pieters.historiography posmoderna

7/28/2019 Pieters.historiography Posmoderna

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New Historicism: Postmodern Historiography between Narrativism and Heterology

Author(s): Jurgen Pieters

Source: History and Theory, Vol. 39, No. 1, (Feb., 2000), pp. 21-38

Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2677996

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NEW HISTORICISM:POSTMODERNHISTORIOGRAPHYBETWEENNARRATIVISMAND HETEROLOGY

JURGENPIETERS

"[A]t tsmostbrilliant,ts most elegant,New Historicisms characteristicallyostmodern"

ABSTRACT

In recentdiscussionsof the workof new historicist ritics ike StephenGreenblatt ndLouisMontrose,t has often been remarked hat he theoryof historyunderlyingheirreadingprac-tice closely resembles that of postmodernhistoriographersike HaydenWhite and FrankAnkersmit.Takingoff from one such remark, he aim of the presentarticle s twofold. First,I intend o providea theoretical asis fromwhich to substantiatehe idea thatnew historicismcan indeedbe taken obe theliterary-criticalariant f whatFrankAnkersmithastermed he"newhistoriography."n thesecondhalf of the article, his theoretical oundationwill serveas thestartingpointof a further nalysisof both the theoryandpracticeof new historicismntermsof its distinctlypostmodermistoriographicalroject. will argue hat n order o fullycharacterizehe new historicist eadingmethod,we do well to distinguishbetweentwo vari-antsof postmodernhistoricism:a narrativist ne (best representedn the workof MichelFoucault)anda heterological ne (of which Michelde Certeau'swritings erve as a supremeexample).A brief surveyof the two methodologicaloptionsassociatedwith these variants(discursive ersuspsychoanalytical)s followedby ananalysisof the workof the central ep-resentativeof new historicism,Stephen Greenblatt.While the significantuse of historicalanecdotes in his work leaves unresolvedthe question to which of either approachesGreenblattelongs,the distinction oes servea clearheuristicpurpose. n bothcases,itpointsto thedangerous pQtwhere the new historicism hreatens o fall preyto the evils of thetra-ditionalhistoricism gainstwhichit defined tself.

I. INTRODUCTIONMuch has been said and written about both the formal and the intellectual strate-gies by means of which new historicists like Stephen Greenblatt, LouisMontrose, Stephen Orgel, and Robert Weimann began to define, in the early1980s, their various practices in contradistinction to those of their forerunners,the hordes of traditional literary historians whose naive historicism the new his-toricists were allegedly trying to overcome. Earlier historicists, so new histori-cists argued, upheld a quasi-positivist belief in the objectivity and the unprob-lematic representability of the historical past which new historicists, as staunchbelievers in poststructuralist theories of representation and signification, nolonger could. Also, earlier historicists reduced history to a single, massive mono-

1. CatherineBelsey,"MakingHistoriesThen and Now," n The Usesof History:Marxism,Postmod-ernismand the Renaissance,ed. F.Barker,P. Hulme, and M. Iverson(Manchester,Eng., 1991), 29.


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22 JURGENPIETERSlith that left no room for the dissonantvoices new historicistswanted to listen toand conversewith.Finally,earlierhistoricistsdid not take intoaccounttheirownhistoricity their Vorurteile,as Gadamerput it and the subsequent mport ontheirresearchof the interferencebetween the past which they tried to investigateand the presentfrom which they were doing so.

There is little use in repeatingall of this: it has become part of our commonknowledge of the new historicist mo(ve)ment.2 have no intention of denounc-ing the core of truth hat resides in whatI havejust presentedas if it were noth-ing but a series of cliches. InsteadI wish to advance the discussion of the theo-retical backgroundof new historicist historiographyand to introduce into it anumberof issues thathave, unjustly n my view, been left outside it. Takingas astartingpoint CatherineBelsey's assumption hat"at its most elegant"new his-toricist theory and practicecan be regardedas a contemporary,"postmodern"branch of historicism,the aim of the presentarticle is twofold. First, I want toinvestigate the theoretical, historiographical basis that underlies Belsey'sassumption n orderto findout whethernew historicismcan indeed be regardedas the literary-historical ounterparto recent, "postmodern"evelopments n thetheory of history. My focal point will be FrankAnkersmit'sapology for post-modern historicism, which will provide an argument hat enables me to concurwith Belsey's assertion. However (and this is the second aim of this article, inwhich the discussion is moved from theoreticalquestions to new historicistprac-tice as exemplifiedin the work of Stephen Greenblatt), want to argue that inordertofully characterizeGreenblatt'sreading practicewe do well not to treatpostmodernhistoricismas a unitarymethod.I will proposea distinctionbetweentwo different (though obviously related) methodological options entailed bypostmodernhistoricism:a "narrativist" r discursiveapproach,anda "heterolo-gist" or psychoanalyticalapproach.The former finds its supreme example inFoucault'sarcheologicaland genealogical work;the latter in thatof Michel deCerteau.The questioncentral to the second partof this article will be to whichof these Greenblatt'spracticecan be profitablyrelated.In outlining my answerto it, I intendto focus upon Greenblatt's haracteristicusage of historical anec-dotes and to arguethat,on the basis of the evidenceof his "anecdotalheuristics,"his readingmethodcan be said to contain tracesof bothapproaches.

II.THEORYOne of the centralexpositoryloci of thehistoriographical rojectof new histori-cism is in the opening section of "Resonance andWonder,"he final essay ofStephenGreenblatt's ollection Learningto Curse.In this text, Greenblatt umsup whatin his view makes his work and that of his colleagues standapart romthat of traditionalhistoricists.As I see it, thepassageis importantor at least tworeasons. First,because Greenblatthas done very little to theorize or comment

2. A fairly comprehensivesurveyof the discussion and furtherbibliographical eferences can befoundin John Brannigan,New Historicismand CulturalMaterialism London,1998).


