Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 00:35:37 +0100
Subject: [fwd] Rene Barendse: can historians be objective?


dear All,

a bit hesitant to disturbe our peacefull stillness silence .......

but i can't resist sending you this excellent piece by the historian
Rene Barendse. His posting is a part of a (ungoing [sic]) debate
currently on the history-world list about that notorious of all historo-
ontological questions viz. the one about the status of subjectivity and
objectivity in the historical sciences; and, although historians are his
initial audience, i think he has some interesting and wise things to say
about issues that regularly surface here on our list too.

yrs,
jan

==================================================H-WORLD-AT-H-NET.MSU.EDU

From:    R.J. Barendse
              Leiden University



In response to Patricia Seed:

>I would like to applaud Pamela McVay for her honest assessment of her
>approach to history.

I too - but I find Patricia Seed's response very strange indeed:

>I view her response as a much needed first step in
>reform of discipline (history) whose epistemological foundations remain
>locked in nineteenth-century thinking.

I'm all for the `new' but history is not a detergent advertising campaign.
Historians (of all people) should be aware of historic precedents - what is
`new' is not necessarily better. And before Patricia starts denouncing those
`naive' nineteenth century thinkers let me emphasize those dreary nineteenth
century white people were not nearly as naive as Patricia seems to
think. For `nineteenth century' to Patricia apparently means the position
that the truth is `out there' and can objectively be known through the study
of original documents. And I'll really have to rush here to defend the
nineteenth century.

What Pamela tries namely to convey, `the emotional empathy' with people
in the past as the historian method is nothing else but what those
aforementioned dreary nineteenth century penis-people called `das
Verstehen'. And in fact far from being philosophically naive what Pamela
is trying to say namely that the difference between natural science and
historical science is `das Verstehen' (you can not `feel like' an elementary
particle, but you can feel you understand Theressa de Avilla better than
your very own boyfriend) is actually far from a philosophically naive
position as Pamela thinks. It is namely also the position of one of the
great nineteenth century philosophers, Wilhelm Dilthey. (And in fact I see
a great deal of Martin Heidegger in Redwood's previous posting - for
doesn't Heidegger say that understanding is conditioned by being in
time and place?)

Again, let's not claim to reinvent the wheel as Patricia does then, I feel.
Those annoying nineteenth/twentieth century philosophers also wrote on
this and often I'm afraid far better than much of what has been written in
the US in the here and now. Thus Pamela:

<In fact, I find the longer I study a time and
>place the more readily I can perceive the world the way the people I
>study did. (Yes, I know this is an peculiar statement, philosophically.)

This is not a peculiar statement `philosophically speaking' at all since what
Pamela is trying to express here would be called `the closing of the life
horizon'
by one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century, Hans Georg Gadamer.
It's tough reading in any language but Gadamer's basic work `Truth and
Method' would well repay study for Pamela to show her she's not by far as
naive as she thinks she is. And the late Gadamer was in turn but building on
a vast philosophical tradition, called hermeneutics and going back to
Schleiermacher in 1800 - close reading of text and testimony originally
developed for bible studies in the early nineteenth century. Close reading of
texts wasn't certainly invented in the 1980's then, which is why I find
Patricia's
statement very odd:
>For example, socio-cultural anthropologists are trained to become
>self-conscious of their cultural and personal biases before undertaking
>fieldwork. This task is neither pleasant nor easy, because it entails
>shining a strong critical light on usually dearly held prejudices.

>Unlike their counterparts in history, anthropologists do not rush to
>proclaim their work "objective" as a result--because they have no stake
>in maintaining nineteenth-century standards.

Now, apart from the fact that Patricia contradicts herself here since she
says anthropologists learn to `criticize prejudice' which implies their work
is `objective' (if it was n't, there would be no difference between `views'
and `prejudice' the latter being bad, the other good according to some
objective standard of what is `prejudice' apparently) But I have a major
problem - in Patricia criticizing `outdated' history versus. modern
anthropology.
First what Patricia considers the anthropological method is nothing but an
(I'm afraid somewhat watered down) version of nineteenth century hermeneutics
brought into anthropology by German-trained scholars like Bronislav
Malinovski, who had been taught hermeneutics and what would then have
been called the `German historic method' in Berlin.

