specific historical narratives. If this dimension of
meaning-construction is not clearly present in the minds of readers—if, for
instance, our cultural understanding of historical narratives includes ideals
of objectivity, of narratives being real, of narrative transparency, of mean-
ings existing in the past to be discovered and so on—discussion is limited
largely to the epistemic, to “history proper.” And then, historical narra-
tives will easily function as vehicles of received ideology, as affirmations of
the way things are. The more self-evident the constructedness of meanings
becomes, the more the dimension of responsibility for the consequences of
historical narratives is also foregrounded—and this shifts discussion to the
ethical-political. Denying a more political, presentist emphasis (as “con-
ventional” historians tend to do in the name of epistemology) would thus
12 Narrative Truth
appear to support conservative values and sustain the status quo. For White,
at least: “Nothing is better suited to lead to a repetition of the past than a
study of it that is either reverential or convincingly objective in the way that
conventional historical studies tend to be” (White 1987, 82; for a more
detailed elaboration of how realist form tends to support the status quo, see
also Jameson 2013).
White’s concern with what can be done—and with what should we
do, both as historians and as responsible individuals, it seems to me—has
become more clearly articulated in his recent writings. In The Practical
Past, he discusses this responsibility with respect not to history only, but
also (and in fact more so) in relation to “parahistorical” pasts (a range of
popular readings and understandings of the past from political slogans to
“high” art). Particularly in this broader context, any “responsible” oppor-
tunities that remain for history relate to the ways in which it might provide
readings of the past that enable emancipatory thinking and actions—to
the ways in which history could be “for life” rather than simply remain-
ing a staid, closed-off discipline. In White’s long-term focus (which has
mostly been on history as a discipline), this emancipatory potential has
gone hand-in-hand with modernist and experimental representational
forms, with, that is, forms that refuse the kinds of closures attributed to
more conventional realist as well as propagandic representations. History
does not (as I have suggested a number of times already) have a great deal
to offer if operating from epistemology alone. As White sums this up:
“Surely, the more precise, accurate, and authoritative the accounts by his-
torians of the historical past, the less relevance it can be said to have as an
analogue of any situation in the present. Conclusion: historical knowledge
is of no use at all for the solution of practical problems in the present”
(White 2012, 127).
In this practical context, the importance of representations of the past
is increasingly determined on the basis of their usefulness and popular
appeal. Either they have some significance “for life,” or they can be dis-
carded. The problem of loss of authority that history faces with the decline
of its epistemological mandate is less pressing an issue here—and parahis-
torical representations certainly have little reason to consider it; they make
use of whatever means best suit them, already aimed at capturing hearts
and minds according to current sensibilities at the outset, as part of their
raison d’être.

Experience and the Ragged Edge of History

Disappointment with the impotence of the historical past (with, that is, his-
tory’s inability to have any real and present meaning) and the consequent
valorization of the practical past have had some interesting consequences
even, I would claim, within the discipline of history itself. The importance
of “memory” and “experience,” as well as the return to “reality” and
 Narrative Truth 13
“­materiality”—presented as a getting beyond the sterile textualism that
constructivist arguments constrain history to—could be read as testifying
to the need for a reformulation of the discipline. Yet, the need to change
or abandon it has so far been channelled into fairly romantic conceptions
that play well with more conventional understandings of what historians do
(and of what they should do).
The most challenging question currently relating to the idea of narrative
truth in historical representation is, in my estimation at least, this same one
of its relation to experience and what may best be called “experientiality.”
There appear to be many persisting confusions about the role of experiences
in constituting history: History continues to be viewed as being for society
what memory is for individuals, and, as a consequence, collective beliefs
and values regarding the past and its meanings are ascribed the same status
as personal life experiences. Hence, they, too, are naturalized. This overall
dynamic of tying phenomenology to history is the fourth and final miscon-
strual that I want to highlight in this chapter.
The unjustified extrapolation of historical meaning from personal expe-
rience haunts the idea of history, I would claim. Since David Carr’s (to
me surprisingly) long-lived argument in the mid-1980s against White and
other, as Carr has it, “discontinuity view” theorists of narrative (­theorists
who subscribe to a break between narrative and reality), the notion that
subjectively experienced temporality and stories constructed by individu-
als and collective subjects in their attempts to understand their lives has
something to do with historical representation always seems to return to
the table. But equating narratives constructed in the process of explain-
ing one’s life events, for example, with narratives constructed by histo-
rians to emplot “historical” events is an exceedingly weak argument for
showing that narratives generally exist “out there.” Just because these
narratives “existed” in personal (or indeed collective) imagination (and
consequently in experience) does not make them any more real in the
sense that constructivists question. In the sense, that is, where mean-
ing and values might be “out there” to be discovered. The imposition
of meaning is just as much a part of the process in these situations. (Cf.
Carr 1986.) In this respect at least, Carr’s critique of Louis Mink’s famous
description of “narrative form as a cognitive instrument” seems to miss
the point: even if narrative is indeed the quintessential form in which
interpretation takes place (“the primary form of human comprehension”
as Mink [1978] expresses it)—and precisely because it is so universal a
phenomenon—these very different instances of interpretation have very
little to do with each other. If historians were intent only on reporting
how particular persons or groups construed and described their experi-
enced life trajectories (that is, if this were all that was sought in histories),
then a position where such experience-narratives and history were seen to
be of the same order would perhaps make sense. Since that is not the case,
the view seems misplaced.
14 Narrative Truth
This same confusion appears to dominate attempts at bringing various
discourses of “memory,” “historical consciousness” and “collective experi-
ence” to bear on history in a way in which they might help solve the prob-
lematics of meaning. As if, that is, history might benefit from these forms of
“experienced” reality to the extent that it could dismiss scepticism regarding
meaning. The problem with this is, however, that the bridge from reality to
meaning remains an imaginary one.
As far as I understand it, this attitude is part-and-parcel of the gen-
eral socially conditioned reliance on realist discursive forms. And
it thus manifests as a problem also in the way in which reading takes
place. As long as we read histories within a framework of realist reading
expectations—guided, that is, by this simplistic idea of everyday experi-
ence and understanding—the dynamic is a difficult one: the more respon-
sibility history texts take for meaning in terms of constructing truth for us,
the more real they feel and the more truth-value we easily (and paradoxi-
cally) attribute to them. This ties in also with the reason why modernist
and experimental texts often appear to be so involved with the process
of meaning-construction: when a text begins to resist realist closure and
forces readers to work for meaning, it necessarily also draws attention
to its strategies of meaning-construction or, in extreme cases, refuses to
offer the reader any help at all or even aims to confuse or mislead. (For
a detailed analysis of this kind of subversion of representation, see, for
example, Pihlainen 2013b.)
By continuing to contextualize the process of narrative understanding and
truth firmly in cultural and linguistic codings and conventions, the approach
offered by White would appear to take the best of what can be had from
thinking narrative form as a “cognitive instrument.” While meaning is not
entailed from reality, then, narrative truth is constrained by the abundant
codes within and by which we narrativize, both in our daily lives and as
historians. At the same time, this approach takes into account what (little)
can be gleaned from the idea of experiences of reality, not on the prob-
lematic level of unmediated experience but, again, in relation to the codes
and discourses that we use to make sense of experiences. Hence, the role
of experientiality as metaphorical insight or “human truth,” for instance,
comes to offer some interpretive traction or—as presented here in the idea
of narrative truth—to hopefully have more resonance with historians’ phe-
nomenologically inspired intuitions concerning the need for and presence of
the historical past. As imaginary as they both are.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2013.
“Narrative truth.” Metatheoria 4 (1): 37–53. EDUNTREF—Editorial de la
Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero.
 Narrative Truth 15
Notes
1. As I note in the Preface, the term “narrative constructivism” (which I take from
Munslow [2007, 17]) seems to me the most productive one to use here. It helps
distinguish this strand of the debate from the constructivisms of Giambattista
Vico, John Dewey, R. G. Collingwood, Michael Oakeshott and Leon Goldstein,
for instance. It will hopefully also serve in helping to bury claims about a pur-
portedly self-refuting “constructionism” that some critics attempted to attach to
White and others in the late 1970s and the 1980s.
2. Although I present Ankersmit here as a narrative constructivist, his later writ-
ings suggest that he now tends to view meaning in a somewhat different way.
(See, for example, Ankersmit 2013a; 2013b; cf. Icke 2012; Pihlainen 2015b and
my note 10 below.) In what follows, I will briefly discuss some of Ankersmit’s
more recent claims, too. Despite a shift in some of his emphases, Ankersmit
still maintains—as I understand him—the critical distinction between individual
statements and complex representations: “it is absolutely crucial in the context
of my argument that historical representations (or texts) and the sentences con-
tained by them should carefully be kept apart. My whole argument depends on
this” (Ankersmit 2013a, 576). For an elaboration of Louis Mink’s influential
argument to differentiate between singular statements and narrative constructs,
see van den Akker (2013).
3. The recurring assertion (and fear) that the recognition of such a general condi-
tion of discursivity would lead to people giving up on trying to reach practical
understandings is a common (and facile) criticism of scepticist or relativist posi-
tions: in denying authoritative stances, scepticism is assumed to lead to nihilism.
Yet, rather strangely, given this apparent power to annihilate, it is often also
claimed by the same critics to remain a self-defeating position.
4. White has qualified his view of history’s truthfulness on numerous occasions.
Here he goes on to say: “This does not imply that traditional historiography
is inherently untruthful, but only that its truths are of two kinds: factual and
figurative” (White 1999, 10).
5. Talk of narrative in this context has at times been criticized for its narrow
focus, especially by literary theorists. For my intents and purposes here, how-
ever, the term can be detached from most of the formal definitions given in
literary theory and understood instead to stand in for discourse and textual-
ity but with the one added qualification that it does imply some imposition
of formal closure. For an excellent discussion of definitions of narrative as
well as of “narrative culture” more broadly, see Rigney (1992). For a more
recent and equally brilliant defence of the continued centrality of narrative,
see Partner, who concludes her essay compellingly thus: “The unillusioned yet
unresisting embrace of narrative may prove the center of the post-postmodern
stance” (Partner 2009, 101). For a recent criticism of narrative constructivism
(rendered as “narrativism”) on the basis of a more restrictive definition of nar-
rative, see Kuukkanen (2015).
6. White distinguishes between narration and narrativization as follows: there
is “narration, a mode of speaking about the world that is different from the
mode characterized as description, and narrativization, a way of representing
the world and its processes as if they possessed the structure and meaning of
a story” (White 2000, 399). Or, as he elsewhere puts it, narrativization is “the
16 Narrative Truth
imposition on the materials of real life, of the structures and forms of meaning
met with only in story, fable and dream” (White 2010b, 15).
7. As far as I can see, Ankersmit’s idea is intended as a direct counter to (Rortyan)
antirepresentationalism too. It raises significant problems, however: it seems to
assume either that representation is always only about reality or that the world
can mystically reveal to us which things are “real” (and “true”) and which
are not. Even at its most modest, this latter option would still imply that there
are means available for distinguishing between “real aspects” and imaginary
constructions.
8. Carter’s approach is fascinating and extremely sophisticated, but his focus on
temporality is still open to the same critique of moving from phenomenological
experience to practices of representation. I am not convinced that his position is
as far from White’s as he suggests, however, at least with respect to the ways in
which cultural codes and discourses constrain meaning and interpretation.
9. Where it is mistaken, pace Ankersmit (2013b), to suggest that the centrality
of narrative form in cognitive processes somehow makes historical narrative
equally important to cognition, it is even more of a mistake to argue that this
then also has some bearing on historical representation. Already the title of
Ankersmit’s recent essay summarizes this idea that I object to: “Representation
as a cognitive instrument.” Whereas: if narrative form is indeed a cognitive
instrument in this general way, as Arthur Danto and, famously, Louis Mink
claimed, the insight that the use of that instrument affords can still be produc-
tively spoken of as narrative truth. Mink’s overall position has been exception-
ally well presented by van den Akker (2013).
10. I should stress that I intend “meaning” here in the sense of the complex (and,
admittedly by some extension, also “literary” and “metaphorical”) content of
a representation, the valuations that take place in emplotment and so on; it is,
then, here about the attribution of significance as well as the kind of “content
of the form” brought to the fore by White (and certainly not simply about
what is intended by a discrete sign, for instance). Ankersmit’s recent attempt
to import a use of meaning in which the concept remains bound to truth and
reference to the discussion of such more elaborate representation seems to me
a far more problematic route. At the same time, it also, and I think needlessly,
opens him up to the kind of critique he has received from the point of view of
philosophy of language (especially Roth 2013; see also Ankersmit 2013b as well
as Ankersmit’s direct response to this critique in Ankersmit 2013a).
11. For a most cogent argument regarding this general discursive condition, see
Ermarth (2004).
12. Even Keith Jenkins, who takes constructivist arguments concerning history to
their limit, is very careful to emphasize that his is not an antirealist position: “I
take as my originary axiom the existence of matter; of materiality, of ‘actual-
ity.’ I take it that the ‘stuff’ we call, for example, the world, the universe, etc.,
is really out there and is therefore not the product of my current mental state”
(Jenkins 2009, 256).
13. For a succinct account of the centrality of “falsification” in history, see de Cer-
teau (1986, 200–201).
14. White’s claim is an eminently sensible one: “The historian shares with his audi-
ence general notions of the forms that significant human situations must take
by virtue of his participation in the specific processes of sense-making which
 Narrative Truth 17
identify him as a member of one cultural endowment rather than another”
(White 1978b, 86; see Chapter 6 for a longer version of this quote). It should
be emphasized that White always carefully steers away from essentialism. To
me, his views neatly align with (but also tend, for the purposes of history, to
be more comprehensive than) those, for example, of Michael Riffaterre (1990)
regarding “the sociolect” and the “verbal givens” that govern opportunities for
understanding.
15. The question of the status or usefulness of such truth and insight presents no
problem for White. He makes this clear with another equally challenging (and
equally rhetorical) question: “Anyway, does anyone seriously believe that myth
and literary fiction do not refer to the real world, tell truths about it, and pro-
vide useful knowledge of it?” (White 1999, 22).
16. I employ “ethical-political” in the spirit of Jacques Derrida in the “Afterword”
to Limited Inc.: “A decision can only come into being in a space that exceeds the
calculable program that would destroy all responsibility by transforming it into
a programmable effect of determinate causes. There can be no moral or politi-
cal responsibility without this trial and this passage by way of the undecidable.
Even if a decision seems to take only a second and not to be preceded by any
deliberation, it is structured by this experience and experiment of the undecid-
able. If I insist on this point from now on, it is, I repeat, because this discussion
is, will be, and ought to be at bottom an ethical-political one” (­Derrida 1988,
116). This way of presenting the relation between ethics and politics to me
best defines and invokes the underlying idea of social responsibility. On this
view, social justice and responsibility pose the core ethical-political and exis-
tential question—and one, incidentally, that binds together existentialism and
poststructuralism.
17. For some of the more recent elaborations of White’s existentialism, see Paul
(2011) and Doran (2013a). White has now increasingly focused on “the practi-
cal past,” in relation to which the questions of what can and should we do are
even more pressing. (See White 2010b; 2012, especially 131, and 2014b.)
2 Rereading Constructivism

Within historical studies, the debate concerning narrative constructivism à la

Hayden White is too easily read as involving only epistemological issues. It
is assumed that at stake are the limits and possibilities of representation:
the question of how our stories of the world, and particularly of the now
absent world of the past, can be “truthful,” “representative,” “authentic”
and so on. From this perspective, the fact that broader debate often remains
fixated on whether history writing is “true”—and to what extent—is under-
standable. Focus on the question of whether there is ultimately any dif-
ference between history writing and literature—whether history is fact or
fiction—is, however, the sum total of a number of misunderstandings and
generalizations, the most common of which I already outlined in the previ-
ous chapter.
The core claims of constructivism certainly relate to epistemology: To
what extent can a story or narrative be true? Is it even possible to think
that the organization of facts into story form could somehow be neutral or
objective? The short and quite unequivocal answer is that however true par-
ticular facts (“singular existential statements”) may be, their presentation in
historical stories cannot but introduce a content that does not belong to the
past, but is created by the story form. That is, history writing (or any other
referential and “truthful” narration, for that matter) cannot be produced
without ideological valuation and assessment of the significance of the facts
presented, or, indeed, without the introduction of added meanings belong-
ing to the representational (literary) form.
Constructivist theorists of history like White present numerous exam-
ples of this process, ranging from simple (but inevitably arbitrary) choices
regarding a story’s beginning or end points, for example, to detailed and
intricate literary-theory-type analyses of narrativization.1 Ultimately, all
these deal, however, with the way that narrativization and narrative appro-
priate the truths of the past; the writing of history always constructs its
stories (albeit from and around facts) simply because stories did not exist
in past reality (and nor do they exist in present reality); they are not a part
of any actual existence beyond a specific act of representation, as it were.
 Rereading Constructivism 19
And thus, they cannot, of course, be found. The stories that historians
purport to have found in the past are just as subjective as those we use to
structure our own everyday experiences. The past, like the present, does
not offer a single, linguistically appropriable “truth”; instead, explana-
tions are the product of historians’ readings of it. Reality is ambiguous and
always requires interpretation. (The reason that I want to rehearse part of
this discussion from the previous chapter is that this rather straightforward
but fundamental idea seems to be a continuous cause of difficulty even for
some of the most theoretically aware historians.)
Despite all this, the discussion concerning history as fiction is often based
on unnecessary overstatement: we generally do not view the explanations
and interpretations of natural science, for example, as fictional in the sense
of their being only imaginary creations. While the current either-or debate
is to an extent perhaps the result of deliberate provocation on White’s part,
he has also later attempted to correct the misconceptions associated with
his argument regarding history’s fictionality.2 The fact that the concept of
fiction has remained at the centre of the debate is perhaps understand-
able despite subsequent attempts at clarification. It is quite hard to under-
stand, however, why the more general debate still so often continues to
simplistically equate fictionality with literature and literariness. Although
it is clear that the text cannot in itself (by its language, shape, style or even
its references, for example) demonstrate the truthfulness of its claims, it is
unreasonable to argue that there is no difference between history writing
and literary fiction. Here too, the fact–fiction debate seems to have focused
only on a small part of White’s deliberately challenging argument. What
has largely been neglected is its forward-looking part: in order to be mean-
ingful in present-day social contexts, history should employ contemporary
and appealing representational forms instead of continuing to rely on the
realist stereotype.
A central aim in this has been to make historians aware of the opportunity
of broadening their range of literary means by pointing out that—as a model
for history writing in the representation of reality in all its diversity—the
nineteenth-century realist novel deserves no privileged position over, say,
modernist fragmentation or stream-of-consciousness. Its centrality to his-
tory today is only the result of representational traditions and conventions.
What is more, and as White expressly tries to show, the model of the real-
istic novel too easily prevents evaluations of the significance of particular
ideologies and uncritically affirms existing practices (see especially White’s
“Burden of History” in White 1978b, 27–50; see also Pihlainen 2015a).
The model only affords simple and straightforward stories about reality,
stories that are additionally sanctioned by the institution of history, with
the implication, of course, that, because the stories produced in this way are
“history,” and because the sanctioned form leaves no room for either doubt
or alternative readings, they cannot be anything but “true.”
20 Rereading Constructivism
History Writing as a Distinct Genre
A necessary starting point for any theory or philosophy of history is in some
idea of the distinctness of history as a practice. With regard to the research
side of things, this is relatively easy to establish. Historians study past phe-
nomena and events, the activity of humans in the past. This research task
involves various procedural issues and institutionally defined methods.3
Among historians, it has traditionally been held that this kind of method-
ological awareness is sufficient to ensure the scientific status of history writ-
ing. When past events have been satisfactorily elucidated, historians need
“simply” to present them in written form, preferably in such a way that
others can easily verify the facts on the basis of the references given.
The claim that the presentation of research results in narrative form is
not quite so straightforward has naturally not been well received by all his-
torians. Reactions have ranged from full denial (the still often heard: “That
would make the study of history pointless!”), calls to define better accept-
able representational methods, all the way to “theoretical” positions claim-
ing that narrative forms are a natural consequence of the contents, the facts
of the past; this last either in the sense that facts define the appropriate rep-
resentational means or—even more incredibly—that stories exist in reality
and can be discovered by means of careful research.
What should be clear, however, is that a constructivist position denies
all such claims: narratives are always (at least to some extent) the result of
subjective choices; and materials, facts, can never exhaustively determine
interpretations and emplotments. In an interesting debate in the 1990s in
History and Theory, Raymond Martin presented a tempting thought experi-
ment intended to question this claim. He suggested that it would be pos-
sible to choose between different, competing interpretations once enough
facts were available: if we could amass sufficient detailed information—if
we had “enough access to the evidence”—a truthful interpretation could be
achieved (Martin 1993, 30–32).
Despite at first appearing quite convincing, this idea fails at the exact
point that constitutes a blind spot for so many historians: interpretations
(like stories) are not something that can be found in the details of the past,
hence the concept of truth does not apply to them as it does to factual
information in the form of singular factual statements—and hence, since
reality and representations are in this way of a radically different order, his-
torical facts can never be sufficient for controlling the narrative and formal
aspects of representing. The archetypal example of this was, of course, pro-
vided by Metahistory and its idea of the different tropological alternatives
for structuring narratives. (At the same time, the formalizations offered in
Metahistory are unnecessarily limiting if taken as a “model” of some sort,
as White too has reminded [2000, 391]).4
This is not to say that the subjective choices effected in narrativizing
could not be institutionally regulated (once more: to some extent) through
 Rereading Constructivism 21
some set of fanciful and limiting practices, or that constructivism signifies
relativism regarding the existence of past reality. Constructivism is decid-
edly not an antirealist position. Furthermore, the role of individual verifi-
able facts (as “singular existential statements”) in constructivist theory has
been clearly defined (see, for example, White 1987, 45 and 1978b, 97; cf.
Ankersmit 1990, 277–278), and its questioning of history writing begins
only once these initial epistemological hurdles have been cleared. The ques-
tion, therefore, is: What may legitimately be inferred from these individual
facts? And the answer, again: Nothing, really. All stories that are constructed
from these facts are equally propositional (see, for example, Ankersmit
1990, 282). From this, it is not a great stretch to the claim that no means
remain for distinguishing between history texts and literary writing. Indeed,
after the selection of material, the writing process can be thought to proceed
in a very similar manner.
Yet the latter, more extreme interpretation completely ignores the insti-
tutional and generic commitments of history as well as the realities of the
writing process. Despite having to construct their stories, historians remain
restricted by the fact that they are historians, not literary authors. In Edith
Wyschogrod’s (1998, 4) formulation, historians are bound by the “histo-
rian’s promise” of truthfulness. Where literary authors produce and shape
their “materials” (the substance of the worlds presented by their texts) in
accordance with the conditions and needs of their stories, historians attempt
to fit their stories to all available facts. This is something that is often over-
looked by populist adoptions of constructivist arguments even though it has
a significant impact on form also. (For more on the restrictions to form, see
Pihlainen 2002a.) In line with this very concrete observation, seeing histo-
rians as working on terms set by available materials is something that sets
White’s thought apart from more radical views that take the stories pro-
duced by history writing as being imaginary in the same way as, for exam-
ple, theoretical (philosophical) or literary texts.5 Thus, although stories are
not “true” in the kind of constructivism represented by White—by virtue of
their being stories—neither are they “untrue.” Epistemological criteria are
simply not applicable to narratives. And the stories offered by history writ-
ing are only possible ways of formulating ideas regarding the significance of
particular facts about the past.6
One conclusion to be drawn from the challenges history faces is the
one defended by Keith Jenkins, for whom it is difficult to find justification
for either historical research or writing any longer. If we accept that the
past contains no stories or indeed even significantly determines the pur-
poses for which it can be used—if, in other words, the past can offer us no
“­lessons”—there seems to be no point in tying the products of our imagina-
tions to it in ways demanded by the current generic and institutional rules
and conventions of history (for more on Jenkins’ turn away from history,
see Pihlainen 2013a). On the other hand—and in spite of the impossibilities
involved in representing the past—White’s goals, for example, have often
22 Rereading Constructivism
included the preservation and justification of history writing as a practice.
This more pragmatic approach can be defended simply because the theoreti-
cal hopelessness of the practice has not deterred historians from continuing
with their work (however one defines that work in relation to truth and to
the past).
So, although it is clear that talking or writing about the past at the level
of narrative involves both the formulation of subjective opinions and an
attachment to various ideologies, the linking of history writing to reality
holds significance for historians and readers alike: histories are experienced
as meaningful in a very different way because they relate to past reality
through the “historian’s promise” and on the basis of their genre. It should
be understood, however, that this does not in any way alter the epistemo-
logical standing of historical representations but only reflects institutional
and social attitudes toward them. And, in this way, it also reflects another
common fancy or prejudice regarding history: because historical narratives
stick to historical facts, as much as possible, the thoughts and attitudes they
present are often ascribed added value in comparison to those appearing in
“purely” imaginary texts. Through this perceived added value, history can
more convincingly be used in contemporary society as a means of influenc-
ing public opinion, the attitudes it defends by default lending support to the
status quo. Because, that is, the naive yet generally accepted view of history
holds that historical accounts deserve added credit for not only being imag-
inable or even plausible but for also being “real” by virtue of the events
described having “happened,” history is assumed to provide an understand-
ing of reality not achieved through any other means.
On this view (which I think helps explain away some of the ostensible
contradictions in constructivist theory), the motivation for maintaining the
special status of “historical knowledge” derives from a more general phe-
nomenon: although the imaginary or fictional character of stories is largely
recognized, people still want historical stories to create some kind of experi-
ence of relating to the past. In other words, there is a broad desire that the
facts we have about the past be significant, and, ultimately, any investment
of significance is possible only through an active experiential relation. In the
same way that we all strive to understand the present through bestowing
meanings and significance on it, (historically minded) people also seem to
hope to be able to meet the (distant) past on a level where it would be “pres-
ent” and meaningful to them. While some theorists of history—with Keith
Jenkins at the fore—quite rightly do not find this desire legitimate or indeed
theoretically justifiable, it remains, despite its irrationality, an important
explanatory factor in understanding historical research and theorizing.
The reason why so few history theorists are willing to follow the con-
structivist argument “to the end of the line,” as Jenkins does, needs to be
sought in the same desire that brings so many readers as well as historians,
one must assume, to history in the first place: they desire reality even when
it is already experientially unavailable as in the case of the past. This longing
 Rereading Constructivism 23
and the accompanying desire to understand, and (often) learn, something
from the reality of the past can be seen to be implicated even in the ten-
sions contained in White’s constructivist approach—most importantly in
his long-standing attempt to rescue history despite full awareness of the
fundamental problematics it faces.
The persistence of history and historical thinking can thus at least partly
be explained by the way in which past reality is held to be significant as
well as by the experiential (phenomenological) longing directed toward the
past. Although this phenomenological yearning, felt by both historians and
consumers of history, is often based on a confusion regarding the limits of
the theoretical possibilities of history—although, that is, the idea of his-
tory’s truthfulness is mistakenly extended from the level of the facts studied
to that of the stories constructed—their underlying experience of history’s
“reality” needs to be taken seriously in terms of its impact. Despite theoreti-
cal objections, many people do take historical representations to be “real”
and important, and that cannot be dismissed from the equation. (I will con-
tinue to elaborate on this idea of phenomenological yearning; see especially
Chapters 4 and 5.)
At the same time, constructivist theorizing runs into problems: As men-
tioned, White’s original purpose in questioning the objectivity of historical
study has involved an attempt to undermine the way in which institutional
interpretations are automatically credited with authority. While the strategy
of denying historical interpretations their status as “truth” purely on the
basis of their institutional origins (of, that is, dispelling the naive view that
stories are “true” because of history’s objectivity and scientific nature alone)
has been effective in this questioning, it has also created parallel problems
for so-called alternative interpretations. This leads to a choice: either accept
that all stories are only interpretations to be freely chosen from—in which
case “anything goes” in an admittedly inflated postmodern reading—or
grant special status to institutions in exercising ideological power in the
evaluation of interpretations. In both cases, the (poststructuralism-inspired)
intention of making room for alternative readings runs into problems. Either
anything goes, or nothing changes.

Alternative Representational Forms

In the more sensationalist interpretations of the fact–fiction debate, hardly
any attention has been paid to White’s attempts to formulate a “politics of
historical interpretation” (White 1987, 78) or indeed to the broader ideo-
logical and political aims guiding this social commitment. For this reason,
the connection between these political ambitions and the demand for the
renewal of narrative forms is not always clearly understood.
As I have already begun to discuss, White’s constructivist theorizing
has increasingly focused on the discovery and adoption of new represen-
tational forms in order that the model provided by the nineteenth-century
24 Rereading Constructivism
realist novel might be replaced with less ideologically constraining narrative
forms—forms that would be less likely to unreflectively reproduce existing
values and beliefs. A further difficulty with employing the realist novel as a
model is in the simplistic view of historical knowledge that realistic histories
offer: such straightforward narratives leave no room for alternative points of
view regarding events. But this is arguably only part of the reason for White’s
strong focus on alternative forms. These forms are interesting also for the
way in which they facilitate alternative conceptualizations of history through
the creation of a different kind of experientiality—something that they do, to
oversimplify (yet remain, I think, fully in agreement with White’s thought),
by being more interesting and appealing than traditional stories. Partly, this
simply reflects White’s subjective preference for modernist modes of presen-
tation, but partly—and more interestingly here—it also constitutes a claim
that history writing should resonate with the tastes of readers in order to be
meaningful. As he writes of the out-dated modes of historical study:

In sum, when historians claim that history is a combination of science

and art, they generally mean that it is a combination of late-nineteenth-
century social science and mid-nineteenth-century art. That is to say,
they seem to be aspiring to little more than a synthesis of modes of
analysis and expression that have their antiquity alone to commend
them. If this is the case, then artists and scientists alike are justified in
criticizing historians, not because they study the past, but because they
are studying it with bad science and bad art.
(White 1978b, 43)

The special feature (and added value) of modernist form is also, of course,
in the way it allows for the presentation of subjective and provisional points
of view and thus leaves readers/recipients the possibility of understanding or
experiencing in their own ways; differently, as it were.
Connecting between the interest generated by the narrative form and the
possibility of presenting alternative interpretations is thus complex. On the
one hand, new forms permit the rejection of old ideological (and narrowly
“empirical”) interests and attitudes. On the other hand—and more impor-
tantly for my purposes here—they also ensure the effectiveness of new inter-
pretations in the kinds of conditions in which the (imagined) truthfulness
of stories no longer helps make them more convincing than some other,
alternative ones.
This ties in interestingly with the phenomenological yearning that argu-
ably sustains history as a discipline: It seems to be rarely understood that the
reasons why narrative constructivism emphasizes new forms are much less
to do with persuading historians to turn to (or admit to) writing literature
(as the fact–fiction debate so often suggests in its more trivial interpreta-
tions) and more with the kind of experiential relation to the events described
with which these new forms could potentially provide readers. Even less
 Rereading Constructivism 25
often, the debate seems to recognize how tapping into this phenomenologi-
cal yearning and harnessing the experiential capacity of texts could lead to
the acceptance of alternative history approaches and interpretation along-
side traditional models. (And this is where “experimental history” enters the
picture too; see especially Munslow and Rosenstone 2004; also Munslow
2007 and 2010; and Vann 2013).
Since, that is, historical stories can no longer be justified on epistemologi-
cal grounds—as all stories and ways of structuring materials that account
for existing factual knowledge are equally imaginary—they can only be
compared in aesthetic terms and their value derives from their effectiveness.
Importantly, this remains so as long as it is the stories themselves that we
evaluate. When we expand the examination to involve history writing as a
whole—with the question: “Why write about the past?”—attention shifts
from the scientific foundations and the form of history also to its broader
social function. Yet the issue is still one of how history writing could be
defended as a practice. Although constructivist thought appears to lead to
a prioritization of the entertainment value of history (and this is something
I believe constructivism could rightly be criticized for), this should not by
itself be taken as sufficient justification for the existence of a discourse about
the past. Instead, any debate concerning the significance and presence of the
past necessarily needs to extend to social issues too. And because the past
can offer no meaning in itself, this meaning must be sought in the present
(and even then, of course, only in our interactions with it).
To the extent to which it claims that justifications for all actions are to
be sought for in their consequences, narrative constructivism is inevitably
linked to poststructuralist thought.7 Here, the answer to the question “Why
write about the past?” is to be found in the (possible) impact of history
writing and thus differs markedly from earlier conceptions that lean on the
ideal of objectivity, grounding themselves in views according to which his-
tory repeats itself, we can learn from history, history helps us understand the
present and so forth. A presentism explicitly oriented toward consequences
is in itself enough of a challenge for many historians simply because it neces-
sitates abandoning those last illusions of history as somehow objective. A
further difficulty with regard to such presentist thinking is contained in the
anti-authoritarian stance common to poststructuralist approaches. After all,
a view that assumes justification to reside in consequences and demands an
awareness of choices and responsibility prevents the drafting of any kind of
methodological rules. Instead, things must always be assessed on a case-by-
case basis. So, although “postmodern” thought has often been criticized as
leading to relativism with its refusal of authoritarian definitions (as well as
for its own ostensible reliance on such a definition in presenting its “rule”
of constant questioning and awareness),8 this kind of case-by-case evalua-
tion provides the only sustainable ethical-political basis for representation.
Since dispensing with the ideal of objectivity—or, at the very least, the
clear articulation of that dispensing—still so easily returns attention to
26 Rereading Constructivism
questions of truthfulness, however, it is important to take care with this
point. Emphasizing the importance or consequences of history writing is
not the reason why objectivity should be abandoned and “fictionality”
endorsed, even if this is how the matter is sometimes (mis)represented.
Objectivity as it has traditionally been understood within history is simply
not an option even to begin with. The added content brought by narra-
tives and narrativization (“the content of the form”), the evaluation, atti-
tudes and demarcations that are part of narrative emplotments, cannot be
random or unreflected if representation is to serve any deliberate purpose.
(Or, indeed, if it is not intended to reassert existing value structures and
power relationships.)9 Otherwise—even though history writing inevitably
has some consequences in the present and thus also impacts the future—the
author has not consciously assumed responsibility for the representation.
To question presentism only because it would somehow lead to the “use”
of history for ideological purposes is, from this perspective, thus equally
based on misunderstanding. For historians to hide behind the illusion of
objectivity and refuse to see the consequences of their (epistemic beliefs
and) actions in a broader context, beyond the boundaries of “research”
and ­institutionalized history, is even more suspect. Whether historians wish
it or not, their stories about the past hold significance for people in the
present and that responsibility should be kept in mind at the writing stage.
Presentism is thus not seen as an alternative to objective history writing but
rather a corrective, and understanding the inevitability of consequences and
responsibility is a crucial step in the formulation of a constructivist theory
of history. This understanding need not lead to the kind of nihilism and aim-
less relativism opponents of constructivism fear, however. As White writes:
“I conceive relativism to be the basis of social tolerance, not a license to ‘do
as you please’ . . . the socially responsible interpreter can do two things:
(1) expose the fictitious nature of any political program based on an appeal
to what ‘history’ supposedly teaches and (2) remain adamantly ‘utopian’ in
any criticism of political ‘realism’” (White 1987, 227).
The phenomenological yearning that feeds into historical thinking is
quite significant here too. As already noted, it reinforces the need to see
historical study as providing real, true or objective stories. At the same time,
it creates an attitude by which the past is in a somehow meaningful rela-
tion to the present; we may, for example, identify with historical details
more intensely as a result of drawing parallels to our present. The choice
for historians is not, however, one between a belief in objective representa-
tion and a complete disavowal of the past (involving quite extreme posi-
tions of epistemological relativism, antireferentialism or even antirealism).
And it seems this point cannot be overstated. Neither does the fact that the
past has taken place and is in that sense real lead to it ever being experien-
tially attainable (it is not epistemologically available either, after all). When
historians engage with their materials and the past “speaks” to them, the
phenomenological yearning they feel easily causes them to overlook this,
 Rereading Constructivism 27
however. A good example of this kind of emotional attachment and conse-
quent obfuscation can be found in the recent debates concerning the pres-
ence of the past (see, for example, Runia 2006; Gumbrecht 2004 and 2014;
cf. Pihlainen 2014a).10 Here, it is hoped that historians might somehow
encounter that past “directly.”11 Furthermore, the idea of this encounter
appears to be more strongly formulated than in the metaphors offered by
traditional hermeneutics, as well as additionally haunted by a naive view of
the past as somehow unproblematically meaningful, irrespective of interpre-
tation and narrativization.
As long as the past is assumed to offer historians ideas and understand-
ings that are somehow independent of them, as, for example, in the form
of a “horizon” of the past or related metaphors suggesting possibilities for
a merging of temporally distinct horizons, the underlying assumption is the
existence of some kind of “truth” of the past that can first be understood
and then presented as a story. Because constructivism rejects such ultimately
essentialist thinking, there is little sense in attempting to reintroduce these
kinds of more complex (and inherently problematic) metaphors to that
discussion. Moreover, if constructivist premises are accepted, there is no
justification for thinking of the traces or factual knowledge of the past as
“speaking” to the researcher in a way that might yield historical under-
standing. The experiences and insights gained in the formation of stories are
all products of the imagination in equal measure and romanticizing the use
of that imagination in this way does not alter the epistemological base onto
which this new debate hopes to be transplanted. (For a concise formulation
of this argument, see Pihlainen 2014b.)
A viable defence of ideas involving directly or immediately experiencing
the past would entail a very large-scale shift in our theoretical thinking—a
shift that proponents of these views have so far failed to provide tools for.
(For more on this, see, for example, Runia 2010; Jenkins 2010; and Icke
2012.) Yet, even though some of the theories relating to memory and pres-
ence are inherently and internally contradictory and out of place from the
point of view of a theory or philosophy of history, they do seem to gain
popularity among historians from time to time. I have already tried to sug-
gest how this kind of thinking wells up from a particular kind of desire
for reality felt by historians, but it is still worth stressing at this point that,
however strong that desire becomes, no “historical phenomenology” that
might satisfy it can be entertained within the framework of a constructivist
theory of history.12