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NEW HISTORICISM 23upon the conceptual backgroundof his own practice. Consequently,the fewplaces where he does so are (by definition as it were) interestingand important.Second, because in this passage Greenblattseems to be arguingthat the nameunderwhich his reading practice gained rapidfame is thoroughly misleading.3Accordingto Greenblatt'sdictionary,new historicismmustin no way be regard-ed as a branchof historicism. This is how Greenblattputs it himself:

The AmericanHeritage Dictionary gives threemeaningsfor the term"historicism":1. The belief that processes are at work in history that man can do little to alter.2. The theorythatthe historianmust avoid all valuejudgments n his study of past peri-

ods or formercultures.3. Veneration f the past or of tradition.Most of the writing labelled new historicist, and certainlymy own work, has set itselfresolutely against each of these positions.4

Up to now, this passagehas been mainlytaken at face value. But it ought to beclear thatin following the strictdictionarydefinitions,Greenblattactually lumpstogether two distinct historiographicalpractices that are betterkept apart.Tosome extent, the problemis terminological.In English, the conceptionof "his-toricism"has been the cause of some ambiguity,to say the least. It is used todescribe two blatantlyoppositional practices:5on the one hand,the speculativeand mostly overtly teleological philosophy of history devised, employed, andelaboratedby the likes of Hegel, Spengler, and Toynbee such as in KarlPopper's well-known critique The Poverty of Historicism;6on the other, theobjectivist-reconstructionistwork of such practicing historians as HippolyteTaine and Leopold von Ranke.7In his critiqueof traditional"historicism" n"Resonance and Wonder,"Greenblatt ries to take the two under one and thesame umbrella,without wonderingabout the appropriateness f doing so: thefirstpartof his negativedefinitionclearly appliesto Hegel's philosophyof histo-ry, the historicismof universal, nvariable aws; thesecondpartappliesto the his-

3. For Greenblatt'sown comments upon the swift institutionalizationof the term see StephenGreenblatt,Learningto Curse: Essays in Early Modern Culture New York, 1990), 146.

4. Ibid., 164.5. Cf. FrankAnkersmit,"Historicism:An Attemptat Synthesis,"History and Theory34 (1995),144.6. KarlPopper,ThePovertyof Historicism(Londonand New York, 1957).7. The terminological problem can be solved, along the lines of Frank Ankersmit'ssuggestion(FrankAnkersmit,Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy Beyond Fact and Value [Stanford, 1996],

375-376), by applyingtheconceptof "historicism"o the work of Hegel and his like, and to label thatof Rankeandhis successors "historism." ee also Georg Iggers,The GermanConceptionof History:The National Traditionof Historical Thought rom Herder to the Present, rev. ed. (Middletown,Conn., 1983); Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis: Over interpretatie,representatieen his-torische realiteit (Groningen, 1990), 127-148; Ankersmit,"Historicism:An Attemptat Synthesis,"143-162; and Paul Hamilton, Historicism (London and New York, 1996), passim. Seen fromAnkersmit'sangle, it would be more logical andappropriateo label Greenblatt'spractice"new his-torist"rather han "new historicist."For furtherreadingmaterialson the subject see also Ankersmit's"bibliographical ssay" in A New Philosophy of History, ed. Frank Ankersmitand Hans Kellner(London, 1995), 278-283.


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24 JURGENPIETERStoriographicalpractice associatedwith Ranke'swork a practice, it shouldbenoted, that was originally meant as a critiqueof Hegelian historicistthought.8

Greenblatt'sdiscontent with Hegelian historicism is self-evident: historianswho concern themselves with universalprocesses and unchanging aws that arenot considered o be subject to the contingentdynamics of human action are notdoing historyat all. More important or my purposes, however,is Greenblatt'scritiqueof Ranke'shistoricism.But heretheenemywhomGreenblattopposes isa caricatureof Ranke.True,the mottoesby which Ranke'sideals have becomeknown (the historian should try to find "wie es eigentlich gewesen" and treatevery historical epoch as if it were "unmittelbar u Gott") do have the touchofpositivist naivetewith which Greenblattcredits them. However, as Pieter Geyland othershave argued,the theory and practicefrom which these mottoes areusuallyisolated is definitelyneitherpositivistnornaive.9

As soon as we take into consideration he possibility that traditionalhistori-cism is not naively objectivist, it becomes clear that the problem at the heartofGreenblatt's ritiqueof it lies deeperthanmerequestionsof terminology.Despitethe real differences that exist between his own new historicistpracticeandthatof old historicistslike Ranke,Greenblattneed not necessarilyhave rejectedtheterm"historicism" ltogether.

To see this, consider the articles and lecturesin which FrankAnkersmithasoutlined a theoreticallysound apology for historicistpractice.10 n the first ofthese, entitled "Een moderne verdediging van het historisme" ("A ModernDefense of Historicism"),Ankersmitdrawsthe contoursof what he termsa "nar-rativist historicism." By this he means a historiographical practice whosedescriptionsand interpretations f the past are characterizedby an "absoluteaccuracy," et which is conscious throughoutof the fact that historicaldescrip-tions and interpretationsan in no way equal the object (the past itself) whichtheytakeas theirs.11

Even thoughAnkersmit'smmediateconcernsdo not lie with the new histori-cist practiceof Greenblattandothers,it is clearthat his accountof a contempo-rary, postmodernhistoricism fits the needs of the new historicist agenda. Onecould even say that the relationshipbetween the old and the new historicismin

8. See Hayden White, Metahistory:The Historical Imaginationin Nineteenth-CenturyEurope(Baltimore, 1973), 164 and also FrankAnkersmit,"The Origins of PostmodernistHistoriography,"nHistoriographybetween Modernismand Postmodernism:Contributions o the Methodology of theHistorical Research,ed. Jerzy Topolski (Amsterdamand Atlanta, 1994), 90. White offersa good sur-vey of Ranke's"historism" in Metahistory,163-190, as does Iggers, GermanConception,63-89) andopposes it to Hegel's philosophy (Metahistory,81-131). For a furthercontrastive reatment ee PieterGeyl, Gebruiken misbruikder geschiedenis (Groningenand Djakarta1956), 31, and Iggers, GermanConception,66-67.

9. See, for example,PieterGeyl, FromRanketo Toynbee:Five Lectureson Historiansand Histor-iographical Problems (Northampton,Mass., 1952) and Pieter Geyl, Geschiedenis als medespeler(Utrechtand Antwerp, 1958), 9-25.