To wit: the `modern' method taught to anthropologists doing participant
observation actually derives from that very same dreary nineteenth century
history, philosophy and theology, and that same hermeneutial cannon worked
out by Schleiermacher and Ernst Troeltsch. This nineteenth century which
Patricia thinks was only theoretically naive and which we immediately should
get rid of !

>Instead, even today, some historians loudly proclaim their allegiance to
>their cultural and class prejudices by describing their judgments as
>"plausible." These historians (most recently during a trial in England)
>remain blissfully ignorant of how  culture, class, historical
>experience, and even languages influence what they consider "plausible."
>
>Furthermore, historians lack critical training in reading. There are a
>limited number of critical questions that historians ask (which I
>outlined in a 1994 article, "Postmodernism in Postcolonial History.") As
>part of disciplinary training historians fail to learn techniques of
>critical reading  that have been taught in literature departments since
>the late 1980s.  They are particularly ill-adept at analyzing narrative,
>particularly those that exist in  their original sources.
>

The problem here is that Patricia argues probably too much from her own
field - after all `critical reading', or "analyzing narratives particularly
those that exist in their original source" is what, say, medieval or
Byzantine historians have been doing ever since 1800. Nobody obviously
speaks or writes medieval Greek anymore so Byzantinology always works
with a corpus of original sources - sources which are as difficult to
understand
than any anthropologist's interview with a khoisan hunter-gatherer. More
so I think since it was not written to `fit' modern occupations. What Patricia
probably wants to say is that we should rely less on colonial sources and more
on `indigenous sources' which are more difficult to interpret because of
class and national biases to study colonial societies - I fully agree with
that position.

But if you talk about Greece in the seventh century this is a strange
indictment indeed because you can do little else but critical reading if you
do Byzantine (or for that matter early medieval European or early Turkish or
Mycenian etc. etc.) history. There is but a limited corpus of sources for
Byzantine history and the overwhelming bulk of it consists of life of saints.
So if Patricia were really right and historians were not at all skilled in
"critically
analyzing narratives" Byzantine studies could have ceased working somewhere
around 1910 - when the sources were all published - Again, if Patricia would
be right Byzantinologists would also believe in miracles and the big theme
in Byzantine studies would be that God works through the workings of the
holy men. (If historians really stayed that close to the narrative and were
unskilled in critical reading that's the only thing Byzantinologists could
talk
about because that's what these texts are all about. Since, well, these texts
were not written to reflect modern preoccupations but to reflect those of
seventh century preachers and monks).

I can assure Patricia the field is pretty much alive and kicking, though,
and the whole field of Byzantinology is an impressive tribute to how
historians - after a whole lifetime of training - can still squeeze vast
amounts
of information out of an extremely limited number of sources by, yes,
nothing but critical reading.

I'm afraid, then, Patricia is accusing medieval or classical historians of
not doing something they have done since at least 1880. For there is a whole
branch of medieval studies called criticism of charters with methods going
back to 1500 (!) which does nothing else but ascertain through critical
reading whether documents are genuine or not. There is also a branch called
`text criticism' which has to ascertain through relentless and painstaking
work what the original of a narrative might have said. If criticism of
charters and of texts is not critical reading then what is ?

But the point is of course that much of the critical reading in language
departments is also of this same old, dreary but nevertheless absolutely
essential - and taking a lifetime of experience - variety. If - as some
of the postmodernists are arguing - the `author is dead', then it's of no
use to ascertain what the missing hypothetical copy `B' might have said
in the sixth century; whereas we now have only copy `D' from the ninth
century and copy `F' from the eleventh; both probably derived from `B',
which in turn was copied from original `A' written in the fifth century.
This kind of work is what many of the philologists in the literature
department
do all their lives though - and if the author were dead by implication some
of the best scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth century have been toiled
all their life in vain. For what's the use of ascertaining whether page 35
originally has servum (F-copy) or servus (D-copy) if the text does not
really exist at all but is merely de-constructed and re-constructed by the
critical reader ? I do not think therefore many of the good philologists in,
say the Anglo-Saxon section of the English literature departments take the
theoretic `pomo'  announcements coming from their colleagues in modern
literature of the same department very seriously. Or, at least, that in any
way they follow them in practice. (If what the author intended does n't
matter then you can as well cease publishing text-critical editions,
which is what most philologists do).