The Experiential Presence of the Past

The desire to construct an experiential relation to the past has found more
room in White’s later work, as has the idea of using the past. Intensifying
experientiality through means of the representational form is a central
theme already in Figural Realism (1999), perhaps indicating optimism on
28 Rereading Constructivism
White’s part regarding the broader acceptance of constructivism’s epistemo-
logical arguments.13 In these later deliberations too, attention seems to focus
primarily on the presence of history in people’s daily lives, on how inter-
pretations about the past also thrive outside the bounds of institutionalized
historical study.14 In this, White seems for his part to have left the discussion
concerning the accuracy and authority of interpretations behind. Yet the
issue is never about the past “speaking” to us in some mystical “direct,”
“true” or “pure” fashion, but about the role that historical thinking has and
could have in the lives of people today. Neither is it about any experience
of or contact with the past. Accordingly, White’s interest is in the use and
popular interpretations of history. In part at least, then, he attempts to rede-
fine the role and significance of historical study now, after the challenges
brought by the linguistic turn and constructivist theory.
Any answer to these challenges naturally moves in both of the spheres
that remain even after the end of the epistemological debate: the aesthetic
and the ethical-political. In these, White continues to focus on the form of
presentations, particularly on such forms as might bring together historical
thinking and experientiality. He names such forms “parahistorical” (White
1999, 68–69), indicating that quarrelling about their truthfulness is in no
way relevant; their purpose is to affect people’s thinking, not shed light
on the past.15 Thus, although such a parahistorical work may make use of
historical materials, its primary purpose is to facilitate the re-evaluation of
existing and codified ways of thinking and believing. It aims at general con-
ceptions, not at the results of academic research.
White’s more recent attention on “the practical past” (a concept he
adopts from Michael Oakeshott) is similarly aimed at providing alternatives
to institutional history, to, that is, the professional writing of history. Yet his
interest appears to be in defending thinking about the past in spite of the
crisis faced by “official” historical study (the same crisis that he has been so
instrumental in bringing about). Where historical films, for instance, may be
seen to disseminate “history” on a popular level, the presence of the practi-
cal past also more directly affects the ways in which people think and act in
their everyday lives. The past does not communicate with us, yet its traces
direct actions both materially as well as on a cultural and ideological level.16
Of course, institutional history can also be used to examine these influences,
but it always offers only one (quite limited) approach, functioning primarily
as a means of verifying facts and rarely even attempting to shed light on the
practical, present-day consequences and significance of such broader forms
of (para)historical thought. In other words, the institutional study of history
largely disregards the practical past because contemporary conditions, as
well as any actions regarding them, are seen as being beyond its mandate or,
indeed, interest.17
Taken to an extreme level of generality, the idea of the presence of “his-
tory” does not seem to lead anywhere. Indeed, the attention of theory would
do well to return to this narrower definition of history as institutional history
 Rereading Constructivism 29
writing—at least as long as we are dealing with some kind of constructivist
theory of history and its possibilities. Indeed, most talk of the presence of
the past can be seen as leading thinking astray. And the only conceivable
way of talking about experientiality in relating to the past—or about the
past’s potential to intervene in understanding the present—seems, within
a constructivist framework, to be to focus on the interruptions in textual
(or, more broadly speaking, representational) coherence and a narrative’s
diegesis caused by the interplay and tension between form and the facts that
history’s genre commitment entails.
In this sense, the past (in the form of factual statements) can function as
a corrective to narrative, or, more precisely, as a partial remedy to the over-
determining, glossing and colonizing impact of narrativization, as a kind
of defamiliarizing content or subject in its own right. (One of my favourite
examples of such a use of material continues to be Natalie Zemon Davis’
Fiction in the Archives [1988].) Because an increase in fragmentarity in itself
already allows for the disruption of narration and its control of meaning,
simply pointing out the ambiguity of historical facts and the breadth of
possible interpretations could provide excellent possibilities for the type
of rethinking that constructivism aims at with respect to representational
form. This kind of form—in which the author’s role as the creator of signifi-
cance is diminished and more responsibility is shifted to the reader—would
also permit the realization of a reality-like experientiality (a kind of evoca-
tion or deployment of the dynamics of “lived experience”) much better than
traditional literary forms. (For more on alternative representational forms,
see, for example, Munslow 2007.) Even though such experimental forms
have appeared in literature and film, for instance, they largely remain for-
eign to history and historians—even if their audiences might well be ready
for them now.
Overall, then, the debate concerning constructivism remains somewhat
limited, often concentrating unduly on the search for alternative forms of
representation in literature and film. As a result, the disruptive potential
of historical sources (in their aspect of being rather uncontrollable tex-
tual elements) for questioning the oppressive effects of narrativization, for
example, still remains largely unexplored. More importantly, focusing on
the creation of experientiality and emotional impact, as well as on the ways
in which artistic representations might help in bringing these about, has
led (in addition to the squabble over the fact–fiction issue) those historians
who are sensitive to these kinds of theoretical questions in the first place to
overemphasize the entertainment function of history instead of the social
and oppositional aims of constructivism. This is based, to some extent at
least, on a confusion between experience (actual and lived) and the kind of
heightened experientiality and emotional impact provided by conventional
and closely controlling aesthetic forms.
A central aim of the constructivist focus on artistic forms of representa-
tion has been to bring to history writing forms of representation that might
30 Rereading Constructivism
affect readers experientially, in this latter sense of producing an emotional
impact (cf. White 1978b, 43–45). The goal has been to return to historical
narratives the significance stripped from them by constructivism’s ques-
tioning of epistemology and of the authority assumed to come with it. By
creating an aesthetic experience for readers, that is, affecting readers with a
representation’s force or, for example, poignancy, (another kind of) mean-
ing is achieved. The greater the experiential impact of a story, the more
likely it is to create changes in its readers’ worldviews. Thus, the authority
history loses following the collapse of its epistemological or institutional
self-evidence might be returned through emphasizing its artistic and cre-
ative aspects, and the significance of history as a genre might thus be justi-
fied. Of course, such a strategy can easily lead historians back to defending
the factuality of history and only serve to feed the now dead in the water
fact–fiction debate. As it indeed so often has. Yet what should be recog-
nized is that the fact–fiction question only haunts these debates so readily
and persistently because so many historians continue to take truthfulness
and effectiveness as somehow mutually exclusive; and this simply because
they fail to sufficiently distinguish between the form and factual contents
of narratives.
Although the distinction between lived experience and a heightened expe-
rientiality or impact is subtle, it should not be overlooked: Emphasizing the
simulation of lived experience over the more conventional aesthetic creation
of emotional impact could lead historians toward presentational forms that
seek to emulate the fragmentariness of reality; here experience is born of
interaction with reality, and the work an agent performs in constructing
meanings is a defining feature of it. Where a text that is experiential in terms
of its capacity to create emotional impact can offer the reader enlightenment
within a framework of meanings determined by the text, a text that aims at
lived experience permits the forming of a particular reader’s own insights
and understanding.18 A text aimed at experientiality through aesthetic
impact largely determines, then, the meaning that a reader will find in it,
whereas a text that emphasizes the creation of lived experience would leave
a great deal more room for the reader’s own meaning-making processes.
Although the terms I use here differ somewhat from White’s, it should be
obvious that texts aiming at creating (or at least emulating) such lived expe-
rience would better support his desire for history writing that would encour-
age alternative and oppositional views than would texts whose significatory
systems are quite determined or even “closed.” The more responsibility for
meanings is shifted from the author to the reader, the more feasible this kind
of change in the social significance and role of history becomes. It can be
argued that this kind of form would also best create the feeling (illusion) of
the presence of the past. In part for the very simple reason that when readers
encounter such texts they are forced to engage in a process resembling the
one by which they also construct their relations to reality, in part because
the “raw data” that readers encounter is the best substitute for the past that
 Rereading Constructivism 31
a text can ever offer. This, to me, establishes the theoretical limits of the
debate concerning presence—unless currently existing philosophical presup-
positions about reality, meaning and representation are first replaced with
radically different ones.
White and narrative constructivism have sometimes been criticized
because the theory offers only formal but no substantive guidance as to
what should be done, in spite of the importance of social responsibility being
so forcefully foregrounded. It is, in other words, experienced as being too
speculative and abstract, and not sufficiently prescriptive. This same criti-
cism is often also directed, of course, at poststructuralist philosophies more
broadly, and that observation might be explanation enough for the narra-
tive constructivist stand. The values advanced by poststructuralist thinking
focus on the undesirability of speaking for others as well as the exhortation
to constantly question.19 Hence, any conceivable assumption of responsibil-
ity is always based on continuous choice; and prescriptive theorizing makes
no sense. Understandably, then, White—like the other thinkers who have
accepted the kind of scepticism underlying the linguistic turn—wants to
avoid setting hard and fast rules that might prevent people from actively
assuming responsibility for their actions.
White is, however, resolute about the kinds of practical goals he sets
for a politics of historical interpretation: any enlightened historical repre-
sentation aims at questioning oppressive power structures, ideologies and
philosophies, and at emancipation and general well-being. Moreover, White
has—in a number of talks—called attention to the reduction of hunger,
poverty and inequality. Indeed, his own political convictions clearly reveal
affinities with existentialism, poststructuralism and Marxism, even though
he most often refuses to employ such labels in his texts.20 Within this kind
of ideological frame, attention to the consequences of one’s actions and the
ideal of continuously choosing are quite appropriate. Which makes it all the
more surprising that so little attention has been given to the ethical-political
content of White’s thought or of constructivist theorizing more generally.
It seems to me that the main reason for this neglect lies in a lack of under-
standing: because constructivism does not offer prescriptive rules, its under-
lying ideology is not taken to involve an ethical stand.21 Even though the
reverse would be closer to the truth.

The Scope for Historical Thinking

It must be admitted that, despite great potential and decades of debate,
constructivist theory has done little to transform mainstream historical
research. Yet, to the extent that this results from misguided interpretations
regarding its epistemological position, things should be easy enough to fix.
The case could just be explained once more in depth: The existence of the
past is not in question. Neither is the issue of whether we can have knowl-
edge about that past at the level of factual statements, and so on. The only
32 Rereading Constructivism
serious point of contention seems to involve the idea that stories cannot
be “found” in the past because the past does not consist of stories but of
numerous unarticulated interlinkings and coincidences. Thus, stories and
the evaluation they perform are always impositions, a narrative surplus of
history writing that is always inevitably also ideological. And, since this
is so, the responsibility of history writing cannot (beyond the verifica-
tion of singular facts) be in any way to a past, only to the present and the
future. More importantly, and because the writing of these stories is an
area of historical work that is not institutionally regulated, this respon-
sibility is also the aspect that theoretical attention needs to primarily be
directed on. The function of historians’ commitments and history’s pre-
vailing generic agreements is to ensure the reliability of historical research.
The responsibility for interpretations is broader and thus also rests with a
broader community or, from the quite existentialist viewpoint of narrative
constructivism, with each and every one of us. Thus, historical thinking
extends from referring to historical research to include all talk about the
past, while the focus of all that talk shifts from truthfulness to the conse-
quences of interpretations.
The greatest threat in all this involves, of course, a decline in the power
that the institution of history wields. Even then, it seems that historians’
widespread resistance to constructivist theory is not based only on this fear:
after all, the threat of loss of power could be countered by their simply
insisting on the authority of empirical research; and then (at least a large
portion of) competing stories would not need to be tolerated in this arena
and popular or vernacular history or historical conceptions would still have
no impact on this kind of history. Historians’ disregard of constructivist
theory is also in part consequence of its refusal to offer a clear alternative:
historians are expected to trade an institutionally legitimated methodology
that maintains their myth of objective research for the admittedly vague
idea of assuming social responsibility. What is more, this methodology-free
demand for taking responsibility and making a difference is so far from
traditional views about what history is and what it should be that it is most
often simplistically interpreted as a demand for doing away with history, for
the end of (doing) history altogether. No wonder that the question of how
constructivism might permit historical thinking at all is such a difficult one
for so many historians.
I have already noted that constructivist theory has trouble justifying the
contemporary practice of history and, further, that even White—whose goal
for so long has seemed to be that of rescuing history as a social practice in
its own right—finds it difficult to assign the institution of historical study
any significant role in its preservation. A worthwhile question to ask might
be: Is the role of fact-finder and producer of justified (but not authorized)
interpretations sufficient for institutionalized historical study? And another:
Can more general forms for dealing with the past be accepted as the kind
of historical thinking that institutional history could also make use of? At
 Rereading Constructivism 33
least within history education, popular interpretations do not seem to be a
problem, and in that sense, White’s idea of parahistorical representations as
well as his focus on the practical past appear to suit the current situation
and its demands. From the point of view of fostering an interest in his-
tory (albeit that what is at stake in many cases is, rather, an interest in the
past itself, not history as such), encouraging popular discussion about it is
imperative. The significance of the past seems, at this level, however, to be
primarily in the kinds of understandings it can create in the present as well
as—particularly in the case of popular interpretations—in the undeniable
entertainment value to be derived.
Seen from within the prevailing institutional understanding and defini-
tion of the genre of history, neither such more engaged understandings nor
the goal of entertainment appear as legitimate purposes or motivations,
however, and both fail in justifying history as a reasonable pursuit. At the
same time, it is difficult to imagine historians contenting themselves sim-
ply with the production of factual knowledge in a situation where history
as story (especially in popular forms) continues to be avidly consumed. In
this situation also written, “conventional” or “academic” history is called
on to provide readers with interesting stories. In fact, this aptly describes
the direction taken by historical research after the linguistic turn: where
constructivist attitudes have become accepted within theory, many initially
oppositional ideologies and approaches have achieved similar recognition
within history proper. Feminist history, cultural history and microhistory,
for example, all have clearly oppositional origins, whether through their
political objectives, their choice of subject matter or their particular way of
dealing with that subject matter. Yet all have found a place in the “official”
history canon following their popularity, and choice of subject matter or
perspective alone can hardly be said to provide means for any substantial
questioning of dominant ideologies today.
With the acceptance and co-option of such approaches as part of aca-
demic and institutionally legitimate historical studies, history’s traditional
genre definition has been maintained. (Needless to say that if viewed in
terms of acceptance of their original theoretical underpinnings, these
approaches would constitute a very marginal part of institutionally legiti-
mate history indeed.) Yet, with this same co-option, history is also pre-
sented as having become a little more “engaged” and “entertaining,” and
this new, now fashionably not-entirely-objective form is taken as represen-
tative of the “interpretive” and “narrative” history writing described and
advocated by constructivist theory. By muddying the theoretical waters in
this way, research that is more transparent about its positioning can thus
be classed as “ideological” and susceptible to postmodern, scepticist or
relativist thinking, whereas “serious” and “scientific” history then appears
to have been somehow distinguished from its entertaining counterpart and
can still—through this same obfuscation—be presented as immune to con-
structivist critiques.
34 Rereading Constructivism
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2013.
“Rereading narrative constructivism.” Rethinking History 17 (4): 509–527.
Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group (www.tandfonline.com)

Notes
1. For an example of White’s detailed “tropology,” see Metahistory (1973) and
White (1978b); on Frank Ankersmit’s idea of “narrative substances,” see his
Narrative Logic (1983) and Ankersmit (1990, 279–280).
2. In what has perhaps been his most controversial essay, “The Historical Text as
Literary Artefact” (1978), White presented the idea of history writing as a trans-
lation of “‘fact’ into ‘fiction’”; here “fiction” was placed in scare quotes, and in
another version of the essay published in the same year, it was presented as “fic-
tions” (see White 1978a, 53; 1978b, 92). Despite this care with formulations,
many historians appear to think that White takes history texts to be fictions
that are “not subject to truth controls” (Iggers 2000, 383); in the exchange with
Iggers, White once again systematically answered and refuted such accusations
(White 2000, 398).
  Interestingly, in The Practical Past, he has chosen to present this original pro-
vocative formulation as a “mistake,” saying he should have made the point
differently in order for it to be better received: “I now recognize that I made
a mistake by once suggesting that the problem consisted of the relationship
between two substances, ‘fact’ on the one hand, ‘fiction’ on the other. I might
well have said that the problem had to do with a discourse (history) that wished
to be faithful to its referent but which had inherited conventions of representa-
tion that produced meaning in excess of what it literally asserted of a kind that
were identifiably literary if not fictionalizing in their effects” (White 2014b, 20).
3. It should be noted that more recent constructivist theory hardly ever problema-
tizes the research carried out by historians. See, for example, White (1999, 7–8;
2014a, passim) and Jenkins (1999b, 94), both of whom distinguish and set aside
from discussion the “research phase” in order to better focus on the process of
narrativization.
4. For a thorough account of the context and reception of White’s early work,
including Metahistory, see Herman Paul’s Hayden White: The Historical Imagi-
nation (2011); specifically on the idea of tropological “models,” see Paul (2011,
82–91).
5. White often emphasizes that history (in order for it to be history) cannot be
written freely; instead, historians need to consider the demands and limits set by
the materials as well as by the institution (see, for example, White 1978b, 97).
This is part of what I take to be White’s defence of history, despite all critique
to the contrary by historians. Compare this with Jenkins, who suggests that we
simply decide to live “amidst the ample and agreeable imaginaries provided by
postmodern-type theorists . . . theorists who can generate enough by way of
emancipatory rhetorics such that we no longer need any kind of foundational—
or non-foundational—past” (Jenkins 1999a, 10). Hence the difference between
White’s and Jenkins’ positions is not in the theoretical stand they adopt per se
but is rather based on their having quite different aims: until his shift to focus
 Rereading Constructivism 35
on the practical past, White has largely aimed at refiguring and thus possibly
rescuing history as a form of discourse, whereas Jenkins has long hoped that
it might be forgotten altogether. For a comment on Jenkins’ position on “new
imaginaries” by White, see White’s foreword to Jenkins (2009).
6. Hence, it makes good sense to say, with White, that the best way to refute an
unwelcome interpretation is to offer a better one: “The best counter to a nar-
rative that is supposed to have misused historical memory is a better narrative,
by which I mean a narrative, not with more historical facts, but a narrative
with greater artistic integrity and poetic force of meaning” (White 2005b, 336).
As long as we are speaking of history, however, as opposed to representations
belonging to what he now terms the practical past, White has from the begin-
ning tempered this aesthetic interest with a pragmatism regarding the purpose
of historical representations. This is what he wrote already in the 1960s in “The
Burden of History”: “We should ask only that the historian show some tact in
the use of his governing metaphors; that he neither overburden them with data
nor fail to use them to their limit; that he respect the logic implicit in the mode
of discourse he has decided upon; and that, when his metaphor begins to show
itself unable to accommodate certain kinds of data, he abandon that metaphor
and seek another, richer, and more inclusive metaphor than that with which he
began” (White 1978b, 47).
7. For more on the argument for consequentialism, see May (1995, passim, espe-
cially 71). Where poststructuralism liberates people from traditional ideologies,
it also on this view binds them to personal responsibility regarding the conse-
quences of their choices in an existentialist fashion.
8. A typical example of this kind of (careless) interpretation of postmodernism can
be found in, for example, Zagorin (1999, especially 7). For a thorough response
and clarification of the misunderstandings involved, see Jenkins (2000).
9. To rehearse White’s core claim concerning the perpetuation of dominant values
and structures: “Nothing is better suited to lead to a repetition of the past than
a study of it that is either reverential or convincingly objective in the way that
conventional historical studies tend to be” (White 1987, 82).
10. It is instructive to compare this more recent discussion about presence with the
debate concerning memory in the 1980s and 1990s. See Klein (2000) for an
excellent overview of that debate.
11. Ankersmit spoke of this already in 1997. As he then explained: “I’ve lately
become interested in the notion of experience but that’s a different problem
from the problem of historical writing. It has to do with the problem of whether
a direct access to the past is possible. And I have committed the folly—and I
persist in committing this folly—of saying that such a direct access to the past is
under certain circumstances indeed possible. But everybody says that I’m com-
pletely mad to argue for this. . . . My interest began with Huizinga who has the
notion of ‘historische sensatie’—historical sensation—which he describes as a
direct and immediate contact with the historical past” (Pihlainen 1997, 368).
In Sublime Historical Experience (2005), Ankersmit engages with this contro-
versial idea in much greater detail. See also Domanska (2009), Icke (2012) and
Pihlainen (2015b).
12. The usefulness of speaking about phenomenology in historical research might
be questioned, however. As noted above, the past is not and cannot be present
in any real way. Hence, our relationship to it cannot be based on its being a
36 Rereading Constructivism
perceivable phenomenon, and “historical phenomenology” needs to be some-
thing quite different. An “encounter” with the past through its traces does not
strictly speaking constitute contact with the past, then, but only with the pres-
ent. Any historical phenomenology thus always only means an imagining of
the past, not a picture formed on the basis of any real interaction. The nature
of imagining in this case is thus quite different from our encounters with the
present where meanings are constructed in relation to pragmatic needs and with
recourse to interaction and experimentation. Speaking of phenomenology in
history is thus only an extension of our everyday approach: that specific “phe-
nomenology” has taught us something fundamental about the way the world is,
and we use this understanding in describing events in the past. So how does this
really differ from constructivism as presented by White, for instance?
13. At the start of Figural Realism, White rehearses the constructivist challenges
facing history one-by-one, including historians’ most common responses as well
as his own reasons for why these miss their target (White 1999, 1–26).
14. This kind of more general “historical” thinking appears to have priority in
White’s recent writings—particularly in the essays in The Practical Past (White
2014b). This is perhaps so because these other discourses now appear to hold
more potential for promoting social change than does contemporary academic
history. Yet, despite his long-time focus on social consequences, White’s move to
opposing the historical (institutionally established) past to the practical past has
been a gradual one. For some recent examinations of this separation between
the historical and the practical past, see Lorenz (2014), Tozzi (2014), Ahlskog
(2016), La Greca (2016) and Pihlainen (2016).
15. White uses Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK as an example of parahistorical repre-
sentation. By choosing the example of JFK and initially focusing on its factual
aspects, he unfortunately also opens the door to the fact–fiction debate again,
however (White 1999, 68–69). If he had instead chosen a work that agreed
more clearly with known facts, this issue would not have come up as forcefully,
and the example might have been seen as offering an alternative interpretation
while better staying “true” to the facts. For a more detailed discussion of this
issue, see Chapter 5.
16. In Historics (2006), Martin Davies comes to very similar conclusions about
the overall pervasiveness of historical thinking and the inevitable historicity of
actions. In contrast to Davies’ position, White’s turn to the practical past is at
the same time a disavowal of the social significance of professional history. For a
most insightful comparison of White’s and Oakeshott’s investments in the idea,
see Ahlskog (2016).
17. On the other hand, it seems to me that White’s attachment to the example of
modernist literature at times prevents him from fully recognizing the inherent
strengths that history possesses with regard to representational form precisely as
a result of its referential commitment. For an elaboration of this argument, see
Pihlainen (2002b), as well as the chapters that follow in the present volume.
18. This may be read as echoing Roland Barthes’ well-known idea of “readerly” and
“writerly” texts. See, for example, Barthes (1975). My argument is not, how-
ever, the same as Barthes’ in that both of the (admittedly caricatured) textual
dynamics I describe here mark texts that he would characterize as “writerly.”
The difference between the kinds of texts I describe (both of them fundamen-
tally “writerly”) is more interestingly viewed as one between a modernist and a
postmodern aesthetics.
 Rereading Constructivism 37
19. On the refusal of representation in Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard,
see May (1995); on Jacques Derrida and the aporetic moment of “undecidabil-
ity” required for a choice to be properly ethical, see Derrida (1988) and Jenkins
(especially 1999b and 2003).
20. On White’s existentialism, see Paul (2006; 2011). White seldom classifies his
theory in any way; he has, however, explained his motives regarding postmod-
ernism thus: “the anti-postmodernist handwringers are wrong when they say
that the postmodernists are ‘against’ history, objectivity, rules, methods, and
so on. What we postmodernists are against is a professional historiography, in
service to state apparatuses that have turned against their own citizens, with
its epistemically pinched, ideologically sterile, and superannuated notions of
objectivity” (White 2005a, 152). As I see it, this position seems to encompass
the political aims of both existentialism and poststructuralism quite well. White
has been more outspoken about his existentialism as well as his political posi-
tion and commitments in Rogne (2009).
21. In an analysis of White’s early writings, Herman Paul emphasizes the way in
which White’s epistemological relativism/irony is aimed at responsibility and
ethical commitment. (Paul 2006, especially 43) This again relates to White’s
existentialism; in addition to Rogne (2009) and Paul (2011), see, for example,
Spiegel (2013) and Doran (2013a) on that. For a discussion of some of the
affinities between White and Sartre specifically, see also Pihlainen (2005).
3 An End to Oppositional
History?

The idea of an “end” to oppositional history could be taken to suggest that

we no longer have a dominant, over-riding institutionalized way of think-
ing among historians and hence need no antihegemonic, “oppositional” or
“alternative” history writing. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case, as
evidenced by the continuing (though never mainstream-history) interest in
“experimental,” “unconventional” and “alternative” histories, as well as
by the persistent, quite factional, oppositional political motivations behind
many of the attempts at recreating or, rather, reinventing the forms of his-
tory writing. The terminology of “oppositional history” itself could also
be misinterpreted; it is, after all, a curious term, especially for those in
the Anglo-American tradition. Although the motif of opposition has sel-
dom been employed within recent theory of history, I introduce it here to
cut through the difficulties that more form-centred ways of labelling hege-
monically or institutionally disruptive histories have created: Speaking of
“unconventional” histories, for example, invokes a dominant way of doing
history that defines itself in terms of established, even unquestionable,
practices—and then “unconventionality” is often merely something inno-
vative or surprising in presentation. What is more, the “oppositional” is
not as easily interpreted as intending something that is simply unexpected
in terms of subject matter. Thus, while the more familiar terms could also
be used in deconstructing existing hierarchies, “opposition” better intro-
duces the issue of ethical-political motivation and ensures that the discus-
sion does not remain focused only on forms of presentation or choices of
innovative subject matter—both easily subsumed by the institution into
its “methodology” for history. Reunited with this idea of opposition and
oppositional politics, it is my hope that the once-radical theories and prac-
tices present in contemporary debates will thus also be reminded of their
original motivations.
My attempt to explain the loss of oppositional purpose in historical prac-
tice in relation to only a few movements within the field will inescapably
lead to a simplified (and impressionistic) account. That, however, is some-
thing that I choose to do here for reasons of scope and economy. Because,
that is, I want to sketch the outlines of a broader development that concerns
 An End to Oppositional History? 39
me more than its details: namely the threat posed to the oppositional (to,
that is, “leftist” as well as more disciplinarily driven varieties of opposition)
by both recent theorizing about history and “new,” now-institutionalized
practices. I will, however, refrain from discussing threats from empiricist,
“proper” history, since these have been so widely discussed—which is some-
thing that, as will be seen, in fact forms part of the problem.
Although contemporary practices of history have become more “radical”
in the sense of having taken on previously ignored subject matter as well
as challenging inherited forms, it seems fair to say that they are in no way
oppositional in the present-day context. Admittedly, some acceptance of
the forms and openness of earlier anti-establishment history is present. Yet
there also appears to be a clear absence of political purpose. (Think of the
innocuousness of most titles involving “cultural history,” for instance; an
arena where experimentation with form has been most evident. Or, indeed,
of the way the majority of more traditional histories still attempt to distance
themselves from the present, to ignore or cover up their inevitable presentist
concerns.) So, instead of simply cheering on our current practices for super-
ficially continuing to question history as an oppressive institution, it may be
useful to look at this situation more closely.

What Could “Oppositional History” Mean Today?

Constructivism or narrative constructivism has, as I hope to have made clear
in the preceding chapters, provided the main contemporary impetus for
exploring issues of epistemological scepticism and of representational forms
in history writing. It has been instrumental in propagating a view of history
as a particular case of fictionalizing, as well as in familiarizing historians
with the argument that form and “narrative” always bring ideological com-
mitments that are too often uncritically accepted. These views have paved
the way for the general idea that history writing cannot become free of its
ideological complicity with hegemonic history except by adopting alterna-
tive, unconventional or experimental, forms of representation from literary
modernism and, more recently, from innovations in contemporary media.
For Hayden White, quite categorically it would seem, “the kinds of antinar-
rative nonstories produced by literary modernism offer the only prospect
for adequate representations of the kind of ‘unnatural’ events . . . that mark
our era and distinguish it absolutely from all of the history that has come
before it” (White 1999, 81). Hence, even though we might question the
idea of an absolute distinction between historical eras, the means by which
these “antinarrative nonstories” might facilitate acceptably ethical-political
representations need to be investigated.
A central theoretical goal of any such “adequate” representations can
be assumed to be the avoidance of closure and all its concomitant dangers.
The oppressive nature of closure has been foregrounded in White’s earlier
work and, on occasion, this recognition has appeared to provide narrative
40 An End to Oppositional History?
constructivist theorizing with enough theoretical awareness in and by itself;
it might arguably often be sufficient that readers and historians just give up
on the idea that history had to be a story, that it needed to hold the kind of
basic “narrative” interest and meaning for us that formal closure effects.
(Taken to the extreme and not allowing for changes in current practices, we
might then, in fact, be obliged to give up on the discipline of history com-
pletely, simply through this recognition of the dangers of closure.)
As White has famously emphasized with reference to the annals and
chronicles, the historicized past is a product of our historical sensibilities, of
our conception of what history is for. He further suggests that the need or
desire to narrativize events is proportional to the need to justify a particular
ideological position—to provide authority for a particular view of reality.
Through this process—a (verbal) sleight-of-hand one might say—the histo-
rian invokes “the authority of reality itself” in order to present a particular
interpretation as “true,” or at least, as “more true” than others. (Cf. White
1987, 19–20.) As White writes:

The demand for closure in the historical story is a demand, I suggest,

for moral meaning, a demand that sequences of real events be assessed
as to their significance as elements of a moral drama. Has any historical
narrative ever been written that was not informed not only by moral
awareness but specifically by the moral authority of the narrator?
(White 1987, 21)

In this way, speaking about the past always also appropriates and pres-
ents it (in the sense of making it present or “presentifying” it). If historians
were, however, to give up on the idea that their work has an explanatory
intention—if they renounced the claim to reality that specifically historical
narration makes—a simple avoidance of closure might provide sufficient
theoretical sensitivity.1 Historians would carefully collect, conserve and
catalogue in a properly scientific and detached spirit and—perhaps, as a
consequence—the traces or texts of the past would retain a greater aspect or
reflection of the subjectivities with which they originated. At the very least,
readers would be able to make judgements about them with less interference.
In other words, no representation or naming would reduce them to being
objects for our subjectivities as either historians or readers, and representa-
tions might preserve (and materially convey) part of the temporal distinct-
ness involved in terms of experience rather than as detached knowledge.
Such a focus on experientiality through form would, then, parallel many
views about poetry, for example, and the idea of how it can provide the
reader with a sense of facing (some kind of) otherness or alterity. A general
claim that can indeed be made is that the goal of “postist” representation
is not so much to communicate ideas as it is to evoke emotional responses
in the reader or viewer; these representations would not be involved with
information as much as with experientiality and emotional effect. And the
 An End to Oppositional History? 41
result of such an approach would no longer, of course, be “history” in the
sense in which we currently employ the term.
If representations are also expected to hold interest for readers, how-
ever, the challenge would be to come up with effective alternative ways
of representing—with, that is, forms that contain a minimum of inherited
assumptions and yet would be so novel that the ideological content they
still inevitably impose on “material” cannot and will not pass unnoticed or
go unchallenged. The rationale for employing “antinarrative nonstories” in
historical representation would, from this perspective, thus largely be based
on their capacity to produce alienation, to disrupt any narratively solicited
suspension of disbelief and of the critical faculties: these “nonstories” would
provide ways of communicating that cannot—in their unfamiliarity or
indigestibility—be automatically or unreflectively consumed and subordi-
nated to our accustomed interpretations of the world. To state this in terms
more metaphoric: these new types of (anti)narrative could place us beside
ourselves, and, ideally, through them, we could come to see our habitual
ways of thinking more critically, as if from the “outside,” and would be
forced to at least re-evaluate and confront them. And if we were to dogmati-
cally refuse this demand for re-evaluation, we would be left beside ourselves
emotionally, upset by the claims that such presentations place on us and our
normative beliefs. Such an appeal to individual conscience and choice also
already partially addresses the common objection of moral relativism: if his-
tory can lead to critical self-reflection regarding particular issues and even,
in part, guide evaluations, it appears to be on the right track.
Against this ideal, the contemporary historical field is still often described
as clearly divided: although some historians have admitted scepticism at
least with respect to epistemology, many remain staunchly objectivist—those
that the more radical, textually oriented historians and theorists sometimes
refer to as “empiricist” or “conventional.” A number of history workers
do, however, appear attentive to theory—and the more radical dimension of
this awareness is demonstrated by the existence (and in some quarters, even
the popularity) of so-called unconventional or experimental histories.2 So,
whatever the level of understanding and acceptance of post-linguistic-turn
theoretical insights may be, it seems that the ideological weight of narrative
constructivism and an awareness of “the content of the form” have led to
a significant number of historians at least claiming to agree. Given such a
state of affairs, it might appear unnecessary to argue the case of “opposi-
tional history” at all. Yet this theoretical awareness is in many cases based
on quite popularizing readings, and there is a manifest lack of understand-
ing of specifics as well as of the underlying motives.
Despite their knowledge of recent theory, many historians still quite
naively persist in thinking, that—in the end—truth will somehow triumph
(and also ensure ethical and “good” histories). A supporting and equally
persistent conviction is that historians are involved in a practice that is in
some way emancipatory and that offers—perhaps as a result of its interest
42 An End to Oppositional History?
in contexts and community—some inherent corrective to relativism. Even
when they are not quite so empiricist or ideologically trusting, historians’
acceptance is often still mediated by some vague belief that the “historical
method” and “professional consensus” can weed out unwanted interpre-
tations, like those of the much-debated revisionist histories of the 1990s,
for example.3 And why should it not be, from a purely theoretical point
of view? As long, that is, as historians continue to identify themselves
as committed to writing in a particular context and genre and in a fairly
uniform way? When it is focused on the discipline, such belief does not
even need to be based on illusions of epistemological certainty; the ques-
tion of what kind of interpretations are desirable or undesirable does not
involve epistemology or even theories of representation per se, but is a
matter of purpose and consequences. Yet this is precisely the point that
is largely missed.
For all those historians who still subscribe to an idea of—in some
way—unproblematic representations of the past (whatever their epistemo-
logical beliefs), “oppositional history” might belong to the class of propa-
ganda or revisionism, or, at best, could be taken for some strange form of
counterfactual history or theorizing. It would be a pastime focused on pre-
senting alternative accounts of the past, which these historians would give
very little value to as (their kind of) history. This does not, unfortunately,
apply only to the objectivist, epistemologically non-sceptical camp, but to
all those who find institutional justification for a particular kind of history.
Even beyond this neglect of purpose and consequences, there lies a fur-
ther challenge to the oppositional, however: it is disregarded also by many
of the historians—or at least theorists—who are willing to accept that his-
tories have (and emplotments and impositions of form introduce) unwanted
ideological content. With their focus on epistemological scepticism, they
have largely been swept away in a celebration of the opportunities for politi-
cal and social responsibility that this (however well delimited and curtailed)
relativism affords and have forgotten that, whatever opportunities we
have, no difference can be made without pointing to concrete instances of
injustice and suffering or presenting attitudes and positions that we would
(and would see others) espouse and occupy in the world beyond theory
of history. They are, in other words, radical in terms of their theories and
­representational practices but not in terms of their political commitment.
The problem, then, is that for many of these—for lack of a better term—
“postmodern” historians, “oppositional history” has equally become a
misnomer, given their understanding of the current situation and practices
within the historical field. To what, after all, should we be opposed if there
is unlimited openness and opportunities for all to present their views in
ways that are already institutionally accepted?
Despite the “anything goes” attitude attributed to a popularized “post-
modernism,” the terminology of opposition and the concept of oppositional
history seem to be best approached in terms of the intellectual trends and
 An End to Oppositional History? 43
political ideologies that can be grouped together under the label “post-1968.”
(Certainly, the spirit of radical politics sometimes attached to contemporary
formal innovation and the avant garde largely belongs there.) Appealing to
the post-1968 may not be an immediately obvious strategy since many of
the movements involved have been described as overtly anti-historical (and
often also apolitical). Admittedly, neither postmodernism nor poststructur-
alism appear to lend themselves to historical study in the sense that it is con-
ceived of by most historians. In spite of critical interpretations, however, the
political positions they established and the ethical-political demands they
presented still have potential resonance for what we do and how we see our
purpose as historians today.
As seen with respect to narrative constructivism, debate within the dis-
cipline of history concerning the linguistic or textualist turn (and its rela-
tion to post-1968 thought) has largely centred on the apparent relativism it
introduces to historians’ theories and practices. Yet, in order to fully under-
stand the textualist position, it is important to first recognize that episte-
mological relativism is not the final target of most post-1968 philosophy.
To be sure, the post-1968 is antirepresentational (in Richard Rorty’s use of
the word in relation to the contingency of all knowledge), but scepticism
regarding reference and epistemology is only one issue among other (more)
important ones. To better understand the debate, and perhaps to better
move the discussion along, also the issue of différance and the irreducibility
and ultimate unattainability of (complete or totalizing) truth and meaning
need to be revisited. Arguably, poststructuralists4 (whom I deploy as the
chief representatives of the post-1968) would see historians who continue
to be preoccupied with the issue of an objective truth that is not only “out
there” but to be captured by traditional historical methods (or any other
methods for that matter) as confused. Similarly, the persistence with which
debate concerning “postmodernism” focuses on questions of truth and ref-
erence appears misguided. What should be at stake, instead, is the problem
of ideological and moral commitments. And this is a problem that can in no
way be solved with recourse to epistemology.
Thus understood, this issue of moral relativism defines the difference
between poststructuralism and “postmodernism.”5 But the potential con-
sequences of this (admittedly contested) distinction have been almost com-
pletely overlooked within theory of history. With this in mind, I will focus
on the role of oppositional politics in these ways of thinking and on the dis-
tinctions that turning attention to the ethical-political might permit making
between various kinds of history. In order to do so, it will be best to set aside
the question of epistemology for once (since, apparently, it cannot be done
for once and for all). “Bracketing” controversy concerning epistemology in
this way, the first thing that becomes evident is that most postmodernism is
not critical in any (other) way. Instead, postmodernism (as a political posi-
tion) can be (and has been) argued to lead to a universalization of differ-
ence and consequently to the loss of political effectiveness (see, for example,
44 An End to Oppositional History?
Haber 1994). In addition, it has often—through the aestheticization and
relativism that more extreme interpretations advocate—been associated
with even less inspiring phenomena, such as the tremendous emphasis on
consumer culture and a related growth of narcissism. Despite such prob-
lems, appropriations of “post-1968” theories have been carried out in his-
tory too, especially in various “supplementary” fields.6 Feminism’s reliance
on poststructuralism is perhaps the most obvious example, and I will come
to that in a moment.
To make all this clearer, it may be useful to revisit some principles of
poststructuralist thought, albeit in summary form. Where postmodernism
has often been invoked loosely and fast, there is less confusion about post-
structuralism, and some principles are relatively unambiguous and hope-
fully familiar—although not necessarily supportive of historical practice.
Firstly, the refusal to represent. In a famous conversation with Michel
Foucault, Gilles Deleuze emphasized Foucault’s role in formulating what
has become a core belief of poststructuralist theory. Deleuze admits: “We
ridiculed representation and said it was finished, but we failed to draw the
consequences of this ‘theoretical’ conversion—to appreciate the theoretical
fact that only those directly concerned can speak in a practical way on their
own behalf” (Deleuze 1977, 209). Foucault was, however, says Deleuze, the
one who first taught them “the indignity of speaking for others.” Although
such a refusing to speak for others would patently be too limiting a demand
on historians (if they choose to continue with history), it is central to for-
mulations of post-1968 theory and is sometimes even presented in terms of
an “ethic” of poststructuralism. (See, for example, May 1994, 97) At the
very least, this principle implies that if history is to have a social function—if
it is to be a legitimate pursuit in an ethical-political sense—historians and
theorists of history will need to look for means of subverting or curtailing
representation, at least in its aspect of coherence, closure, clarity and so
on. (See also White 1999, 99–100) (Again, rethinking history in this way
is necessary only as long as we attempt to hold on to history within a post-
structuralist framework—a framework which, to me, seems to be the only
one that we can acceptably have. Theoretically, it would be more coherent
to follow Keith Jenkins’ lead here and let go of history and the contradic-
tions that engaging with it in this way involve both in the epistemological
and in the ethical.)
Secondly, this refusal to represent has also been presented slightly less
radically as the refusal of “grand narratives” and the foregrounding of
petits récits. Quite understandably, Jean-François Lyotard’s celebrated call
for an “incredulity toward metanarratives” in The Postmodern Condition
(1979) has been more readily welcomed and adopted by historians than the
full-scale refusal to participate in representational practices. In fact, many
historians at least claim to subscribe to this general way of thinking, even
though uncritical talk of “grand narratives” well beyond the specific major
Western beliefs intended by Lyotard sometimes suggests a popular adaption
 An End to Oppositional History? 45
rather than explicit theoretical awareness. Whatever the usage, and despite
a difference in the degree of applicability, the objectives of these first two
tenets at least seem to be the same: the questioning of hegemonic ideology
and valuation of particularity and detail. (Feel free to think microhistory
here already; I will come to that, too.)
Thirdly, there is a relatively undisputed principle that is similarly
focused on avoiding oppressive representations, an emphasis on new
forms of expression. This emphasis is especially on forms embracing inco-
herence, paralogy, parataxis, fragmentarity, complexity, ambiguity, con-
fusion and so on. These kinds of strategies are seen to provide the only
route to representation that is (at least roughly) in agreement with the
overall objective of subverting oppressive descriptive practices. As Jean
Baudrillard reminds:

The reconciliation of all antagonistic forms in the name of consensus or

conviviality is the worst thing we can do. We must reconcile nothing.
We must keep open the otherness of forms, the disparity between terms;
we must keep alive the forms of the irreducible.
(Baudrillard 2002, 123)7

As I have already discussed in connection with narrative constructivism,

such emphasis on (what is also) more contemporary and effective form
in the ways argued for by White does not only help to subvert the harm-
ful effects of conventional representation but also to create stronger,
more meaningful readings. In other words, to provide an “experience” of
reality with all its indeterminacy—although this can only ever be “nar-
ratively” simulated, since historians, of course, have no access to any ulti-
mate reality, and texts could not convey it anyway. Importantly, this is an
ethical-political and not only an epistemological strategy (even if it might
easily be interpreted differently in terms of “postmodernism” as compared
to ­poststructuralism)—hence, I do not want to overemphasize the aspect
of inaccessibility but will instead continue to bracket epistemology. (It is
worth keeping in mind here also the way in which the idea of experiential
presentations ties in with a general desire for elusive “presence,” or, in
the specific instance of history writing, the historian’s phenomenological
yearning, the desire to experience the past as present and real, which I
already introduced in the previous chapter.)