10. Ankersmit, De navel van de geschiedenis, 127-148; Ankersmit, "Originsof PostmodernistHistoriography";Ankersmit "Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis"; and Ankersmit, "Reply toProfessorIggers,"History and Theory34 (1995), 168-173.

11. Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 138, 131.


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NEW HISTORICISM 25literarystudies is comparable o that between the "old" and the "new historiog-raphy" as Ankersmit outlines it in History and Tropology:"[T]he distinctionbetween the two," he writes, "lies in different views on the natureof historicalreality,of historicaltexts, and of the relationshipbetween both."'2 nAnkersmit'sterms, the logic of old historiographys governed by what he calls a "doubletransparency ostulate":on the one hand,traditionalhistoricistsconsider texts tobe transparentn the sense thatthey offer a direct andunproblematical ccess tohistoricalreality;13on the other hand, texts are transparentn the sense that theyareunmarkedby the intentionsandcriticalperformancesof the subjectthatcre-atedthem. 4

One of the earliest programmaticcontributions to new historicist theory(Greenblatt'sntroduction o a special issue of Genreon "TheFormsof Power andthe Power of Forms") inglesoutthe exactproblems hatAnkersmit ocuses uponin his criticalanalysis of traditionalhistoricism.In Greenblatt's ft-quoted erms,traditional istoricistsmonologizehistory:theyreducehistoricalperiodsto a sin-gle, homogeneous traditionand they consider what they come up with in theirresearch o be historical acts rather han "the productof the historian's magina-tion." 5Againstsuch anapproach,Greenblatt roposesa fully dialogicalpractice:one which tries to take into accountnot only the fullness of thepastin all its het-erogeneity,but also thehistoricityof the historian. nthisview historicalpraxis sdialogicalin two differentways: it considershistoryin terms of a dialoguewith-in the past (everymomentin the pastis characterized y a conflict of voices, allof which the historianneeds to makeheard),and in terms of a dialoguewith thepast (as Gadameralreadyemphasized,historianscannotexclude themselves fromtheir nvestigation:while speakingaboutthepast, they also talkto it).'6

Drawing upon the idea that historicismis based uponthe equationof a phe-nomenon's dentitywith its history,Ankersmitarguesthata contemporary, ost-modernhistoricism what he calls narrativism need in no way be a contradic-tion in terms,with theproviso, however,thatwe distinguishbetweena phenom-

12. FrankAnkersmit,History and Tropology:TheRise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley, 1994),126.

13. "Forthe new historiography,he text must be central-it is no longer a layer through whichone looks (eitherat a past realityor at the historian'sauthorial ntention),but somethingwhich thehistoriographermust look at. In the new historiography his new postulateof the nontransparency fthe historical text leads to a concentrationon the conflicts, hesitations, ambiguities, ambivalences-in short, on whatPaul de Man has styled the undecidabilitiesof the historicaltext, in which the non-transparency f the text revealsitself." (Ankersmit,History and Tropology,128-129.)

14. Ibid., 126.15. "The earlier historicism,"Greenblattwrites, "tends to be monological; that is, it is concerned

with discoveringa single politicalvision, usually identical to that said to be held by the entire literateclass or indeedthe entirepopulation.... This vision, most often presumedto be internallycoherentandconsistent, thoughoccasionally analyzed as thefusion of two or more elements, has the statusofanhistorical act." StephenGreenblatt,"Introduction"o TheFormsof Powerand thePower of Formsin theRenaissance,ed. Greenblatt, pecial issue of Genre15 [1982], 5.)

16. In this, GreenblattadoptsMachiavelli's famous dictum (from the Discorsi) in consideringhis-toricalpracticeas a dialogue with the dead. (See Stephen Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations:The Circulationof Social Energyin Renaissance England [Berkeley, 1988], 1.)


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26 JURGENPIETERSenon's "identity"and its "individuality."'17n Ankersmit's erminology, he phe-nomenon's "identity" s the determinate nterpretation iven to it at a certainmoment n time,while its "individuality"s the actualphenomenonas it occurredin history.In Ankersmit's view historians do not concern themselves with the"individuality" f historical phenomena:historiansdeal with historical"identi-ties," with "propositions"n terms of which theycan view andinterprethistory."8

The distinctionthatAnkersmitsuggests between "identities"and "individual-ities" has a doubleargumentativeunction: t servesas the basis of his critiqueoftraditionalhistoricism,andas thehallmarkof his own narrativist istoricistprac-tice. As Ankersmithimself puts it, some historicistsmade the mistake of pro-jecting the identityof historicalphenomenaonto the past itself.19This crucialmistake s the occasion of a second important ssay by Ankersmit:"Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis."20n this text Ankersmit focuses on the historicistnotion of the "historische dee," n his words "themost fruitful conceptthat hasever been developedin the historyof historicaltheory.'"21nkersmitderives theconcept from Wilhelm von Humboldt's "Uber die Aufgabe des Geschichts-schreibers."22ccordingto Ankersmit, he concepthas an undeniableroleto playin thetheoryof historicism, n thatit links the two pillarsof Rankeanhistoricismtogether.To the historian t functionsas the key to the "wie es eigentlichgewe-sen," andis also the ultimateproof that"jede Epoche ist unmittelbar u Gott."Ankersmitdescribes ts uses in the following manner:1)the historicaldeaembodieswhat s uniqueo botha historical ntityanda historicalperiod; ) byembodyingheuniquet givesusaccess owhat s essentialo that ntityorperiod; ) inbecoming cquainted ith he ideaof anentityorperiod,we have na the-oretically rucial ense"explained"t; 4) though ocial-scientificawsmayhelpus toascertainhe nature f the historicaldea, t can neverbe reducedntirelyo thekindofknowledge xpressed y these aws;5) the historicaldeaembodieshe coherence f themanypropertiesf a historicalntityorperiod o thatwhendebatinghemerits f sever-alproposalsor howtoconceiveof a historicaldea, he decisive riterionwillbewhichproposal s mostsuccessfuln givingcoherence; nd 6) the historical deacannotbedefined prioristicallys FichteorHegelhadhoped odo,butonlyonthebasisof unbi-asedhistorical esearch.23

The danger nherent n the conceptof historischeIdee, so Ankersmitgoes onto argue,is that historiansmay fail to see thatit is not to be located in the pastitself-where, admittedly,historicistssuch as RankeandVonHumboldtsearched

17. Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 139.18. Ibid., 138.19. Ibid., 141.20. History and Theory34 (1995), 143-162, followed by a reply by Georg Iggers, "Commentson

F. R. Ankersmit'spaper: Historicism:An Attemptat Synthesis,"'History and Theory34 (1995), 162-167.

21. Ankersmit,"Historicism:An Attemptat Synthesis,"154. In his answerto Iggers's replyhe callsthe concept "thelogical heartof historicism." Ankersmit,"Replyto ProfessorIggers,"HistoryandTheory34 [1995], 170.)