Likewise I think few medievalists would take any of Patricia's injunctions
very seriously, though what she writes is perfectly applicable to
nineteenth/twentieth century colonial history. Because, basically, the
`culture shock' if you study Medieval texts is as profound as going to
live amongst the Khoisan. For the very simple reason that this society is
culturally, economically and, yes, mentally as different from ours as
that of the Khoisan. More alien in fact because medieval texts were not
written for a modern audience. If your Khoisan has a belief or use you
do not understand you can probe him/her through further questioning:
your spokesmen are after all addressing a westerner in 2002. Medieval texts
on the other hand were written for a medieval audience, which saw `alien
uses' as the `normal' way. They therefore did not need further explanation -
and your spokesman are, again, long dead - no further questioning here.
To grasp these texts at all you have to `think' like the audience in the
Middle Ages which means that you have to shed not only prejudice and
your own culture but `modernity' - a far more difficult thing - and you have
to do that in a far more radical way than anthropologists ever are forced to.
Anthropologists mostly have a local assistant helping in the fieldwork - a
personal intermediary serving as a bridge between them and the `other',
who can translate words or practices - medievalists have no such bridges:
the `other' there is long, long dead.

And then Patricia finally says:

>And that's not to mention the way in which they construct facts--what
>they reject as factual, what they dismiss as "implausible" fact, etc.
>

Actually they do that working through the hermeneutial method which is
complicated in theory - and on which hordes of historians, philosophers
and theologians have been toiling ceaselessly since the late eighteenth
century - if you're interested read the huge classic volume of Camilio
Betti "Introduction to hermeneutics" -but it is easy to say what it should
entail in principle. In principle - and it comes down to a few basic rules
which I always illustrate through a case given by the professor of Budhist
studies in Leiden.

Suppose, Vetter says, I read a seventh century Tibetan mystical text in
which the author claims that when he had meditated long enough he was
able to fly. I could then think a couple of things: first I could say that
the laws of gravity following the text did not apply in seventh century Tibet.
However, referring to Newtonian physics that does not seem likely; and
also from my Own experience (and that's about as far as many hard-core
neo-positivists would go) I know that there exists a `covering law' that man
can n't fly and that if you jump from a high building you're mostly dead.

I can then say that this text proves once again that if you pray hard enough
God will for the time being suspend gravity - that's probably what the
overwhelming mass of mankind in 2002 believes.

However, since Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft we have essentially put
God (or aliens or fairies or what have you, anything which we can not
prove that exists) in `brackets' in any scientific explanation. We can not
definitely say you can not fly if you pray a lot but since we have no empirical
proof that you can we can not use it as an explanation either. All this may
not sound like very much but remember that `bracketing' anything for which
there is no proof makes science whether it be philology or natural science
(and you'll be amazed how many explanations in history revolve around things
which can not be proven).

I can then say that my writer is claiming he can fly because he's
completely, ravingly mad - that's what we all would assume in common
everyday practice. However, here's the point where the hermeneutical
cannon comes in: saying that somebody is irrational - is not `like you' -
I don't think I'm mad after all - is not an explanation at all, heremeneutics
holds; because basically completely irrational or mad behavior is random
and can therefore not be rationally explained. However (being human beings)
we know we act very rarely completely randomly, even if we're drunk, and
we can assume our flying monk is no exception. Instead, we will `bracket'
the explanation "he is mad and not like me" and will assume this monk is a
similar human being as we are, a human being which can rationally understand.
We have to wonder then under what circumstances people will act in the same
way you could plausibly act were you in the same circumstances, living within
the same system of belief and provided with the same information. That is:
through reading the text I have to question myself: under what circumstances,
with what kind of beliefs and with what kind of information, which is given
in this text, and were I in the same circumstances as the writer, would I
believe
that I could fly? This is called the hermeneutic circle: first confronting
the text,
then making clear what your own beliefs are; then going back to the text again
and then turning back to yourself and trying to make clear to yourself how and
why you might behave or believe like the author of the text.  For example -
if I had been meditating for days on end wouldn't I come in a kind of trance,
in which I had the impression I moved outside of myself and which was
generally described by my fellow monks as being in the `state of flying' ?

Now all this may seem rather simple and down to earth but it's extremely
difficult to make this hermeneutical circle in practice. It takes years of
experience and even sometimes courage since it often involves asking
painful question not only on what your own beliefs and prejudices are but
also on who you are yourself. (Closing the hermeneutic circle namely also
involves translating the life-world of your subject into your own which can
often be a frightening thing. For example: is n't it a prejudice of me to
think my Tibetan monk mad if he claimed he could fly, all evidence to
the contrary notwithstanding ? Don't I have equally bizarre beliefs actually
- like that smoking won't do any harm to me but only to others: there being
a whole body of evidence proving the contrary ? If I hold such an equally
strange belief that what does apply to everybody does not apply to me,
all experience to the contrary, then are the believes of my monk any more
irrational than mine?)