A Slide from Opposition to Innocuous Histories

The 1970s saw an increased interest in social history, and histories of
women, workers and minorities flourished. Despite the rapid spread of
these “new histories,” they began as oppositional within the context of the
academic history of the time. With the en masse turn to social history this
oppositional intention was, however, soon seen to have been lost. As Tony
46 An End to Oppositional History?
Judt objected as early as 1979: “there is no place for political ideology in
most modern social history” (Judt 1979, 87; cited in Sharpe 2001, 34).8
This is the difficulty following the abandonment of “grand” or overarching
narratives: political ideology must mean something private and individual,
too. And the increased foregrounding of the private had a clear political,
antihegemonic goal in some movements. It seems, however, difficult to keep
such focus on the private distinct from the kind of “postmodern” narcissism
that undermines political efforts, especially as institutional recognition is
gained—and, of course, as general social sentiment tends towards this kind
of “postmodernism.” In The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an
Age of Diminishing Expectations (also first published in 1979), Christopher
Lasch notes:

After the turmoil of the sixties, [North] Americans have retreated to

purely personal preoccupations. Having no hope of improving their lives
in any of the ways that matter, people have convinced themselves that
what matters is psychic self-improvement: getting in touch with their
feelings, eating health food, taking lessons in ballet or belly-dancing,
immersing themselves in the wisdom of the East, jogging, learning how
to “relate,” overcoming the “fear of pleasure.” Harmless in themselves,
these pursuits, elevated to a program and wrapped in the rhetoric of
authenticity and awareness, signify a retreat from politics and a repu-
diation of the recent past.
(Lasch 1991, 4–5)

Though I certainly have nothing against such pastimes (quite the opposite,
in fact), they do not belong to history as a public discourse—something that
history by generic definition is and should be. It appears, however, that at the
time, the emphasis on private, narcissistic interests did in fact converge with
the more politically engaged change in subject matter to radically transform
history. While there must undoubtedly have been a great deal of diversity
involving the extent to which political engagement was felt to be desirable,
there seems also to have been broad agreement among these oppositional
groupings that the form of history writing and not only its objects needed
to be changed. Given their emphatic linking of ideology to the type of “con-
ventional” objectivist and (“grand”) narratively constructed history that
was being objected to, this was, of course, quite natural.
In the same year in which Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition appeared,
when Tony Judt decried the apolitical nature of social history and when
Lasch’s book on narcissism was published, Lawrence Stone gave an illu-
minating albeit, as some critics have later pointed out, somewhat narrow
account of the “narrative turn” that he felt was taking place in the field of
historical research. (For a critique of the limited nature of this account, see,
for example, Peltonen 1999.) Importantly, while neither Stone’s analysis
nor the turn he speaks of preceded the theoretical introduction of narrative
 An End to Oppositional History? 47
constructivist positions, the changes he points to in practices of historical
research and writing can still be taken as relatively independent of that
theoretical debate. In this account, Stone’s focus was on “new history,” by
which he referred to a broad practice of microhistory and the history of
mentalities.9 He argued that there were two parallel developments to con-
sider: for him, changes in methods or methodology could be distinguished
(at least to some extent) from changes in the content or focus of the stud-
ies. Where the representational means carried ideological content, choice
of subject seemed most often to be a much more direct political statement.
As Stone writes:

One of the most striking recent changes in the content of history has
been a quite sudden growth of interest in feelings, emotions, behav-
iour patterns, values, and states of mind . . . This change in the nature
of the questions being asked is also probably related to the contempo-
rary scene in the 1970s. This has been a decade in which more person-
alized ideals and interests have taken priority over public issues, as a
result of a widespread disillusionment with the prospects of change by
political action. It is therefore plausible to connect the sudden upsurge
in interest in these matters in the past with similar preoccupations in
the present.
(Stone 1979, 14)

Although “method” (both in research and presentation) can be separated

from content, there is (and Stone clearly states this too) an obvious link
between an increased interest in private lives and the recovered empha-
sis on narrative. As White’s constructivist position underlines, modernist
literary means can perhaps provide the best way we have of portraying
the actuality of the internal lives of others (albeit with nothing more than
imaginary access to these internal lives, of course).10 Speaking of Le Roy
Ladurie’s Montaillou and the way it “rambles around inside people’s
heads,” Stone alludes to the same: “It is no accident that this is precisely
one of the ways in which the modern novel differs from those of earlier
times” (Stone 1979, 17–18). Further, these “new historians”—in addition
to presenting or creating rambling internal dialogue—“aspire to stylistic
elegance, wit and aphorism. They are not content to throw words down on
a page and let them lie there, with the view that, since history is a science,
it needs no art to help it along” (Stone 1979, 4; cf. White [1978b, 43] on
conventional history writing as “bad art”). Stone also links this interest
with new forms to a general privatization and aestheticization of historical
research. Yet he—like the other “new” historians, it would seem—was not
overly interested in articulating the reasons or politics behind this revival
and interest in literary means. (Further, and as his interest was in defending
these histories, Stone also fails to see them as particularly narcissistic, as
opposed to Lasch.)
48 An End to Oppositional History?
It was not only the privilege of new historians, however, to take this turn
to narrative. Stone argues that more traditional historians had also adapted
“their descriptive mode to ask new questions.” According to him:

Some of them are no longer so preoccupied with issues of power and

therefore with kings and prime ministers, wars and diplomacy, but are,
like the “new historians,” turning their attention to the private lives of
quite obscure people. The cause of this trend, if trend it be, is not clear
but the inspiration seems to be the desire to tell a good story, and in so
doing to reveal the quirks of personality and the inwardness of things in
a different time and culture.
(Stone 1979, 20)

Stone’s view of the narrative turn is thus quite far removed from the politics
of poststructuralism, or from any “radical” or oppositional intentions, for
that matter. Yet it appears to be quite an accurate description of the changes
that were taking place in actual practices. It was not the desire to subvert
representation, but the desire to tell good (and finished) stories that seems
to have been the prime motivation for many of these (“new”) historians.11
In this aspect, the interest in the private lives of common people has surely
indeed—to respond to Stone’s qualifier—been a trend, and popular “post-
modern” interpretations of theory and of the point of historical practice
seem only to have further converged; as I see it, to the detriment of both.
It needs to be remembered, however, that, at the time, much of the content
of these histories was still radical and revolutionary in itself, and hence lent
them some ethical-political justification.
In defining microhistory, Giovanni Levi notes that—at the time of its
inception—“[i]t was . . . important to refute relativism, irrationalism
and the reduction of the historian’s work to a purely rhetorical activity
which interprets texts and not events themselves” (Levi 2001, 99). It may
seem—following popular interpretations—that such refusals make micro-
history diametrically (as well as quite deliberately) opposed to the kind of
narrative constructivism associated with White. After all, the “fictionaliza-
tion” of history in extreme form is the central object of Levi’s critique here.
Understanding of the goals of narrative theory of history or narrative con-
structivism à la White has improved greatly since the early 1990s when Levi
wrote these words, however. And, during that time, White has made efforts
to distance his theoretical position from the antireferentialism invoked in
the accusations he has faced from historians. As he quite explicitly states: “it
is absurd to suppose that, because a historical discourse is cast in the mode
of a narrative, it must be mythical, fictional, substantially imaginary, or
otherwise ‘unrealistic’ in what it tells us about the world” (White 1989, 39).
Thus, and in spite of the differences in political emphasis, I want to suggest
that microhistory might in fact provide the closest widely employed—and
now institutionally established—model of history writing approximating
 An End to Oppositional History? 49
narrative constructivist goals regarding form. Apart from the obvious
refusal by microhistory, as by any history, to accept extreme versions of tex-
tualism (which are often simplified and represented as being equivalent to
“poststructuralism”), there is a close relation between the origins of Italian
microhistory and some of Foucault’s work in the 1970s, for example. If
microhistory is indeed committed to questioning the generalization per-
formed and cohesiveness and continuity imposed by ideological and (con-
ventionally formulated) narrative histories, there is at least an affinity with
the political aims of narrative constructivism: this kind of microhistory also
hopes to somehow circumvent or at least control the content introduced by
unreflective adoptions of form—reiterating, in turn, the broad poststructur-
alist strategy of refusing representation or, at minimum, of attempting to
avoid its ideologically colonizing aspects. In this way, at least, the politics
of microhistory would appear to commit historians to experimental writing
in order to provide marginalized groups and individuals with a voice. (Cf.
Peltonen 1999, 66.) The only real objection to the narrative constructiv-
ist position thus seems to involve what microhistorians have interpreted as
its antireferentialism—their perception that narrative constructivism is not
sufficiently reliant on or respectful of the empirical. But this view is largely
based on a conflation of White’s position with more radical interpretations
of it. To cite White once more to defend his attachment to historical evi-
dence; as he adamantly reminds: “The reality of the past is a given, it is an
enabling presupposition of historical enquiry” (White 2005a, 148). In other
words, we can, for the purposes of the present discussion, continue to forget
the problems raised in debates on antireferentialism.12
Wary of the kind of methodological own-sakism that he sees the rhetoric
of microhistory as potentially leading to, Peter Burke observed: “Fascinating
as it is, this outpouring of microhistorical studies raises the question whether
the law of diminishing intellectual returns has not set in. . . . now, more than
a quarter of a century after the pioneers, might it be time to stop?” (Burke
2001, 115). Today, 40 years in, the question is even more pressing. As I sug-
gested, however, as long as we continue to bracket epistemology in order to
reveal motivations elsewhere, microhistory’s empirical emphasis can be seen
as making good political and representational sense. Indeed, this focus on
the empirical and on abundance of detail also mimics (perhaps unintention-
ally) the explosion of representational entities called for in poststructural-
ism (cf. May 1994, 83), as would, in fact, any attempt to convey reality “in
full.” In Levi’s definition: “Microhistory as a practice is essentially based on
the reduction of the scale of observation, on a microscopic analysis and an
intensive study of the documentary material” (Levi 2001, 99). For him,
“[t]he unifying principle of all microhistorical research is the belief that
microscopic observation will reveal factors previously unobserved” (Levi
2001, 101). (Again, continue thinking of the poststructuralist subversion of
representation here, particularly, for instance, of the quote from Baudrillard
above: “We must keep open the otherness of forms, the disparity between
50 An End to Oppositional History?
terms.”) Moreover, Levi writes: “Microhistory tries not to sacrifice knowl-
edge of individual elements to wider generalization, and in fact it accentu-
ates individual lives and events. But, at the same time, it tries not to reject
all forms of abstraction since minimal facts and individual cases can serve
to reveal more general phenomena” (Levi 2001, 112–113).
Further continuing to align microhistory with poststructuralist theo-
ries emphasizing changes in the literary form, Levi advocates making the
research process visible in the narrative: “incorporating into the main body
of the narrative the procedures of research itself, the documentary limi-
tations, techniques of persuasion and interpretive constructions. . . . In
microhistory . . . the researcher’s point of view becomes an intrinsic part
of the accounts” (Levi 2001, 110). (At the same time, this strategy also
reflects the self-reflexivity demanded of history writing by narrative con-
structivism. But that is really an epistemological issue . . .) Overall there
seems, then, to be very little argument between the goals of narrative con-
structivism and the practices of microhistory, at least according to the kind
of popular interpretations invoked here. Instead, both aim to create an
experience of dealing with reality by emphasizing radical alterity; how bet-
ter, after all, to understand Jacques Revel’s slogan for microhistory: “Why
make things simple when one can make them complicated?” (quoted in
Levi 2001, 114) than in terms of the poststructuralist ethical-political call
for complexity? This connection between (complex) form and political
consequence is something that mainstream practitioners of microhistory
seem to have little understanding of, however.
Another important arena for developing critical historiography has been
feminist history. Obviously, like microhistory, feminist and women’s his-
tory is (or at least has been) opposed to hegemonic, event-oriented histori-
cal study and also contributed markedly to the 1970s shift from political
history to social history. What is more, the emphasis on linguistic figura-
tion, even specifically on the constructivist position that all meaning is con-
structed in the present and in language by the historian, has been central to
feminist history’s political agenda. Indeed, summing up the contemporary
popular view,13 Joan Scott sees women’s history as based on deconstruct-
ing the opposition between “history” and “ideology” (Scott 2001, 50 ff.).
In addition to emphasizing that history cannot be free of ideology, Scott
also makes a point of questioning what she sees as a common opposition
of “professionalism” to “politics” (Scott 2001, 45 ff.). For her, any writing
is always positioned politically (Scott 2001, 59–60). This, of course, is very
much the same position as that occupied by poststructuralism and—within
theory of history—by narrative constructivism: history (like any represen-
tation) is, by definition, political in the broad sense of the word, in that it
is always informed by ideology. In what are surprisingly simplistic terms
considering she is writing to historians and theorists in the 1990s—perhaps
in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding in reception, since those
have not been hard to come by in the past—Scott reminds us that: “In the
 An End to Oppositional History? 51
end there is no way to detach politics—relations of power, systems of belief
and practice—from knowledge and the processes that produce it; women’s
history is for this reason an inevitably political field” (Scott 2001, 61).
Although a necessary component of action, such theoretical awareness
does not automatically lead—and nor has it led—the historians involved
to assuming political responsibility in women’s history any more than it
does—or has—in other areas. Rather, responsibility is tied to the ideology
of opposition, which, in turn, is largely a matter of benefits and status yet
to be achieved. In other words, where responsibility is of necessity to the
future, established historians can already be happy with their present. And
feminism in history has without a doubt established itself; confirming this,
Scott writes: “With changes in the conception and practice of history, rela-
tionships of power and terms of debate have altered. Historians of women
have come into a share of disciplinary power” (Scott 2001, 62). Thus, argu-
ably, the debate within women’s history regarding an ideology of resistance
has become more a methodological one, much like I claim has the narrative
constructivist debate as it is popularly now engaged in between “the histo-
rians” on one side and “the theorists” on the other.
In this way, women’s history too has been co-opted by professionally
established history. This is, however, not only (or even primarily) a bad
thing. Women’s history has led—to an extent, at least—to the kind of redefi-
nition of the terms employed within the historical field at large that (at
least some) feminist historians intended. At the same time, numerous valu-
able historical studies have been completed that might not have been pos-
sible without the institutional acceptance and respect achieved—admittedly
hard-earned and well-deserved, one might add. Yet—and this is not in any
way to belittle the significance of these accomplishments—there is a danger
of oversaturation in women’s history too, of over-use of (now) established
forms of critique employed in cases where their relevance is unclear; the
fear that simply focusing on women will obscure particular, less obvious yet
equally political problems involved is certainly justified. This is, of course,
not a novel critique. Yet it seems that, much like contemporary microhisto-
rians’ (sometimes blind) reliance on scale alone, the choice of the gender of
the subjects of research is too often and too easily seen as a sufficient curtsy
to a politics of the past and of historical representation.

Rediscovering Resistance
The “new” historians linked with the changing landscape of historical study
can be seen as representing the best existing fit to the theoretical position
elaborated by narrative constructivists. Since the focus of these historians
is so strongly on privileging representational form, this is not surprising.
But, in addition to the fact that this focus can lead to a lack of thought
to consequences when purely “methodological” thinking takes over, when,
that is, innovative examples are simply replicated without attention to their
52 An End to Oppositional History?
ethical-political significance, attention to form can also result in a loss of
control regarding talk about the past when combined with postmodern,
“anything goes” attitudes. (Once again, this kind of nihilism is not only an
epistemological but also, and more importantly, a political or consequen-
tialist issue.)
In an essay entitled “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” Nancy
Partner notes how the popular understanding of linguistic constructivism
(and especially, I assume, of the “turn to narrative” that Stone speaks of)
was widespread also outside the academe in the mid-1990s. History was
being used (and abused) to construct irresponsible and self-interested iden-
tity positions. At the same time, a similar—grossly simplified—view of
theories claiming the fictional nature of history had found purchase in the
imaginations of many more conventional historians, and, of course, these
historians were adamantly opposed to the idea of history as being anything
but “scientific” (Partner 1995, 21–24; see also Toews 1997, 238–240 and
Jenkins 1999b, 111–112). Setting aside for now Partner’s equally astute
observations about the different uses of “fiction” employed in this debate,
I want to foreground her claim that academic history and popular appro-
priations of the past needed to come together and reconnect in this situa-
tion; academics needed to assume their social responsibilities. Admirable in
her insistence that historians should become more involved with the world,
Partner pointed to a central problem with history and theory of history: in
order to be experientially “true,” history must have resonance for us here
and now. (This conclusion is nicely expressed in one of her section head-
ings to the essay: “‘Truth’ and Actuality: Which do People Want When?”
[1995, 35].)
Viewed in this context, the persistent attraction of mixing fact with fic-
tion in popular culture (or, to be more specific, the attraction of intention-
ally confusing the two and thus of “distorting” reality) results, it seems,
from much the same aspiration that has led many more conservative histo-
rians to vilify the whole fact–fiction debate: most people would surely want
representations to have meaning for their present. But strategies for gain-
ing meaning from the past are different. For many professional historians,
meaning has been achieved through a rather elaborate, professionally deter-
mined, route.14 Therefore (despite my here bracketing the issue of reference
and epistemology in order to emphasize the ethical), an empirically sensitive
strategy for use of the past should inform theorizing as long as the intention
is to involve and engage historians; after all, safeguarding the “purity” of
the past and distinguishing history from explicitly ideological writing con-
tinues to be the objective that informs the genre. Although this should not
give historians an excuse to ignore responsibility for the uses of history, they
do still appear to see themselves as insulated from (at least popular) preju-
dices and hence capable of speaking authoritatively on the basis of their
empirical and methodological expertise. And this experienced insularity has
on occasion arguably been strengthened by the adoption, as a “system,” of
 An End to Oppositional History? 53
narrative constructivism as well as other, apparently reflexive “methodolo-
gies” and “historical approaches” by those who have rejected appeals to
the “truth” of history as insufficient. Hence, the rethinking of this current
complex of seemingly oppositional theory and practice is essential for any
recovery of social and ethical-political responsibility.
On the surface, all may appear to be well today, however, even from the
point of view of a politics of historical representation. We have various kinds
of histories that are formally acceptable to narrative constructivism—if
not always themselves in sympathy with its theoretical claims. (Indeed, we
have many more than I have space or expertise to discuss; one could, for
example, also look at the German Alltagsgeschichte in this context.) Yet
there is a problem that is common to all of these apparently critical or at
least self-reflexive historiographies: they have become the norm rather than
the exception. In other words, the areas of history writing that they repre-
sent are no longer today seen as radical or even “supplementary,” but are
instead unreservedly embraced and integrated; in fact, in numerous history
departments, they present the most obvious and justified ways for studying
the past.
While the gaining of institutional acceptance has in many ways been a
victory for these once-oppositional histories, it can also be viewed with sus-
picion, as part of what is sometimes described as postmodernism’s strategy
of depoliticization: with the universalization of difference and the conse-
quent emphasis of the private and the non-political, alternative positionings
have become acceptable but have also been disempowered in terms of their
capacity for questioning the institution. (For more on this dynamic, see, for
example, Haber 1994 and Fraser 1995.) They are simply alternative view-
points among so many others. Historians working in women’s history and
microhistory, for instance, have very diverse and quite particular social and
political goals, but the wholesale embracing of all different viewpoints as
equally valid relegates most of them to a powerless minority.
The way such a continuous battle for difference can lead to privatization
is perhaps simplest to illustrate by continuing to look at feminism. Clearly,
contemporary “third-wave” or “postfeminism” is often today presented as
apolitical and pleasure-seeking. Concentrating as it does on private rather
than overtly public issues, it is understandable why this trend is taken to
reject the explicit political commitments of its predecessors. Yet, one might
also see here a very similar dynamic to that evidenced by the “oppositional”
in other arenas. Following a period of strong demand for conformity within
oppositional movements, their contemporary representatives are now—one
might argue—attempting to oppose both the repressive definitions internal
to these movements as well as the broader social and political challenges
faced. (See, for example, Braithwaite 2002, 338–339.) Many feminists are
thus now intent “on examining [their] personal li[ves], on exploring its
many contradictions, desires, pleasures and fun.”15 The aim of such refram-
ing is, to quote Stacy Gillis and Rebecca Munford, to “re-present rather
54 An End to Oppositional History?
than reject conventional ideas about ‘femininity’ in order to create models
of contradiction and conflict” (Gillis and Munford 2004, 171).
Again, however, it seems the radical edge of this kind of action has been
blunted. Although emphasis on consumption, desire and hedonism (and the
juxtaposition of a related lifestyle with a politically principled and oppo-
sitional standpoint) has provided feminists with a means to deconstruct
received categories, it is no longer as complex an identity positioning as
it once was and hence no longer bears the same intellectual shock value.
And this, perhaps regrettably, replicates the fate of similar shock tactics in
more traditional historical inquiry. For example, although once disruptive
and radical, the academic study of comic books or rock music no longer
has any particular oppositional content. Rather, the study of even the most
trivial forms of popular culture has become daily fare for cultural history.
Similarly, for feminisms today, immersion in contemporary consumer cul-
ture has led to what some commentators have termed a “feminist narcis-
sism.”16 While this narcissism can occasionally be put to emancipatory use,
its effectiveness is largely gone, swallowed up by numerous other parallel
phenomena in popular culture.
A part of the present argument that I particularly want to emphasize is
that, due to the centrality and tremendous success (read: controversy) of
narrative constructivism in theorizing antihegemonic history, the focus of
debate has remained primarily on the forms that opposition could utilize
in order to be successful; not on the content of those forms. For this reason
(or at least, as a parallel development informed by the narrative construc-
tivist debate), interest in the purpose and contents of opposition itself has
lessened, and talk of alternatives in historical research tends to focus more
on a resistance of the traditional historical narrative and ideals of historical
objectivism, on a resistance of “grand narratives” or—although seldom—on
a resistance of representation itself, but rarely on a resistance of particular
forms of oppression or even on a defence of presentist, locally or subjec-
tively motivated positions. We are, in a way, then, witnessing what could be
described as a return of the opposition between “theory” and “politics” that
post-1968 thinking has attempted to deconstruct.
Unfortunately, satisfaction with the status quo—or possibly simple com-
placency regarding contemporary social needs—is in this way reintroduced
by more conservative (and ironically at the same time popularly “postmod-
ernist”) readings of narrative constructivism. For those working on the basis
of a prescriptive understanding of the narrative constructivist call for alter-
native forms of historical representation, the crucial issue of transgression
and contestation can become clouded. Rather than actively seek new forms
of representation (for political ends), such historians might contentedly
adhere to the definitions and examples given of these forms by theory (some
dating back as far as the 1960s, it should be emphasized) under the rubrics
of literary modernism, “antihistory,” “antinarrative nonstories,” or “post-
modern parahistorical representations.” In this way, these now apparently
 An End to Oppositional History? 55
theoretically aware historians would continue to be as dependent on institu-
tionalized practices and conventional wisdom as their objectivist predeces-
sors. Their faith in what they do would hinge on the political commitments
and struggles engaged in by theorists and role-models of a previous genera-
tion. So, at best, only the practices of validation will have changed from
empiricist history. Yet the goal today should not be to use once-radical sub-
ject matter and once-radical forms as a methodology for writing history.
That would only lead to new, equally oppressive and hegemonic histories.
Thus, instead of accepting a purely methodological interpretation (the use-
fulness of which has been tied to a specific historical moment or, more accu-
rately, a particular readership), White’s examples could better be read in
terms of their original political motivation. In this way, it would also be
natural to proceed beyond the forms he suggests, if and when those now fail
to serve in emancipatory representational projects. For this to become fea-
sible, historians’ (ethical-political) intentions need to first be rescued from
restrictive debates regarding the choice of particular forms, however. The
lesson to be immediately learned from this is that, although the debate con-
cerning narrative constructivism has perhaps tailed off, we cannot simply
ignore the issues that it has raised but, rather, need to remain constantly
vigilant concerning received beliefs. Without such vigilance, our theoretical
grip on the past as it relates to what is (to us personally) present slackens.
Since, that is, the present continues to change, so should theories relating
the past to its demands.
Centrally, what should not be forgotten is that narrative constructiv-
ism has its roots in the same spirit of resistance as so much other post-
1968 thought. That is to say, its ideals and objectives have been vested
with an oppositional politics. Furthermore, the questioning and critique
of the ideological element in historical research and especially writing that
it performs cannot be comprehensively understood in separation from this
politics. One problem, however, is that White, as so many like-minded
thinkers, is often far from specific about the substance of such a politics,
noting instead quite generally that a constructivist understanding is essen-
tial to any “visionary politics” aimed at revealing oppressive ideologies
(White 1987, 73). Yet, and despite stating that he has no use for revolution
(see White 1987, 63; I cite him on this in Chapter 5, n3), he is concerned
with the alleviation of suffering and his programme for historians clearly
involves a strong (if not always explicitly spelled-out or prescriptive) com-
mitment to society at large.17
In recent discussions concerning narrative constructivism, focus has
unfortunately remained largely on the issue of epistemological scepticism
and the way in which this is dealt with in the fact–fiction debate. Thus,
one of its core concerns has been overlooked. The point of prolonging the
discussion now is only to provide a politics of historical representation
to be used in offsetting the moral relativism introduced. As part of this
undertaking, salvaging either narrative constructivism or oppositional
56 An End to Oppositional History?
histories requires freeing them from their currently widespread and
popularized “postmodern” readings and placing them more securely in
a properly fleshed out poststructuralist context (reading the meaning of
these terms as I have set them out here). This means we would need to
stop making the comparison to popular forms of popular culture (the
too-easily digestible) and instead aim to devalue the oppositional cur-
rency of entertainment. To say this more precisely in terms of the usual
narrative constructivist debate, the near-exclusive focus on representa-
tional means and strategies (on what we can do with form) has led to
losing sight of the goals and substance of historical research (on what
we do with form). (Again, epistemology does not figure in this argument
for the sake of simplicity, and also because it does nothing to resolve the
problems of ideology, as already noted.)
The danger, then, is that constructivism in its popular form-centred
(largely “postmodern”) guise too easily draws historians away from politics
(in the sense not of political history but of engagement) and urges them
toward what might simply be termed the anecdotal. Thus, feminist his-
tory abandons feminist politics and concentrates on “women’s history.”
Similarly, the theoretical tool of a “postmodernist constructivism” encour-
ages authors of microhistories to pursue their narratives of exceptionality as
a good in itself. After all, if the past is a matter of representation, the only
“reality” to be found in it is antiquarian. And if it is experiential effect that
marks such reality, entertainment seems to be the way to go.
Of course, as I have tried to suggest, this kind of depoliticization is not
so much a result of constructivist theory per se as it is of the co-option
of these subject areas by the historical institution as well as of the gen-
eral culture in which narrative constructivism also partakes. This focus on
consumption and entertainment—that particular “postmodernism”—has
passed the point where it is useful as a transgressive or oppositional tool.
“Interesting” has now become a value in and of itself—in fact it appears
to have become the only value by which to justify the work of historians
without (once again) adopting the empty ideal of “knowledge for its own
sake.” Moreover, much too often, even this “being interesting” is only a
case of selecting subject matter and presentational means that have once
been—but increasingly today no longer are—radical. In fact, while the selec-
tion of subject matter is largely interesting or entertaining only in being
exceptional and particular, and hence “cute” or anecdotal at best, the enter-
tainment value of form comes from being contemporary and—it needs to
be emphasized—familiar: the kind of representational form demanded by
constructivism (be it “antinarrative nonstories” or “parahistorical rep-
resentations”) is the form we as consumers are already used to through
our immersion in contemporary media. White’s oft-repeated comparison
of traditional histories to nineteenth-century realist novels (history as “bad
art”) illustrates this well: the sense of excitement and interest to be derived
from such texts is slight compared to that of contemporary representational
 An End to Oppositional History? 57
forms—whether these are in literature, film or performance, for example.18
We have changed as readers and viewers.
It might be said that we continue, as history consumers, to be hypnotized
by the (idea of) form mainly for the comfort it brings: the stories provided
by contemporary representational forms are the ones we like to receive,
and they present the world as once again familiar, yet sufficiently new and
exciting. Despite this happy feeling, the ideology of entertainment and being
entertained is something that historians, as historians, might wish to resist;
not primarily because they are professionally committed to “true represen-
tations,” but because these entertaining forms dissipate responsibility. It is
the ease of access and familiarity of such forms that seem particularly wor-
rying. In light of the preceding discussion, the first thing to become aware
of is that these entertaining forms that history seeks to emulate are some-
times too simple and obvious. Readers and viewers are already accustomed
to parahistorical representations in the manner of Oliver Stone’s JFK and
numerous, more recent films, like Good Night, and Good Luck by George
Clooney, for instance. The simple mixing of “truth” and “fiction” fails to
present a challenge any longer, and a focus on the contents of consciousness
and internal dialogue are similarly—representationally—part of our staple
diet (even if such strategies still remain quite problematic for any strictly
historical methodology). Hence, the strategies any would-be poststructur-
alist historians should want to lift from contemporary representations are
continuously shifting in sync with the sensibilities of the readership. And we
might thus choose to not be content even with copying existing representa-
tional means, but instead strive towards producing ones that are specifically
historical—that are, in other words, based on the referential commit-
ments that working with specifically historical intentions (and—obviously,
although secondarily—with historical materials) brings. Why, given very
different social as well as referential needs and conventions, should history
look to literature or film alone for guidance? Especially if it is to be avant
garde in itself, in the way an undiluted narrative constructivism and any
effectively oppositional commitments necessarily must envision. Surely his-
torians would be capable of producing challenging representational means
of their own once aware of the desirability of doing so.
Whatever forms are developed cannot be employed in all situations; hence
our having institutionally accepted certain ways of doing history—and thus
having denied others—will always remain problematic. New challenges
will demand new forms if they are to be approached as properly “other.”
Therefore, while history (the meanings that historians attribute to the past)
is always a site of struggle, it is not only its meanings but also the means
for engaging in that struggle that would need to be constantly contested.
What I want to underscore with all this is that no all-embracing yet purely
theoretical (that is, non-prescriptive) representational theory such as narra-
tive constructivism can be translated into historical practice without com-
promise. It is too easily codified into an “anything goes” position by cruder
58 An End to Oppositional History?
interpretations of the postmodern. Thus, at least some ethical-political com-
mitments need to be spelled out even at risk of imminent redundancy.
Without this kind of clarity and continuous repositioning, the turn to
entertainment will simply offer another way to undermine the “openness
of form” and the availability of (re)description to all. Even before most
people (even most students of history) have been convinced of the accep-
tance of the undetermined nature of the past, we already have another way
for control within the institution of history. In this new paradigm—where
“objectivity” and “realism” no longer provide the institution with the same
leverage—history becomes that which conforms to the kinds of storylines
consumers take for granted. It might thus be time for historians as well as
theorists to strive once again to find ways of becoming politically committed
and, with that, also challenge their audiences to do the same.19
Disillusionment with government and leadership and the lack of interest
in political activism through traditional channels clearly continues today.
It could even be suggested—as Lawrence Stone already did in 1979—that
the (re)turn to narrative has been a result of that disillusionment.20 In pro-
viding a distraction from political events and “serious” history, interest in
narrative has, however, also provided a distraction from social commitment
and from political life on the individual level.21 In this way, history and
historians too have promoted complacency concerning injustices and have
dulled (ethical-political) senses with entertaining stories. Stories that keep
us—those of us who are privileged enough to enjoy spending time with
stories—preoccupied and content. To remedy this, we should be wary of
reading narrative constructivism or any other theory of opposition in terms
of system or systematicity and of thereby turning it into a methodology. We
need, rather, to embrace insecurity regarding what history can be.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2011.
“The end of oppositional history?” Rethinking History 15 (4): 463–488.
Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group (www.tandfonline.com)