22. Wilhelm von Humboldt,Schriftenzur Sprachphilosophie, d. AndreasFlitner and Klaus Giel(Darmstadt,1994), 80-99.

23. Ankersmit,"Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis,"154.


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NEW HISTORICISM 27for it-but in the historian'sdiscourse,in the interpretation f a historicalrealitywhich reads the coherence of the past in the terms centered aroundand embod-ied in the historical dea. In other words,[n]arrativists gree with theirhistoricistpredecessorsthat it is the historian'stask to seethe coherence and Zusammenhang n the past and they will readily acknowledge theimmense valueof thenotion of the"historicaldea."Butwherethehistoricists .. thoughtof the historical dea as an entelechy present n the past itself that had to be "mirrored" ythe historian's anguage, narrativists elieve that the historian's anguage does not reflecta coherence orZusammenhangn the past itself, butonly gives coherence to the past.24

According to Ankersmit, hen,narrativist istoricism s true to the philosophyof historicism n the sense that it rejectsthe "metaphysicalaccretions" hat stillcharacterized the works of traditional historicists like Ranke and VonHumboldt.25 y displacing heallegedlyhistorical"substance" f thingsfromthe"factuality" f the past onto the discursiveorderthat is situated at one removefrom it, Ankersmit's narrativism ully takes into account the main axiom thatgoverns Greenblatt'shistoriographical roject:"there s no escape from contin-gency."26t follows from all of thisthatGreenblatt s wrongin declaring hatnewhistoricism isn't a form of historicismat all. On the contrary, t aims to rescuehistoricism from the metaphysicalrealism which marred ts older versions, andtherebyrenders tself a newer-and truer-version of historicism.

III.PRACTICEThe theoretical alliance between new historicismand postmodernhistoricismstill leaves open the questionto what extent Greenblatt'spracticecan be regard-ed as the literary-critical ersionof the postmodernisthistoriographicalproject.This question immediatelytriggersa new one, which will have to be dealt withbefore we can answer the first: can we regard postmodernisthistoricismas ahomogeneous practice,or arethere, rather,differenttypes of it? Put differently,given the clear poststructuralistnspirationof Ankersmit'snew historiography,andgiventhediversityof poststructuralistheoryitself (notto mentionthediver-sity of its impactupon practitioners f culturalandliteraryhistory), s it possibleto say thatthe narrativistmodel is the sole optionfor historianswhose practiceis backedby postmodern heories of representation ndknowledge?

It will probablycome as no surprisewhen I say that the answer to the latterquestionis negative.Since most poststructuralist istoriographerso have influ-enced Greenblatt Todorov,Certeau, Foucault,and Lyotard,to name the most

24. Ibid., 155, italics his. In his "Six Theses on NarrativistPhilosophy of History,"collected inHistory and Tropology,Ankersmitwrites the following: "Historistsattempted o discover the essence,or, as they called it, the historischeIdee, which they assumed was present n the historical phenome-nathemselves.Narrativism, n thecontrary, ecognizedthat a historical nterpretation rojectsa struc-ture onto the past and does not discover it as if this structureexisted in the past itself."(Ankersmit,History and Tropology,36.)

25. Ankersmit,"Historicism:An Attempt at Synthesis,"155.26. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations, 3.


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28 JURGENPIETERSobvious) deploy Ankersmit's criterion of double non-transparencyn differentways, few people will want to deny that the mansionof postmodernisthistori-cism containsmany rooms. In what follows, I intendto give an outline of whatIconsider to be two different(though clearly related)types of postmodernisthis-toricism: the firstI will call "narrativist"largely following Ankersmit'sdefini-tion of the term, yet taking as my main example Michel Foucault), the second"heterological."After havingoutlined both and after having highlighted the tiesthat bind themtogether,I will tryto answerthe second question thatis centraltothis article: o which of these if either can Greenblatt'snew historicismbe prof-itably related?

Narrativisthistoricism s a historicalpracticewhich operates n searchof theprincipleof the historical idea, yet which, in doing so, displaces this principlefrom the ontological level of the past itself (wheretraditionalhistoricism ocatedit) to the discourseof the historical ext(both thatof practicinghistoriansand thatof the textual sources on which they operate). In narrativisthistoricism thedescriptivepraxisof historicallaborprevails:historianswant to reconstruct hepast,to read and understandt as it was and notin view of thepresent rom whichtheyread it (at least not primarilyso). The method that is centralto this practiceis a discursiveone: narrativists im to give a descriptionanda functional analy-sis of the discursive fields and mechanisms that structure he past at a givenmomentin time. The prime example of this model is the historical, "archeologi-cal," and "genealogical"work done by Foucault and by those whom he hasinspired deeply.27Centralto Foucault's approach s thatthe historicalidea is adiscursivephenomenon notanidealisticentityfloatingfreein theair)that struc-turesa period'shistoricaltexts, institutions,andpracticesalike. In describingasmeticulouslyas possible both the outlook and the functionalityof these discur-sive phenomenaas a set of "positivites,"Foucaultarrivesat a readingof the pastthat stresses the heterogeneityof historicalepochs and, hence, the ultimate fail-ure of historical deas to guarantee he Zusammenhanghatwas centralto tradi-tionalhistoricistconceptionsof them.

