Philosophy of history after Hayden White

271 Pages·2013·1.17 MB·English

by  Doran

Philosophy of History
After Hayden White
Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy
Bloomsbury Studies in American Philosophy presents cutting-edge
scholarship in both the history of and contemporary movements in
American philosophy. The wholly original arguments, perspectives
and research findings in titles in this series make it an important and
stimulating resource for students and academics from across the field.
America’s First Women Philosophers, Dorothy G. Rogers
Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism, Alexandra L. Shuford
John Searle and the Construction of Social Reality, Joshua Rust
The Legacy of John Rawls, edited by Thom Brooks and Fabian Freyenhagen
Nozick, Autonomy and Compensation, Dale F. Murray
Peirce, James, and a Pragmatic Philosophy of Religion, John W. Woell
Peirce’s Philosophy of Communication, Mats Bergman
Peirce’s Pragmatic Theory of Inquiry, Elizabeth Cooke
Pragmatist Metaphysics, Sami Pihlström
Quine on Meaning, Eve Gaudet
Quine’s Naturalism, Paul A. Gregory
Reality and Its Appearance, Nicholas Rescher
Relativism in Contemporary American Philosophy, Timothy M. Mosteller
Richard Rorty, edited by Alexander Gröschner,
Colin Koopman and Mike Sandbothe
Richard Rorty’s New Pragmatism, Edward J. Grippe
Thomas Kuhn’s Revolution, James A. Marcum
Varieties of Pragmatism, Douglas McDermid
Virtue Ethics: Dewey and MacIntyre, Stephen Carden
Philosophy of History
After Hayden White
Edited and with an Introduction
by Robert Doran
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square 175 Fifth Avenue
London New York
WC1B 3DP NY 10010
UK USA
www.bloomsbury.com
First published 2013
© Robert Doran and Contributors, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining
from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury
Academic or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–4411–4553–6
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Philosophy of history after Hayden White / edited by Robert Doran.
p. cm. -- (Bloomsbury studies in american philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-0821-0 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-4822-3 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-
4747-9 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-4411-4553-6 (pdf) 1. White, Hayden V., 1928- 2. Historiography.
3. History--Philosophy. 4. Literature and history. I. Doran, Robert, 1968-
D15.W46P55 2013
901--dc23
2012046568
Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
Contents
Editor’s Note vii
Contributors ix
Illustrations xiii
Editor’s Introduction: Choosing the Past: Hayden White and the
Philosophy of History 1
Robert Doran
1 History as Fulfillment 35
Hayden White
2 A Plea for a Cognitivist Approach to White’s Tropology 47
F. R. Ankersmit
3 Deliver Us from A-Historicism: Metahistory for Non-Historians 67
Mieke Bal
4 Hayden White’s Hope, or the Politics of Prefiguration 89
Karyn Ball
5 Hayden White and Me: Two Systems of Philosophy of History 109
Arthur C. Danto
6 Uneven Temporalities/Untimely Pasts: Hayden White and the
Question of Temporal Form 119
Harry Harootunian
7 Hopeful Monsters or, The Unfulfilled Figure in Hayden White’s
Conceptual System 151
Hans Kellner
8 Rhetorical Theory/Theoretical Rhetoric: Some Ambiguities in the
Reception of Hayden White’s Work 171
Gabrielle M. Spiegel
9 Hayden White and Non-Non-Histories 183
Richard T. Vann
vi Contents
10 From the Problem of Evil to Hermeneutic Philosophy of History:
For Hayden White 201
Gianni Vattimo
11 Comment 209
Hayden White
Notes 215
Index 251
Editor’s Note
I would like to thank Hayden White for his support during the preparation
of this volume and for his “Comment,” which appears at the end. I would
also like to thank the University of Rochester, where I currently teach, for its
generous sponsorship of the 2009 conference, “Between History and Narrative:
Colloquium in Honor of Hayden White,” where the early versions of five
contributions to this volume were first presented. Many thanks to Margaret
Brose, for her elegant translation of Gianni Vattimo’s essay, and to Ana Torfs,
for permission to reproduce photographs of her work. Finally, I am grateful to
Camilla Erskine, my editor at Bloomsbury, for her kind and careful attention to
this project.

Contributors
F. R. Ankersmit is Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and Historical
Theory at Groningen University, The Netherlands, and a member of the
Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds an honorary
doctorate from the University of Ghent and is the founder and editor-in-chief
of the Journal of the Philosophy of History. His most recent book is Meaning,
Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation (2012), published by Cornell
University Press. His other books include: Narrative Logic: A Semantic Analysis
of the Historian’s Language (1983); History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of
Metaphor (1994); Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value
(1996); Historical Representation (2001); Political Representation (2002); and
Sublime Historical Experience (2005). He is the editor, with Hans Kellner and
Ewa Domanska, of Re-Figuring Hayden White (2009).
Mieke Bal, a cultural theorist and critic, has been a Royal Netherlands Academy
of Arts and Sciences Professor. Her interests range from biblical and classical
antiquity to seventeenth-century and contemporary art, modern literature,
feminism, and migratory culture. Her recent books include: Of What One
Cannot Speak: Doris Salcedo’s Political Art (2011), Loving Yusuf (2008), A
Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002), and
Narratology (3rd edition 2009). She is also a video-artist, making experi-
mental documentaries on migration. Her first fiction feature, A Long History
of Madness, was made with Michelle Williams Gamaker. She is currently
working on a series of video installations, later to be turned into a feature film,
titled Madame B, based on Flaubert’s Madame Bovary. She occasionally serves
as an independent curator.
Karyn Ball is Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta.
Her areas of research and teaching interests include Holocaust studies, theories
of memory, trauma, narrative, and film. She is the author of Disciplining the
Holocaust (2008, paperback 2009) and the editor of Traumatizing Theory: The
Cultural Politics of Affect in and Beyond Psychoanalysis (2007). She has also
edited a special issue of Parallax (2005) on “Visceral Reason” and a special