Notes
1. Let me make it clear that I am not suggesting the kind of “presentification”
argued for by Gumbrecht (2004, 124), in which historians can somehow imag-
ine things in their historical contexts without attributing meaning to them. My
claim here is the much more basic and practical one that he wishes to transcend,
relating to the imposition of meaning taking place in presentation: for a repre-
sentation of the past to be more than a list of details, an annals, a chronicle or
a catalogue of material traces, for example, requires commentary on the part of
the representer that is temporally removed from the object it comments upon.
This commentary or re-presentation in turn inevitably involves a reframing of
 An End to Oppositional History? 59
the past in terms and in the language of the historian and his or her context,
bringing temporally distinct values to bear on the material. Thus, although my
overall intentions regarding experientiality run in parallel with Gumbrecht’s, it
is not clear to me how “conjuring up the past,” as he would have it, could ever
bypass this basic dynamic of representation. I develop an argument defending
material presence toward the end of the book, but for me, this involves the resis-
tance of any such “conjuring” activity; see especially Chapter 6.
2. For a description of this division of the field as well as an extended effort to find
a compromise between textualism and empiricism, see Ankersmit (2001). On
“unconventional history,” see especially the December 2002 theme issue of His-
tory and Theory of that name, as well as the discussion surrounding it. Finally,
for an account of “experimental history,” see Munslow (2007, 103–110) and
Munslow and Rosenstone (2004).
3. As already discussed in the preceding chapters, White, of course, partially
allows for this appeal to historical method in introducing his idea of the ideo-
logical baggage brought by narrativizing. He stresses that he does not intend
“to say that a historical discourse is not properly assessed in terms of the truth
value of its factual (singular existential) statements taken individually and the
logical conjunction of the whole set of such statements taken distributively. For
unless a historical discourse acceded to assessment in these terms, it would lose
all justification for its claim to represent and provide explanations of specifically
real historical events” (White 1987, 45).
4. Although any attempt to pin down poststructuralism will always be a controver-
sial one, that made by Todd May (1994; 1995) in terms of a “poststructuralist
ethic”—focusing attention on a recognition and resistance of representational
closures—is to me a most convincing one and aligns with other arguments relat-
ing to poststructuralist political attitudes. For more on how this ethic and the
related “subversion of representation” might play out in history, see Chapter 6.
5. Almost without exception, discussions of “postmodernism” in history revolve
around the issue of epistemological scepticism that, as I argue here, is only a
preliminary one with respect to the broader political and ideological aims of
“postist” thought. This confusion is quite persistent and leads to rejections of
“postmodernism” (including poststructuralism) by thinkers who are clearly in
agreement with the political and social aims involved and really object only to
the moral relativist or antireferential views imposed on “postist” thought in
popular readings. Even some quite sophisticated readings fail to see the distinc-
tion between postmodernism and poststructuralism; see, for example, Davies
(2006, 13–18). Although Beverley Southgate, for example, has presented a more
understanding reading of postmodernism, importantly noting that it is not only
a philosophy but also a pragmatics for living, he too focuses largely on the
epistemological side of the issues (truth and aporia, incredulity toward meta-
narratives, undecidability) and neglects their ethical-political consequences. See
Southgate 2003, 5–6. As he writes, though: “Postmodernism is not, then, simply
a ‘philosophy,’ or a part of a subject that everyone knows has little or nothing
to do with ‘real life’; it’s not just a ‘theory’ that impinges on nothing more sub-
stantial than the abstract metaphysical constructions of ‘intellectuals.’” Hence,
it is not enough to say that postmodernism is not necessarily apolitical. Instead,
room needs to be made for this political aspect by abandoning the unnecessary
drama surrounding the debate about epistemology and reference, at least the
60 An End to Oppositional History?
ever-popular question of whether history is fact or fiction. Otherwise, this kind
of rhetoric will continue to define the general understanding of postmodernism
and of the post-1968 more broadly. For more on this, see also Munslow 2007;
Jenkins 1999b, 62 ff. and Breisach 2003, 72 ff. Breisach’s classification of nar-
rative constructivism as “poststructuralist postmodernism” partakes, to me, in
this more popularizing reading and presents non-referentialism as an integral
part of this position.
6. The term “supplementary” has been proposed by Joan Scott. She claims that
women’s history is supplementary in the sense of being both “superfluous and
indispensable”—hence, it underscores a lack in existing historiography. (Scott
2001, 50–51) For a discussion of Scott alongside White, see La Greca (2016).
7. Also cited in Jenkins (2003, 9). The translation given by Jenkins is more elegant
but also puts less emphasis on the issue of forms. Note how White’s defence of
relativism as a basis for tolerance and social responsibility provides an impor-
tant practical correlative to this argument with respect to history: “the socially
responsible interpreter can do two things: (1) expose the fictitious nature of any
political program based on an appeal to what ‘history’ supposedly teaches and
(2) remain adamantly ‘utopian’ in any criticism of political ‘realism’” (White
1987, 227).
8. In Ill Fares the Land (2010), Judt makes a very compelling case for the need to
return consideration of social consequences to contemporary political discourse.
9. Some of the exemplars that Stone mentions as representative of this “new his-
tory” are the same that have been often referred to in the constructivism/post-
modernism debate in history even up to and including recent years: the most
prominent of these being Simon Schama and Natalie Zemon Davis. See also, for
example, Southgate (2003, 51–52).
10. As Robert Rosenstone (2004, 3) notes, literary innovations allow the historian
to write in experiential terms. For him, traditional realist writing: “Did not let
me get close enough to my characters. Did not let me see the world through their
eyes, smell it through their noses.” On the flip side, there is always the danger
of forgetting the fictionality involved in this kind of imaginary identification.
11. As Stone continues: “Another obvious danger is that the revival of narrative
may lead to a return to pure antiquarianism, to story-telling for its own sake.
Yet another is that it will focus attention upon the sensational and so obscure
the dullness and drabness of the lives of the vast majority” (Stone 1979, 22–23).
12. For more on the arguments for the incompatibility of microhistory and White’s
constructivism, see the Ginzburg–White debate in, for example, Ginzburg
(1991). It is worth noting, however, that the commitments of narrative construc-
tivism to reality have simply been ignored in this and in other similar critiques.
One parallel in which these commitments are obvious is to be found in the
fact that, like microhistory, narrative constructivism also takes inspiration from
social and cultural anthropology, especially from the work of Clifford Geertz
and the concept of “thick description.”
13. Feminism’s interest is, of course, first in practical social criticism, not theory.
Hence, these positions have been theorized on pragmatic terms. For a discus-
sion of feminism’s relation to postmodernism, see, for example, Nancy Fraser
and Linda Nicholson (1988). For studies of women’s history, see, naturally,
Joan Scott’s Gender and the Politics of History (1988) and Bonnie Smith’s The
Gender of History (1998). Also see Scott’s “Feminism’s History” (Scott [2004];
reprinted in Morgan [2006]) as well as La Greca (2016).
 An End to Oppositional History? 61
14. Another, more recent development relating to the fact–fiction debate should be
mentioned here too, namely the return to or increased interest in empiricism.
See, for example, Spiegel (2005) and (2009). While this tendency has generally
been seen as a “re-turn” from linguistic emphases, it needs to also—following
the bracketing of the epistemological dimension in this chapter—be examined
in ethical-political terms. In this context, focus on empiricism in an antiepiste-
mological intellectual climate must be related to the present, not the past; it can
be viewed in terms of a representational strategy of soliciting emotional involve-
ment through appeal to the “real” on the one hand, and in terms of (re)gain-
ing some control over interpretations on the other. Emphasis of the empirical
attachment of history does not, after all, necessarily intend some unachievable
objectivity.
15. As Ann Braithwaite writes: “This insistence on examining one’s personal life, on
exploring its many contradictions, desires, pleasures and fun marks one espe-
cially salient example of the overlaps and similarities between third-wave and
postfeminisms. For many third-wave feminists . . . a defining feature of their
self-identified brand of third-wave feminism is precisely its refusal of the second
wave’s politics of rejection of signifiers and practices of traditional femininity in
favor of a politics of contradiction, incorporation and negotiation” (Braithwaite
2002, 339).
16. Compare this with Imogen Tyler’s critique of such a narcissist label and its sub-
versive effect on feminist political ambitions: “Women’s anxiety about being
identified as feminist is a direct consequence of the coercive efforts of the social
elite to delegitimize feminism by naming it narcissistic” (Tyler 2005, 39).
17. This avoidance of overt or at least contentually specific political positions
appears to be more evident in American debate. I suggest that this has much to
do with the fact that the United States is more committed to and more engrossed
in the “entertainment age” than perhaps any other nation. This relates, of
course, also to the more extreme interpretation often given to textualism in
theory debates there.
18. The range of contemporary representational forms goes well beyond those men-
tioned here. Particularly interesting and timely areas for developing the argu-
ments that I relate here to performance art include various interactive and social
media. For more on these, see Kansteiner (2007), Fogu (2009) and Lähteenmäki
and Virta (2016).
19. Asking historians for this kind of political commitment is admittedly an exact-
ing requirement. As Munslow and Rosenstone (2004, 14) note, successful for-
mal experimentation and political activism are demanding tasks that also carry
a professional risk.
20. Stone’s comment brings an interesting issue to the fore: if the 1970s were indeed
a period of disillusionment with regard to the efficacy of political action, how
accurate is it, in fact, to assume it was also a time when opinions and emphases
concerning what history is for actually aimed at political engagement?
21. Compare this with feminism, where private life was by many made into a politi-
cal strategy much in the same manner as it has been used as an oppositional tool
in contemporary performance art, for instance.
4 Communication and
Constraint

Even after so many decades of attention to the artefactual nature of history,

the theory and philosophy of history continue to demonstrate a curious
neglect of reading and reception. The attention of contemporary narrative
constructivist theorists like Hayden White, as well as Frank Ankersmit and
Alun Munslow, for example, has instead remained focused mostly on two
issues: the epistemological challenges involved in investigating the past and
the linguistic construction or figuration that takes place in the represen-
tation of that past as “history.”1 Although the question of representation
naturally connects in many ways with that of reading and readership, the
emphasis in these debates has not been primarily on history as a form of
communication but on history as a literary representation; on, that is, the
form and particular literary strategies histories (as stories) adopt—including
structuralist and semiotic investigations of these. Given the extent to which
objectivist thinking has dominated institutional history, the constructivists’
emphasis on form is quite understandable—their provocative arguments
perhaps having in part been responsible for the acceptance of at least some
important understandings regarding representation and the linguistic turn
in history.2
From a history theoretical viewpoint, the brunt of the work to be done
now would seem to be in transferring these largely textualist insights over
to the study of history writing as communication. There is substantial over-
lap in the issues already raised by constructivist theorizing and in viewing
historical representation in terms of communication. Naturally, the way in
which constructivism focuses on the aesthetic moment and the significance
of form as content is crucial to both what is communicated and how com-
munication takes place. At the same time, this is precisely why a blind spot
exists in current conceptualizations. Because history writing is not (or at
least not only) a literary pursuit, importing aesthetic theories from the sphere
of literary studies overlooks the particularity of history in terms of its firm
ties to reality, however tenuous or infirm the details of that reality and the
means for their “recovery” may be. In other words, the full significance of
the historian’s commitment to the task of truthful representation—whatever
we may think of the chances for success in this—remains largely unexplored
 Communication and Constraint 63
in terms of its impact on form as well as in terms of the communicative and
reception processes implied in the writing.3 This is where theory needs to
pay more attention to practice. After all, historians do write for a reason,
and that reason involves not only the past but also the present, at least
to the extent of wanting to communicate their particular understanding or
discoveries to readers. Their commitment to representing truthfully also has
important implications in terms of form—implications which theoretical
discussions concerning narrative need to better account for.
Even for a constructivist theory of history, focus on intentions and com-
munication is essential to understanding the formal limitations of history
as history rather than as simply another imaginary or fictional genre.4 As a
result of their commitment to faithful representation (which entails profes-
sional practices and methodologies, including fidelity to sources, fairness
and inclusiveness), historians produce historical narratives on the terms of
the material they have available and not primarily as formal innovations
with a focus on storytelling or aesthetic values. For this simple reason, as
suggested already in Chapters 1 and 2, historical narratives as narrative
invention are essentially limited—their processes of meaning-construction
are impaired in the creation of formal coherence and closure. To be sure,
they are aesthetic constructs, but only to an extent—aesthetic consider-
ations come into play only after the demands of material and method. These
narratives, disturbed by reality (or by their commitments to representing a
past reality, to be exact), are first and foremost “historical.” Indeed, they
are so to the extent that this level of interference should be the standard
we intend when speaking of a specifically historical narrative. Historical
narratives—as narratives—are fundamentally disturbed.

The Extremes of Literary Textualism

Narrative form has a tendency to convince, hence its easy link to author-
ity and the consequent questioning of and desire to subvert narrative in
post-1968 thinking generally, as well as in the constructivism pioneered by
Hayden White in history. What traditionally “good” writing does is cre-
ate coherence and a “reality-effect” (à la Roland Barthes) that leads us to
believe, or at least to willingly suspend or suppress most disbelief. It is this
feature of literary writing, of “literature,” that has, I would argue, caused
the most obstacles to the inclusion of literary theory and associated ways of
thinking in historical scholarship—and which is thus responsible for much
of the conflict surrounding constructivism in history. If anything, after all,
history is about questioning and inquiry, not acceptance. To ask us to sus-
pend our disbelief when reading historical stories amounts—while poten-
tially important in creating the aesthetic and emotional impact needed to
engage readers—to treating them as fiction, agreeing to overlook all and
any discrepancies between one particular account and any other available
knowledge on the subject in question. Such agreement is not part of the pact
64 Communication and Constraint
between writers and readers of history (whose stories are still often thought
of naively as historical accounts in reading practice), even though it is of
prime importance in the sphere of literature. Indeed, even the suggestion of
transgressing this boundary by constructivist theorizing has understandably
upset many empirically more straightforward historians.
In this way, the “historian’s promise” of truthfulness has consequences
for positioning readers: the “reading contract” in history involves read-
ing as if true and real, reading, that is, in an associative and critical way.
History texts have a conceptual dimension extending “beyond” the (single)
text, which is necessarily present in the imaginations of readers, and ques-
tions regarding the existence of things not mentioned in the text are quite
legitimate. This, again, is an issue that current theory has failed to properly
address. In contemporary history writing and theory, there thus appear to
be two competing and conflicting contracts in force at once, both that of
fictional creation and that of truth and reference, hence the constant con-
flict between these positions (for more on this conflict, see, for example,
Roberts 2001).
Conceivably, excessive focus on the question of the continuity of narrative
forms across genres and assumptions of equal fictionality among all types
of literary artefacts can lead to a mindset inappropriate to historical study.
And this is the fear that underlies, I think, the enduring urgency that histo-
rians who participate in the fact–fiction debate demonstrate for “resolving”
questions of truthfulness. While it often seems that at stake is a conflict
between “conventional historians” and more avant garde or experimental
ones, the difficulties perhaps more importantly reflect two kinds of read-
ing approaches and belief systems—what might, respectively, be character-
ized as literal-minded and postmodern (albeit once again with all necessary
caveats and qualifications regarding such labelling). This same difference
between belief systems can also be discerned in the controversy between
historians and theorists, of course. Seeing the debate in these broader terms
is helpful, however, in showing that the real issue does not concern truth as
much as it does praxis. At issue is the use made of history by variously inter-
ested parties. “Truth” might be seen simply as a value that historians keep at
the centre of the debate for reasons of professional practice; the utility and
persuasiveness of history over and above other genres in decision-making,
for example, and—indeed—in the daily lives of most people, only hold as
long as the professed goal is knowledge and truth.5 In this limited sense,
advocates of more traditional history writing are certainly justified in claim-
ing that history would end with the adoption of overtly literary assump-
tions. But things are obviously not so clear-cut.
For defenders of history as just one “imaginary” among others, practical
considerations are also significant.6 They perceive the suasiveness of history
as harmful when tied so efficiently to truth in the minds of readers. White
states this in no uncertain terms: “Nothing is better suited to lead to a rep-
etition of the past than a study of it that is either reverential or convincingly
 Communication and Constraint 65
objective in the way that conventional historical studies tend to be” (White
1987, 82). From this perspective, disillusionment with, and even hostility
toward, history is understandable. Given its association with truth, his-
tory writing permits (and indeed facilitates) oppressive practices, whereas
literature—and the imaginary generally—is more often viewed as having the
potential to free people from dominant ways of thinking and thus ultimately
(potentially) even from oppressive power structures.7 Of course, the perpet-
uation of oppressive attitudes is not only a problem of history versus litera-
ture but is, rather, also maintained to be inherent, for example, in the classic
realist novel with its conservative ideological underpinnings.8 Emancipation,
on the other hand, arguably requires effective (artistic) form, not means that
have become commonplace and habitual—means, that is, that only reiter-
ate and uphold received beliefs and values. While exasperated by it, the
problem with history as a form of ideological positioning does not reside,
however, in its literary form per se—old-fashioned and unreflected as that
form so often is. Indeed, in purely technical terms, historical narratives seem
quite capable of employing all the representational and formal strategies
and techniques available to literary fiction—even first-person, present-tense
discourse, for instance, despite the counterintuitiveness involved—as long as
the reading contract permits the necessary liberties regarding verisimilitude.
The principal problem, rather, is in the practice of history and its intimate
link with power. Or, stated more pragmatically, the problem lies in what we
think history is and the ways in which we use and consume it.
To this extent, then, while literary textualism has made significant con-
tributions to history, particularly in refining and redefining the theory
of ­history, its limitations need to be examined in more detail. The most
obvious of these limitations is the extreme textualism of deconstructionist
approaches: there is no sense to such textualism in history and, although
fundamental in fuelling the debate on linguistic constructivism, it unneces-
sarily feeds the fact–fiction debate at a time when there is no longer much
need for such overstatement. No either-or opposition regarding history’s
commitments to the truth and its (un)availability is justified as long as dis-
ciplinary standards, authorial intentions, and the writer–reader contract are
also accepted as defining the text—as long, that is, as the significance of
the extra-textual is also recognized. Where—in the context of the linguistic
turn—focus on the text as a strictly constrained and almost hermetic space
was necessary in clearing room for a history that is linguistically figured
and critically distanced from naive views of correspondence and represen-
tation, remaining so fixed on textuality may now be seen as preventing a
fuller understanding of history and its communicative function. Accepting
that this is indeed the present state of the discipline, the fact–fiction debate
is—to mix metaphors—a dead herring. Moving beyond the fact–fiction
issue appears, however, to be remarkably hard now that the early provoca-
tions have done their work—especially as long as we wish to examine the
nature and workings of history writing and historical narratives.
66 Communication and Constraint
The difficulty with moving on appears to result at least in part from a
persistence of beliefs that equate constructivism with unconstrained rela-
tivism. The thinking behind this misapprehension seems to be that if his-
tory is a linguistic construct and not a “true representation,” then there
are no grounds of appeal for judging between interpretations. Despite its
theoretical naiveté, this kind of panic-reaction to the perceived threat of
relativism still appears to quite regularly surface in debates between his-
torians and theorists.9 What is missed by knee-jerk defences of history is
that constructivism—especially in the work of Hayden White—is similarly
aimed at rescuing history against what sometimes seem to be quite over-
whelming theoretical odds. Indeed, it is precisely because of the overpower-
ing force of the arguments against “objectivity” and “method” that such an
elaborate rescue is needed. Denial will not make the problems go away.10
I have suggested already, however, that history has a formal quality that
helps in overcoming this problem of unwitting complicity and association
with ideology. If we focus on what history is as a practice rather than solely
as form, the exaggerated possibility of purely imaginary creation does not
even present itself. Importantly, the fact that historical narratives in them-
selves interrupt the processes of narrative and ideological closure has been
largely ignored by theory of history. Instead, these narratives have been
viewed as completely malleable. While this idea of malleability goes well
with the theorizing it is used to support, it is strongly counterintuitive and
fails to agree with the practice of history writing. After all, as historians
are so well aware, history is not written “freely” but is constrained by pro-
fessional or generic, and hence specifically “historical,” needs; hence my
emphasis on history as a disturbed form of narrative when compared to
(idealized) literary creation.
The disruption history brings to narrative is—naturally—most evident in
the aesthetics of the resulting text, particularly in the limited level of aesthetic
closure that the text can achieve. Yet, as Hayden White has so convincingly
argued, the aesthetic cannot be completely separated from the moral in such
instances. The closure effected by a text is, on the level of form, an aesthetic
one and, on the level of content, a moral one (see White 1987, 23 ff.). In
other words, closure contains an evaluation and a judgement concerning the
significance of the contents described and thus cannot remain exclusively an
aesthetic or formal consideration. (Whether full aestheticization is possible
even in a fictive text is a much more difficult question—be that as it may, the
obvious contextualization required by history’s commitment to truth and
hence also to the needs and values of the present prevents history texts from
withholding judgement at least in this very minimal sense.) As the disrup-
tion in this way broadens to include other considerations (most importantly
the relation of the attitudes introduced by the text to the social and political
positioning of the reader and his or her worldviews), it also opens the way
for communicative means that are no longer defined solely within the epis-
temological (the original focal point of the disruption).
 Communication and Constraint 67
The most obvious innovation to textualist theorizing and its largely
aesthetic considerations involves the introduction of intentionality to the
equation; the history text and its reception cannot be seen as hermetically
sealed but as pointing toward shared artefacts and understandings. In addi-
tion to intending at communication, the history text also intends at real-
ity, at a discovery rather than simply a creation. It is, in other words, in
its disciplinary definition unyieldingly a re-presentation, even if only in
intention and not actual concrete outcomes or even potential opportuni-
ties. Nevertheless, historians need to balance this with an awareness of the
impossibility of simply re-presenting, since the stories history creates are
always linguistic figurations and imaginary constructions, despite the exis-
tence of more idealistic goals. In other words, while the fear that literary
textualism may overwhelm history as an all-sufficing methodology is quite
justified, the dangers of completely forgetting the inescapably textual nature
of historical knowledge must also be kept in mind. Because of the intention
to re-present—and allowing for some flexibility regarding the word–world
translation that history writing relies on—it seems useful to continue to
speak of historical “representation” in order to limit undue exaggerations
regarding its fictionality.
Is the point here that history is inferior to literature? Or that history is
superior to literature? Is the point that the two should not be compared? Are
they like the metaphorical apples and oranges? In a way, yes, I am saying
such comparison is fruitless and should be avoided because it sets history
into a context where its specificity and particular strengths are too readily
ignored. At the same time, showing history as an unsuccessful instance of
narrative creation can be turned around to demonstrate the ways in which
the practice of history commits itself to reality and to social and political
concerns in a productive way. Because history invokes a different kind of
generic contract between authors and readers, it naturally defends an alter-
native position on communication, too. It is this focus on communication
in a different mode that can make history as a distinct genre so significant
for social purposes: historical communication is a sharing of commitments
regarding social reality that allows for—and indeed invites—questions
about the “what should we do?” from readers. In this way, history moves us
from the egocentric “I” of literature to a consideration of a concrete “we”
and specific rather than abstract challenges and values.11
Given that I am reading so much into the contract between the his-
torian and his or her reader, it should not come as a surprise that the
(critical) reintroduction of the author and of authorial intention into the
historical equation is also on the agenda. Emphasis on the communica-
tion between historian and reader requires that we acknowledge the fact
that—as the author—the historian introduces subjective elements into the
story produced.12 Further, there seems little reason to categorically deny
speculation concerning an author’s intentions with regard to meaning (pace
textualism; see especially Holland 2002, for an emphatic reiteration of an
68 Communication and Constraint
anti-intentionalist position). This is not to introduce biographical details or
extra-textual evidence into the reading except to the extent called for by each
particular text, however. (A wonderful example of an analysis that proceeds
on the terms established by the text is to be found in Hayden White’s semi-
otic reading of The Education of Henry Adams; see White 1987, 185–213.)
In other words, it is simply a case of sufficiently historicizing the text to
permit a reading that points at reality (as per the generic commitments of
a history text). The situation here is different from the case of a text that
is fictional by (generic) definition because such texts do not purport to be
about reality in the first place, at least on an extra-textual level (neither is
their writer–reader c­ ontract oriented by any such understanding). To put it
succinctly, the assumption shared by the author and the reader of historical
narratives is that the text points to something beyond itself that can, at least
in theory, be used to endorse some attributions and reject others. The crucial
question, then, is not “Is this true?” but, rather, “Is the text intended to be
truthful?” And, further, “What use does it make of reality?”
In this way, the demands on constructivist or poststructuralist history
writing go far beyond epistemology; the intention to be truthful, albeit
essential as a generic demand, is not enough alone. It needs to be accom-
panied by another kind of intention, already mentioned in relation to the
resistance of narrative authority above and set out by Hayden White in his
sketches of constructivist history writing: history needs to be aware of its
political and ideological commitments (see, for example, White 1978b, 41
and 1987, 72). As history writing is always for something, it needs to con-
sciously decide. And this general faceless “it” implicates, of course, each and
every author/historian, even though this is often left unstated in theory with
textualist emphases. Just like reality, the author too needs to be returned to
the reading process—and with equally great care.
So, with objectivity no longer at the centre of the history debate (thanks
in large part to the linguistic turn and to constructivism), traditional cri-
tiques against presentism also appear too harsh. While this can be seen as a
step toward the fictionalization of history, there is no need to interpret it so
radically. Presentism, at the very least in the unavoidable sense of the impact
of the author’s reality and concerns on the processes and focus of a text,
has come to be seen as a condition of possibility for history writing and no
longer a problem per se. Drawing the line becomes harder when presentism
is understood as the conscious imposition of a politically motivated agenda
or ideology—or even the reading of the past in terms of present views with-
out any attempt at understanding (although disciplinary considerations
should certainly prevent this). Again, however, the historian’s commitment
to studying the past and to shared disciplinary demands comes into play to
alleviate these difficulties: the most the historian can do, after all, is to try
to understand and present or make present the past, as best he or she can.
With the introduction of this caveat, the endless worrying over objectivity
and method is reformulated as a personal concern for both the past and
 Communication and Constraint 69
the present. The constructivist recognition that figuration always involves
imposing judgement on the contents of a representation is brought to the
fore: since the historian passes judgement, attention to ideological aspect
and orientation is crucial. It is in this way that care—both in the sense of
caring and responsibility as well as in the sense of carefulness and atten-
tion to details—has come to define the contemporary (by which I mean the
post-linguistic-turn, constructivist) historian’s approach. At least in theory.
(For some sketches of a history that would be more sensitive to the pre-
sentist challenge and more open to formal innovations, see, for example,
Munslow and Rosenstone 2004.)

The Seepage of Reality into Story

Where textual differences between genres are admittedly hard to pin down,
there is, for history writing as contrasted to literary creation, a definitive
difference in the nature of the communicative act. As noted, this difference
can be defined in terms of the commitments of the writer regarding reality
and hence in terms of the generic commitments governing that act. There
is no doubt that this attitude is shared by readers as long as the intentions
and function (both textual and extra-textual) of the text are clear. Because
of a difference in purpose, however, the specificity of the history text can
also be seen as a seepage of reality into story, resulting from the disruptive
nature of historical (qua historical) materials—as opposed to the incorpora-
tion of reality into story more obviously occurring both in history and liter-
ary fiction. This difference is evident from the text as text. (For an in-depth
discussion of the textual differences between fact and fiction, see Pihlainen
2002a.) The realness of history does not come, then, from the use of histori-
cal material but from the untameability of that material by story. And this
untameability, in turn, stems not from the nature of the material but from
the capacities and limitations of the historical narrative, the conditions gov-
erning its story formation. So, in addition to—and in line with—the product
of history being a disturbed narrative, the process itself is already one of
narrative failure to begin with. That is so, of course, only as long as we are
willing to import our definitions for failure and success from a foreign, and
in many ways quite outmoded, theory of narrative.
Yet, keeping in mind the intentions and commitments of history writing,
it might make better sense to say that this inability to fit materials in in a
remainderless way is a good thing. The aesthetic goals of a historical nar-
rative need not be the same as those of overtly fictional ones. Importantly
though, history does need aesthetic acuity too; as Hayden White has repeat-
edly reminded, without the capacity to move readers and elicit emotional
responses and involvement, narratives are useless for any kind of social or
political efforts.13 And there is no reason—other than persistent misconcep-
tions regarding objectivity—why historical narratives should be somehow
exempt from such responsibility. Sadly, however, readily available literary
70 Communication and Constraint
examples for a history writing that does not aim at aesthetic closure and
coherence are scarce. The examples offered by theorists of history tend to
involve literary work with primarily artistic ambitions (and often, admit-
tedly, also great artistic value and influence) (see, for example, White 1987;
1999; and LaCapra 1982). Although this has been extremely useful in
moving attention as well as the search for models away from the classic
realist novel, it has also furthered the impression of an excessive aestheti-
cization taking place in these theories of history writing. Following this
shift in the theory of history—and the overall, intimately related, rise of
constructivism—emphasis has increasingly been placed on form and aes-
thetic values that hide rather than make use of history’s particularities.
There is an obvious logic to this development: With the quite necessary
separation of history from “truth” and ultimate authority, the effectiveness
of historical narratives has been significantly diminished. At the same time,
hegemonic power structures have continued to function and grow on the
lingering assumption (which they readily propagate) that they have some
kind of access to truth, even if their suasiveness has become more a mat-
ter of established credentials and institutional authority than any kind of
privileged understanding of the way things are. In this context, the form of
historical representation has become a crucial site of contestation. (See also,
for example, Munslow 2003 as well as the essays reprinted in Roberts 2001;
for a detailed discussion of the dominance of history in the humanities, see
Davies 2006, 138–175.) Stated simply: new forms are needed that provide
ways of questioning the received beliefs and values inherent in traditional
ones, particularly within the genre of the realist historical narrative. To be
effective in their emancipatory role, these new forms need to be capable of
impacting readers on an experiential level, making history into something
meaningful and present.
Despite clearly having had this aim in mind, it seems that many construc-
tivist historians and theorists have increasingly turned in the direction of
easily digestible and entertaining forms as the new paradigms for history
writing. Even Hayden White, with his long-standing emphasis on “literary
modernism,” has presented the catchier example of contemporary cinematic
form in Oliver Stone’s controversial 1991 film JFK (White 1999, 68 ff.; also
see Chapter 5 for a more in-depth discussion of the problems relating to this
example, largely the way in which the film continues to create meaning in
relation to, and on the basis of questioning, “the facts”). While often being
more ironic regarding truth, contemporary and entertaining forms largely
continue to operate within the same framework of narrative coherence
and closure that—with its covering up of contradiction and uncertainty,
for instance—also governs more traditional forms. Furthermore, despite its
usefulness in having brought ideals of multiple timelines and perspectives,
intertextual reference, fragmentarity and discontinuity and so on, to the
history debate, even literary modernism appears limited as an exemplar for
contemporary experimental history writing; its conventions and aesthetic
 Communication and Constraint 71
regarding truth and fictionality remain too remote from the requirements
and nature of history and historical scholarship. Ultimately, it achieves its
effectiveness through what are still quite particular and controlled aesthetic
means, the smooth translation of which into history writing is impossible
(as it is into other discourses with equivalent generic commitments and
entailments regarding reality and truthfulness—into, that is, other similarly
disturbed discourses).
In The Distinction of Fiction, Dorrit Cohn describes her intention as
being “to show that fictional narrative is unique in its potential for craft-
ing a self-enclosed universe ruled by formal patterns that are ruled out in
all other orders of discourse” (Cohn 1999, vii). As I see it—and as I hope
to already have suggested so far—this “ruling out,” at least in the case of
history, comes about specifically through the commitment to openness and
simultaneous aspiration to inclusiveness of the history text. In a manner
of speaking never complete, always open to reality, the ideal history text
shuns the formal patterns that aim at closure, that permit thinking satis-
factorily of a text as “self-enclosed.” Completeness—in this sense of clo-
sure and fulfillment—is a characteristic of aesthetic creations that have
been crafted freely, without the kind of disruption entailed by non-literary
generic commitments.
Granting disruption, uncertainty and ambiguity a more prominent place
in the aesthetics of the historical narrative might thus help solve some of the
contradictions resulting from its disturbed nature. This would involve rec-
ognizing, first, that history writing is not a second-rate literature but a genre
with distinct—and, as noted above, in many ways very distant—needs and
abilities. It also requires a further recognition: the need to impose meaning
on the limitlessness of (past) reality by selection and exclusion results, in
part, from the nature of narrative but also, more fundamentally, from our
general desire to understand and appropriate. Seeing narrative explanation
as a crucial cognitive tool makes the parallels between our difficulties with
understanding the past and understanding the present more obvious. Where
historical narrative is an imposition, it also functions as an explanation.14
Similarly, we provide explanations for our experiences by imposing mean-
ing on them, attributing more importance to some events than to others
(establishing some as beginnings, ends and so on), denying contradictions
and filling in blanks in order to dismiss uncertainty and cover up confusion.
Indeed, the valorization of limitless meaning and uncertainty would lead
to an inability to function; if we were to focus primarily on discrepancies
and discontinuities in our everyday lives, we would have no organizing and
motivating structures to our actions. (Such structures being essential practi-
cally, regardless of our level of awareness concerning their provisionality
and constructedness.)
What this comparison highlights is that the process of narrative construc-
tion assumes the burden of sense-making from the experiencing subject,
hence shifting it to the author. Historians are the ones who produce the
72 Communication and Constraint
story for the reader although—for the actualization of an experiential rela-
tion to the past—sense-making, and the related experience of confusion or
bewilderment, should rather be the bailiwick of the reader. Why so, though?
Surely we have more effective and impacting experiences when reading great
literature or viewing a particularly moving film, for example.
Firstly, this question is based on a misunderstanding regarding the ­central
role(s) of experience in the discussion: encountering the past experientially
should at least parallel the experiencing of the present. Thus, it needs to
be based on subjective attributions of meaning. In other words, we are
not primarily after strong emotional impact (a literary or otherwise aes-
thetic “experience” or experientiality), but rather lived experience resulting
from personal ways of overcoming confusion and coming to terms with
complexity.
Secondly, there is the ethical-political/ideological aspect: when explana-
tions do not belong to experience—when they are not “owned”—they are
far too easily oppressive, particularly those that relate to self-understanding,
of course. As Richard Rorty so often reminded, imposed redescription and
objectification are the ultimate cruelties.15 While most historical explana-
tion does not relate directly to living people’s experiences of identity—and
thus is not “cruel” in quite this way—the very same worry regarding impo-
sition underlies the general poststructuralist avoidance and denial of rep-
resentation and has consequences for an ethically aware history. Not only
“grand narratives,” but all descriptions are oppressive in the unavoidable
reduction and naming they perform, hence the general “poststructuralist
ethic” of refusing representation (for more on this, see, for example, May
1995, passim, especially 13; also see Chapter 3).
So, in addition to limiting the kind of ideological colonization that coher-
ent narratives perform, emphasizing complexity and confusion also offers
opportunities for experientiality in a different mode. Having greater per-
sonal involvement in meaning-construction and sense-making regarding the
past increases the reader’s responsibility for interpretation and worldviews.
Correspondingly, the reality of the past is experienced more concretely when
its appropriation is more in line with everyday experiences of dealing with
reality; this results in a diminishing of viewing distance and release of autho-
rial control, much as with, for example, televisual presentations of world
events as opposed to newspaper reportage.16
As we cannot all be historians, the brunt of the work of interpreting
the past remains with the author. Yet, because history writing is so differ-
ent from literary writing in its commitments, the field of meanings is, in
theory, equally open for the reader, and bringing to bear knowledge from
outside the single text is a valid—and indeed desirable—move in the process
of meaning-making involved. Neither the history text nor the author can
legitimately deny associations made by the reader on the basis of external
reference and knowledge. In this, the differences in communicative process
and intention to literature are most obvious. Mieke Bal cites a moment
 Communication and Constraint 73
from Karen Harper’s Black Orchid (1996) that can be used to illustrate
this. When the main character’s grandmother asks her for “the name of
that gray-haired boy who’s president right now,” the text already suggests
a move to the extra-textual, immediately confirming it with the reply and
name “Bill Clinton.” If the text otherwise agrees with our understanding of
a real-world historical context, there is hardly any need for the explicit con-
firmation of this kind of “communal” knowledge, as Bal indeed points out
(see Bal 1997, 119).17 If the text gives a different answer, however, we—as
readers of fiction—are obligated to go along with it and construct that
particular world a little differently. Thus, while extra-textual knowledge is
always needed in the case of literature too, its use has a different limit there:
the suspension of disbelief that characterizes the literary reading contract
entails renouncing knowledge that is contradictory (or at least disruptive)
to what is true in the particular world described.18 In history, however, our
reading contract is already firmly oriented toward confusion and disruption
in that it relentlessly calls upon us to question the accounts with which we
are presented.19

Challenging the Mode of History

Even extreme “antinarrative nonstories”—as Hayden White (1999, 81)
calls the kinds of experimental forms he has urged historians to adopt—do
not seem to provide a solution to the problems of authority and form. They
still mostly rely on an ideal of coherence and unifying meaning. Whether
such forms of writing are ultimately any less “narrative” than history also
presents a difficult issue. Certainly most history texts are not narratives
in more complex and systematic meanings of the term: they employ, for
instance, most often no focalization, have no characters to speak of, focus
on collectives rather than individuals and so on and so forth.20 And this
can be enough to subject them to the critique of failed narratives as long
as the literary vantage point is given precedence. At the same time, “anti-
narrative nonstories” as they appear within postmodern literary prose do
exhibit the kinds of processes of meaning-making associated with narra-
tive by literary analysis. At least this can be said of most of them, with the
exception of extremes like Samuel Beckett’s experimental texts from the
late 1960s—most obviously “Ping” (1967) and “Lessness” (1970)—and
William Burroughs-style cut-ups (as well as, indeed, any other work rely-
ing as heavily on aleatory techniques). And even those, although perhaps
lacking intentional processes of narrative construction, have come about
within or in conjunction with a relatively systematic structure of interrelated
meanings. Whether they would qualify as “good art” in terms of aesthetic
qualities alone is another matter. Nonetheless, given their generic intentions
and context, they are expressly statements concerning the state of the art
and are thus read as such. Furthermore, as a result of belonging to the field
of “literature,” they are certainly read as having meaning—and, specifically
74 Communication and Constraint
because of their ambiguity yet simultaneous appeal to a reading contract
promising meaning, they are read even more closely for that meaning (and,
in fact, for narrative coherence)—by many, if not even most, readers. This
demand for meaning is well summarized by Mark Twain’s famous quip:
“It is no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction, after all, has to
make sense.”
The generic conviction that literary texts necessarily have a form and
coherence that bestow structural meaning highlights another problem of
extreme textualism. Nothing, not even the least interesting typescript pro-
duced by one of the typing monkeys of the classic thought experiment (one
of the ones not lucky enough to have replicated the exact text of Hamlet,
for example), is “random” in the misunderstood sense of exhibiting no pat-
terns to be “discovered”—simply, of course, because patterns are as much a
part of interpretation as they are of text. So, understandably, any text that
consists of words or sentences rather than random arrangements of letters
(which the vast majority of the monkey typescripts presumably would be),
let alone any kind of narrative, lends itself quite easily to interpretation by a
reader with enough conviction, patience and analytic skills. “Hidden mean-
ings” are, after all, easily found when they are specified in no way other
than retrospectively by the imaginative abilities of the interpreter. (And if
this is not immediately intuitively obvious, think of the intrigues that an
overly eager interpreter can inventively read into their partner’s comments
in a romantic relationship, for example.) Although this might suggest that
literary analysis is a paranoid activity, my intention is in no way to belittle
it. The point I wish to make, rather, is that textual analysis has its place but
that, when it overreaches itself, as in some of the uncritical uses in history,
undue importance can also be attributed to it. It is not, even if it might
so often appear to be, a universal interpretive method since it only works
sensibly with texts that are sufficiently overdetermined in their processes of
meaning-making—with, in other words, artistic texts whose generic com-
mitments permit meaning-making with no necessary external point of refer-
ence; and, by extension, no limit or point of rupture to their significatory
systems.
At the same time, because a history text is crafted, because, in other
words, it is an artefact, meaningful patterns do begin to permeate the whole
as the writer’s process creates coherence between details. Readers should
not, then, be paranoid in the opposite direction either, shirking away unnec-
essarily from all patterns offered by the text. They should, however, be very
aware of the tendency of both writers and readers to construct literary pat-
terns and—armed with this knowledge—remember that these patterns often
have very little to do with the past and more with (authorial) intention and
chance.21
In this situation, discerning between randomness and chaos on one
hand, and meaningful oversaturation and complexity on the other, pres-
ents a fine-grained (if not indeed impossible) challenge. The important
 Communication and Constraint 75
thing to remember is that, although “complexity” implies a solution, no
inherent solution is present in the past as raw material.22 Whatever stories
present themselves are imposed by interpretation. Thus, where complex-
ity is used to represent reality—and, literally, to make it present again (in
what is understandably still a very limited way because of the unavoid-
able simplification involved, not to mention the restrictions imposed by all
media)—the excess of meaning brought forth naturally also causes confu-
sion as well as makes strange and better visible whatever representational
strategies still remain.
This is where the materiality of historical reference is particularly signifi-
cant: after all, this materiality is what causes the rupture in the aesthetics
(the imaginary) of the historical narrative at both ends or interfaces of the
communication. Where the text produced is disturbed in its processes of
narrative construction and meaning-making, the presence of these disruptive
materials affects reading in a parallel way: readers are (ideally) faced with
materials that equally prevent appropriation and the imposition of closure.
Here, the textual markers emphasizing the fictionality of a text (and thus
leading to aesthetic coherence and closure) are exchanged for the disruptive
materiality of historical reference. And the more the complexity of the past
(its reality) is valorized by the author—and the more that this kind of lived
experience is favoured over imposed emotive experientiality—the more this
complexity presents itself in the text as indeterminacy as opposed to closure
and narrative fulfillment. By overcoding the representation with referential
elements, for example, the reader might be pushed beyond habitual lim-
its. While this is something few historians have attempted, the examples of
Claude Lanzmann’s documentary film Shoah from 1985 (with its chosen
representational strategy of utilizing sheer mass for denying appropriation
and closure) and the more easily approachable Fiction in the Archives (1988)
by Natalie Zemon Davis (where sources themselves seem to overpower the
account) can demonstrate its effectiveness. In this fashion, the reading can
become complicated beyond the explanatory capacities of the text, shifting
responsibility for interpretation and meaning-making to the reader—all the
more highlighting the nature of the past as something ultimately beyond
appropriation.
To say that literary writing is emancipatory and history writing is not
appears to thus be an untenable exaggeration. The emphasis placed by crit-
ics of history on the tendency of history writing to stick to conventional
forms such as the nineteenth-century realist novel (as so often noted by
Hayden White) as well as to the affinity of such forms with conservative
political and social attitudes is, after all, intended as instructive: once we
become aware of these tendencies and connections we can more easily resist
their ideological sway and perhaps even change our practices. The attention
given by theory of history to “alternative” and experimental writing shows
that this dimension of resistance has at least been recognized; indeed, this
aspect becomes especially clear when the importance given to these new
76 Communication and Constraint
forms in some of the theory discussions is compared to their (still) relative
rarity within institutionally sanctioned history writing.23
The desire to experience the past, to make it present in experiential terms,
that often seems to underlie historical research and writing finds a natural
channel in relatively coherent and emotionally appealing stories. That is, the
desire to experience the past is manifest in stories which explain as well as
evoke. These feed into what I see as a phenomenological yearning, shared
by many historians and readers, for “direct access” to the past. Despite
its paradoxical nature, this yearning—the desire for subjective experience
of the world, even though that world is already past and hence ultimately
unavailable—is, I suspect, what continues to fuel also the narrative debate.24
A further paradox here is, of course, that the kinds of literary and cinematic
forms, for instance, that provide a feeling of direct experience and inspire
emotional involvement, do so by means of a creation of distance; they pro-
duce their (often cathartic) effects through carefully crafted strategies directed
at aesthetic closure and resolution. In addition to being “external” to the
material it is imposed on, the feeling of things “making sense”—perhaps
“after all” or “despite everything”—is thus quite calculated. Yet it is not the
fact that this feeling is consciously constructed that should hold our attention
(after all, understanding is often equally tentative and artificial in our per-
sonal interpretations of “directly” experienced reality). Rather, the interesting
point is that the move from carefully controlled formal coherence to inten-
tionally evoked confusion produces a shift of emphasis regarding responsi-
bility for meaning-making from the author to the reader. Despite the shift
in framing and scope involved, it also produces a relinquishment of author-
ity vis-à-vis beliefs and values more broadly. By adopting forms that aim at
confusion and (uncontrolled) experience, historians may be able to provide
histories that better put the reader “in touch with” the past (for more on the
particular strategies such forms might utilize, see Chapter 6; also see Pihlainen
2002b). The drawback, however, is that such histories would perhaps not give
the kind of satisfaction offered by more entertaining (and controlling) forms,
and neither would they provide straightforward interpretations of the past.
Significance would have to be introduced by the consumer.
In effect, the adoption of such forms would surely justify labelling his-
tory as “bad literature” and “bad entertainment” whenever the comparison
is to be made. But, as noted, this comparison only comes up as long as the
generic specificity of history is not recognized—and, to be fair, when com-
parisons are made, even histories that aim to be literary in their form come
under the same verdict. Whenever history is evaluated by literary standards,
it can only be second best. This is not to say that shortcomings in literary
qualities cannot be compensated for to a great extent (as indeed they have
been in different ways by experimental histories). It is hard to see how the
difficulty could be completely overcome, however.
My overall concern is that inventive literary forms are not the direction
in which to take history any longer. The main benefits to be had involve
 Communication and Constraint 77
the establishment of history writing as a figurative and subjectively ordered
activity, views that should no longer require justification. Furthermore, pur-
suing such views easily leads to a deadlock regarding the less fruitful ques-
tion “Fact or fiction?” For me, truth (or the commitment to it) translates
best in history as an emphasis on the disruptive materiality of reference. In
this way, reality, when not excessively fictionalized, can result in an experi-
ence of the real despite the epistemological impossibilities and mediation
involved. While there is a shift from the reality of the past to the experience
of the reader, there is also an effort to retain the texture of the original and
to minimize control and authority. The question that needs to be asked,
then, concerns what it is we want to see with history. A metaphor from a
literary text, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980, 189), may help
further clarify this point:

Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past,
the more concrete and plausible it seems—but as you approach the
present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose your-
self in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually
moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the
screen. Gradually the stars’ faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny
details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves—or rather,
it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality . . .

For history as re-presentation as opposed to arbitrary summary, viewing

from the back row seems unfulfilling and leads to the kinds of ideological
and interpretive difficulties that have been the object of so much discussion.
So, while the exact grain of historical details and past lived experiences
involving complexity and confusion cannot be accessed or reproduced, fore-
grounding the granularity and disjointedness of experience seems prefer-
able to imaginary glossing. This would most likely help also in producing
a different kind of emphasis in the purpose of history. It would certainly
go a long way in shifting authorization—and hence responsibility—to the
individual reader. And, with this, it might even partially satisfy (or in many
cases dispel) phenomenological yearnings regarding the past.
So, insisting that the mode of communication embraced by history
remains firmly tied to reality (at both ends of the communicative act), what
can we learn from constructivism and the whole fact–fiction debate in this
redefined context? How is a constructivist approach to history positioned
with regard to the social and the textual, to the (present and future) real
and the imaginary? It seems to me that, in the end, what we are offered is
simply the existential realization that we are all responsible for what goes on
in the world and that ignorance of injustices is not a valid defence. Although
history is undeniably tied to existing and “real” situations, this provides
no excuse for inaction or fatalism. Social conditions, for example, are not
immutable and history can provide insights for promoting change as easily
78 Communication and Constraint
as continuity. In this way, the imagination need not be denied by emphasiz-
ing history’s commitment to truth, but only be more directly harnessed to
practical purposes. Importantly, the particular use we put the imagination
to, reflected in our moments of decision, is not limited by the past or even
by our understandings of it.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2009.
“On history as communication and constraint.” Ideas in History 4 (2):
63–90. Museum Tusculanum Press.

Notes
1. The same can be said of, for instance, Roland Barthes, Paul Ricoeur, Louis
Mink, Dominick LaCapra or Hans Kellner, all of whom have significantly influ-
enced the current narrative theory of history discussion and occupy a more or
less similar (narrative) constructivist position. One of the best general introduc-
tions to this topic is, to me, still Alun Munslow’s The New History (2003).
2. The epistemological scepticism that constructivism rests on is of needs hostile to
this still dominant objectivist/realist attitude. In addition to Munslow’s already-
mentioned books (especially Munslow 2003; 2007), good introductions to the
history and narrative debate (or the fact–fiction debate) are provided in Roberts
(2001) and Jenkins (1997).
3. For a detailed analysis of the consequences of this commitment on the form of
historical narratives, see Pihlainen (2002a). Regarding reception, see Pia Ahl-
bäck (2007), who has tackled the much-neglected dimension of the reader and
reading practices in constructivist theorizing of history in detail. Against more
literary studies oriented readings, the increasingly popular desire to move the
debates “beyond” a textualist focus has been introduced by Gabrielle Spiegel in
terms of an “after” to the linguistic turn: see Spiegel (2005, especially 22–26).
An even more radical attempt to reorient the debate is provided by Martin
Davies in Historics (2006), in which he attempts to shift attention from a per-
ceived focus on what history is to what it does. In many ways remaining closer
to narrative theory of history, Jörn Rüsen’s (1987) typology of historical nar-
ratives on the basis of their relation to social identities and dominant political
systems can also be seen as helpful in broadening the present debate.
4. Thomas Pavel (2003) provides a useful discussion of the generic commitments
and cultural tasks of various genres. For another look at the question of history
as communication, see Marek Tamm (2014) on the “truth pact” that exists
among historians as well as between them and their readers.
5. Remember from the previous chapter that much of the appeal of history can be
attributed to its being “real” and to its effectiveness in domesticating opposi-
tion. As White puts this: “The evasion of the implications of the fictive nature
of historical narrative is in part a consequence of the utility of the concept ‘his-
tory’ for the definition of other types of discourse. . . . ‘history’ can be set
over against ‘literature’ by virtue of its interest in the ‘actual’ rather than the
 Communication and Constraint 79
‘possible,’ which is supposedly the object of representation of literary works”
(White 1978b, 89). See also Davies (2006) and Munslow (2003).
6. See Keith Jenkins, who argues that we might as well “forget history and the past
and live amidst the ample and agreeable imaginaries provided by postmodern-
type theorists” (Jenkins 1999a, 10; see also his other formulations of this senti-
ment in, for example, Jenkins 2009, 107 and 234). I discuss the usefulness of
history as such an imaginary for negotiating the world more in the next chapter.
7. On history as oppressive, see, for example, Davies (2006, 134 ff.). The Aristote-
lian conception of poetry as an expression of the universal can be seen to inform
the tradition of viewing literature more generally as expressive of possibility
over actuality. For a discussion of more direct ways in which literature can
open up imaginative possibilities and affect social conditions, see, for example,
Nussbaum (1995). This potential is perhaps nowhere as clear as in the affinity
between Latin American literature and revolutionary social change.
8. While there is a temptation to take this as a given in the case of history ­writing—
where authority is implied much more forcefully by the text as well as strength-
ened by political and institutional demands and setting—I would agree with
Dorrit Cohn that the case of the novel is not as straightforward. For Cohn’s
critique of equating ideological or moral normativity with authorial narration
and focalization, see Cohn (1999, 177 ff.).
9. Discussions involving linguistic figuration seem to always return to binary
oppositions of history or narrative, fact or fiction, and so on, as evidenced by
the repeated re-opening of these issues. A now-classic example is to be found
in the Arthur Marwick-Hayden White debate in the Journal of Contemporary
History (1995–1996, issues 30 [1], 30 [2] and 31 [1]).
10. White’s long-term emphasis on finding emotionally moving forms of presenta-
tion can to me be best understood in terms of a desire to re-establish history as
meaningful after the loss of authority brought on by constructivist theorizing.
He only really abandons this vision for history in The Practical Past (White
2014b). For more on his desire to rescue history, see the next chapter.
11. This is a complicated issue, of course, and quite opposite views have also been
convincingly argued for. Think especially of Martha Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice
(1995, 10); for her: “The novel determinedly introduces its reader to that which
is in a way common and close at hand—but which is often, in its significant
strangeness, the object of profound ignorance and emotional refusal.” In simi-
lar vein, Dominick LaCapra argues that the literary, “worklike” text “makes a
difference—one that engages the reader in recreative dialogue with the text and
the problems it raises” (LaCapra 1982, 53). Fiction as a means to deeper (often
empathic) understanding should certainly not be overlooked. For now, however,
my interest is in the way this aspect has already been exaggerated in the con-
structivist theorizing of history.
12. For the sake of convenience, I refrain from discussing the narrator here, assum-
ing, rather, that the distinction between author and narrator largely collapses
in history writing (as defined by its current generic commitments). See, for
example, Cohn (1999, 86, 123 ff.). Although this is in no way a simple issue,
some things can be said with, to me, reasonable certainty: the historical narrator
(who by convention, if not, I think, necessarily, corresponds with the author) is
reliable by generic definition; focalization is clearly signalled when it does not
correspond with the viewpoint of the author/narrator and, even then, it seems
80 Communication and Constraint
that focalization can be explained equally well in terms of representational
frameworks alone—that is, the historian always explicitly refers the reader to
another source/point of view; possible frameworks are quite limited—there is,
for instance, no need to separate between generic and existential entailments (by
the latter, I mean the things that are possible in the world described), since these
categories collapse as a result of the text’s commitments in much the same way
as the author/narrator distinction. For these reasons at least, importing struc-
turalist text analysis to history has proven to be somewhat confusing, as well
as sometimes quite uninteresting. (Cf. Cohn 1999, 109–131; for an excellent
discussion of focalization in fiction, see Ronen 1994, 179–196.)
13. Let me quote White on this important point again: “The best counter to a nar-
rative that is supposed to have misused historical memory is a better narrative,
by which I mean a narrative, not with more historical facts, but a narrative with
greater artistic integrity and poetic force of meaning” (White 2005b, 336). See
also, for example, White (1999, 82). White’s (2014b) turn to the practical past
takes this to the extreme.
14. For a detailed discussion of impositionalism, see Norman (1991); also reprinted
in Roberts (2001, 181–196).
15. See, for example, Rorty (1989, 89): “the best way to cause people long-lasting
pain is to humiliate them by making the things that seemed most important to
them look futile, obsolete and powerless.”
16. White notes this with reference to the television news coverage of the Chal-
lenger explosion: “The networks played the tapes of the Challenger explosion
over and over. . . . It appeared impossible to tell any single authoritative story
about what really happened.” (White 1999, 73) A more detailed examination
of disruptive strategies relying on history’s unique commitments can be found in
the next chapter. I also discuss White’s example of the Challenger explosion in
more detail there.
17. Bal (1997, 119) makes the further point, that: “As a matter of fact, the only
moments that one realizes that some information is not ‘in’ the text are pre-
cisely, when one fails to make a connection by lack of information.”
18. See, for example, Ruth Ronen (1994, 176), who, very much to the point, claims
that “fictional worlds [are] self-sufficient: no unexpected discovery of facts
about a real-historical Hamlet can change the fictional facts established regard-
ing that character’s self with the help of an authoritative textual source.”
19. Ideally of course, we should be able to easily envision (and shift to) a form of his-
torical representation that also makes use of fictional techniques—like internal
focalization for example—if only we reorient the generic contract in a matching
way. The feasibility of such transformation in reading practices and reception
conventions is clearly shown by the example of biographies written in the first
person, for instance. So, yes, the techniques of literary modernism can continue
to offer ideas for experimental history but, in thinking these, the aspects of aes-
thetic creation of emotive experience and impact and the production of a lived
experience (of confusion, for example) need to be clearly distinguished.
20. Although the issue of focalization is a contested one, it can be said that there is—
strictly speaking—no distinct narrator “who sees” present in the traditional his-
tory text, only authorial or “zero” focalization. See, for example, Cohn (1999,
124) and Ankersmit (1983, 23–25). Cf. Bal (1997, 19–20, 142 ff.) and Munslow
(2007, 47 ff.), who relies on a much more general understanding of the term.
 Communication and Constraint 81
  On the broader question of what counts as narrative, my choice is to opt for
the most inclusive interpretation. I would thus disagree with critics who take
the lack of a narrowly defined narrative structure and identifying features to
signify that history, even in its conventional form, is not fundamentally a nar-
rative pursuit. See, for example, Kuukkanen (2015); compare his position with
Kellner’s (2013b) elaboration on the intimate ties between narrative, rhetoric
and argumentation.
21. One should not, then, become too sceptical about the emergence of patterns:
“true” significance has a way of appearing in the reading too. Just as in real life
interpretation, meaningful gaps in narrative become more meaningful by going
unremarked, less meaningful ones less so, for example. And conversely, as Mieke
Bal notes: “The more banal the event, the less striking [its] repetition” (Bal 1997,
112; although Bal is careful to note that hers is only a generalization). Here,
Hayden White’s often overlooked essay on Henry Adams’ autobiography pro-
vides a wonderful outline of the relations of the structural and extra-textual in
historical interpretation. With reference to the 20-year gap in Adams’ account, he
writes: “The textual fact is the gap in the chronicle of the narrative. The reasons
for or causes of this gap we can only speculate about. But the textual function of
the gap is clear enough. As message, it reinforces the thesis of the emptiness of life
that Adams adumbrates in the figure of the mannikin throughout the book. . . .
to explain or interpret a rupture in a text by referring to a rupture in the author’s
psyche is merely to double the problem and to pass off this doubling operation as
a solution to it” (White 1987, 205). Further, as he states in summary: “As for the
text-context problem . . . I have suggested that this problem becomes resolvable
from the semiological perspective to the extent that what conventional historians
call the context is already in the text in the specific modalities of code shifting by
which . . . discourse produces its meanings” (White 1987, 212).
22. As Jenkins (1995, 20) reminds: “To see the content of the past . . . as if it were a
series of stories . . . is . . . a piece of ‘fiction,’ caused by mistaking the narrative
form in which historians construct and communicate their knowledge of the past
as actually being the past’s own.” For a brief discussion of the view that stories
do exist in the past itself as originally presented by Alisdair MacIntyre, see, for
example, Paul Ricoeur (1992, 158 ff.). See also Hyvärinen (2006), for a concise
overview of the broader debate concerning narrative and self-understanding.
23. It is also true, as Alun Munslow (2007, 14) notes, that “it often seems that ‘new
approaches’ to the past are now as important as ‘the past.’” The seeming contra-
diction between these positions relates centrally to my discussion in the previous
chapter: while formal innovations are still fairly rare in mainstream history, as I
claim here, these “new” approaches have indeed been very important in changing
the acceptable content of histories—but they have also been successfully co-opted.
24. This same yearning arguably pervades the very visible debate on “presence” in
the October 2006 theme issue of History and Theory as well as all the ensuing
discussions. It is also clearly evident in, for example, Ankersmit’s idea of the
“sublimity of historical experience” based on loss and recovery; see Ankersmit
(2005, 9). For further discussion of the historian’s phenomenological yearning,
see the next chapter.
5 History in the World

Although it is not an immediately obvious aspect of Hayden White’s oeu-

vre, much of his thinking seems to be based on a particular conception of
the reader of histories. The reader is not conceived of as a passive creature,
simply the recipient of the historian’s authoritative messages as so often is
the case. Nor is the reader to be ignored by the historian. Rather, the reader
is active to such an extent that history writing needs to be reformulated to
suit this new readership. According to this interpretation of White, readers
are actively involved in a process of self-creation, to which end they use his-
tory. In other words, he holds (what I take to be) a Sartrean view of readers
as individuals who are engaged with the world and embrace and pursue
beliefs and goals of their own, even when under the influence of a history
text. While attributing such views to White is admittedly a projection from
implicit assumptions underlying his theories, it is further supported by the
political positions he oftentimes appears to occupy.
White’s long-standing faith in readers as capable of irony also informs
his demand for new forms of history writing. Alternatives are needed not
so much because the profession needs to change and perpetuate itself, but
because the demands of the society in which it is located (as well as the
preferences of the individual consumers of academic history) reveal it to be
an increasingly redundant practice in its conventional form. To arrive at a
better understanding of White’s overall conception of the role of history in
the world, his epistemological scepticism needs to be interpreted in these
terms, too.
To this end, the main task of this chapter is to examine what White’s
take on history writing means in terms of readers. In other words, what
White says—as well as why he says it and what I think he might addi-
tionally say—about reading and history. To me, his central argument can
be summarized as saying that all choices of narrative structuring—all
emplotments—are based on moral and aesthetic preferences and, further,
that they also serve in conveying those preferences. This, again, to me,
amounts to saying that historical accounts impose their presuppositions
on the reader through means of the narrative. They are thus prime vehi-
cles for perpetuating received ideologies. For such ideological transfer to
 History in the World 83
work, there has to be some collusion between writers and readers of these
accounts; involvement in the reading process necessitates that the reader
be open and largely accepts the world presented by the text. In this sense,
readers are vulnerable to points of view they might not even consider under
different circumstances—in both good and bad. But how exactly are readers
engaged by history?
Early on, in Tropics of Discourse, White writes (read: “Hayden says . . .”1):

[I]nsofar as we are concerned with structures of consciousness, we are

acquainted with those structures only as they are manifested in dis-
course. Consciousness in its active, creative aspects . . . is most directly
apprehendable in discourse and, moreover, in discourse guided by for-
mulable intentions, goals, or aims of understanding.
(White 1978b, 20)

While the historian strives to understand the past, this effort as well as the
ideology informing it is inscribed onto the historical narrative created in
the process. In parallel, the goal of understanding is an equally essential
attitude in the reception of such linguistic figurations. Hence—and this
is so particularly for attempts at empathic understanding—it is also the
mechanism by which (again, in good and bad) we, as readers, become con-
vinced, or at least moved. (After all, that is the chief function of narration
and narrative understanding.) But there is always resistance and inertia
against being convinced too. Like the creation of acceptance and open-
ness, this resistance appears on two levels: those of content and form. In
history texts, as opposed to literary ones, openness and the transmission
of belief have long been dependent on the ideas of truth and reference.
Conventionally, historical narratives have not entailed the kind of suspen-
sion of disbelief familiar from literary readings and hence resistance on the
level of content has been simple following an epistemological route, not
merely one of self-coherency or moral acceptability, for instance.
With narrative constructivism, both resistance and affirmation have
become more difficult to justify, however. Truth and referentiality are argu-
ably no longer the primary (or even very reliable) working criteria. Rather,
epistemological scepticism has become the standard attitude even for many
consumers of history. White writes:

Every mimetic text can be shown to have left something out of the
description of its object or to have put something into it that is ines-
sential to what some reader, with more or less authority, will regard as
an adequate description.
(White 1978b, 3)

While this sums up White’s general argument that interpretations and rep-
resentations are always constructs with a purpose, and hence impositions
84 History in the World
on—in the case of historical representation—the “raw material” of history,
it does more: it already introduces the fact that the adequacy of a repre-
sentation is not an epistemological problem, or even one to be solved by
professional consensus, but rather an ethical-political issue, to be assessed
from a subjective standpoint from which “authority” makes a very different
kind of sense. Authority, here, is no longer something outside the moment,
something imposed on agency by structures and conventions or even by the
text; authority becomes individual choice.
This participation of the reader in meaning-making is clearly implied by
White’s constructivist position. Yet, needless to say, it is something that has
largely been clouded by the discussions of truth, objectivity, relativism and
the ultimate meaning (or loss of it) of historical research, which his work
has set off among historians. Indeed, the validity of the move from epis-
temological scepticism to moral responsibility has been the issue that has
drawn the most criticism—as has, of course, been the case with all argu-
ments that attempt to introduce and then subsequently, even if only prag-
matically, to moderate relativism. At the same time, it is here that White is at
his most Sartrean.2 (Might this resemblance, his affinity with existentialism,
also partly explain the ferocity of the opposition?) Despite objections and
questioning, the argument that we can assume responsibility only once we
refuse it on the level of institutionalized meaning—through refusing episte-
mological “truth” and the ideal of objectivity in history—makes good sense
from a pragmatic point of view, however.
Given the loss of epistemological validation on the level of narrative,
every representation is thus also likely to be inadequate from some per-
spective. And this is particularly so for history, which, as Keith Jenkins has
nicely summarized, is “a dirty discourse, affected by suasive desires, always
for someone or something even when it’s allegedly just for itself” (Jenkins
2009, 298). With this introduction of epistemological uncertainty to histori-
cal representation, the reader is drawn into responsibility; the author (the
historian hiding behind a veil of objectivity) is no longer sole authority, but
rather, authorship and responsibility are shared in the process of representa-
tion and interpretation. (For more specifically on authorship in history, see
Munslow 2007.) Authority is located in the communicative space opened
up by the narrative. Further, the historical narrative—just as the literary
one—creates a space that contains entailments for all participants—albeit
that these entailments are quite different in different genres.
In this context, history writing, like literature, can be better viewed as a
matter of communication, not fact-finding. It can be examined as a process
of understanding others, not about understanding “truth.” Looked at in
this way, we can see why White has also had such an influence within liter-
ary studies. His approach tackles history writing not only on the level of
narrative theory simpliciter, but also allows for the investigation of narra-
tive communication—taking into account (if not always explicitly discuss-
ing) the context of reading as much as the context and theory of production.
 History in the World 85
Mindful that history is also consumed, then, he appears aware of the sensi-
bilities of readers and assumes historical reading (or, more broadly, the con-
sumption of information and “infotainment”) to have undergone changes
in parallel with any “postmodern” or other turn in manner of writing and
in the epistemic commitments involved. For him, history and conceivable
changes in historical narration are not simply a product of historians aiming
to be literary, but represent the engagement of historians in a world where
history can still have meaning outside the academic playing field.
Throughout most of his work, White appears to view history as (ideally)
being for people in the real world, not only for those few already completely
absorbed by it through their occupation. For this reason alone, it is clear
why he has focused on issues of power and ideology. It is in this focus,
really, that we can see him as a poststructuralist. Let me qualify this, though:
White has remarked on a number of occasions that he does not hanker after
revolution.3 Change, for him, should come from within existing structures.
To me, this is the key to explaining White’s long-standing insistence on the
potential usefulness of history.4
As a consequence of his commitment to the real world and to concrete
people in concrete conditions (and hence also to history “in the world”),
White’s constructivist interventions should not be judged to be relativist in
every sense, or as destroying history, as some more historically minded crit-
ics have claimed. This very pragmatic commitment holds his epistemological
irony in check, justifying a defence of history writing as a practice. Simply
put: If writing about the past is what historians continue to do, theorists
need to consider ways in which they can do it better. When viewed in the
context of White’s long-term efforts to save history writing as a genre in its
own right, his resolve in pointing out the role of history as ideological and
the practices of historians as formed around the imposition of judgements
and closure should not be read as suggesting that there are no constraints on
interpretation or, indeed, on the kind of history writing he advocates. That
would be to crassly misconceive his purpose. When his focus is on history
(as opposed to the practical past), White is, most importantly, a historians’
theorist.

“. . . The Contract Between Historian and

Reader Has Changed . . .”
In my reading, White’s concern has been with defending history from extinc-
tion by better revealing the conditions of its production. Yet, this has been
received as, at minimum, a paradoxical and self-defeating move; for the
critics, White’s aim has been to tear history down. It would be naive, how-
ever, to suppose that the challenge of epistemological uncertainty, perspec-
tivism or antifoundationalism—whatever we choose call it—would have
remained outside the history profession if White had not been the one to
bring it so forcefully to historians’ attention. (Which is not to say that it
86 History in the World
could have been done as elegantly by anyone else. As Keith Jenkins empha-
sizes in his essay “‘Nobody does it better’: Radical History and Hayden
White” [reprinted in Jenkins 2009], no-one does it better.) Epistemological
uncertainty is, after all, the one thing that even theoretically sound-thinking
historians can still claim as found rather than invented. Despite this, finding
a reason for (and consequently suitable ways of) doing history seems to have
been White’s overriding goal at least until his interest in the practical past.
At the same time, the apparent (re)turn to empiricism within historical
studies as well as the recent interest in “presence” and “experience” seem
to signify a turning away from this kind of (primarily textualist) theorizing.
Or, possibly, even a lack of interest in continuing the discussion on narrativ-
ity at all—perhaps because it appears that most everything has been said
already?5 Yet, what other kind of presence can there conceivably be in his-
torical representation than that created in the immediate, lived experiences
of the reader? It should be understood that the epistemological problems
demonstrated by the linguistic turn—our awareness of uncertainty and of
the figuration involved in representation—will not go away with the adop-
tion of new foci in the theory and philosophy of history. And nor will the
challenge of making historical representations—which are always only “lin-
guistic figurations” and “literary artefacts”—somehow contemporary and
appealing.
For White, the true appeal of historical narratives lies in their meta-
phoric and literary possibilities. Historical narratives provide insight into
the human condition, engaging us in our present also. They are thus useful
instruments for developing self-understanding and cultural awareness. As
White writes:

[H]istorical narratives are not only models of past events and processes,
but also metaphorical statements which suggest a relation of similitude
between such events and processes and the story types that we conven-
tionally use to endow the events of our lives with culturally sanctioned
meanings.
(White 1978b, 88)

The process of understanding thus occurs in relation to culturally sanc-

tioned meanings. This could easily be interpreted as a structuralist formula-
tion that effectively disempowers the subject. But does it need to be? After
all, White’s emphasis on the overwhelming popularity of irony, for example,
as a representational trope cannot be a matter of structures alone. Neither
can it be a matter of simply saying that some abstract entity—“the readers
of historical accounts,” for example—has a predilection that is somehow
separate (or indeed separable) from the tastes and needs of individuals. So,
to say that irony is our contemporary story type par excellence could also
amount to saying that the ways in which we—as individuals—negotiate
our predicaments resonate best with an ironic appreciation of the world
 History in the World 87
around us. (Of course, this needs to be qualified by saying that it pertains
to those of us permitted the luxury of irony and not consumed by survival.
The “us” here being, then, relatively trouble-free consumers of entertaining
stories.) Yet how transparent is White about all this in terms of readership,
and how much am I reading into what he says? After all, he seldom speaks
specifically about the reader.
In Figural Realism, White tackles the issue of the reader head-on, stating
in no uncertain terms that “the contract that originally mediated the rela-
tionship between the nineteenth-century (bourgeois?) reader and the author
of the historical novel has been dissolved.” Along with this dissolution, the
“distinction between the real and the imaginary” is “placed in abeyance”
and “the referential function of the images of events is etiolated” (White
1999, 67–68). From his overall argument, it further seems safe to assume
that the reformulation of the “contract” between author and reader is not
limited only to the realist historical novel but also extends to the reproduc-
tion of this form by historians writing in the academic mode. At least that,
to me, is the core of his claims concerning the diminishing role of disciplin-
ary history in the world today. Now, this can once again be seen simply
in epistemological terms: reference is no longer the keystone of history’s
writer–reader contract. What should be noted, though, is that this same
change in conditions can also be stated in terms of authority. Readers are
not committed to unquestioning belief in received interpretations; rather,
they recognize the ideological element involved and accept that participa-
tion entails a degree of responsibility on their part. Whichever way we look
at it, it is clear that readers’ expectations and commitments have changed.
The losses caused by introducing even a somewhat tempered or moderate
relativism here appear to be significant, however. With this reformulated
contract, history has—at least in theory—already lost more than its useful-
ness as a tool for ideological oppression. History (institutional historical
work) has surrendered its position as a significant force in society. It has
retreated from the world to become a largely academic and overwhelmingly
private pursuit. Again, this is largely due to the advent of epistemological
scepticism: history can no longer be held up as teaching something. The
past does not seem to provide anything we need for negotiating the present.
And this seems to indeed be one main worry that White has actively been
trying to alleviate. It is certainly one of the central motives prompting his
attempts to redeem history.
As White suggests, there is also another aspect to history’s decline, some-
thing that has already been raised in previous chapters: history writing as
form fails to engage readers to a sufficient extent. To take this a step further,
there seems to be no sense to most history in terms of the present and our
pragmatic needs. The format of the nineteenth-century realist novel holds
little appeal for contemporary readers (or, to say it more bluntly, history
also fails to entertain). Yet this cannot be attributed fully to the loss of insti-
tutional or epistemic authority in the obvious sense. Rather, there might be
88 History in the World
something to the claim that the world has changed significantly, even more
than the change marked by epistemological irony. There appears to be little
use in looking to the past for meeting the kinds of demands contemporary
society places on individuals. Likewise, looking to the realist novel for guid-
ance to overcome the representational dilemma involved in engaging read-
ers would be quite misguided.
So what does White’s “implied reader” of histories look like? In the way
that I read White, it appears clear that readers all bring their particular
wants and desires as well as knowledge to the reading.6 Remember: there
is always something some reader somewhere will regard as being (un)justi-
fied. Once again, this is not only an epistemological issue, however. Rather,
the underlying emphasis is thoroughly Nietzschean in inspiration: we are all
idiosyncratically positioned in the world and perspectivism is all-pervasive
with regard not only to truth or beauty but also to choice and justifications
for action; morality. Realizing this, White’s reader is certainly ironic and
playful in many ways. Not surprisingly, this reader is also familiar with mod-
ernist literature and commands a wealth of other cultural capital. Further,
White’s reader possesses undeniably postmodern sensibilities regarding lit-
erary form. The similarities between the reader implied by White’s theory
and White himself should not surprise us, of course, particularly when he
writes about historical representation as “we” experience it, on the basis of
shared cultural codes and conventions.
When White suggests that the contract between writers and readers of
historical narratives has changed, how does he see it as existing today, then?
With the relinquishment of a strict fact–fiction distinction, the contract
between participants is obviously weighted more toward the pragmatic (and
ethical) consequences of the communication. But what of form?
In Figural Realism, White also provides the most specific formulation to
date of where he sees (or, more importantly, would like to see) history as
going—before he turns away from it in favour of the practical past. With
respect to what he terms the “modernist event,” he turns to changes that tech-
nological innovations have brought to the presentational form. Significantly,
historical materials have become less subject to linguistic rendering (or at
least, they require it less urgently). The fact that so much material is available
in visual form seems clearly an important factor in presentations becom-
ing less determining: because materials can be made available to viewers in
a more accessible format than written records, and because these materi-
als are capable of conveying much more information in a “direct” fashion,
emphasis is no longer on their representation as much as on presentation.
Presenting them in both senses of the word becomes a central concern: mate-
rials need to be both brought to the attention of the “reader” as well as given
a contemporary significance. To effect such presentations, historians would
be led to resort to methods that are clearly “modernist.”
With all the emphasis on modernist literary forms and modernist sen-
sibilities, how exactly do the “postmodern parahistorical representations”
 History in the World 89
White introduces in Figural Realism fit in? As with his earlier emphasis
on modernist literary forms, parahistorical representations underscore the
preference for the avoidance of closure, for the recognition of indetermi-
nacy and for the desire to avoid imposition of hard-and-fast judgements.
They also reveal the point where the ideal of any new, “unconventional”
history writing and White’s interpretation of the nature of contemporary
media meet; this is so especially in the example of media representations
of the Challenger explosion in 1986. They are, in a way, where he thinks
historians and readers are today—when we are at our best. Thus, they mark
the spot he wants readers to occupy; in other words, they define the ideal
consumer of histories à la White.
But how does the White we know as an advocate of modernist literary
techniques in history writing cohere with the White who holds up Oliver
Stone’s film JFK (1991) as a model for historical representation? Admittedly,
the difference between these positions is not as great as one might assume
from the general label of “postmodern parahistorical representation,” par-
ticularly when read with the argument he makes concerning the Challenger
explosion in mind. In many ways, JFK fits in nicely with what White has
earlier presented as modernist representational means: it involves pastiche,
palimpsest and—perhaps most importantly—a degree of reflexivity. For
White, postmodern representation seems to affirm modernism’s refusal of
naive storytelling (see White 1999, 74). Thus, the real difficulty with seeing
JFK as a model for this kind of radical representation concerns the com-
mitment to questioning narrativity itself, something that White associates
strongly with literary modernism and even more so with the task he sets
historians (see, for example, White 1987, ix). JFK involves forceful nar-
ration and, as narrative, is obviously about reaching rather than avoiding
closure. Hence, its claim to being “postmodern” lies firmly on the episte-
mological axis—in its “playfulness” with truth—whereas White’s example
of the media treatment of the Challenger explosion is a very different issue.
Here, in the kind of “direct” portrayal and repetition that White reports in
the televising of the explosion, there are no answers, and there is no closure.
Furthermore, this absence of answers is the only space in which the kind of
alienation he assumes (also) modernist literary means to achieve can prop-
erly originate.
Contrasting these two examples from Figural Realism seems to better
reveal what White intends by parahistorical representation and what this
kind of history might also imply. Representation along the lines of JFK
meets many of the requirements White has previously set for any new and
improved history writing, yet it lacks one crucial ingredient: as representa-
tion, it is clearly a vehicle for establishing ideology, and its political orien-
tation is achieved only in terms of our beliefs of how things really were,
that is to say, in terms of epistemological accuracy or lack of it. While this
level provides a natural way for contesting received beliefs, there is little in
the form itself that backs up claims to radical politics. And this emphasis,
90 History in the World
understandably, returns the problem of epistemological relativism to the
centre of any debate. If historical representation following a “postmod-
ern parahistorical” route finds its strength in being entertaining and con-
troversial rather than in “modernist” strategies such as estrangement or
alienation, for example—means that are intended to cause the reader to
do a double-take, rethink received beliefs in terms that are personal and
experiential—its transformative effect is potentially undermined. It contin-
ues to work in and on terms that are already given.
Here it seems that White’s thinking may have undergone a decisive shift:
he now appears more willing to accept entertainment as the goal of his-
torical representation than he is on positing a politics of opposition. The
need for new forms of historical representation becomes more focused on
maintaining the interest of readers—on keeping history alive, as it were,
in a world of more interesting pastimes—than it is on avoiding the pitfalls
of ideological commitments attached to the employment of habitual and
unreflected representational forms.7 But why has he done this? Whether it is
because he sees epistemological issues to have been sufficiently discussed or
because he felt a more urgent need to bring history to bear on contemporary
readership, it seems as if something may have been lost in rescuing history
in this particular way.
Despite the challenges it presents in terms of seriousness and responsibil-
ity for consequences, the turn to entertaining taken by postmodern-type
representations like JFK seems largely a good thing. Certainly, the playful-
ness of such representations in the sphere of history serves to nicely bring
home the point of epistemological uncertainty. In doing so, it also highlights
the main drive behind constructivist thinking: that history and indeed rep-
resentation is always, of necessity, in some way ideological. The question
that should be asked, however, is whether emphasizing epistemological
uncertainty is really necessary anymore. It seems to me that this is the cru-
cial question for White in the shift of focus from The Content of the Form
to Figural Realism (and to The Practical Past, where he has now largely
turned away from that debate). The ideological contents of representation
are assumed to be a fairly obvious fact already to readers of Figural Realism,
readers who are used to postmodern, ironic representational form. The kind
of epistemological irony that White has drawn our attention to from the
beginning has lodged itself firmly in the everyday of consumers of (even)
historical representation. No longer do readers need to be reminded of their
role in constructing their worlds; instead, they need now to be given some-
thing to temper their apolitical, egocentric beliefs. Irony, for them, conforms
also to White’s other, socially less desirable usage: the ironic consciousness
views things as always remaining the same. It implies a lack of faith—or
indeed even interest—in our abilities to make substantial changes to “the
way the world is.”8
It is through the embracing of irony that history is rescued as a valid (rep-
resentational) form among others. This kind of history is thus not primarily
 History in the World 91
about a search for truth but about stories of a particular type. Although
reality still plays a role in such thinking, it is only reality as mediated by the
history profession: reality as an agreed-upon set of rules applicable to the
genre of history. History thus admits to being a form for communicating
(about) preferences and beliefs. Naturally, the difficulty with this solution is
in what it takes away from history. Foregrounding the entertainment role of
historical representation obscures the political dimension, the significance of
history for social change. This is not to say, however, that it is the loss of the
epistemological we should worry about: My interest is not in defending the
way that history’s identification with “truth” could provide means for social
involvement and justifications for change. The point is, rather, to make clear
the difference between entertainment and the kind of impact and influence
that is implied by ideas of “metaphorical insight,” “literary knowledge” or
“narrative truth,” for example. Crucially, this difference also relates to the
issue of narrative form.
From the point of view of the reader, it is complexity that creates a space
where the text is not simply a given. Complexity transforms the text into a
space for communication, in which readers’ input is not only welcome but
crucial. Involving readers in the creation of meaning in this way marks the
difference between an “entertaining” representation and one intended to
encourage reformulations of received beliefs. (This is naturally a simplifica-
tion and there is no reason—except the limits set by creative talent—why
representations could not succeed in doing both.)
For White, “modernist literary means,” including, most importantly, I
would argue, complexity, provide a way to “present” the past, to actualize
it for the reader, in terms that are not merely epistemic but also experiential.
Emphasis on the importance of contemporary representational forms is, in
other words, intended to make the past relevant in terms that are personal
and lived. White’s historical sublime is similarly positioned, aimed at an
experience that makes “real” without imposing closure or abstracting the
particularity of a historical event. (White’s professed aim is, after all, to save
history from “domestication”; see, for example, White 1987, 75.) And, in
Figural Realism, he ties this to the change in representational technologies
and reader sensibilities that can further explain the nature of readers’ irony
today: the modern media has the capacity “to represent events in such a way
as to render them not only impervious to every effort to explain them but
also resistant to any attempt to represent them in story form” (White 1999,
72). Uncertainty has become the informing epistemological attitude and, as
White has long claimed, irony is the dominant (and consequent) trope.
White’s take on the re-presentation of (or more accurately, the refrain
from representing in any traditional sense) the Challenger explosion pro-
vides a good example:

The networks played the tapes of the Challenger explosion over and
over. . . . All that the “morphing” technology used to re-present the
92 History in the World
event provided was a sense of its evanescence. It appeared impossible to
tell any single authoritative story about what really happened.
(White 1999, 73)

In other words, repetition without closure, re-presentation with mini-

mal narrative context or framing. Engaging with sufficiently complex
and underdetermined representations, opinions are not simply assumed,
they are formed. (Not found, but invented . . .) Consequently, history is
to some extent rescued, permitted to provide inspiration without denying
responsibility.9
For some readers (at least for those who are also more conventional his-
torians), this is problematic, however, as it can potentially leave historical
materials indistinguishable from other kinds. (As White notes, this was also
the substance of the accusations articulated in the reception of JFK.) At
the other extreme, for readers who have fully assumed antifoundationalism
or “irony” in that particular manifestation, this does not pose a problem.
Rather, they may draw the conclusion that has been succinctly presented by
Keith Jenkins, deciding to

forget history and the past and live amidst the ample and agreeable
imaginaries provided by postmodern-type theorists . . . theorists who
can generate enough by way of emancipatory rhetorics such that we
no longer need any kind of foundational—or non-foundational—past.
(Jenkins 1999a, 10)

Yet even readers who do subscribe to the shared “referential” contract that
the existence of specifically historical writing entails can become free of the
automatic association between authority and belief (narrative and ideol-
ogy), with their appreciation of irony simply remaining curtailed by prag-
matic considerations. For them—as for White—necessary pragmatic limits
continue to involve two levels, the epistemological and the ethical-political:
We still talk about a real past and are subject to professional considerations.
Nonetheless, we also have responsibilities toward the world outside aca-
demia. Ideally, the difference that complexity brings would be visible in
reception and the attitude adopted by readers. Ideally, complexity actual-
izes choice, with choice, in turn, actualizing responsibility. The reader is
thus emancipated, freed from all direction and, at the same time, forced to
come up with his or her own interpretation (thus eschewing all forms of
emancipatory rhetorics)—with confusion leading to indecision and then to
action. Hence the efficacy lent to even historical representation in terms of
experience.
The question here is—ultimately—what happens to morality, in the sense
of a shared set of values and norms? How does ethical-political responsibil-
ity come about and function if interpretation and judgement are moved to
the level of the individual? What limits can be set to pragmatic definitions
 History in the World 93
of need or desire? Despite numerous objections, White’s thinking does not
lead to moral indifference, even if similar positions are sometimes held to
do so. Or that is how I would interpret it at least. Placing responsibility for
choices at the door of each individual can be an effective way of achieving
social responsibility, even if it also involves obvious risk. Certainly, from the
point of view of historians, readers of histories are never left to their own
devices. And the imaginaries offered up for their consumption can remain
equally effective (and hopefully even more so) without the disguise of objec-
tivity and any detrimental effects through the consequent relinquishing of
responsibility at the individual’s level. (Arguably the only level on which
responsibility can be taken. What other way is there?) This is particularly
significant for any oppositional politics. As White reminds:

For subordinant, emergent, or resisting social groups, this

recommendation—that they view history with the kind of “objectiv-
ity,” “modesty,” “realism,” and “social responsibility” that has char-
acterized historical studies since their establishment as a professional
discipline—can only appear as another aspect of the ideology they are
indentured to oppose.
(White 1987, 81)

There are many questions that White does not provide answers to, of course.
Most centrally, that of how effective opposition can be mobilized in a cli-
mate of irony. What kinds of social formations or interest groups can come
about following a universalization of difference? What kinds of justifica-
tions can we find for particular courses of action?
Silence seems justified here, however. These are questions that cannot
be resolved theoretically—on a level of generalization. Responsibility and
action are always situated, and totalizations of needs miss the details. Interest
groups and movements do coalesce and cohere, and the role of the historian
is not to direct them but “simply” to pursue his or her own agenda, hoping
that there is at least some wisdom to it, while at the same time remembering
the danger of self-idealization, the danger of believing oneself to be in posses-
sion of the truth. Historians would also do well to carry this understanding
of situatedness and provisionality over into the representational form itself.
Because these are questions that readers need to be able make up their own
minds about, they require a particular kind of space to do so, a space in
which communication (and hence choice) is possible. To facilitate this, his-
tory workers and educators can at the very least hold up historical research,
history writing and theory of history—just like philosophy and literature—as
useful in producing an awareness of the limitations on knowledge, and hence,
to this extent, as beneficial. History remains important—even if, in large
part, as an example of the dangers involved.
Admittedly, the move White makes from epistemological scepticism
to the espousal of social responsibility at the level of the individual—and
94 History in the World
hence in a new, uncompelled kind of way when contrasted with hegemonic
histories—entails a leap of faith. This leap is, however, firmly grounded
in a humanism, based on traditional values of reason, compassion, toler-
ance and equity. (On White’s humanism, see also Paul 2006, 40 ff.; 2011.)
Perhaps even more concretely, this leap of faith relies heavily on readers and
their sophistication.
It seems clear that, whatever else it might involve, White’s approach to
history writing—and reading—requires a degree of commitment regarding
the world around us. Indeed, responsibility for the impact of our represen-
tations as historians (and responsibility for our interpretations and conse-
quent beliefs and actions as readers) seems to be a key to reading White.
(His perhaps most often mentioned aim is the reduction of suffering and
the avoidance of oppressive practices.) While he has been exceedingly clear
regarding the responsibility those involved with history have to avoid ide-
alizations (and particularly the self-idealization of objectivity), it seems he
seldom wishes to provide prescriptive or authoritative answers regarding
political choices. We are left (both free and obliged) to give our own content
to the refusal to blindly accept the status quo.

. . . In Order to Satisfy Our Desire for Presence . . .

Further, like almost everyone grappling with the nature of historical repre-
sentation, White appears to “suffer” from or at least somewhat partake in
a specific phenomenological yearning, a desire to (paradoxically) experi-
ence the past (as represented by history). This is the historian’s strength and
weakness, which remains the only justification for any continued interest in
history. White hints at this in The Content of the Form:

I merely wish to suggest that we can comprehend the appeal of historical

discourse by recognizing the extent to which it makes the real desirable,
makes the real into an object of desire, and does so by its imposition,
upon events that are represented as real, of the formal coherency that
stories possess. . . . the reality represented in historical narrative, in
“speaking itself,” speaks to us, summons us from afar (this “afar” is
the land of forms), and displays to us a formal coherency to which we
ourselves aspire.
(White 1987, 20–21)

We re-cognize through history, then, something we would want to see in our

lives, in the present. It reveals the world as understandable, as making sense,
much like literature. And, while it is this desire for clarity and sense that
motivates interest in history—as it is in literature (indeed, as it is in most of
the things we consider entertaining)—it is the justified attachment of this
clarity to reality that makes history such a special discourse. By its existence,
history affirms (however mistakenly in an epistemic sense) the rationality of
 History in the World 95
imposing interpretations on reality; it is a discourse of negotiating the world
and thus simultaneously a model for our psychological orientation to the
present, for our being in the world. Even as a fabulation (as an epistemi-
cally unwarranted form of discourse), its continued existence offers hope of
mastery. Thus, in addition to fulfilling a basic and apparently common psy-
chological need, history writing allows us to savour the experience of reality
in illusio—the only way in which reality can be captured. Historical narra-
tivization gives to reality a form that we are able to observe (in a sustained
way) as opposed to fleetingly experience. (Hence, historical narratives also
always entail the bad faith involved in any totalization.)
Where White and narrative constructivism have so forcefully denounced
the pipe-dream of epistemological certainty and no meaning or lessons can
any longer be assumed to derive from historical knowledge alone, this idea
of experience appears to still offer a means (conceivably the only means) for
rescuing history. Since this line of thinking is so subject to misinterpretation,
however, we should be most wary of allowing this phenomenological yearn-
ing to degenerate into an insistence or focus on identity, memory or pres-
ence as it so often has. Rather, it should be seen in terms of communication
and understanding. That is also what makes the reader such a crucial force.
Again: the experience of “presence” is actualized only by active engagement
in the meaning-making process.

“. . . In Order to Make History Matter.”

Along with the proclamations of the death of the author, interest in histo-
rians’ motives and intentions has given way to structuralist (and poststruc-
turalist and deconstructionist) emphases on the materiality of the text and
the discussion has—in this limited way—moved to a discussion of read-
ership too. Despite this, it seems fair to say that in practice—especially
in historical practice—focus on text and textuality is largely a focus on
the temporal surface of construction (the present of the author) and at
best—and most subjective—a focus on the (inter)textuality of the histori-
cal narrative, with intertextuality most often involving limitations regard-
ing anachronistic interpretation and so on, thus keeping the focus on the
authorial point in time. Bridging this temporal limitation is the key to the
materiality of the history text, or, in White’s terminology, the historical
text as a literary artefact. As he so often reminds, historical narratives are
nothing but linguistic figurations and, like language, simply things “in the
world” (see White 2006, 33). But, as such, they are necessarily intended to
be read and thus participate in communication and engage authorial pro-
cesses of meaning-making.
At the same time, history retains significance for both practitioners (insti-
tutionally) and the general public; epistemic validation as a practice has not
been abandoned either by history producers or by consumers in a compre-
hensive manner, hence we cannot rely on better practice or sufficiently aware
96 History in the World
readers to make the kinds of choices we (or White) might want. All readers
are not ideal readers. Many still want to have (or at least assume) some kind
of “history” to look to in justifying their beliefs and daily practices. So, to
effect change, history needs to remain tied to power, only it should remain
so in the hands of self-aware historians who are committed to the kinds of
values that we see as desirable. (Indeed, it might be argued that history was
one such desirable for White until his stronger advocacy of the practical past
instead.) And, of course, this is where White leaves room for validation by
the history establishment and professional consensus. Crucially, neither the
turn to textuality, any “death of the author” nor continued belief in histori-
cal practices absolves historians of responsibility. Similarly, there is nothing
to release us from responsibility to the world as readers or as human beings.
Yet there is some contradiction here: the demand for complexity and
open-ended representations is hard to reconcile with the emphasis on histo-
rian’s responsibility and commitment. Unless, that is, we firmly fix in mind
the fact that the historian’s most pressing responsibility is in avoiding clo-
sure and the judgements closure invariably performs and propagates, even
at the price of offering up confusion and discomfort in place of clarity and
easily digestible narratives. Further, since history writing needs to have sig-
nificance for its readers with regard to their particular circumstances and
problems, the employment of contemporary representational means (and
the consequent option of touching readers’ lives) is a choice that needs to
be made regardless of subject matter or even beliefs concerning the exact
epistemic status of history writing. We need—as theorists of history—to
broaden the temporal focus of the history text to include all participants
in the communication. (Indeed, given the fact that, strictly speaking, the
people in the past are not participants in the history conversation at all, the
extent to which the audience has been ignored is stunning.)
But do White’s recommendations go too far in the search for new repre-
sentational forms? I don’t think so. Although requiring all readers of histori-
cal narratives to be comfortable with representational radicality following
Virginia Woolf or Gertrude Stein, for example, may be too demanding (not
to mention the insurmountable challenge this would pose to most histo-
rians), we need to remember that comfort is not the goal. For history to
flourish, however, White appears to think that it should also entertain, not
simply appeal to experience more directly, through complexity, for exam-
ple. Hence the attention on the kinds of forms represented by JFK and on
media other than the written word. Yet, without the more challenging liter-
ary examples, we would be somewhat lost regarding what White sees as
the salient features of his postmodern parahistory (as well as of effective
interventions within the domain of the practical past).
And is he right about readers? Absolutely. The difficulties in history’s
engagement with the world today, I would say, are not a consequence of
White’s views concerning narrative representation. Far from it! They
result from the all-too-meagre capacities attributed to readers by the rest
 History in the World 97
of us, especially by those historians who would have the talent for engag-
ing in experimental forms: if we are to rescue history from its self-imposed
ethical-political inadequacies, yet avoid falling back into the free-for-all of
promoting stories only designed to captivate and amuse, we need to place
faith in (and sometimes even to overestimate) the abilities of the readers
of historical narratives. We also need to accept that history—even of the
“new” kind—will have come into its own only once enough readers have
internalized not only epistemological scepticism but also become fluent
and grounded in forms of complex culture. (Which has, of course, now
already largely happened, since forms of “popular” culture are increasingly
complex and demonstrate pronounced awareness of the kinds of strategies
White labels modernist and literary. Once again, we simply need to look to
contemporary filmic representations, for example. And we need to wake up
to this change.)
Achieving change in forms of historical narrative may now only
involve historians trusting in readers’ abilities and finally taking the kinds
of risks advocated by White and other narrative constructivists. What
is representation—after all—if not a communication, a performance?
Historians are not the only ones required in the practice of historical rep-
resentation. Thus, it seems reasonable that the methods employed by them
be updated to meet audience sensibilities—sensibilities that include, without
question, an appreciation of “irony” and a fair (however under-theorized)
grasp of antifoundationalism. Is it not time that these changes become
accommodated for and accepted by the producers of history? In other
words, is it not time to meet the readers, as Hayden White says?

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2008.
“History in the world: Hayden White and the consumer of history.”
Rethinking History 12 (1): 23–39. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group
(www.tandfonline.com)

Notes
1. This chapter was originally written as a tribute to Hayden White, and the tone
is thus perhaps less “academic” than that of the others. In revising it, I decided
to keep part of the rhetorical “Simon says” structure and some of the subtitles to
that effect. So please, pay attention.
  To briefly explain the motivation behind this: Like so many things, my respect
for Hayden White can perhaps be best presented in concrete terms: my copy of
Content of the Form today still sports 39 yellow post-its in the margins—by far
a record among books I own, especially since none of the remaining reminders is
redundant; all mark things I feel I need to think more about. Not surprisingly, my
relation to Figural Realism is much the same. Further evidence—perhaps better
98 History in the World
revealing the extent of my admiration—is provided by the fact that “Hayden
White says” or its equivalent often appears to be my go-to line of (academic)
reasoning.
2. As noted earlier, there are a number of more detailed discussions of White’s exis-
tentialist leanings. For his own view and for an acknowledgment of Sartre as one
of his intellectual heroes, see Rogne (2009); also see, for example, Paul (2011)
and Doran (2013a).
3. White is very clear on his stand on social change and revolution: “Now I am
against revolutions, whether launched from ‘above’ or ‘below’ in the social hier-
archy and whether directed by leaders who profess to possess a science of society
and history or be celebrators of political ‘spontaneity’” (White 1987, 63; see also
Rogne 2009).
4. White’s faith in the potential of academic history for being rescued is the one
thing that has changed dramatically, however. Although already critical of his-
tory’s having become a “culturally irrelevant discipline” (Paul 2011, 37) early
on, his view of historians’ openness to engagement is even more pessimistic in
The Practical Past: “It can easily be seen that in practical life, the historical past
and knowledge of that past are of little or any use. Indeed, professional histo-
rians profess to be interested primarily if not exclusively in ‘the historical past
in itself’ alone, or in understanding the past on its own terms, and resisting any
inclination to draw inferences of a practical or utilitarian kind from the past to
the present” (White 2014b, xiii). And further: “It is ironic that, as professional
historical studies have become more and more scientific, they have become less
and less useful for any practical purpose, including the traditional one of educat-
ing the laity in the realities of political life” (White 2014b, 42).
5. The desire to stop talking about narrative seems strong within current theory of
history, as already discussed in the Preface. A striking illustration of this is the
theme issue entitled “After Narrativism” in History and Theory (May 2015).
Similar claims for “post-narrativism” are also present in Kuukkanen (2015). For
a very potent pre-emptive argument against any such claims, see Partner (2009).
6. Again, this is very Sartrean: “what the writer requires of the reader is . . . the gift
of his whole person, with his passions, his prepossessions, his sympathies, his
sexual temperament, and his scale of values” (Sartre 1949, 51).
7. In this context, White’s later shift in focus from “parahistorical” presentations
as alternative forms for history to learn from to the common and “practical”
understandings relating to the past that those presentations create as well as
build on is in fact a very slight one: in practice, it reflects the abandonment of
the epistemological problematics only. Without having to constantly deal with
historians’ belief in entailments from facts and knowledge, he is freer to focus on
the ethical-political consequences of representations.
8. For an in-depth discussion of White’s epistemological as opposed to ideological
irony, see Herman Paul (2006, 35 ff.; also see Paul 2011, 62–69).
9. A more detailed discussion of possible representational strategies that would rely
on the particular ontological commitments of “doing history” to disrupt closure
can be found in the next chapter.
6 Reforming Representation

History writing has, even among historians, largely come to be recognized

as a cultural practice in its own right, not “merely” a representation or
interpretation of the past. In this chapter, I examine the conditions under
which historical representation may be seen to partake in the production
and reformulation of cultural situatedness and historical understanding
beyond its conventionally “historical” boundaries. Arguably, the past has
remained pragmatically and experientially distant to many readers, even
though both the “new” and “experimental” historians of recent decades
have been more welcoming of contemporary literary devices as well as of
contesting voices—and hence, to some extent, also of the interpretive uncer-
tainty that the presentation of contradictory perspectives implies.
In order to develop such possibilities further, my emphasis here is on
exploring the means through which interpersonal understanding is con-
veyed in forms of representation that have overtly sought to subvert the
connections between power and representation. Central to this investiga-
tion is the question of live performance and its potential mediating stance
between verbal presentations and reality. I will argue that historians and
­historical representation have much to learn from performance and the
more comprehensive (and less easily appropriated) articulations it enables
in the construction of public memory and cultural understanding. Through
these lessons, the impact of the past’s reality might be employed without
necessarily attaching it to ideological purposes.
Much of contemporary cultural representation centres, understandably,
on the human body. Thus, examined in relation to our inherent physical-
ity or embodiedness, it is easy to understand why many of the more lin-
guistically absorbed approaches to representation can appear insufficient.
In contrast, the emphasis on issues of consumption and situatedness that
has come increasingly to the fore in debates concerning representational
means today is arguably reflected in the forms invented and utilized by
more modern artistic and communicative means. For historians who aim
to represent the reality of the past, however, innovations of this kind have
so far largely focused on questions of narrative form; beyond this, the uti-
lization of radical, alternative or “unconventional” means has mostly been
100 Reforming Representation
limited to experiments with documentary film and the organization of his-
torical events or “sites” such as history fairs and historical villages. And
even in cinematic historical narration, little has been done to renew the
narrative form itself. As should be obvious by now, narrative constructiv-
ists have two main motives for their demands for such renewal: 1) the
traditional narrative form most often fails to achieve moving results in the
audience due to the limitations that are imposed on authorial freedom by
the demand to remain within the referential realm, and 2) on top of involv-
ing a selection of material and choice of emplotment that conform to a
set fashion of reading, the traditional narrative form imposes an exclusive
closure on the events it presents.
In this context, history presentations have been seen as facing a dilemma,
at least from a narrative constructivist viewpoint. To somewhat exaggerate
the impact of this, historians can be described as facing a choice between
epistemological considerations and effectiveness in presentation. While
the problems arising from this choice have been fairly effectively solved
through debate and professional consensus among historians proper, there
is an alternative solution that has largely been ignored by the discipline:
Choices concerning historical narratives have depended on an either-or logic
according to which truthfulness to the past prevents historians from engag-
ing in creative presentation since—as long as the point of comparison for
historical narratives is taken to be literary prose—this would involve them
in a process of “fictionalizing the facts” (White 1978a, 53). The alternative
that I have proposed here of utilizing the referential dimension of histori-
cal narratives in presentations is one that can be easily overlooked once the
opposition of fiction to fact or indeed of literature to history is adopted. The
renewal of the representational form employed by historians has thus been
viewed as primarily a referential or a literary issue.
In this chapter, my aim is to reformulate the issue of the fictionality of
historical narratives in terms that seem more promising at the present junc-
ture in the debate. Hayden White’s much discussed idea of “the content of
the form” has, it seems, by now made historians and theorists of history suf-
ficiently aware of the literary nature of the historians’ work. Emphasizing
the content conveyed by the narrative form has been especially important in
drawing attention to evaluations and attitudes that are easily and sometimes
with complete innocence included in narrative presentations. The related
demand that historians strive for forms of writing that would convey an
emotional and “artistic” or “metaphorical” knowledge in addition to the
empirical content of their narratives has also been significant; although—as
already noted—this call has been largely left unanswered by the core of the
discipline.
One reason for the relatively few alternative approaches offered of ­history
writing can be discerned in the very close relation between interpretation and
narration. As White has emphasized especially in Figural Realism, these two
modes of organizing knowledge resemble each other in many ways and can
 Reforming Representation 101
often even be seen to substitute for one another. On this view, the historian’s
work as an interpreter of the past relies on understanding based on arche-
typal story forms, culturally conditioned discourses and generic plot struc-
tures. And the same goes for the readers of historical narratives. Although
I have already in the previous chapter attempted to show how readers are
much more engaged for White than is at times assumed, the basic process
involved is quite clear. To begin, it is worth quoting White again on this, this
time in greater detail:

The historian shares with his audience general notions of the forms that
significant human situations must take by virtue of his participation in
the specific processes of sense-making which identify him as a member
of one cultural endowment rather than another. In the process of study-
ing a given complex of events, he begins to perceive the possible story
form that such events may figure. In his narrative account of how this
set of events took on the shape which he perceives to inhere within it,
he emplots his account as a story of a particular kind. The reader, in
the process of following the historian’s account of those events, gradu-
ally comes to realize that the story he is reading is of one kind rather
than another: romance, tragedy, comedy, satire, epic, or what have you.
And when he has perceived the class or type to which the story that
he is reading belongs, he experiences the effect of having the events in
the story explained to him. He has at this point not only successfully
followed the story; he has grasped the point of it, understood it, as
well. The original strangeness, mystery, or exoticism of the events is
dispelled, and they take on a familiar aspect, not in their details, but in
their functions as elements of a familiar kind of configuration. They are
rendered comprehensible by being subsumed under the categories of
the plot structure in which they are encoded as a story of a particular
kind. They are familiarized, not only because the reader now has more
information about the events, but also because he has been shown how
the data conform to an icon of a comprehensible finished process, a plot
structure with which he is familiar as a part of his cultural endowment.
(White 1978b, 86)

Importantly, the process of accommodating past events to such cultural

understandings is not an overtly logical process but, rather, one based on
more informal principles of rhetoric.1 As White later notes:

the sequence of turns taken in interpretative discourse resembles more

the path traversed in the search for a plot structure adequate to the con-
figuration of a diachronic series of events into a paradigmatic structure
of relationships than it does the progressive accommodation of a set of
perceptions to the exigencies of a nomological-deductive demonstration.
(White 1999, 127)
102 Reforming Representation
Seeing both interpretation and understanding as taking place primarily on
the level of such general and culturally codified tropes, it becomes clear
that there is scant room left for history writing that does not attend to the
desire for conventional narrative form. While this justifies White’s claim
that historical discourse is necessarily figurative, it only follows from a prior
linking of history texts to literary ones on the basis of their shared medium.2
Let me state this differently: Given the obvious difficulties historians face in
finding more emotively influential or artistically expressive means for their
stories, it seems that some of the assumptions behind history writing need
to be rethought.3 In order to continue to accept history writing as a distinct
genre from literary prose—as most historians surely would—we need at the
very least to question the view on which historical truthfulness excludes
the employment of expressive artistic techniques in presentation. To this
end, selecting examples of “contemporary” artistic forms from non-literary
fields of art rather than, as the case often is, from novels, or indeed now
fairly conventionally conceived and familiar cinematic forms, already goes a
long way in freeing the historian from this either-or logic. Since “[n]othing is
better suited to lead to a repetition of the past” than—as White has polemi-
cally put it—most of conventional history writing in its affirmation and
strengthening of the connections between power and the representation and
construction of identity positions and communal self-understanding (see
White 1987, 82), forms that challenge conventional representation seem
the most promising. Of these, performance art and its ambiguous position
between immediate reality and artistic presentation provides the reference
point for what follows.

The Present-Momentness of Historical Representation

History writing and historical interpretation continue to be important in
the formation of conceptions of identities and community. This is espe-
cially so for any cultural politics aimed at changing received definitions or
intending to offer new ways of conceptualizing group identifications. To the
extent that historical representation is involved in “righting the wrongs of
the past,” it faces the same difficulties as all other attempts at transforming
the present. Used as legitimation for change, the claims of “the past” are,
at best, on equal footing with other opinions about what needs to be done.
(Again, the ethical-political of previous chapters.) As noted above, however,
historical representation is additionally internally hampered by its admis-
sion that the things it purports to know are in no way definitive concerning
what “actually happened”; in other words, and perhaps clearer ones, it is
restricted by its confusion regarding its function. As tools for situating one-
self in the world, history writing and historical knowledge are thus hope-
lessly limited at least as long as they are assessed on purely epistemological
grounds. For historical representation to partake in the production or refor-
mulation of cultural situatedness, it needs to step out of its role as a faithful
 Reforming Representation 103
interpreter of individuals and events long past (this being, of course, some-
thing that most historians have accepted) without relinquishing the role of a
go-between, or at least imaginary go-between, between actual people living
in the past and its present-day audience. Producing historical understanding
for its audience, historical representation should indeed rather be taken as a
cultural practice that must willingly embrace its present-momentness.
While historians have traditionally objected to so-called presentist appli-
cations of historical knowledge, there should be no denying that legitima-
tion for historical narratives is most responsibly to be found in their effects.4
These effects, range from the results of allowing history’s methodology to
enter one’s thinking (especially vis-à-vis the idealistic intention of under-
standing others without prejudice) to the practical results of re-descriptions
of, say, the roles and positioning of oppositional, marginalized and minority
groups. Providing an experiential—yet relatively painless—comprehension
of the impossibility of ever fully understanding another, “artistic” presenta-
tions (or simply presentations where the form has a marked role in com-
munication) can lead to insight into issues concerning personal identity in
relation to other individuals as well as institutions. At both ends of the scale,
the central issues are tied to understanding others as well as to questioning
the connections between power and representation. In addition, and again
at both ends of the scale, the emotive force generated by the presentation
naturally has a significant role in the impact it can achieve.
Increasingly in his more recent work, White has insisted that modern-
ism, and especially modernist literature, has presented history writing with
a situation in which the “contract” between author and reader concerning
accounts utilizing historical phenomena has changed from that invoked by
the nineteenth-century historical novel, for example. The audiences of con-
temporary “parahistorical representations” are used to suspending inter-
est in “the distinction between the real and the imaginary” (White 1999,
67–68).5 Since they are no longer asked so much to “understand” as to per-
sonally and quite idiosyncratically “interpret” the substance and personal
implication of the presentations, these audiences are given, then, a com-
pletely different way of experiencing the content presented. Even though the
dangers of historical relativism may at first sight seem to be compounded
here, an emphasis on responsibility and mindfulness for the consequences of
the representation on the part of the historian as well as his or her adherence
to the “historian’s promise” are sufficient to curb them. (What alternatives
are there, after all?) In line with this, the dangers involved in aestheticizing
events seen as “unrepresentable” or inappropriable—the frequently used
example of the Holocaust being the paradigm here—are largely countered
by the withholding of interpretation and certainly of explicit judgements in
the presentation, a manoeuvre necessary to provide readers with room for
making it personally significant.
While modernist literary forms provide readers with both license and
means to interpret historical events on the basis of the significance these
104 Reforming Representation
have for their present, it seems, however, that such forms still remain unable
to realize and mobilize reality “itself” to such an extent that it would pro-
vide the experience of otherness entailed by any ideal historical encounter.
This is to say that these forms, too, are ultimately incapable of the kind of
emotional impact that a “direct” encounter with otherness might feasibly
provide.6 For this reason, I continue to argue that we would do well to move
beyond the familiar comparison of historical narratives to literature—even
to the kinds of (post)modernist literature discussed by White. The central
reason why I argue that the example of live presentation and especially of
performance art provides a fruitful comparison for history writing is to be
found in the way it emphasizes the concreteness of the other in the relation
of understanding in a manner that is completely absent from literary prose.
The reader of a more traditional literary novel achieves an understanding
of the events and characters’ psychological workings that can surely be
influential and even eye-opening; yet, at the same time, this understanding
remains on such an immaterial and abstract level that it seldom leads the
reader to concrete realizations concerning the actual world. In contrast, his-
torical materials or the performance artist on a stage (or, even more effectively,
outside a conventional stage setting) concretely demonstrate their otherness
while simultaneously convincing the reader or viewer of the profoundness
and limitlessness of this difference (as opposed to the literary environment
which discourages the reader from asking questions concerning the existence
or nature of aspects of the world that are not described, as discussed in more
detail already in Chapter 4). Faced with such insurmountable and persistent
difference, viewers are potentially pushed to reconsider their own position
and orientation in the world.
Where the physical presence of the performer is often the key to pro-
ducing an alienation of sorts in the viewer, it is also the element that makes
understanding a matter of interpersonal communication rather than of
introspection. Unlike literary prose, the attitudes communicated in perfor-
mance are actualized in lives that are independent of the viewer and thus
cannot be dismissed as easily. This concrete presence demands an aware-
ness and recognition of the subjectivity of the performer. Thus, as viewer
and performer are placed in a present, concrete relation to each other, a
whole new set of limitations is imposed on the imaginative “filling-in”
that still inevitably takes place. As Simon Frith formulates this, “[t]he
body-in-­communication holds in tension not simply the subjective and the
objective (the art question), but also the private and the public (the every-
day question)” (Frith 1996, vi).
The immediacy as well as the reality associated with and evoked by this
kind of concrete presence is an important factor in providing performances
with their effectiveness. In part, this is certainly due to the uncertainty and
unease effected in the viewer by the tension caused through the continuous
blurring of reality and performance (and also, to return to Frith’s point, of
the private and the public). At the same time, the tension experienced is
 Reforming Representation 105
a reflection of cultural values and discrepancies and thus never purely an
“artistic” issue. As David Harradine similarly notes, “the radical perfor-
mance of the abject body can force a rearticulation of the exclusionary logic
of abjection” (Harradine 2000, 74). Moreover, being “always in ‘excess’ of
that which it iterates” (Schneider 2000, 30), the performing body refuses to
be defined, rejecting interpretive closure in a way that purely literary narra-
tives, at least, are incapable of. In circumventing representation (or at least
holding closure at bay) in this manner, live performances succeed in the
subversion of representation to an extent that might in many instances meet
even poststructuralist demands for refusing representation.7

Avoiding Narrative Closure

In addition to denying appropriation and closure on part of the viewer, live
performance draws attention to issues of power and representation more
directly through the performers’ physicality. Providing a common ground
between spectator and performer (as well as among members of the audi-
ence when faced, for example, with threats to their comfort or security),
embodiedness and presence lead the participants away from the limita-
tions ascribed to more linguistically focused presentations. While, on the
face of it, it may seem that these limitations indeed result from the medium
used, they are more productively seen as following from the stand taken on
issues of reference. Often placing themselves outside the sphere of art-for-
art’s-sake, performances can play in both an “abstract” and a “concrete”
register simultaneously. Even though Colin Counsell (1996, 19) introduces
his idea of these two distinct registers as antithetical, it seems preferable here
to argue that the presence of both is essential for the potential mediating
stance between artistic representation and reality that performances, and, as
I claim, historical narratives too, can occupy. Accepting this insight, we may
approach history writing as also moving on both a concrete and abstract (or,
perhaps more specifically, an epistemological and ethical-political) level and
begin to examine the ways in which it mixes and blends them, strengthening
both with elements from the other.
Emphasizing the difference between literary prose and history writing
allows the historian to make choices based on the demands of histori-
cal study as a genre more directly, choices that have been denied by the
example of the classic realist novel that much conventional history writ-
ing still follows. The first of these that is suggested by the comparison to
performance art is the full utilization of presence as it exists in historical
(re)presentations. The presence of reality in the form of sources can be seen
to effect a similar interruption in historical narratives as the physical pres-
ence of the performer in live presentations, at least very closely reproduc-
ing an “actual” encounter with a radical otherness. Denying the imposition
of interpretive closure and the appropriation of the material presented to
the same extent that such procedures are carried out by readers of literary
106 Reforming Representation
narratives, reality in the form of historical materials is an effective tool
for alienation. While hiding the reality and complexity of the sources
behind a simplifying narrative is a means of ensuring the comfort and ease
of the audience, the demonstration of this complexity can thus lead to a
better understanding of the reality and concreteness of the past. As Jean-
Paul Sartre attractively formulates the workings of a totalizing narrative:
“expectation, decisions made in uncertainty, weighing things, choices,
which are the characteristics of the human condition, cannot be integrated
into any synthesis because they are precisely what is eliminated from any
synthesis” (Sartre 1992, 467).
The uncertainty that determines what Sartre terms “the human condi-
tion” can be presented only through bringing home the actuality of past
agents to the readers of historical narratives without the gloss of authori-
tative explanations. The reader’s uncertainty with regard to the import of
materials as well as the confusion caused by conflicting information could
well be seen to parallel the uncertainty experienced by past agents presented
(at least partly) through these materials. Simultaneously, the issue of uncer-
tainty relates to the reader’s inability to appropriate the past in a satisfactory
manner as well as to confusion concerning the limits of the presentation
(that is, uncertainty as to where the past ends and interpretation begins, or,
to put it differently, with regard to what is “real” and what is not). An insis-
tence on complexity could thus, by itself, provide a means for subverting
representation, highlighting its artificiality and provisionality and leaving
the reader unable to rationalize away the reality of the past—as is often the
case when stories are seen simply as stories, and the existence of issues that
are not discussed is simply forgotten.
In this way, as well as in the various other ways suggested in previous
chapters, an increase in complexity could be a working strategy for prevent-
ing representational closures. Todd May makes this point especially well.
For him, and in connection with a poststructuralist ethic of avoiding rep-
resentational practices: “The subversion of representation is by means of
a multiplication rather than a diminution of representing entities, a multi-
plication that drives the representational system to its own point of explo-
sion” (May 1994, 83–84). In much the same way that “the authorizing text
itself must disappear behind the performance” (Auslander 1997, 66) and its
inexhaustible detail, the historical narrative needs to relinquish its authority
and provide room for the reality of the past to such an extent that it exceeds
the limits of the reader’s ability to appropriate. Presenting the past as it is
embedded in the sources in themselves and thus underlining the material-
ity of the sources as well as the conditions that necessarily accompany this
materiality (archives, selection, preservation, problems with interpretation
and so on) already effects a distantiation of the reader from the narrative
itself. Breaking away from narrative authority in this way, a presentation
of the past that makes transparent its provisionality opens itself to varying
interpretations and (largely) surrenders authorial control.
 Reforming Representation 107
In order to produce a sufficient impact on the reader in terms of imme-
diacy or what, after White, can be dubbed as the “metaphorical insight”
conveyed by historians’ primarily documentary endeavours, history pre-
sentations have, however, also traditionally been expected to go beyond
the limits of “merely” conveying the past, at least insofar as they should
make demands on the reader’s present, requiring that he or she reassess the
present with regard to the material, attitudes and opportunities presented.
Working toward this same goal, an “alternative” historical presentation
would firstly aim at creating conditions under which readers could realize
and rearticulate their own historicities rather than simply rehearse familiar
attitudes. While such realizations can equally lead to affirmation of exist-
ing positionings, they at least require that some reassessment take place.
And this is where the significance of history writing purporting to refer to
reality really needs to be recognized: although experiential reassessments
have most often been seen to follow from the “artistic” content or form of
historical narratives, the commitment to reality can be used, as I hope to
have already suggested, to draw the reader into a “real” and transformative
dialogue—as opposed to their experience of conversing with an imaginary
otherness when presented with literary prose. To the extent that it forces
the reader to recognize the reality and subjectivity of past agents (if, impor-
tantly, never to have access to them, pace some of the contemporary theories
of presence and experience in the theory of history), simply the creation of
confusion through details is already a step in the right direction.
The tendency of historical narratives toward narrative closure or “total-
ization” brings us also to another significant difficulty with literature as a
model for representing the past and, particularly, with conventional liter-
ary forms in representing what White has termed the “modernist event”:
White draws our attention to the fact that while traditional history writing
is based on an attempt to see events “from the inside,” possibly through
an exercise in empathy, efforts at empathy with regard to occurrences that
the historian has no experiential parallel for—such as the Holocaust, for
example—are destined to fail (White 1999, 80–81). That is to say, then, that
effective interventions cannot be achieved through empathy or understand-
ing, since any empathic relation I have to another is automatically aimed at
crossing the divide between our subjectivities and “matching” our subjec-
tive experiences.8 Although White suggests that the problem is ultimately
not so much one involving understanding as it is the representational means
chosen, it seems that any literary presentation of past events—as long as
it aims at an epistemologically faithful account—would be similarly chal-
lenged since it is predicated on conveying understanding of some thing. On
a traditional view of history writing, the (automatically assumed) determi-
nateness of the object of representation would thus deny the employment of
literary means that refuse to interpret or narrativize the contents they pres-
ent. Of course, the whole aim of White’s emphasis on figuration is to show
that ­representation that is “truthful” to its object is possible, while avoiding
108 Reforming Representation
the kind of interpretive closure traditionally associated with narrativization.
This point is clearly established at the beginning of Figural Realism when
he writes: “All stories are fictions. Which means, of course, that they can be
true only in a metaphorical sense and in the sense in which a figure of speech
can be true. Is this true enough?” (White 1999, 9).
As long as constructing linguistic figurations of the past remains on the
historian’s agenda, the answer to White’s rhetorical question must, as I argued
in the first chapter, be a resounding “yes.” Learning to live with the limit thus
placed on truth, we also come to accept that representational closure need
not be enforced to ensure that our representations (as historians) are histori-
cal or “truthful.” The practical difficulty remains, however, of figuring his-
torical descriptions in a modernist way so that the imposition of narrative or
interpretive closure be avoided and an “adequate” representation reached.
Quoting Auerbach on “the characteristic features of the modernist style,”
White provides us with some examples of literary means that could produce
the kind of undecidability and provisionality with regard to interpretation
that I have outlined here (White 1999, 100). He does not, in my opinion,
place quite enough emphasis on the issue of complexity, however. And nor
does he yet discuss the ways in which the core commitment of history writing
to primarily referential representation might be utilized in such figurations.