The other branchof postmodernhistoricismuponwhich I wantto focus-theheterological one-takes a different aim and employs a slightly differentapproach. ts goal, as its nameto a certain extent already ndicates,is to get "intouch with"or "laybare" he "other" f history.Given thepoststructuralistnspi-rationunder which they work, it is obvious that heterologists are at all timesawareof the fact that this other can never be made visible andpresentimmedi-ately: all that we have from the past are descriptionsand mediations of it.However, heterologistsbelieve that the other of the past can be felt and seen inthatwhichit is not: it can be madepresent n its absence,as it were, provided hatwe read thepast by means of the appropriatemethod that focuses uponthe mar-gins of historical mechanisms of representation.As the work of Michel deCerteaumakesclear,this methodis basically psychoanalytical:t is a methodby

27. Foucault's example crops up more than once in Ankersmit'streatmentof narrativisthistori-cism. See, for example,Ankersmit,De navel van de geschiedenis, 63ff. andAestheticPolitics, 96-136.


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NEW HISTORICISM 29means of which the historian attempts to find the repressed of the past, therepressedwhich, accordingto the logic of the "retourdurefoule,"returns n ourdescriptionsof it. The repressed-that which cannever be present-is there n itsabsence, as a negative of the very mechanismsby which it was excluded.28The practicesof Foucault and Certeauresembleone another o such an extentthatwhateveroppositionone wouldwish to drawbetween them needs to be qual-ified immediately.But such resemblances n no way invalidate he heuristics ofthe opposition.Narrativismandheterologyare two sides of the same coin: theyare complementarypracticesthat,in a way, can profitfrom one another n orderto fulfill theirjoint purposes.Focusinguponhis characteristicusage of historicalanecdotes,I intend to arguethat indeed Greenblatt'swork combines bothin onesingle investigativemodel:theanecdoteboth serves as the central ocus of a cul-ture'sdispersivenature narrativism) nd as the site wherehistory'sother can bebrought o the fore (heterology).Since the mainpurposeof this article s to makeclear the heuristicadvantageswhich the oppositionmay have on future discus-sions of the new historicism,I will haveto leave outside its scope the more crit-ical questionof where and how Greenblatt'spracticemaybe said to deviate fromor conflict with either of the paradigms.I will, however,brieflytouchuponthismatterand suggest a point at which his readingpractice threatens o slide backinto the habits of the traditionalhistoricismthat he soughtto overcome.29New Historicism and FoucauldiannarrativismProbably he easiestway to relateGreenblatt'swork to narrativist istoricism s topointout that theconceptof "self-fashioning"hat structures is first majorwork(RenaissanceSelf-FashioningromMore to Shakespeare)unctionsas a historicalidea in Ankersmit's sense of the term. This concept provides the basis ofGreenblatt'sproposal to read the early-modemperiod the way he does: theRenaissancecan be seen as a periodin which a certain dialectics between theautonomousashioningof individual dentitiesand theirmassive societal determi-nationcomes to the fore and resultsin new conceptionsandpracticesof subjec-tivity.The idea is not taken o be a historical act,but as the centralcore of the dis-courseby means of which Greenblatt riesto make cohere the chaos of historicalphenomenawithwhichhe is confronted.Bearing n mind Greenblatt's ritiqueoftraditional istoricism,t couldbe argued hathis readingof theearly-modern eri-od in the lightof the single principleof self-fashioning s as monologicalas thatof the earlierRenaissance-scholarsgainstwhose workhe attempts o definehisownpractice.30 owever, he constitutionof theseparate hapters hatmakeuphisstudyrefutesthis reproach o an important xtent. One could even say that thelogic thatgovernstherelationshipbetween the concreteanalyses developed n theseparateessays andthe general argumentativeine of Greenblatt's tudyis muchthe same as that between the two types of narrativismhat FrankAnkersmithas

28. Michel de Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoir-e Paris, 1975), 22.29. I intendto elaborate his partof my argument n the largerprojectof which this article s a part.30. On this pointsee Greenblatt,ShakespeateanNegotiations,2.


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30 JURGEN PIETERSoutlined in a centralessay in his De Navel van de Geschiedenis("TheNavel ofHistory").In this text, Ankersmitproposes a distinctionbetween whathe calls a"dispersive" nd an "integrative"arrativism:while the latter s mainlyconcernedwithpresentinga coherentview of a historicalperiod, n which everypart(icular)is expected to illustrate he whole from which it is isolated, the former(exempli-fiedin Carlo Ginzburg'smicrostorie)attempts o lay baretheideology of illustra-tion that ies behindsuchintegrativeapproaches.Dispersivenarrativismmakes usawareof the limits of this ideology by arguing hat that which is representativesnever fully so: in the integrativeapproach, he singularityof individualphenome-na is reduced n favor of their llustrativeorce, in the dispersiveapproachhe sin-gularitiesremainsingularitiesnot necessarilycoherent with one anotheror ver-sionsof anunderlyingunifyingforce.

In eachof the six chapters n Renaissance Self-Fashioning,Greenblattkeepsasteady eye on the fundamentalheterogeneityof the materials hat he makes useof, and insistson the way these singularitiesmay resistbeing integrated nto thecultural universe which the book as a whole purports o produce. Indeed, the"dialogical" eading-methodwhich in this book he bringsto some perfectionforthe first time in his career can be said to result from thatheterogeneity: n eachof the essays Greenblatt ombines and opposes a number of contemporaneoustexts in his analysis in orderto produce (parts of) the discursive system whichthey all share,a system whose main function it is to structureand stabilize soci-ety and to subjectthe individuals living within it to its demands,while at thesame time leaving sufficientroom for the work of autopoesis inherentto early-modern mechanisms of subjectification.31 uch discursive systems resemblewhat Michel Foucaulthas termedcultural"dispositifs": hey resultin a diverseand complex dynamic system of texts, practices,and institutions,all of whichshare a commongoal andall of which relateto one anotheraccordingto a logicof "unity n difference."32n Greenblatt'sview, these "dispositifs"or discursiveformationsdevelop alongtwo axes, that of "constraint"ndthatof "mobility"33:culturalsystems work anddevelop accordingto the limits which they pose, lim-its that make some things possible while makingothersimpossible.