This involves awkward questions: the classic example might be the Goldhagen
debate a few years ago. Assuredly you have to be careful drawing the
Holocaust in in any historic debate, but since the Holocaust involves
`thinking the unthinkable', since it is the historic study of the absolute
evil, and is therefore the ultimate border case of historical studies, it
highlights many of the same dilemmas faced by historical researchers
working, say, on Tibet or Byzantium in the seventh century in extreme
form.

I'm somewhat misrepresenting Goldhagen here but what Goldhagen appeared
to be arguing to many of his opponents was basically the commonsense `not
like me' position, like that Tibetan monk who claims he can fly the Germans
were clearly starkly mad and no explanation from rational reasons we could
in any way experience is possible. The World War II Germans were not `like
us' but a bunch of murderous anti-Semites and any attempt to make them
more `like us' by making them act rational is - Goldhagen often appeared to
argue - only a misleading apology. To make them more behave like us is
imputing `rational' motives to them they didn't have in the first place. Thus,
for example, instead of serving any `like us' rationality of using captives
for
output, the purpose of work in the concentration camp was not productivity
but a quite `unlike us' purpose: to work people to death.

However, the problem in the Goldhagen debate was that - even granting
Goldhagen's point that the World War II Germans were `unlike us' in widely
adhering to a murderous anti-Semitism which alone produced the Holocaust,
something many of his opponents were uncertain about  - this essentially
leaves the hermeneutical circle open. The proper question would not be to
say: `the Germans are not like us', the questions would be to ask, according
to the hermeneutic cannon, what kind of pressures and what kind of
circumstances might make me hold a fanatical belief that Jews were
"vermin which must be exterminated at all costs?" This is not an apology
of evil; that it was evil everybody agreed, the problem is that people
rarely see other people as a plague which the entire community must work to
wipe out. Which is why Raoul Hilberg says the real problematic issue of the
holocaust is not the reactions of the victims, they're easy to understand,
but the motives of the perpetrators because it leads to an extremely painful
`who am I' question. (Basically: `could I have acted as an SS-man ?' `would
I really be immune to a Government campaign which told me daily it was
my duty to a threatened fatherland to hate the Jews?')

So, here's why the hermeneutical circle takes courage: if the World War II
Germans were `not like us', that really absolves modern society from
any blame. If on the other hand the draftees of the Einsatzgruppen were
ordinary men (mind you this is the subtheme of the Goldhagen/Browning
debate: Browning writes `ordinary men', Goldhagen: `ordinary GERMANS')
like you and me, then you have to face a terrible question: what kind of
structures exist in modern society, and maybe not in Germany alone, which
lead to genocide. And to an even more terrifying question: might then
genocide not reoccur?

And furthermore it leads to very difficult questions on one's own identity:
such difficult questions that they might even drive one (as I think happened
with Timothy Mason) to suicide. For if many of the perpetrators - as was
indeed the case - only worked to advance their career or their income if
I then close the hermeneutic circle I have to ask the terrible question:
wouldn't I equally easily give in to absolute evil only for the sake of my
career, my job, my salary, or my children going to a good school? And,
wider, if I participate in the `rat-race' nowadays do I therefore not
perpetuate evil structures, structures which produced a holocaust once,
and might produce them twice?

As said - agonizing questions, which is why a hermeneutic circle takes
courage - more courage, I'm afraid, than much of the rather smug `critical
reading' done in literature departments. For the hermeneutic circle takes
another form of courage: intellectual humility - assuming that you are not
`smarter' than the person whose text you are reading and that your way
of looking at things is not necessarily `better' than that of a person in
the past. Intellectual humility however is the one obvious virtue
academicians - myself absolutely not excluded - tend to be rather short
of and a virtue I - therefore ? - all too often miss in all the deconstruction
of texts going on in the literature departments. For doesn't `deconstructing'
texts (the word conveys something of the image of a superior architect who
takes texts apart and then resembles them according to some overall plan
not clear to the stupid author) rather than `Verstehen' already not convey
a kind of intellectual hybris ?




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