To Experience through Interruption

In line with what has been said so far, the ideas of narrative truth and
metaphorical insight might also be understood in terms of presenting the
past “authentically”—in such a way, that is, that the representation medi-
ates as minimally as possible and (to whatever extent such a thing can be
accomplished) facilitates a true, “concrete” or “authentic,” encounter with
radical alterity. Through providing a strong emotive experience and jar-
ring the reader out of habitual conventions of reading and comprehension,
such an encounter could arguably result in a significant repositioning of a
subject’s self-understanding. If these kinds of effects were indeed achievable,
the opportunity of presenting past events to readers in a way that brings
those events to bear on readers’ particular interests and concerns, perhaps
even engaging their joys, disappointments and self-understanding, would
certainly provide historians with a reason to adopt “literary” means with
an emphasis on referentiality.
Of the alternative presentational means available, the overcoding of
presentations, pushing the reader beyond familiar limits, is something
that historians have been most reluctant to attempt. (Attempts like Claude
Lanzmann’s documentary film Shoah indicate the possibilities of utilizing
the sheer mass of material in producing a feeling of the magnitude and
inconceivability of the events recounted.) One reason for reluctance in mak-
ing such attempts is surely that they easily lead to unreadable and unap-
proachable works. Even the introduction of polyphony—something we are
 Reforming Representation 109
more than familiar with from literature, film or even, and especially, music
videos—seems to easily make historical narratives “difficult.” The introduc-
tion of contesting voices interferes with the kind of formal coherence that we
as readers normally expect from historical narratives and leads to objections
even when the style is structurally continuous with presentations that we
are more than used to consuming in other spheres. The ramifications of this
difficulty are significant. Although historians are expected to be involved
in what Michel de Certeau has termed “historiographical exorcism” (de
Certeau 2000, 227), giving the past an active significance in the present,
they have little experience in the utilization of contemporary cultural forms,
and the past is seldom “brought to life” in any significant way. Historical
narratives seem to fall behind their “artistic” parallels—even performance,
despite much of what I have said so far—in their ability to effect coherence
or at least a formal unity on a structural level.
Let me explain this further: although it is possible for historical texts to
create experiences of confusion and to present complexity in ways that point
readers toward a fuller “experience” and understanding of the reality of the
past, they lack much of the emotional impact achieved by presentations that
can more freely select their contents—presentations that are not limited by
the historian’s promise of truthfulness. To a great extent, this is simply an
issue of style, and historians continue to be faced with the challenge of find-
ing suitable means for the particular material they have at hand. It is also,
however, more importantly, a matter of refusing to deal with the past on
the level of present-day needs or by relating the issues raised by the mate-
rial to issues that could address historians and their readers in terms of their
everyday lives. Returning to the idea of performance and the possibility of
reconciling stylistic inventions to a “direct” encounter with the past, a brief
introduction to the possible representational strategies that might be adopted
can be found in a seldom remarked-on passage written by White as early as
1966: speaking of the work of Norman O. Brown, White draws attention to
the way in which Brown

reduces all of the data of consciousness, past as well as present, to the

same ontological level, and then, by a series of brilliant and shock-
ing juxtapositions, involutions, reductions, and distortions, forces
the reader to see with new clarity materials to which he has become
oblivious through sustained association, or which he has repressed in
response to social imperatives. In short, in his history Brown achieves
the same effects as those sought by a “Pop” artist or by John Cage in
one of his “happenings.”
(White 1978a, 45)9

Given all that has been said so far, it seems reasonable to ascribe some
phenomenological yearning to the kind of theory championed by White.
The particularly historical longing of opening the past to some experience
110 Reforming Representation
of it contains, however, an inherent contradiction paralleling the prob-
lems of phenomenology more generally. Attempting to understand other-
ness “from within” involves a disregard for differences between subjective
experiences, while the attempt to somehow represent this otherness without
interpretation or understanding largely denies the possibility of linguistic
figuration. Despite this difficulty, White effectively repeats his early call for
representational techniques similar to those employed by performance art-
ists in his defence of figuration more than three decades later. As he argues:
“the kinds of antinarrative stories produced by literary modernism offer
the only prospect for adequate representations of the kind of ‘unnatural’
events—including the Holocaust—that mark our era and distinguish it
absolutely from all of the history that has come before it” (White 1999, 81;
cf. White 2014b: although he no longer places this charge on history writ-
ing, the special capacity attributed to modernist stories remains the same
within the sphere of the practical past).
Rather than interpreting White’s emphasis on the modernist event as relat-
ing to the nature of the events themselves (however momentous or incom-
prehensible these might be), it should be seen in terms of his general probing
of the relation of the historian and history to the past and the role of expe-
riential understanding in this. To me, White’s insistence on the distinctness
of what he terms modernist events should be seen less as a change in the
nature or magnitude of the events themselves than as a difference in our
relation to them. As he repeatedly argues, historians need to realize that our
culturally inscribed way of looking at the past has changed: “[t]he outside of
events, their phenomenal aspects, and their insides, their possible meanings
or significances, have been collapsed and fused” (White 1999, 79). From
such a “postmodern” point of view, I would argue, events are no longer seen
as independent of their representations primarily because of the different
material and representational means that we currently have at our disposal
for storing, accessing and conveying them. White seems indeed to admit
this, noting that our having “a typically modernist interest” in premodern-
ist events implies that such events also need to be presented in other ways
than the “storytelling techniques traditionally utilized by historians” (White
1999, 82). This caveat returns us solidly to White’s long-term politics of his-
torical representation: for history writing to have significance for readers in
their particular circumstances, contemporary representational means need to
be adopted—whatever the subject matter.
Yet, it seems, the significance for White’s argument of our contempo-
rary, “nontraditional” historical materials and the range of presentational
and storage media available still remains largely undeveloped in narrative
constructivist theory of history. Linking this unexplored issue with what I
have already argued concerning the desirability of using historical mate-
rials to disrupt coherent, all-subsuming narrative and to suspend closure
on the level of the diegesis, we may better appreciate the difficulty inher-
ent in White’s insistence on specifically literary representational techniques.
 Reforming Representation 111
Literary representation, even in the “modernist” style advocated by White,
involves a bracketing of reality that denies historical materials the experien-
tial impact they could—by being “true” and hence potentially disruptive at
least of the aesthetic intentions of the text—otherwise bring to an account.
By insisting on narration and figuration, we remain tied to re-presenting
these materials rather than attempting to directly present them; rather,
that is, than refraining from incorporating them into the representation.
Reference to textual materials or to documentary footage, for instance,
could also, however, be allowed to shock the reader away from the diegetic
level of a historical narrative instead of being comfortably embedded in and
incorporated into its representational twists and turns. For this reason, the
example of films—even of the “postmodern parahistorical” kind that White
refers to—leaves us with the same problems as does literature. The effects of
interruptions to the narrative are necessarily softened by the formal aspira-
tions of the representation to artistic impact.
In this respect, the kind of presentism promoted by White (especially in
connection with his example of Norman O. Brown) aimed at bringing the
past to the same ontological level as our immediate experiences of the world
through the medium of artistic representation clearly leads the historian to
a practical dilemma. Since the recognition of this brand of consequentialism
entails, as White notes, a reformulation of the contract between author and
reader on a basis other than the distinction between fact and fiction, it only
further impedes the utilization of historical material as a disruptive element, as
a vehicle for radical otherness.10 When applied to history writing, performance
art’s emphasis on presence and its central goal of subverting representation
may help avoid this quandary: instead of bracketing the material utilized so
as to reduce it to the ontological level of the possible as carried out by White’s
parahistorical representations (and thus arguably no longer to the sphere of
the fictive alone, as in traditional literary approaches), performance promotes
the materials collected of the past firmly to the present, making them avail-
able to the embodied appreciation of the viewer rather than offering them
up as something to be contemplated in a detached manner by a transcendent
consciousness. Although the difference between these positions is largely in
emphasis, the kind of politics of historical representation called for by White
and narrative constructivism seems better served by a focus on the reality of
the past and the foregrounding of radical otherness than by the now some-
what misleading parallel to literary fiction. Whichever alternative is chosen,
however, the task of the historian remains one of making present that which
is important about the past, namely, its significance for us as situated subjects.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2007.
“Performance and the reformulation of historical representation.” Storia
della Storiografia 51 (1): 3–16. Fabrizio Serra editore.
112 Reforming Representation
Notes
1. For a very useful discussion relating to the breadth and nature of “rhetoric” and,
indeed, of the linguistic turn, see Kellner (2013b). As he points out, conceiving
of rhetoric too narrowly can lead to ignoring its fundamental role in binding
together narrative and argumentation and thus also to misunderstanding the
point of the linguistic turn; Kellner further notes how this ties in with the com-
mon neglect of the audience in such debates. For him: “Most important, perhaps,
is the idea that historical argumentation is a primary factor, even the guiding
force, in historical writing; research, in other words, is guided by the argument
that defines what is relevant and not. Because arguments are made locally, for
specific audiences at specific moments, it is important to understand the nature
of the historical audience, although this is an area that has received relatively
little attention. Audiences will be persuaded by the perceived authority of the
historian, his or her ethos; historical ethos is what is at stake in all the discussions
about the historian’s objectivity, or personal partisanship. These core discussions
of argumentation, audience, and ethos are thoroughly rhetorical, although they
have little to do with formal considerations and are rarely understood as part of
the linguistic turn” (Kellner 2013b, 150).
2. While it is certainly true that—as White says—“[t]he similarities between inter-
pretation and narration argue for the essentially figurative nature of the dis-
courses in which they are typically represented in speech or writing” (White
1999, 127), my aim is to question the justification of relating history writing
to other ways of presentation on the basis of the form it utilizes rather than its
generic commitments as, first and foremost, a referential discourse. Ultimately,
my argument here again hinges on questioning the prioritizing of interpreta-
tion over presentation in history writing and recommends the postponement
of interpretation to the reader as far as that may be possible. In other words,
although history writing is undeniably a case of language use, its revelation
in language is not its prime determinant, and thus any continued search for
unconventional presentational means would do well to direct attention to the
strengths and limitations entailed by its particular commitment to refer.
3. I have elsewhere examined in more detail how a purely formal distinction might
be made between history and “literary” narratives, following from the limits
that their respective generic commitments place on them (see Pihlainen 2002a).
For present purposes, the import of this argument is that historical narrative
should not be viewed as second-rate literature but should rather be appreciated
for its unique position with regard to referential issues.
4. As should be evident by now, judging history writing on the basis of its commit-
ments and potential effects is a central point for White. His demand for histori-
cal representation that subscribes to what he terms a “politics of liberation” is
founded on the idea that since historical narratives allow for alternative emplot-
ments of historical events, the selection between competing narratives needs to
be made on the basis of the consequences of those narratives (see, for example,
White 1978b, 38; White 1987, 227; for an extended discussion of morally
“appropriate” and “acceptable” forms of emplotment, see, for example, White
(1999, 27 ff.).
5. White speaks specifically of “postmodern parahistorical representation” in this
context, referring to books and films that use historical materials while quite
 Reforming Representation 113
deliberately fictionalizing them. Oliver Stone’s JFK—which White discusses in
more detail—provides a most potent example of such a presentation. See White
(1999, 66 ff.); also see Chapter 5.
6. To explain this further at the risk of excessive repetition: literary narratives
may be seen to occupy an ontological space that can never accommodate his-
tory writing and its pledge to speak truthfully of real events. In other words,
the commitment of traditional historical narratives to reference denies them the
kind of transcendence that is generally attributed to literary fiction. This tran-
scendence, however, in turn bars literary narratives from ever being radically
other in the way that historical narratives with their incorporation of reality can
be. Leaning heavily on a Levinasian conception of radical alterity here, it seems
to me justified to claim that any recognition of an inappropriable otherness can
only take place when confronted by a difference or alterity that is irreducible
to similarities. Such a recognition entails that the other be present in a way that
cannot be constructed only by narrative means. For the argument I am making,
the presence of historical materials in the narrative provides this “concrete”
otherness—an absolute limit to narrative assimilation.
7. As already discussed earlier, Todd May has gone so far as to term the general
poststructuralist aversion to the representation of others a “poststructuralist
ethic” and an “ethics of antirepresentationalism” (see, for example, May 1994).
Stemming from the widely recognized difficulties with rule-based, deontologi-
cal theories and generalizing, the wish to avoid authoritative descriptions of
something so infinitely varied as “the human condition” is surely an argument
against historical representations in any conventional narrativizing mode and,
at the same time, also supports the kind of strategy that I advocate here of
employing particulars from “real” lives to disrupt narrative cohesion.
8. As Seyla Benhabib, for one, quite convincingly argues, empathy is not an
approach that is conducive to understanding radical alterity since it “may make
it difficult . . . to draw the boundaries between self and other such that the
standpoint of the ‘concrete other’ can emerge” (Benhabib 1992, 168).
9. White returns to these more radical ideas regarding formal experimentation in
Figural Realism, tying them to the idea of the modernist event. His focus there,
however, is largely on the impact that technological innovations and alterna-
tive media have had on presentational forms. The way that historical materials
are now freed, as it were, from linguistic rendering is crucial to understanding
the ramifications of these arguments. Presentations no longer need to produce
meanings as forcefully when the materials themselves are in visual form and
increasingly available for direct viewing. Arguably, this can at least diminish
the role of the historian as mediator when compared to the sharing of written
records—ideally leading, even, to some democratization in the uses of the past.
At the same time, the purpose of any selection and commentary then becomes
that of engaging, more overtly and also in more nuanced ways, with contempo-
rary significance rather than of imposing some comprehensive narrativization.
10. An especially fruitful approach to the idea of the reading contract is offered
by Sartre in What is Literature? (1949). Elaborating on the process of reading,
he stresses that the reader needs to be addressed in the full scale of his or her
lifeworld, affective experiences and values. In Sartre’s description, the meeting
of author and reader is additionally informed by a mutual respect for freedoms,
stemming from a recognition that can be seen to at least parallel the Levinasian
114 Reforming Representation
face-to-face encounter. The recognition of freedoms in the literary encounter
leads, however, to a transformation in subjective self-understanding that does
not bring with it an experience of alienation or objectification. While such an
encounter thus would not provide the reader with an experience of a past that is
radically other, this meeting between the two subjects as Sartre describes it could
still be argued to have the kind of ethically transformative power attributed to
facing radical otherness.
7 The Confines of the Form

One difficulty with employing alternative literary approaches in history writ-

ing can be seen to lie in the similarities and overlap between interpretation
and narration. In calling for the adoption of “new” and unconventional meth-
ods by historians, Hayden White has often emphasized the resemblance and
occasional conflation of these two means of organizing knowledge. Although
endeavouring to understand the past, historians resort, as he argues, to estab-
lished representational means, choosing from among a limited choice of
emplotments. This involves them in a rhetorical or narrative structuring of
their material that—in addition to leading to numerous problems with regard
to the “truth” of their presentations—marks a move from the sphere of the
logical to that of the figural.1 To define the interpretive move or moment in
history writing specifically as a “fictionalization” or “figuration” in the sense
of shifting things to the metaphorical is, however, rooted in an underlying
analogy between historical narratives and literary writing.
While this is all very much to the point when the goal is to initially break
with conventional forms of history writing, my intention in this final chapter
is to once more challenge the comparison of historical narratives to fictional
ones now (accepting the initial break) on the basis of shared form as well
as, and more consequentially, the coincident disregard of what in fact seems
to be their determining feature, namely, their commitment to reference and
to representing the past truthfully. The main thrust of the argument is to
question the common emphasis on interpretation rather than presentation
when thinking about history. This continues to justify my earlier suggestion
for a strategy of deferral of the interpretive moment in the reading process
to the reader to the extent that this is feasible. Thus, while historical nar-
ratives are clearly linguistic figurations and in this aspect resemble literary
works, I argue that this, somewhat paradoxically, is not their determining or
most salient feature in the search for alternative representational strategies.
Rather than persist in referring the investigation of the historical narrative
to its similarity with literary fiction, I will focus on the strengths stemming
from the commitment to referentiality.
As already argued at some length now, the association of history writing
and literary texts may, when looking beyond formal similarities, be seen to
116 The Confines of the Form
reflect a general yearning within historical research for subjective access to the
past. Setting aside the material aspect of texts (their being marks on the pages
of books, for instance), we can say that literary fiction, like consciousness,
exists in the manifestation of its contents alone. There is thus no story to be
had separable from the one presented since the contents have no life of their
own. What is “given” to us is all that can be known. (Which is not to say that
a text cannot make use of “external” knowledge or that there cannot also be
intimations of things unknown. And nor is it so say that a text cannot mis-
lead us about its world, for example. Such things are all textually controlled,
however, as discussed in detail in Chapter 4.) History, on the other hand, or
any ideal history at least, objectifies these contents and their relations, and
thus remains—to stay with the metaphor of consciousness—always only a
representation or reconstruction of subjective experience. Indeed (beyond
the more obvious epistemological difficulties that need to be kept distinct
from any existential or experiential dimension here), history writing reveals
this reification as two conflicting desires: to re-present the directly expe-
rienced nature and reality of the past and to yet simultaneously construct
the referentially unhindered encounter with the subjective experience of the
reader that we are familiar with from fictional narrative. Naturally, both of
these ambitions cannot be realized at the same moment—at least not when
formulated in this way.
I have also argued that the particular phenomenological yearning (for
some experience of realness) that White’s theorizing admits to historical
narrativization comes about, in large part, as a result of this same compari-
son between history writing and literary prose. This comparison, in turn,
seems inspired by the common conception of literature as enabling a trans-
fer of understanding between distinct and often incommensurable world-
views. The attribution of a similar mediating function in historical narrative
to something like empathy or identification alone is not, however, justified
since the recognition required goes beyond an admission or understanding
of shared similarities. Where empathy furnishes—to some extent—an abil-
ity to “see” and “experience” things from another’s point of view, it fails to
provide the kind of critical distance also required in seeing the other as dif-
ferent to oneself. To provide a means for re-conceptualization and change,
literature also has to address the reader in his or her specificity. This point
has been particularly well made by Winfried Fluck:

By engaging the reader’s interiority, ranging from mental images to

bodily sensations, in the transfer that transforms the words on the page
into an aesthetic experience, fiction provides recognition of the reader’s
subjectivity. This individual empowerment goes beyond any identifica-
tion with single characters or events in the text. It arises from the neces-
sity of the individual reader to actualize a whole world along the lines
of her own interiority.
(Fluck 2003, 25)
 The Confines of the Form 117
In my reading, the main thrust of White’s arguments concerning the desir-
ability of historians making use of modernist and postmodern literary
means centres on his wish that history writing become similarly emotion-
ally effective, that it permit an experiential identification by the reader in
the manner in which literature does. The transformative—and clearly thus
also ethical-political—power of fictional discourse is something that narra-
tive constructivists would like to see historical narratives achieve, especially
since the social efficacy of history has been greatly undermined by the rec-
ognition of its epistemological troubles. At the same time, it seems to have
become clear that the formula of the nineteenth-century realist novel can no
longer provide a means for such emotional involvement given the political
difficulties linked with the overly determined and unifying forms it engages
as well as significant changes in audience sensibilities. Rather, the poststruc-
turalist call for the disruption of representative closure needs to be heeded,
even if not for political purposes, then simply for the reason that readers
have come to expect representations to allow for more ambiguity. (White
has made this point emphatically in Figural Realism; see White 1999, 66 ff.)
Although the evocation of culturally shared attitudes through recogniz-
able images is something that even the most fictional of texts rely on, that is
not where the subjective appeal of literature comes from. Nor is it sufficient
to attribute this appeal to general textual strategies that situate the reader in
some familiar context. As so many narratologists have repeatedly pointed
out, the literariness of the literary text is also in part tied to its employment
of the unfamiliar and unexpected, its ability to stop readers from continuing
along familiar tracks in their thinking, or indeed, even, along a route first
clearly marked out by the text. For literature to be referential would require
that it give up this ethereal, otherworldly quality, its ability to conjure up
subjective, textually underdetermined images from within the reader that
would resonate with hopes and desires that are essentially private.
But is there anything that would prevent a historian from also writing in
this “literary” fashion? In addition to the inescapable question of referenti-
ality and its generic role, which I have attempted to redescribe and empha-
size here, a more specific issue that needs to still be considered in relation to
the use of contemporary literary forms as models for historical representa-
tion is the centrality of intertextuality in their creation. Obviously, because
of their different referential commitments, historical narratives cannot uti-
lize intertextual means in the same manner or to the same effect as they
could if they eschewed their promise to be truthful representations of reality.
Although I make very general use here of the term intertextuality in a way
that cannot do justice to the different forms it takes, my claims are based on
the assumption that intertextual references open up the significance of the
work, displacing meanings from the overt narrative in a way akin to that
performed by various tropes. Thus, they also serve to undermine the literal
meaning of the work, or at least to provide it with a richness or complexity
that a straightforward realist account could not.
118 The Confines of the Form
A related point, but one that White at least has been less explicit about,
is that of the reader’s role and involvement. While it is true that readers
perhaps expect more ambiguity in and less control over their interpretation,
there is also a distinct change to be perceived in the way that we have come
to view interpretation itself. Traditionally seen as an intellectual process
involving an attentive encounter with the text, it seems—to me at least—that
increasing emphasis is being placed on the way that interpretation is not so
much guided by the text as provided with loose parameters for free-play and
association on the basis of the reader’s particular background and experi-
ences. And even sudden fancies. This is, of course, where the troubles with
history writing begin. The challenge is not so much one of literary form or
the presentational techniques utilized but rather of the commitments of the
text. The historical narrative is ultimately committed to engaging the reader
in a process that needs to be returned to the world, returned, to borrow
a phrase from Herbert Marcuse, “from the illusion to the reality of the
illusion,”2 whereas a literary narrative may well remain content with leav-
ing its reader somehow privately edified. This distinction is naturally never
clear-cut, but it is suggestive of a great deal.

The Realities of History

My general point of departure for what follows is in the idea that literary
fiction effects its meaning-making through an overdetermination of semiotic
significance, in other words, through giving priority to the overall meaning
of the work as it is constituted in and by the form and general coherence of
its various elements. While certainly an exaggeration, this claim seems often
accepted as a useful heuristic by White (see, for example, White 1987, 202)
and has been extensively defended by literary theorists of different persua-
sions. In Michael Riffaterre’s formulation, for example, “the literary text
is a sequence of embeddings with each significant word summarizing the
syntagm situated elsewhere” (Riffaterre 1980, 672).3
However, as Gary Saul Morson has noted, literary theory tends to priori-
tize issues that are not necessarily as important to most readers of literary
narratives. Questions of significance of the narrative as a whole are peculiar
to a way of reading that seeks to foreground literary narratives as dense and
coherent works of art, conforming to the shared interpretive bias of literary
critics.4 This same interpretive bias could, conceivably, be extended to the
reading of historical narratives despite the counter-intuitiveness of doing so.
Even if historical narratives are accepted as being guided by their referential
commitments to such an extent that their material cannot be structured
around a single meaning, it might still be argued that the linguistic figura-
tion of historical material could lead to overall interpretive schemes—as
White has, at times, in fact been claimed to suggest with his early tropologi-
cal “models,” even if these were most likely never intended as something
that could simply be followed.
 The Confines of the Form 119
There is, nevertheless, a difference to be noted: where historical narratives
may and certainly most often do similarly incorporate material into their
form, subsuming it to a greater meaning, the selected elements do not cohere
primarily on the level of semiotic signification but with regard to simpler strat-
egies of troping and emplotment. The significance of this difference seems to
be generally overlooked in discussions of historical narrative, especially when
the regrettably common fact–fiction fears are raised. Where literary theory
can be seen to fetishize meaning (the “message” of the text), narrative theories
of history similarly raise history writing to the level of a literary artefact with-
out necessarily noting that the literariness of these artefacts is of an altogether
different kind. Where historical narratives create meanings around reference
to reality, literary texts simply mean: importantly, in this way, historical nar-
ratives are organized around the ideal of understanding external processes
whereas literary narratives focus on internal ones. (Think back to Marcuse
and the need to evoke the context or the “reality” of the illusion as opposed
to the illusion itself.)
At the same time, the desire for reality and experience is hard to resolve
with historians’ practice. The obvious paragons for this kind of referential
writing would seem to lie in the sphere of autobiography. Yet even with the
privileged access to material afforded in the writing of autobiography, the
author is left with numerous unsolved epistemological problems. The nar-
rativization of material and the theoretical complications to do with remem-
bering and self-understanding deny this form of writing any special position
with regard to “truth.” The objections to epistemological “accuracy” raised
by White and like-minded narrative constructivists with regard to selection,
framing, and emplotment are at least as serious in the case of autobiography
as they are within other genres of referential discourse.5 What the difficul-
ties with autobiography serve to remind of, then, is that there is an inher-
ent problem in the linguistic presentation of reality that is not a result of a
particular historiographical way of thinking. Realizing this, we may also
note that linguistic form—or, to apply White’s more recent terminology,
linguistic figuration—is not a problem for fiction because fiction by defini-
tion does not abide by a similar commitment to represent reality. Rather, as
so much “postist” theory has shown, literary writing is linguistic through
and through (excuse the implicit tautology here; for some reason, this is not
always a self-evident point).
In continuing to draw out the implications of this “ontological” com-
mitment of given genres to particular “recipes” with regard to reality and
reference, it is important to refuse the extreme view that history texts are
literary artefacts in the more straightforward way of literary fiction.6 The
first consequence of this refusal is to begin to see historical narratives as
paradoxical in their very conception. To tell a true story of people, processes
and events without recourse to intentions, aspirations, causes or indeed suf-
ficient documentation generally is an impossible goal. In fact, even with suf-
ficient access, the imposition of story form on so diverse a material would
120 The Confines of the Form
effect a totalization that leaves out more than it can ever include. For this
reason, the suggestion by Morson that historical narratives would do well
to present alternatives that did not take place, while still proceeding to nar-
rate the factual (as opposed to counterfactual) histories constructed around
them, seems an approach that could better convey an understanding of the
reality of the past:

Perhaps a better alternative, one much more consonant with the think-
ing of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Bakhtin would be to imagine the
what-ifs—several of them, most likely—and then follow the choice that
was actually made; and at the next moment of choice, do the same,
repeatedly. In that case, one would have a sense of history as constantly
presenting alternatives and the history we know as one possibility
among legions.
(Morson 2003, 69)