The task of narrativisthistory,then,is to describe the formationand the func-tionalityof these culturalsystems. Its most succinct andsharpestprogrammaticexpression s foundin Foucault'sArcheologieduSavoir.It comes as no surprise,therefore,that the sort of questionswhich Greenblattattempts o answerin hisculturalanalysisof literary exts arelargelyreminiscentof those that are centralto Foucault'swork:

31. In this respect,Greenblatt's dea of self-fashioning could be profitablybrought in line withFoucault's analysis of the rise of theories of "governmentality"n the early-modernperiod. See, forexample, Michel Foucault,Dits et Ecrits (Paris, 1994), III, 635-657.

32. See Lawrence Grossberg,"On Postmodernismand Articulation:An Interview with StuartHall," n StuartHall: CriticalDialogues in CulturalStudies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-HsingChen(Londonand NewYork,1996), 141.33. Stephen Greenblatt,"Culture,"n CriticalTerms or LiteraryStudy,ed. FrankLentricchiaandThomasMcLaughlin ChicagoandLondon, 1995), 225.


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NEWHISTORICISM 31What kindsof behavior,what models of practice,does this workseem to enforce?Why might readersat a particularime andplace findthis work compelling?Aretheredifferencesbetweenmy valuesand the values mplicit n the workI am reading?Upon what social understandings oes the work depend?Whose freedomof thoughtor movementmightbe constrained mplicitlyor explicitly

by this work?Whatare the largersocial structureswithwhich [the]particular cts of praiseor blame

[involved n literary exts] mightbe connected?34The same logic of "unity n difference"s at the heartof Greenblatt'sonceptu-

alizationof therelationshipbetweenpartsandwholes in his historicalanalysisofa culturalconstellation. ts locus primuscan be foundin the author's trikinguseof the historicalanecdote.In the most typicalof his essays, Greenblatt tartsoffhis investigationwitha meticulousrhetorical nd deologicalanalysis(a Geertzian"thickdescription") f one or other seeminglybizarre extualizedeventthat callsup in the critic'smind-and in the most successfulcases also in that of the read-er-a second text, the one that is reputedlycentralto Greenblatt's ssay.35Thechapteron Othelloin RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning, or instance,36 pens with aten-page"excursion"ntoa passagefrom PeterMartyr'sDe OrbeNovo. Thepas-sage is that n whichMartyr ells the story of an expeditionof Spanishconquista-doreswho succeeded n manipulating groupof Lucayan ndians ntoworking orthem in their gold-mines,by telling them thatthey (the Spaniards) ame from acountryto which the forefathersof the Lucayanshad moved aftertheir deaths.Fromthis anecdoteGreenblatt ttempts o producewhat he believes to be a typi-cal Renaissancemode of subjectivity,whichhe calls "improvisation":y inscrib-ing themselvesinto the culturalparadigms hatstructurehe Indians'worldview,theSpaniardsmanage o control hose whose forcestheywant to employ.Much inthe sameway,Jagosucceeds n manipulatingOthello'snegativeself-imageandhisdeep-rootedearthathe won'tbe ableto live upto theexpectationsmposeduponhim by a Christian ocietyto whichhe is nothingbuta stranger.

It is not surprising hat Greenblatt'smethodhas raised the criticismof "arbi-traryconnectedness."37His rejection of the sort of causal explanationsthatformed the hallmarkof traditionalhistoricistanalyses invites such a reproach,refusing as he does to fully explicatethe relationship causal,functional,or oth-erwise) which he perceivesbetween the diverseparticularsof a culturalwhole.What is the exact natureof the relationshipbetween Jago'sattitudeand thatofthe Spanishconquistadores? n which ways arethey similarandin which waysdifferent?Greenblattdoes not bother o answerthesequestions; mportanto himis that the similaritybetween the two phenomena(and,equallyimportantly,hethingsthat set themapart)convincethereaderof the appropriatenessf his inter-

34. Ibid., 226.35. For a thorough reatmentof this aspectof Greenblatt'spractice,see Joel Fineman'scontribu-

tion to The New Historicism,ed. H. AramVeeser(London andNew York,1989).36. StephenGreenblatt,Renaissance Self-Fashioning:FromMore to Shakespeare(Chicago and

London, 1980), 222-254.37. WalterCohen, "Political Criticismof Shakespeare,"n ShakespeareReproduced:The Text nHistoryand Ideology,ed. JeanE. Howardand MarionF.O'Connor LondonandNewYork,1987), 34.


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32 JURGENPIETERSpretation.Both relate to the same historicalidea, but this idea in the first placeconstitutesGreenblatt'sdiscourse,not the pastwithwhichit deals. Ironically, hereproachof arbitrary onnectednessdoes not necessarily need to be takenas neg-atively as it was originally ntended.Afterall, what Greenblattwants to illustrateis that the connectionbetween two texts or two cultural phenomena is in factarbitrary. t is arbitrary ecause it is not natural: exts and objects are connectedbecause they shareanideological field of articulation, nd it is this field, in all itsarbitraryogic, that the narrativist istorianwill have to describe.

The narrativist eading-method hatGreenblattdevised in Renaissance Self-Fashioning is broughtto perfectionin ShakespeareanNegotiations. The practi-cal andconceptual mpactof Foucault'stheories of discursivitybears more fruitin this book than in the previous one. As the introductory chapter ofShakespeareanNegotiationsmakesclear,Greenblatthas developeda more elab-oratedview of the functionalityand formationof culturalsystems and processes.Inthis chapter,"TheCirculationof Social Energy," e conceives of cultural otal-ities in termsof organized, dynamic systems that are subdivided nto separate,though nterrelated"zones"(thezone of religion,the zone of economy,the zoneof theater, the zone of politics, . . .). These are reminiscent of what Foucault in"L'Ordre u Discours"has called "des regionsde discours"38:ach of the zonesis a discursivearea with a distinct way of determiningandproducing he objectsthatcirculate hrough t, and of relating heseto thespecific truth-regimehat dis-tinguishes it from other zones. Greenblatt'szones are societal spaces whosespecificity is functionallydeterminedby the discourses that areproperto themand thatgovernwhichphenomena"naturally" elong to a certainarea n society,what can be said about themand by whom. This account of cultureand how toread it is employed in ShakespeareanNegotiations to detail the cultural andsocial transactions nvolvedin the movement of discursivephenomena rom onezone to another.While these aregenerallymaterial, heirimpactis primarilyoneof signification: he negotiations nvolved arenegotiationsof meaning. (To givea simple example:a bishop'smiter does not have the samemeaningin the zoneof theateras it has in the zone of religion.)

