Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe is not a work for the casual reader. Hayden White's opus requires some commitment and some work. It is lengthy and there is a lot of jargon to wade through. While jargon in a work of history often seems to substitute for original or even just interesting thought, White's project is complex enough that the jargon is warranted. It effectively becomes shorthand for very complicated ideas, enabling the reader to follow him as he builds his arguments without needing to restate at every turn.
Essentially, White examines eight nineteenth-century authors (four historians and four "philosophers of history") in order to dissect their works and discern the literary premises upon which they constructed their narratives. I will attempt to paraphrase his project and I will not half do it justice. White examined the works of G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Benedetto Croce, Jules Michelet, Leopold von Ranke, Alexis de Tocqueville and Jacob Burckhardt. In doing so, he paid special attention to what he called the poetic "trope" each author used to characterize their narrative. That is, were they basing their historical narratives in Metaphor, Irony, Metonymy or Synecdoche? Depending on the trope employed, each author's work would proceed on the grounds assumed by that trope. In this way, the operative trope of a work of history would necessarily characterize its subject in a certain fashion, whether the trope were consciously chosen or subconsciously employed. Additionally, unconnected to the operative trope, but working in conjunction with it, is the author's given method of "emplotment". Does he present the historical events at hand as Romance, Tragedy, Comedy or Satire? All of these questions (and oh so many more) determine, for White, the form these men's histories took.
I would come up with an example but, frankly, this aspect of Metahistory bored me a little. I already believe that history is not a science or even really a pseudoscience, but an art. It is not the least surprising to me that an historical narrative draws its epistemological assumptions from poetic conceits (storytelling conceits) and not from "objective" observation. But this very topic, whether history is a science, a pseudoscience or an art, is precisely what White's subject authors were debating. Which, in fact, brings me to what I did find really fascinating about Metahistory.
White contends that history in the newly scientific, Enlightenment world of the 18th century suffered from extreme irony. There was nothing new under the sun, man had repeated the same savage and stupid mistakes in the past and would continue to do so into the future, and while change is inevitable it is neither distinctly traceable nor predictable. This state of psychological malaise, triggered by a fever of scientific inquiry that only pointed out humankind's limitations, made it practically necessary to write history in an ironic mode. Come Hegel and the 19th century, and folks were really tired of irony. Hegel and the gentlemen whom White studies in Metahistory sought to identify history as a discipline proper and, in many cases, as a scientific discipline. They sought to liberate it from irony and to learn lessons from it that would improve the state of man. Okay, that last bit only generally. For as White discovered, liberating oneself from irony when the history of man is, in fact, a cyclical pageant of power relationships is not an easy task. And a good portion of these eight authors did not believe the march of history was necessarily toward something good or better.
And here's what I found really interesting - the extent to which our post-post-modern world suffers from just such an ironic malaise. We live in an incredibly ironic age. It is truly difficult to be earnest and genuine when you have been shown, again and again, that there is a dark side to every positive human impulse and that the light and the dark exist in each of us simultaneously. And if history does anything, it instructs us well of that. As I wholeheartedly believe in this correlation between the 19th century and the early 21st century, and as I too have studied history hoping to learn some "truths" of humanity, I was thrilled when White repeatedly found each of his eight authors grappling with a central conundrum, with which I struggle daily - action versus withdrawal.
Over and over again, the intellectual pursuits of these eight historians led them to weigh the public merits and personal toll of either remaining politically active and invested in the the future of their societies, or of withdrawing into a personal life where one invests in private pursuits and loved ones and pretty much leaves the outside world to itself. Something about studying history must bring this specific quandry upon one, for I have certainly been consumed by it in recent years. Or maybe it is a more general question we all must answer and, for those of us who are historically minded, the study of the expanse of time brings the question front and center. Maybe for the scientifically minded, studying the universe's beginnings or the minute cosmos of an atom has the same effect.
In any event, I certainly fall on the withdrawn side of things - as, it turns out, did Jacob Burckhardt. I felt a great kinship with these eight men, even the ones who answered this question differently, for at least they asked it - if all change seems to end up as the same old grinding wheel of power and oppression, why should I really advocate for change? You take a long enough perspective on history and it all seems one. We are dust motes. And we are not even particularly kind or virtuous dust motes. We love our power and we want, want, want. It makes me think of Meet John Doe (the 1941 Capra film) and Walter Brennan's rant about the "heelots". If you are not familiar, please take a few minutes and watch this clip. I do not agree on every point, but I find it a really succinct way of summing up human greed and materialism. And, like Walter Brennan's character, I prefer simply to not play that whole game rather than deal with the heelots. I get by on a little and try not to wish for a lot. I withdraw and I invest myself in the people and quiet pursuits I love. I do vote, I donate a little time and money now and again, and I listen to the news. But I definitely hear it filtered through the assumptions of the Ironic trope and emplotted by a mix of Satire and Comedy.
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