Making the past feel more real in this way, by allowing readers to explore
situations in their (if not full, then at least) expanded potential, would lead
to a history writing that might satisfy one aspect of the phenomenological
yearning that I have attributed to the historical enterprise, namely, the desire
to relive the choices of an agent in the past. Indeed, in narrative construc-
tivist theorizing, the call for the adoption of different literary strategies is
aimed at satisfying this very desire. There exists, however, a problem with
employing points of view that are interior to a character—to take an exam-
ple that is familiar from much biographical writing—in historical narrative
since, in most cases, the author has no access to these. Admittedly, seeing
such narrative strategies as unsuitable may simply result from an overly nar-
row conception of historical narrative and reliance on its current scientific
aspirations. Microhistorical approaches, for instance, have gone a long way
in successfully stretching these boundaries. (For a very useful discussion of
the genre of microhistory, see Mark Salber Phillips [2003, 222 ff.]; also
see Anton Froeyman [2015] on this and on many of the other issues that I
discuss here.) With their commitment to factuality, historical narratives—at
least when taken as ideal constructions—still clearly remain limited in their
opportunities for figuration, however.
A further difficulty historical narratives face with regard to systematic
determinations of meaning is to be found in their general lack of focaliza-
tion. The “Who sees?” of historical narratives is—once again, due to their
commitment to reality—less clearly determined when compared with lit-
erary fiction. Following from the need for transparency in their processes
of meaning-making, historical narratives by nature refrain from imposing
closure with regard to perspectives for re-emplotting the material presented.
Similarly, the “speakers” who may be introduced to the story are not limited
to those presented by the text, whereas it would be quite uncalled for to
bring a character from Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin, for example,
 The Confines of the Form 121
to a reading of Alice Munro’s “Meneseteung”; despite the close thematic
and historical overlap between the works, this would provide no textual res-
onance or interpretive insight since their significatory systems and textually
determined worlds are so overtly self-contained and mutually excluding.7
This, again, suggests a distinction between narratives where the imposition
of form is a consequence of meaning-making (history) and where the same
imposition is an integral part of the process itself (“fiction”). Between, in
other words, linguistic figurations that attempt to incorporate content and
those which construct it in the telling. (To perhaps exaggerate a little, his-
torical events can be said to receive their telos in the imposition of the form,
whereas properly literary narratives conform to this telos even prior to the
creation or selection of the events.)
Intertextual references as well as references to general knowledge or
historical events, for example, appear to aim at opening fictional narra-
tives outward, of placing them in context for the reader. The nature of
this seeming outward-directedness is, however, quite distinct from the
referentiality of historical narratives. Instead of informing the reader of
alternative but actual ways of thinking or events, these references serve to
situate the text in and through a world of meanings and interpretations
that are already figured; their meaning in the narrative is solely a lin-
guistic one, either opening the text “outward” to prefigured associations
and interpretations that are familiar to the reader in his or her present or
appealing to knowledge that the reader brings to the reading to deepen
and actualize the narrative’s exercise in meaning-production. While this
kind of meaning-production is essential to what Riffaterre has called the
“truth-creation” taking place in fictional narration, it effects a displace-
ment and broadening of meanings that permits these texts to have signifi-
cance for the reader without demanding a point of reference beyond the
reader’s personal experiences of the world (cf. Riffaterre 1990). Given
this difference in ways of meaning-production, it seems more apt to say
that fictional texts are directed “inward,” to the unfolding and deepening
of the narrative itself as well as to the subjective processes of the reader’s
world reflected in his or her self-experience.
To simplify, it could be said that the strategy of meaning-making utilized
by complex fictional texts is effected through referring the reader to mate-
rial with which he or she is already familiar and, by playing with the range
of associations afforded by the text as a whole, gradually narrowing the
range of interpretations that can be made of the text’s overall significance. A
simple example of fictional truth-creation is given by Riffaterre to illustrate
this process. In Fictional Truth, he presents us with a typical truth-creating
move from Marcel Proust: “No one yet was to be seen in front of the church
except for the lady in black one sees leaving hurriedly at any given time in
provincial towns” (Riffaterre 1990, 8). In historical narratives, the dynamic
is quite similar but directed outward, as it were: the reader is presented with
new material that is taken as true at face-value and the evidence presented
122 The Confines of the Form
provides a link with the real world even when it is unfamiliar to the reader.8
With the capacity to use its referential agreement for the purposes of intro-
ducing new material, the historical narrative is able to reject fictional means
of truth-creation (almost) completely.
The displacement of meaning encountered in a historical narrative is thus
quite different from the use of intertextual references in literature. The text
transfers its argument or meaning (its “message” or interpretation) to evi-
dence that is textually manifested as “real” through various documentary
conventions. The pact between the author and readers reserves certain lit-
erary devices as referring to extra-textual evidence. The most obvious of
such devices is quotation. Dialogue that is presented directly in the text is
marked as opening up onto the extra-textual through a system of notations
demonstrating its origin. Yet this is something that also happens in fiction
where speech is attributed to particular characters. The difference is not in
fact textual, despite the divergence between the means for indicating origin,
since we might quite easily accept a different convention in referential nar-
ration for attributing a comment to a character in a given context. Here,
for instance: This time, I had no misgivings regarding what I said as I could
hear a familiar voice in my head, repeating: “The similarities between inter-
pretation and narration argue for the essentially figurative nature of the
discourses in which they are typically represented in speech or writing.”
Although this is, of course, a fictional moment on the level of the narra-
tive, or rather, an emplotment that greatly simplifies the (temporal, spatial
and perhaps ideational) relations between the characters present, it in no
way makes the ideas expressed less real or detracts from their referential
quality. Were historians to write historical accounts with recourse to more
involved literary conventions, the distinction between factual and fictional
narration would still remain in place simply on the basis of the agreement
regarding their genre and intentions.
Instead of emphasizing the potential for displacement of meaning offered
by reality (the tending of the historical narrative to the extra-textual), nar-
rative constructivist focus with respect to history has, however, so far been
on a more literary (intra-textual) displacement and slippage from one pos-
sible interpretive moment and context to another in the manner of much
contemporary literature. But why so, if the goal is to provide history writing
with alternatives?
In addition to being generically committed to reference and truth, his-
torical narratives mark their referentiality by presenting the reader with
sources. Differing from many instances of fictional truth-creation, these pre-
sentations are generally quite straightforward. The convention of abiding to
documentable evidence relieves the historian of the need for involved nar-
rative means for making things “ring true.” In other words, historical nar-
ratives present references and evidence with an eye on the validation of the
truth of the account they offer. Yet, and although this is the position from
which criticisms of more conventional history writing tend to come, this is
 The Confines of the Form 123
not the whole story. The way in which references are presented in historical
narratives differs radically from the strategies of fictional truth-creation.
Historical narratives present references that they assume to be unfamiliar to
the reader, appealing to the reader that he or she situate this new material
in the context of the familiar, perhaps producing a new understanding of
the whole. To make this process even more truth-like (and experience-like,
if one takes on board the conclusions that I have been drawing concerning
the underlying phenomenological yearnings as well as the importance of
agency and active sense-making in alternative forms of representation that
might parallel the dynamics of lived experience), historical narratives that
are conscious of the complications involved in narrativization often engage
in a form of “thick description” that allows readers to “see for themselves”
the materials that are used and the voices that are ultimately (most often)
subsumed to the interpretation itself. Despite the opportunity for personal
evaluation that this affords, the reader has, of course, only the generic agree-
ment as insurance that the evidence is real. Clearly then, truth-creation in
historical narratives is not a textual feature but is based on a shared under-
standing between the author and reader with respect to the legitimacy of
interpretations and the epistemological standing of acceptable evidence.9
Despite White’s long-standing emphasis on “the content of the
form,” it seems to me that he might accept a similar distinction between
inward-directed and outward-directed forms of discourse.10 Yet he takes the
outward-directedness or “extra-referentiality” of the discourse for granted
(quite naturally given his general argument) and leaves its full implications
unexplored. The extra-referential attitude or commitment of historical nar-
ratives seems, however, to require further mention since it is a particularity
that has largely, and quite surprisingly, been neglected in discussions of their
possibilities. Although effective historical narratives may, like their fictional
counterparts, well begin from the observation of an individual or situation
as a suitable subject for narrative representation, the historical narrative is
even in this first stage, tied to a movement from world to text. This limita-
tion is clear even when the historian wishes to present an observation for an
ethical-political purpose or in order to illustrate a more general point. Where
a fictional narrative becomes effective through its ability to create truth and
immerse readers in the plausibility of ways of thinking and behaving that
were previously foreign to them, the strength of the history presentation is
thus not in its universalizability or its strikingness on an abstract level but
in its strictly particular and concrete nature. To illustrate this briefly: how-
ever charming or curious a fictional description of, for example, the ability
to bluff one’s way into influential circles as with the protagonist in John
O’Farrell’s This is Your Life (2002), its appeal as an example—as opposed
to a theory—of the potential of the human condition would be heightened
by its being true rather than merely plausible.11 Simply put, a historical nar-
rative marks our otherness and particularity whereas a literary one often
absolves us of such experiences.
124 The Confines of the Form
Recipes for Historical Meaning
Even if the historical past cannot by definition be present in or through means
of a historical narrative (since it is, indeed, past and thus inaccessible to us),
this absence can be transformed into a concrete presence through the textual
markers that define history writing as referential. The presence within the
text is not, then, that of the past but of a surrogate created for our histori-
cal imaginings in the text by its commitment to remain within the realm of
the real rather than that of the imaginary. This overall dynamic has conse-
quences that serve to distinguish the history text from the fictional narra-
tive. The historical narrative is involved in a justification—or a pretense—of
referentiality through the sleight-of-hand of introducing extra-textual truth
to a narrative rather than engaging in textual truth-creation. For this reason,
the historical narrative remains, from a literary theorist’s point of view, a
formally inferior literary artefact. From an opposing point of view, the faith
placed by the historical narrative in its ability to convince without resorting
to linguistic trickery may be taken as a sign of honesty. To take this one step
further, it might be suggested that the narrative that refuses to lead us on by
“typically” literary means is already involved in an unconscious denial of
representation.
The most important thing to note concerning the issue of “presence” in
the text is that it shows us two alternative approaches to representation. The
conventional history text is not, I would argue, committed to mimetic repre-
sentation. It does not (necessarily) intend to conjure up a reality in our reading
of it; nor does it claim to present the world it attends to within its represen-
tational discourse. Rather, its aim is to direct us to the artefacts that remain
of a past reality and thus to refer us to something outside itself. The literary
text, on the other hand, requires no reality of its own that we might refer to
independently of the text. In the case of literary fiction, we are referred only
to our personal experiences of the world. Of course, there are many instances
where literary fiction does not proceed in such a self-sustaining manner: the
case of the historical novel often provides the stumbling block for approaches
that attempt to make a formal distinction.
The upshot of this argument, however, is that forms of discourse con-
ventionally marked as literary rather than referential refuse to give con-
trol of interpretations to the reader.12 The dynamic they utilize in their
meaning-production necessarily involves them in an overdetermining of
their object to the extent that, although readers may justifiably ask what
something means with reference to their own lives, they are prevented from
deferring to the narrative as justification for changing their behaviour.
Granted, this is also a result of the different ontological spheres these nar-
ratives inhabit. For the purposes of practical efficacy, there is thus a great
deal to be said in favour of a narrative that maintains its position in the
ontological sphere of the real (and can thus invoke the force of “truth”)—
even with the criticism heaped by more traditional historians on historical
 The Confines of the Form 125
narratives that lead to presentist thinking and by many theorists on the idea
of a compelling truth.
Handing responsibility for the construction of meaning over to the reader,
the kind of “committed” and self-aware historical narrative that I have been
advocating here and in many of the previous chapters, could permit a differ-
ent kind of understanding to be formed: this is not an understanding of the
subjective processes of being human or the ability to empathize with those
who are different to ourselves as much as one of recognizing one’s role as a
concrete actor in a world where meanings are not predetermined—a world
where meanings are as fluid and unstable as we make them.
While these overall distinctions between ways of meaning-making seem
convincing, they also lead to problems in how precisely to read White’s
idea of “parahistorical” representations. The distinction between the use
of references in the traditional classic realist mode of history writing and
the alternative, possibly parahistorical kind could well be seen in terms of
a totalizing function on the level of their structural significance, the added
“content of the form.” It seems clear from White’s arguments regarding
the kinds of modernist narrative strategies employed by Virginia Woolf, for
example, that this content is no longer in any significant way determined by
the manifest contents of the text but is rather imposed on the story elements
much like plot structure, albeit in a more complex fashion. The imposition
of a “metaphoric significance” on the history text becomes a difficult issue
in this updated understanding of the process of figuration, however. If the
text utilizes references in a kind of postmodern “pastiche” manner, it also
performs a dispersal of meaning that undermines the whole idea behind a
more structuralist emphasis on the interpretive content of the form.
This reading of White’s position would challenge the extension of the
idea of structural content to anything more than emplotment, selection of
materials or the expansion and condensation of scope. There would be no
closure through anything as involved as semiotic overdetermination. For
interpretations of White’s thinking this seems a most significant issue: we no
longer have White-the-structuralist but now see him as invoking the idea of
a postmodern dispersal of meaning in the very sense in which a number of
his somewhat overly enthusiastic supporters and critics have already previ-
ously come to understand his work. The relativist tendencies implicit in the
assumption of a film like Oliver Stone’s JFK, for instance, as a paradigm
for historical representation are a long way from the kind of structural-
ist reading White performs of The Education of Henry Adams (see White
1987, 185–213). The totalization implicit in earlier attributions of semiotic
significance to structural as well as tropological elements of the text towards
the formation of a coherent meaning has far less room in this kind of para-
history. Historical references would no longer be seen to work together in
the manner of a collage, where they—by design13—direct a reading toward
a coherent interpretation but rather a pastiche, where various elements are
no longer even expected to be “read” as belonging to the same, or even
126 The Confines of the Form
commensurate, ontological or temporal levels. Of course, as I discuss in
Chapter 5, White accepts this, saying that present-day readers read such
presentations with an acquired ease (White 1999, 67 ff.).
Indeed, White argues that it is the particular and exceptional nature of
the “modernist event” that leaves it resistant to conceptualization through
typical representational forms. As he writes: “It is the anomalous nature of
modernist events—their resistance to inherited categories and conventions
for assigning meanings to events—that undermine not only the status of
facts in relation to events but also the status of the event in general” (White
1999, 70). To properly understand this, it seems we should pay particular
attention to his emphasis on “inherited” ways of assigning meaning. Despite
the assertion that there is something fundamentally different about the mod-
ernist event, this seems to suggest that the underlying motive of his claim
relates to our distance to these events rather than to their nature.
Surely, to say that we have no recourse to “inherited” representational
strategies for modernist events means only that we are in search for suit-
able approaches now—as indeed the whole narrative constructivist endeav-
our testifies—and not that those particular events are unrepresentable.
Understood in this way, it might be enough to say that modernist events and
our experienced troubles with representing them are a result of our closeness
to them. Put simply, we lack the means to deal with these experiences on
both a cultural and personal level, although we may well have linguistically
and conceptually codified ways of handling similar events more distant to us.
In addition, our proximity to events of such great magnitude leads us to look
for alternative ways of comprehending and representing them. The reason
that these events do not seem to allow for interpretive closure is that they
have not yet been—and, as the underlying ethical-political argument goes,
hopefully never will be—assimilated to our cultural understandings of “how
the world is.” To refuse the connection between the “outside” of such events
(created through any simplistic or customary readings or stories of them) and
their “inside” (their complex actuality) is simply to maintain our attitude of
awe in the face of things we do not (wish to) understand. If this can be done
through renewed or alternative literary means, so much the better.
For White, the continual displacement and dispersal of meaning as well
as the apparently almost random slippage or “leakage” from one frame of
reference to another typical to the modernist novel provides a way of avoid-
ing the kind of intellectual mastery of the event that he would have us refuse.
Yet, at the same time, having become competent readers of “postmodern
parahistorical representations,” contemporary audiences might be assumed
to already have the ability for resisting such mastery. As White says, “pre-
cisely insofar as the story is identifiable as a story, it can provide no lasting
mastery of such events” (White 1999, 81). Given the shift toward a more
full-blown relativism that such statements suggest, the alternate route to a
subversion of representation through referentiality sketched below seems
quite promising.
 The Confines of the Form 127
Presentational Force from Openness
White’s emphasis on parahistorical representation in Figural Realism can
be seen to signal a crucial turn in his thinking. No longer as concerned
with issues of epistemological accuracy as in his earlier work, White there
increasingly foregrounds the question of representational force. Focusing
on the effects of representations, he argues that the adoption of these para-
historical forms can better do justice to the kinds of events he labels “mod-
ernist,” those where the outside and the inside of the event have become
inseparably intertwined (White 1999, 79). By definition, such events are, of
course, most suitably represented following modernist or postmodern strat-
egies in literature. Yet there remains the question of what such modernist
events are. How in fact do they differ from events that are not in such close
proximity, from events that have been distanced from our present by being
linguistically codified in their transmission through historical accounts? Is it
simply that our perceptions and anticipations of them have not been simi-
larly affected?
Despite an apparent change in his approach, the examples White employs
suggest that his attention remains focused on the structures whereby mean-
ing is constructed rather than on the referential contents these construc-
tions convey. It seems, then, that his views concerning the similarity of
interpretation and narration have led him to a partial denial of both with
much greater force than previously. (And this is in many ways borne out by
his more recent turn away from history to the practical past, where these
problems are less acute.) Narration qua interpretation undeniably hinders
understandings of events and processes that do not readily conform to a
traditional, “culturally sanctioned” and recognizable story form.14
It seems, further, that White’s thinking regarding interpretation and the
role of epistemological considerations is radically different even in the con-
text of these parahistorical representations. Where his earlier approach can
be viewed as having emphasized the political function of history writing
and the ways in which literary means could be used to overcome the doubts
caused by the lack of epistemological efficacy, his interest in contemporary
forms of representation in Figural Realism is more to do with the reification
and uncertainty these produce when not controlled. With, that is, the way
that the new media has partially undone the need for narrative presentations
while also leaving viewers unsure of the way that a particular content should
be understood. He makes this point with particular reference to technologi-
cal advances in representational means and their relation to changes in the
kind of understanding that can be achieved. His example of the Challenger
explosion, for instance, shows how interpretation is replaced by repetition
of the documentary footage of the event with little or no commentary or
narrative involved.15 Explanations are sought in the material itself, which
is, obviously, unable to provide answers as such. The role of the historian
as interpreter is simply displaced onto the viewer of this privileged material.
128 The Confines of the Form
To me, the best approach to the problem of the historical representation of
any modernist events, events that we have no preconceived interpretive mod-
els for, and indeed of all events (since eschewing interpretive frames even for
the most familiar occurrences would best serve the ethical-political commit-
ments that I defend here), is to extend the idea of emergence to the historical
narrative and simultaneously affirm its representational specificity vis-à-vis
reference. In other words, to foreground the reality of the inside of the events
(necessarily figured to some extent by any representation) while at the same
time allowing for an openness of form that would leave as much responsibil-
ity for meaning as possible to the interpretation made by the reader. As the
significance of the narrative would then only come about through its interac-
tion with the life-world of the reader, these two aims can be seen to support
each other. Although the idea of significance as an emergent property is the
same as it is in literary theory positions regarding complex meaning-making,
the aspect that needs to be done away with is precisely that of conceiving
of history writing as a branch of literature since this is where the difficul-
ties with regard to openness for interpretation are also smuggled in. And
this should not be the case for historical representations of modernist events
alone if we choose to view the “postist” critique of representation with the
seriousness it deserves. Instead, it is arguably the most productive approach
to the problem of historical representation more broadly.
For history to be “literary” in the sense of permitting a dispersal of mean-
ing does not require that it somehow become fictional or poetic, since the
particular “natural” dispersal of meaning that takes place within the his-
torical narrative is forcibly toward reality, not language. In lieu of actual
past reality, of course, the textual “meaning” usually attributed to an event
would be displaced onto the materials relating to it, assuming that they are
sufficiently foregrounded. In this way, such alternative presentations might
provide readers with a replication of reality in the form of an apprehend-
ing, meaning-making consciousness rather than the fiction of a coherent,
all-knowing point of view. Bringing history presentations to more closely
parallel subjective experience of the world (as well as historians’ investiga-
tive processes) in this manner could go a long way in engaging the subjectiv-
ity of the reader or viewer, thus rendering the past “present” in a fashion
that satisfies the phenomenological yearning we have for the world even,
and always, within language.

Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was published as Pihlainen, Kalle. 2006.
“The confines of the form: Historical writing and the desire that it be what
it is not.” In Tropes for the Past: Hayden White and the History/Literature
Debate, edited by Kuisma Korhonen, 55–67. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Brill
Publishers.
 The Confines of the Form 129
Notes
1. Let me repeat White’s description of this process from my discussion in the pre-
vious chapter: “the sequence of turns taken in interpretative discourse resembles
more the path traversed in the search for a plot structure adequate to the con-
figuration of a diachronic series of events into a paradigmatic structure of rela-
tionships than it does the progressive accommodation of a set of perceptions to
the exigencies of a nomological-deductive demonstration” (White 1999, 127).
Note especially the idea of “paradigmatic structures” for configuring events
here. For specifics on the dynamic of figuration and fulfillment, see especially
White (2010a; 2013) and Kellner (2013a), as well as many of the other essays in
Doran (2013b). For a succinct explanation of figure and fulfillment in relation
to “historical events” and “trauma,” see White (2014b, 60–62).
2. As Marcuse argues: “Unless the analysis takes the road of return from the sym-
bolic to the literal, from the illusion to the reality of the illusion, it remains
ideological, replacing one mystification by another” (Marcuse 1967, 73).
3. For Riffaterre, the constants in the text become visible by means of “anomalies”
or “ungrammaticalities,” leading the reader to search for a more comprehen-
sive interpretation—the text’s significance—rather than being content with a
mimetic meaning. By disrupting the construction of a literal interpretation, such
anomalies indeed force the reader to search for an alternative way of reading. As
Riffaterre elaborates elsewhere: “Undecidables are pointers showing us at what
spots comprehension will be blossoming once the real meaning-units have been
grasped, once the other way of looking at the crux has been hit upon, once the
right viewing-angle has been discovered” (Riffaterre 1981, 239, my emphasis).
  While it should not be overlooked that Riffaterre’s views are based on a very
single-minded approach to literary works, it cannot be denied that the readings
he produces are extremely persuasive. Admitting the problems involved in an
interpretive theory that hinges on the reader having sufficient “linguistic compe-
tence” for reaching correct interpretations, I hope to show that the assumptions
Riffaterre makes lead to useful insights and observations when related to history
writing, however.
4. As Morson writes: “When we understand a work as a whole, contemplate its
design or structure, we see it as a pattern in which everything fits. It is, so to
speak, visible at a glance. Process exists only within the narrated world, not in
the artifact taken as a whole. A radical divide typically separates the characters
from the author, critic, or rereader. The characters experience open time and
process, but the critic has overcome it” (Morson 2003, 70 ff.). For a detailed
discussion of the idea of a work’s overall meaning as well as the significance of
this for history writing, see Pihlainen (2002a).
5. For a recent and most insightful discussion of history and autobiography, see
Aurell (2015).
6. I take the idea of generic “recipes” from Thomas Pavel (2003, 210), who
writes: “To see genre as a set of good recipes, or good habits of the trade, ori-
ented towards the achievement of definite artistic goals makes the instability of
generic categories less puzzling and less threatening.” Pavel’s overall point that
a particular recipe is created in relation to a specific cultural task is important
to understanding (and hopefully accepting) that the practice of history, too, can
change.
130 The Confines of the Form
7. In this kind of reading, “historical,” “geographical” or even more aggressively
thematic overlaps and parallels between non-referential texts are thus clearly
secondary to textual considerations and intertextual relations.
8. The associations that the reader makes from the presentations of this new mate-
rial are similarly outward-directed. They appeal to ideas and actions concerning
the concrete situations that the reader encounters in the world.
9. Although it does not provide a very interesting or conclusive means for distin-
guishing between genres, the manner in which historical narratives present their
sources and evidence in the form of footnotes, for example, provides—to quote
Dorrit Cohn—an additional “textual zone intermediating between the narrative
text itself and its extratextual documentary base” (Cohn 1990, 782).
  On the basis of this “direct” referentiality, but even more as a result of its
generic agreement to refer, history writing manages to do without the kind of
truth-creating strategies employed by fictional narratives. Truth need not be cre-
ated when it is generically (if mistakenly) seen to be out there for the taking. This
is not to say that truth-creation in historical narratives has no textual dimension,
only that the current practice of footnotes or the presentation of quotations or
appeal to general historical knowledge is a fairly uncomplicated textual strategy.
10. White’s main emphasis is, of course, that historical discourse is intra-referential
in the same manner as literature. As he writes: “historical discourse is ‘inten-
sional,’ i.e., is systematically intra- as well as extra-referential. This intensional-
ity endows the historical discourse with a quality of ‘thinginess’ similar to that
of the poetic utterance” (White 1987, 24). This emphasis on textuality should,
I believe, be read in the context of his general intention of overcoming naive
thoughts of objectivity and textual transparency among practicing historians.
11. This should not be misunderstood, however, as arguing that referential discourse
could lead to emotional identification with the protagonist as easily as literary
dramatizations. In this instance, effectiveness is a matter of truth, not presenta-
tion. This is related to the yearning for reality and the past again: surely, dif-
ferent readers want different things and hence turn to different genres. P ­ hillips
makes this same point in relation to biography as a model for history writing,
saying that “[i]n this new form the power of history resides in its actuality rather
than its exemplarity” (Phillips 2003, 216).
12. It should be noted that this line is a difficult one to draw also from the side
of the “literary,” particularly since the contestation of generic conventions is
far more important there. For an attempt to move away from overdetermin-
ing forms in literature, see Goldsmith (2011) on “uncreative writing” and the
potential of encroachments by the referential; also see my discussion on the pos-
sibility of “uncreative history” in Pihlainen (2016, 423–428).
13. Although White does not discuss the issue of intentionality with regard to tex-
tual overdetermination at great length, it seems that in urging historians to
write more complex and literary texts, he grants authorial intentions a signifi-
cant role. Given the difficulties with rehabilitating the idea of authorial inten-
tions to textual approaches, it seems sufficient for present purposes to adopt
the kind of “weak intentionalism” Mark Bevir advocates for approaching lit-
erary artefacts. In such an understanding of texts, meaning does not reside in
the text but in the intentions read into it by the author or the readers based
on their social and historical context—White’s “culturally sanctioned mean-
ings,” conventions and codings. Thus meaning is not atemporal yet can still
 The Confines of the Form 131
be anticipated and shared. As Bevir writes, this weak intentionalism “equates
meanings with the ways particular individuals, whether they be authors or
readers, understand utterances. The crux of intentionalism thus becomes the
idea that meanings are ascribed to objects by the intentional or mental activ-
ity of individuals, rather than properties intrinsic to the objects in themselves.
Weak intentionalism implies only that meanings have no existence apart from
individuals. Utterances have meanings only because individuals take them so to
do” (Bevir 2000, 387). And, because of their historical nature, utterances have
meanings that are far from free-floating.
14. As far as I can see, the tensions between referential and ideological ­commitments—
between content and form, as it were—can be resolved in at least two ways: one
is to leave the ethical-political responsibilities to representations in the practical
past, as White has increasingly done, and to underplay “truth” there as neces-
sary; the other is to take referentiality to the extreme as I describe here, push-
ing interpretive responsibility onto readers. (These tensions can also, of course,
simply be withstood, as they largely tend to be by practicing historians.)
  While these are not necessarily mutually excluding options, embracing the
practical past does mark a clear turning away from historical practice. Aca-
demic history could still continue as a relatively hermetic discipline, “of no use
at all for the solution of practical problems in the present” (White 2012, 127).
The other way forward might be found in properly disruptive, “uncreative”
histories over and above more conservatively formed experimental or uncon-
ventional alternatives. But this too would necessitate a vigorous reshaping of the
discipline. For some further thoughts on this alternative, see Pihlainen (2016).
15. The main difference introduced by the discussion of the modernist event does
not relate simply to altered representational means but, more specifically, to
their relation to reality. In order for the reality of historical sources in the form
of archival material to become “real” for readers of conventional historical nar-
ratives the materials need to be figured in language following familiar forms. In
the process, they are inevitably tamed and domesticated. In contrast, since the
material available to viewers of “events” such as the Challenger explosion is
“unproblematic” in that it is already a real and “true” view in its own generic
frame, it can be most effective if left alone, without comment. Importantly, how-
ever, this does not mean that meaning is now somehow available “out there,”
and neither does it imply some free fall: the construction of interpretations is still
guided by the generic frame and constrained by dominant cultural discourses.
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Historical Reality.” Rethinking History 9 (2/3): 147–157.
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Wyschogrod, Edith. 1998. An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the
Nameless Others. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Index

access: to the past xv, 35n11, 76, 77, 30, 76; see also narrator; reading
107, 116, 119–20; to reality 5–7, contract
45; see also experience; historians’
phenomenological yearning; presence Bal, Mieke 72–3, 80n17, 80n20, 81n21
Ahlbäck, Pia 78n3 Barthes, Roland 36n18, 63, 78n1
Ahlskog, Jonas 36n14, 36n16 Baudrillard, Jean 45, 49–50
Akker, Chiel van den 15n2, 16n9 Benhabib, Seyla 113n8
alienation xiv, 41, 89–90, 104, 106, Benjamin, Walter xiv
114 Bevir, Mark 130–1n13
alterity 40, 50, 108, 113n6, 113n8 Braithwaite, Ann 53, 61n15
alternative forms for history: aleatory Breisach, Ernst 60n5
techniques 73; antinarrative Burke, Peter 49
nonstories 3, 39, 41, 73, 110–11;
experimental history 10–11, 25, 29, Carr, David xvi–xvii, xviii–xix, 5, 6, 13
38–41, 49, 59n2, 61n19, 70, 75, Carter, Jonathan A. 6, 16n8
80n19, 96–7, 100; parahistorical choice: responsibility to choose 31, 41,
representations 56–7, 88–92, 103, 88, 92–3; vs. methodology 25;
111, 112–13n5, 125–8; see also see also responsibility, undecidability
closure; complexity; confusion; closure 3, 9, 10, 15n5, 63, 66, 70, 71,
disruption; materiality of 75, 76, 100, 125–6; avoidance of
historical reference; subversion of 14, 44, 59n4, 89, 91–2, 96, 105–8,
representation; uncreative history 110, 117; and coherence 44, 63, 70,
Ankersmit, Frank xv, 2, 15n2, 16n9, 75–6, 110, 125 (vs. contradiction 70;
16n10, 59n2, 63, 80n20; on uncertainty 70–1); as judgement 7,
narrative substances 8, 34n1; on 40, 66, 85; oppressive nature of 39,
proposal nature of history 8, 21; on 40; and realism 11–12, 14
singular existential statements 21; Cohn, Dorrit 71, 79n8, 79n12, 80n12,
as romantic materialist 5–6, 16n7, 80n20, 130n9
35n11, 81n24; see also experience commitment (political) see
argumentation 8, 81n20, 112n1, 122 responsibility
audience sensibilities xiv, 4, 12, 57, commitment to reference xxi, 7, 20–1,
87–8, 90–1, 97, 117 29, 32, 36n17, 40, 48–9, 62–3, 65,
Aurell, Jaume 129n5 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 77, 78, 79–80n12,
Auslander, Philip 106 98n9, 107–8, 112n2, 112n3, 113n6,
author: historian as 21, 29, 56, 68, 115, 117, 118–24; see also extra-
71–2, 75, 79–80n12, 81n21, 84, 87, textual information; history
119–20; authorial intention 65, 67, as genre
74, 130n13; “death of the author” complexity 1, 2, 7, 16n10, 45, 50,
95–6; authorial responsibility 26, 72–7, 91–2, 96–7, 106–9, 121,
 Index 141
125, 130n13; see also disruption; Domanska, Ewa 35n11
fragmentarity Doran, Robert xxii, 17n17, 37n21,
confusion (as a representational 98n2, 129n1
strategy) 71–3, 76–7, 80n19, 92, 96,
106, 107, 109; see also complexity; embodiedness 99, 104–5, 111, 116;
disruption see also disruption; performance;
consequences: of history writing xiv, presence
xv, xxii, 10, 11, 25–6, 32, 36n14, entertainment: consumer/audience
42, 50, 51, 59n5, 88, 90, 98n7, 103, needs and sensibilities xi, xx, 33, 57,
112n4; see also consequentialism, 87; history as 25, 29, 33, 56–8, 70,
presentism; responsibility 76, 90–1, 96
consequentialism 10, 35n7, 52, 111; Ermarth, Elizabeth 16n11
see also presentism; responsibility experience: as created through
constructivism (narrative): xiii, 2–3, confusion and sense-making 92,
7–9, 15n1, 15n2, 29–33, 34n3, 78n1, 95, 96, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107,
100, 110–11, 122; and epistemology 108–9, 114n10, 116, 123, 128; vs.
xviii, xxi–xxii, 3, 7, 9, 18, 21–2, experientiality 13, 22–5, 26, 27–30,
26–8, 39, 43, 45, 68, 78n2, 83–5, 90, 40, 45, 56, 59n1, 60n10, 70, 72,
119; vs. “narrativism” xvi–xx, 15n5; 75–6, 90, 91, 117; historical xv, xix,
and “new” histories 47–53, 60n12; 5, 6, 35n11; lived/phenomenological
and politics xv, 54–58, 68–9, 77, 117 6, 7, 11, 12–14, 19, 77, 80n19;
constructivism vs. constructionism xii, see also access; alternative forms for
15n1 history; historians’ phenomenological
conventional history xvi, 9, 12, 19–23, yearning
26, 33, 35n9, 41, 46–7, 51–3, 64–5, extra-textual information 65, 68–9, 73,
75–6, 82–4, 102, 105, 122–4 81n21, 121–4
Counsell, Colin 105
cultural history 33, 39, 54 fact–fiction debate xii, xviii, xxii,
cultural meanings xx–xxi, 11, 14, 16n8, 18–19, 23–4, 34n2, 52, 61n14, 122;
16–17n14, 86, 88, 97, 99, 101–2, and “postmodernism” 59–60n5;
110, 117, 126, 127, 130–1n13 moving beyond xix–xx, 29–30, 65,
77, 79n9, 88, 100, 111, 119
Danto, Arthur 16n9 facts see singular statements
Davies, Martin 36n16, 59n5, 70, 78n3, falsification xxi, 8, 16n13
79n5 feminism 44, 53–4, 60n13, 61n15,
Davis, Natalie Zemon 29, 60n9, 75 61n16, 61n21; and feminist history
de Certeau, Michel 16n13, 109 33, 50–1, 56
Deleuze, Gilles 44 fictionalization x, xii, 34n2, 39, 48, 68,
Derrida, Jacques xvii, 17n16, 37n19 77, 100, 113n5, 115; see also fact–
desire for the past x, xx, 22–3, fiction debate
27, 45, 76, 94, 116, 119, 120; Fluck, Winfried 116
see also experience; historians’ focalization 73, 79n8, 79–80n12,
phenomenological yearning 80n19, 80n20, 120
discursivity xix–xvii, xix, xxi, 1, 2, 9, Fogu, Claudio 61n18
10; as condition 4, 7, 15n3, 16n11 Foucault, Michel 37n19, 44, 49
disruption 41, 66, 71, 73, 80n16, fragmentarity 19, 29, 45, 70; see also
113n7, 117, 129n3, 131n14; closure; complexity; disruption
disruptive potential of sources/ Fraser, Nancy 53, 60n13
materials 29, 69, 75, 77, 110–11; Frith, Simon 104
see also alternative forms for Froeyman, Anton 120
history; closure; materiality of
historical reference; subversion of Geertz, Clifford 60n12
representation genre see history as genre
142 Index
Gillis, Stacy 53–54 see also historian’s promise; history
Goldsmith, Kenneth 130n12 as genre; singular statements
Gumbrecht, Hans xv, 27, 58–9n1 intertextuality 70, 95, 117, 121–2,
130n7
Haber, Honi Fern 43–4, 53
Harradine, David 105 Jameson, Fredric 10, 12
historian’s promise 21–2, 62–4, 103, Jenkins, Keith xxii, 2, 4, 8, 10, 21,
109, 117; see also commitment to 22, 27, 34n3, 37n19, 44, 52, 60n5,
reference; history as genre 60n7, 78n2, 81n22, 84, 86; denial
historians’ phenomenological yearning of antirealism 16n12; on fact-
23–6, 45, 76, 77, 81n24, 94–5, 109, value entailment xxi, 7; on other
116, 120, 123, 128; see also access; imaginaries 34–5n5, 79n6, 92
desire for the past; experience JFK (by Oliver Stone) 36n15, 57, 70,
historical method/methodology xi, 89, 113n5, 125
9–10, 20, 25, 32, 38, 42, 43, 47, 49, Judt, Tony 45–6, 60n8
51, 52–3, 55, 57, 59, 63, 103
historicity xix, xx, 36n16, 107 Kansteiner, Wulf 61n18
history text: as artefact xiv, 2, 74, Kellner, Hans 78n1, 129n1; on
86, 95, 119, 124; as complex centrality of argumentation to history
construction 7–8, 16n10; as fiction writing 81n20, 112n1
see fact–fiction debate Kermode, Frank x–xi
history writing: as communication Klein, Kerwin Lee 35n10
62–9, 72–5, 77, 78n4, 84, 88, 91, 93, knowledge: external to narrative 63,
95–7; as disturbed 63, 66, 69, 71, 75; 72–3, 88, 116, 121; historical xv, 12,
emotional impact of 30, 70–2, 80n19, 15, 22, 24, 67, 95, 102, 103, 130n9;
104, 109–11 (see also experience vs. literary or metaphorical 3, 17n15,
experientiality); as inferior/second- 91, 100; of the past 27, 81n22, 98n4
rate literature 24, 47, 71, 76, 112n3, Koselleck, Reinhart xxi
124; strengths of 36n17, 67, 90–2, Kuukkanen, Jouni-Matti xv, 15n5,
112n2, 115, 123–5; “writing phase” 98n5; on argumentation 81n20
vs. “research phase” 8, 34n3; see also
commitment to reference; disruption; La Greca, María Inés 36n14, 60n6,
historian’s promise 60n13
history: as a cognitive category 4–7, LaCapra, Dominick 70, 78n1, 79n11
13–14, 16n9, 71; as discipline/ Lähteenmäki, Ilkka 61n18
institution ix, xi, 4, 12, 19, 32–3, 51, Lanzmann, Claude 75, 108
53, 61–2, 93, 98n4, 131n14 Lasch, Christopher 46–7
(see also conventional history); as Levi, Giovanni 48–50
genre xxi, 3, 4, 20–3, 29–30, 32–3, linguistic turn xiv, 3, 7, 28, 31, 33, 41,
42, 46 63–71, 76, 79n12, 91, 102, 43, 62, 65, 68, 69, 78n3, 86, 112n1
105, 112n2, 119, 122–3, 130n9 Lorenz, Chris 36n14
(see also commitment to reference; Lyotard, Jean-François 37n19, 44–5, 46
historian’s promise); as historical
phenomenon xi, xiv, 4, 33, 57, 66; as MacIntyre, Alisdair 5, 81n22
natural 4–6, 11 (see also historicity) Marcuse, Herbert 118, 119, 129n2
Holland, Norman 67–8 Martin, Raymond 20
Hyvärinen, Matti 81n22 materiality of historical reference 59n1,
63, 69, 75, 77, 88, 104, 105–6,
Icke, Peter 15n2, 27, 35n11 108–11, 113n6, 128, 131n15;
Iggers, Georg 34n2 see also closure; disruption
intentionality see author meaning: definition 16n10, 119;
interpretation, constraints on 8, 14, as derivable from facts xxii, 7;
16n8, 20, 23, 31, 32, 35n6, 42, 66, imposition of 8, 10, 13, 58n1,
81n21, 85, 101–2, 121, 131n15; 130–1n13; ; as “out there” xx–xxi,
 Index 143
2; production of xvi, xxi, 2, 5, 9, 11, 113n7; vs. “postmodernism” 43, 45,
14, 30, 36n12, 50, 63, 70, 72–6, 84, 59–60n5; see also consequentialism;
91, 95, 118, 119, 120–1, 124, 125, responsibility
128; see also closure; fictionalization; practical past xv, 33, 35n5, 80n13, 86;
presentism vs. academic history 4, 12, 28, 36n14,
microhistory 33, 45, 47, 48–51, 53, 56, 85, 96, 98n4, 110, 127, 131n14
60n12, 120 presence: of the past 14, 25, 27–31,
Mink, Louis 13, 15n2, 16n9, 78n1 35n10, 45, 81n24, 86, 95, 107, 109,
Morgan, Sue 60n13 124 (vs. physical presence 104–5,
Morson, Gary Saul 118, 120, 129n4 111); see also access; performance;
Munford, Rebecca 53–4 materiality of historical reference
Munslow, Alun xxii, 10, 15n1, 25, presentism 11, 25–6, 39, 54, 68–9, 103,
29, 59n2, 60n5, 61n19, 62, 69, 70, 111, 125; see also consequentialism
78n1, 78n2, 79n5, 80n20, 81n23, 84 Proust, Marcel 121
Putnam, Hilary xxi
narrative xvii–xx, 2–3, 5–8, 10–11,
13–14, 15n5, 16n9, 19, 20–4, 29–30, readers: reception by 11, 14, 24,
35n6, 39–41, 48–50, 58, 60n11, 30, 41, 55, 63, 74,78n3, 80n19,
66–76, 80n13, 81n21, 81n22, 82, 82–5, 108–9, 117–18, 120–1, 123,
84, 86, 95–7, 98n5, 106; historical 130n8; involvement of 29–30,
vs. fictional 118–25, 128, 130n9; 40, 72, 74–7, 93, 95, 101, 106–7,
structure xvi–xviii, 15–16n6, 25, 112n2, 113–14n10, 115–16, 124–5,
73–4, 81n20, 100–2, 109, 125; 128, 129n3, 131n14; see also
see also closure; narrativization audience sensibilities; experience vs.
narrativization xvii, 14, 18, 20, 27, experientiality; reading contract
34n3, 116, 123; and closure 107–8, reading contract (writer-reader pact)
113n7; as “content of the form” 26; 63–5, 67–8, 73–4, 80n19, 85–88, 92,
definition 15–16n6; and ideology 103, 111, 113–14n10, 122 see also
xviii, 29, 40, 59n3 historian’s promise; history writing as
narrator 40, 79–80n12 communication
new history 45–51, 60n9 realism xviii, 5, 13–14, 16n7, 20;
Nicholson, Linda 60n13 vs. antirealism xvii–xx, 7, 21;
nihilism 15n3, 26, 52; see also relativism vs. fictionalization x, 77; see also
Norman, Andrew 80n14 commitment to reference; experience
Nussbaum, Martha 79n7, 79n11 realist form 10–12, 19, 24, 40, 56,
60n10, 65, 70, 75, 87–8, 117, 125;
Oakeshott, Michael 15n1, 28, 36n16 and reading expectations 14; see also
otherness 40, 104–5, 107, 110–11, closure; verisimilitude
113n6, 114n10, 123; see also alterity relativism xiv, 9, 21, 25, 26, 37n21,
41–4, 48, 55, 60n7, 66, 84, 87, 90,
Partner, Nancy xxii, 15n5, 52, 98n5 103, 126; see also scepticism
Paul, Herman xv, xvi, 17n17, 34n4, responsibility, ethical-political
37n20, 37n21, 94, 98n2, 98n4, 98n8 9–12, 17n16, 25–6, 31–2, 35n7,
Pavel, Thomas 78n4; on genre as recipe 37n21, 42, 51–3, 60n7, 84, 92–4,
129n6 131n14; see also consequentialism,
Peltonen, Matti 46, 49 poststructuralism, relativism
performance (art) 57, 61n18, 61n21, Revel, Jacques 50
99, 102, 104–6, 109–11 Ricoeur, Paul 78n1, 81n22
phenomenology, connecting to history Riffaterre, Michael 17n14, 118, 121,
5–6, 13–14, 16n8, 27, 35–6n12; 129n3
see also experience Rigney, Ann 15n5
Phillips, Mark Salber 120, 130n11 Roberts, Geoffrey 6, 64, 70, 78n2, 80n14
poststructuralism xiii–xiv, 31, 25, 35n7, Rogne, Erlend 11, 37n20, 37n21, 98n2,
48–50; ethic of 44, 59n4, 72, 105–6, 98n3
144 Index
Ronen, Ruth 80n12 uncreative history 130n12, 131n14
Rorty, Richard xxi, 2, 16n7, 43, 72, undecidability 17n16, 37n19, 59n5;
80n15 see also choice; poststructuralism;
Rosenstone, Robert 10, 25, 59n2, responsibility
60n10, 61n19, 69 universalization of difference 43,
Roth, Michael xv 53, 93
Roth, Paul 16n10
Runia, Eelco xv, 27 Vann, Richard xxii, 25
Rüsen, Jörn 78n3 verisimilitude 11, 65
Rushdie, Salman 77 Virta, Tatu 61n18

Sartre, Jean-Paul 37n21, 82, 84, 98n2; White, Hayden: on antinarrative

on totalizing narratives 106; on nonstories 39, 73, 110; “The Burden
author-reader pact and mutual respect of History” 19, 35n6; on closure
of freedoms 98n6, 113–14n10 7, 11, 40, 66; on conventional
scepticism: and authority 15n3, 31, 33, history 12, 35n9, 64–5, 98n4;
39; epistemological 41–3, 55, 59n5, on cultural meaning-making xx,
78n2, 82, 83, 84, 87, 93, 97; and xxi, 16–17n14, 86, 101, 129n1,
meaning 2, 4, 9,14 130n13; on intensionality 130n10;
Schama, Simon 60n8 on judging between competing
Schneider, Rebecca 105 interpretations 35n6, 59n3, 80n13,
Scott, Joan 50–1, 60n6, 60n13 112n4; defence of history 4, 21–3,
Sharpe, Jim 46 30–2, 34n5, 79n10, 85–90, 98n4;
singular statements xviii, xxi–xxii, 2, on emancipation 12, 55, 93, 112n4;
7–8, 10, 15n2, 18–19, 20–3, 28–9, Figural Realism 27, 36n13, 87,
31–2, 35n6, 36n15, 59, 70, 80n13, 88–92, 100, 117, 127; “The Historical
80n18, 100, 126 Text as Literary Artefact” 2, 34n2;
Smith, Bonnie 60n13 on history as bad art 24; on history
social history 45–6, 50 as fiction xviii, 2–3, 34n2, 36n15,
sources xxii, 29, 63, 75, 80, 105–6, 100, 108; on history as a historical
122, 130n9, 131n15; see also accident 4; on history as opposed
disruption; materiality of historical to literature 78–9n5; Metahistory
reference 20, 34n4; on modernist events 39,
Southgate, Beverley 59n5, 60n9 88, 107, 110, 113n9, 126, 127; on
Spiegel, Gabrielle 37n21, 61n14, 78n3 “parahistorical” representations 12,
Stone, Lawrence 46–8, 52, 58, 60n9, 28, 88–90, 103, 112–13n5, 126; on
61n20 pop art 109; as postmodernist 37n20;
storytelling x, xii, xvii, 63, 89, 110 and the practical past xv, 4, 12, 28,
subversion of representation 14, 44–5, 33, 36n14, 79n10, 80n13, 96, 98n4;
48, 49, 59n4, 99, 105–6, 111, 126; on the reader 82–4, 87–8, 96; on
see also alternative forms for history; reality 49, 94; on reference 17n15,
poststructuralism 48; on relativism 26; on semiotic
suspension of disbelief 41, 63, 73, 83 reading 68, 81n21, 125; on social
change and revolution 98n3; on social
Tamm, Marek xv, 78n4 responsibility 60n7; on truth 3, 15n4,
textuality xvi, 15n5, 95–6; textualism 108; on usefulness of history 12, 85,
13, 43, 59n2, 61n17, 62–8, 74–5, 98n4
78n3, 86 women’s history 45, 50–1, 53, 56,
Tozzi, Verónica xxii, 36n14 60n6, 60n13
truth-creation 3, 121–4, 130n9 Wyschogrod, Edith 21
Twain, Mark 74
Tyler, Imogen 61n16 Zagorin, Perez 35n8