Primarilymeant as a corrective of traditionalmaterialistic and economistictheoriesof society,Greenblatt's one model does not relegatecultureto a supra-structuralevel, but considersit a fundamentalpartof a society's makeup.Themodel also enableshim to differentiatebetterbetween the diverseparts hatmakeup the unityof a society, encouragingas it does distinguishing he distinctfunc-tionalitiesof differentsocial and culturalpractices."Fiction and Friction," hethirdchapterof the book,39offers a perfectexampleof the rangeof Greenblatt'snarrativistapproach: tartingfrom a passage in Montaigne'straveljournalthatrecounts a strange legal case of hermaphroditism,and elaborating upon itthrough Jacques Duval's contemporarymedical treatise on the subject,40 he

38. Michel Foucault,L'Ordredu Discours (Paris, 1971), 39.39. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations,66-93.40. Jacques Duval, Des Hermaphrodits,Accouchemensdes Femmes,et Traitementqui est requis

pour les releueren sante, et bien eleuer leurs enfants(Rouen, 1603).


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NEW HISTORICISM 33chapteroffers Greenblatt's nalysisof the motifs and mechanismsof cross-dress-ing and gender-switchingn Shakespeare'scomedies. This chaptermakes clearthat in ShakespeareanNegotiations Greenblatt's concern lies more with theextent to which similar cultural practices differ from one another than inRenaissance Self-Fashioning.4" hroughout he book this concern with differ-ence in unityis reflected n the author'sattempt largelyabsent from the earlierbook) to outlineas specificallyas possible the way in which theatricalpractices(may) relate to the society of which they area part, yet from which, simultane-ously, they stand apart.

What ultimately binds together cultural practices in ShakespeareanNegotiations(in otherwords,what assuresunityin theirdifference) s the notionof social energy.As the book's subtitlealready indicates,the concept is centralto the logic thatGreenblattattempts o develop.The conceptof social energyismeant to explainhow and to what extent certaincultural objects and practicescall forthin a groupof people at a certainpoint in time a similarresponse.Thenotion of social energy, Greenblattwrites, "is associatedwith repeatable ormsof pleasureand interest,with the capacityto arousedisquiet, pain, fear,thebeat-ing of the heart, pity, laughter,tension, relief, wonder."42Greenblatt's ogic isperfectlyclear: certainobjectsandpractices produceparticular upra-individualfeelings becausethey contain a certain amount of "socialenergy."The fact thatthesephenomenaexert a "compelling orce"upona groupof people sufficientlyexplains why Greenblatthas optedfor the energy metaphor.As a matterof fact,Greenblattadds,the sameimage can be foundin thepoetical writingsof severalauthorswhose writingswere centralto Renaissanceaesthetics,like QuintilianusandScaliger,on whose work he seems to drawhere.In these texts, the metaphorrefersto the powerof language to cause in the reader"a stir to the mind," o usethe wordsof George Puttenham,whom Greenblattquotes directly.43

Greenblatt's eferencesto the genealogy of his conceptarequite important,fonly because they serve as a reminderof the fact "that ts origins lie in rhetoricratherthan physic."44 ts ultimatesource is, of course, the thirdbook of Aris-totle'sRhetoric, n which the notion of linguistic "energeia"s defined as "actu-alization, vividness, representing hings inanimateas animate."45n Aristotle'swork the idea of linguistic energy points to the power of the poet's words andimagesto give (theillusionof) life to lifeless thingsandpeople. By means of this

41. In the latterbook, Greenblatt s not always clear on how to conceptualizethe transition romone text to another,or fromtext to context. Most of the time, he omits the question altogether. n theOthello chapter or instance,therelationshipbetween PeterMartyrandShakespeare's ext is present-ed as a self-evident one: "I wouldhope," Greenblattwrites in conclusion of his analysisof De OrbeNovo, "thatby now Othello seems virtuallyto force itself uponus as the supreme symbolic expres-sion of the culturalmode I havebeen describing." Greenblatt,RenaissanceSelf-Fashioning,232.)

42. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations,6.43. Ibid. The quotation s from Puttenham'sThe Arteof English Poesie. Greenblattalso pointsto

the existenceof a similarpassagein Sidney's Apology or Poetry.44. Ibid., 6.45. Aristotle, The "Art"of Rhetoric, with an English translationby John Henry Freese (London

andCambridge,Mass., 1947), 475.


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34 JURGENPIETERSpotent language,Aristotle argues, "things are set before the eyes by words thatsignify actuality."46ven thoughthe referencetoAristotle does not reallyanswerthecrucialquestionaboutthe exact natureof his social energy, t does containanimportant lue to our understanding f Greenblatt's ll too vague concept. Infact,Greenblattargues,the questionof the true essence of social energyis to a largeextentunanswerable, ince "[t]heterm implies somethingmeasurable,yet I can-not providea convenientand reliable formulafor isolating a single, stablequan-tum forexamination.Weidentify energia [sic] only indirectly,by its effects: it ismanifestedin the capacity to produce, shape, and organize collective physicaland mentalexperiences."47

Given the fact thatAristotle'sremarkson theenergeticnatureof languageweretaken over most prominentlyby Wilhelmvon Humboldt,48he usefulness of theconcept in outlininga narrativistpraxiscenteredupon the searchfor historicalideas becomesevident.At the sametime,however,the link with VonHumboldt'swork makes clearthe potentialdangerthatlurks within Greenblatt's oncept. InfollowinginVonHumboldt's ootsteps,Greenblattmight have been led to employand devise the concept in order to put back the "historischeIdee" where VonHumboldtprofessed to find it: in the past itself, not in the historian'sdiscoursewhich deals with it. Earlier n this articleI pointedout that that was preciselythecentralbone of contentionbetweenAnkersmit'spostmodernhistoricismand thatof his traditional orerunners:n the view of the latter, he coherenceof the past(its Zusammenhang)was a function of the material tself, not of the operationswhich the historian uses to render t comprehensible.As Greenblatt'sminimaldescriptionof the phenomenonmakesclear,social energy (thoughnot immedi-ately visible) is whatultimatelyguaranteesheZusammenhang etweenpast phe-nomena:their coherence is a materialization f social energy. Consequently, heconcept may be said to embodythat which Greenblattwants to avoid most: thesearchfor the "originarymoment,"he searchfor thatwhichmakes the pastwhatit was apart rom our(and others')constructionsof it. Devious as it is, this logicmay ultimatelybe taken to imply that the historianwho managesto sift out thesocial energyfrom its pluralandpluriformmanifestationswill be able to get intouch with the real of thepastand to reduce theheterogeneityof its diverseman-ifestations o its trueground.Thus,anecdoteswill no longerserve as scenes of dis-persal,but as diversely shapedmanifestationsof social energy.New Historicismand CertalianheterologyGreenblatt'suse of the concept of social energy is too undevelopedto warrantassertinga definitivecausalrelationshipbetween the use of this conceptand thedesire to get "intouch with the real."49Giventhe fact that this desire can be said

46. Ibid.,405.47. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations,6.48. Von Humboldt defines living language (speech) as "Energeia,"not "Ergon"(work). (Von

Humboldt,Schriftenzur Sprachphilosophie, 18.)49. Stephen Greenblatt,"The Touch of the Real,"Representations59 (1997), 14-29.


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NEW HISTORICISM 35to lie at the basis of most forms of postmodernheterologicalhistoricism,there snothingwrong with it-at least, as long as it is temperedby the historian'saware-ness that the past for which he or she yearns will never be encountered mmedi-ately.As such, the desireis similarto thatwhichGreenblatt efersto in theopen-ing passage of ShakespeareanNegotiations:the desireto speak with the deadinthe full awareness hat the dead can no longerbe hearddirectly.50

Like that of Foucault, he work of his fellow-countrymanMichel de Certeau scenteredupon the insurmountable arrierbetween historical discoursesandthepast reality that they claim to contain. However,whereasFoucault'sprime pur-pose is to describe (the functioning)of discursivefields and formations n themost accurateway possible, Certeau s mainly concerned with the mechanismthat divides past reality from its representations,both contemporaryand later.Certeau's view on the barrierbetween "les mots et les choses" is Lacanian:"Historiography that is, 'history' and 'writing') bears within its own name theparadox-almost an oxymoron-of a relationestablishedbetween two antinom-ic terms, between the real and discourse. Its task is one of connecting them and,at the point where this link cannot be imagined, of workingas if the two werebeing joined.'"51oucault'smethod, as I have argued earlier,is descriptive:hetakes the ideals of the Geistesgeschichteto an extremein that he even refrainsfromconsidering hemeaningof suchand such discourses.He is interested n notso much the significationof discourses,but the rules and regulationsthat havemade thempossible and that make them what they are.52Certeau'smethod, onthe otherhand,is a psychoanalyticalone, intenton laying bare the mechanismsof writingandrepresentation y meansof which discourseappropriateshe realandinvades it. WhatCerteaufinallywants to make clearis the extent to whichthe real (history's "other," s he calls it) returns n discourse as that which it hasrepressed.The "other,"n otherwords, can only be known andmade presentinthatto which it is opposedand from which it has to remainforeverseparated.

In each of the threeessays that Certeauhas devotedto Foucault'swritings,53his attention s drawn o thehistoriographicalogic of dispersalandestrangementthatlies behind them. The supreme con of this doublelogic he findsin the sin-gularstories that Foucault ntroduces n thegrandnarrative f the rise of moder-nitywhich structuresmost of his books. These stories function not as illustrativegestures; heyare "scenes of difference" hat enable the reader o experiencethatwhich Certeau ntends to bringto light in his own work: "uneclat d'autre."54

Certeau'sanalysis of the dialogical relationshipbetween past and presentresembles Greenblatt's o a large extent. In Certeau'sview, this continuing dia-

50. Greenblatt,ShakespeareanNegotiations,1.51. Certeau,The Writingof History,transl.Tom Conley (New York, 1988), xxvii, his italics.52. In the wordsof Gilles Deleuze: "seul compte ce qui a ete formula, la, a tel moment,et avec

telles lacunes, tels blancs."Foucault (Paris, 1986), 13.53. One is devoted to Les Mots et les choses ("Le noir soleil du langage: Michel Foucault," nMichel de Certeau,Histoire et psychanalyse entre science et fiction, ed. L. Giard [Paris, 1987], 15-

36), another o Surveilleret Punir ("Microtechniques t discours panoptique:un quiproquo,"n ibid.,37-50), and the thirdto the totalityof Foucault'swork("Lerire de Michel Foucault,"n ibid., 51-65).54. Certeau,Histoireet psychanalyseentrescience etfiction, 55-57.


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36 JURGENPIETERSlogue upon which the practiceof historiographys foundedentails a never-endingprocess of (self-)estrangement:he past underscrutinyboth serves as a touchstonefor opinions and expectations hat are productsof an investigativedomain that isin and of itself historicallydetermined, nd as a rejectionof the philosophyof tele-ology thatregards he presentas an unproblematic nd perfectedproductof thestructures f the past.In Certeau'sview, historicalmaterialsare not open to sucheasy appropriations. ttempts o projectthepresent nto the past (and vice versa)arefrustrated,f only because the historical exts that the historianuses as sourcematerials are characterizedby an internal rift that is constitutiveof writing assuch: on the one hand,texts are the productof a series of "effets de reel" (narra-tive or other),while on the otherthey are structured rounda numberof (mute)mechanismsof exclusion and silencing.Textsarecharacterized,Certeauwrites,by a non-saidthat is impliedin the closure effectedin and by discourse. Thesetermsalreadyndicate hepsychoanalytical ackboneof Certeau'shistoriography:since historical exts can no longerbe seen as transparent indows that allow fullsight of the past "as it was,"historiansmust substitute or the naive mimeticistreadingmethodfosteredby such a view one that s centeredupontextual silencesand blindspots, both of which aresignalsof the text's "unconscious."56n such areadingmethod, extualsigns do not referunproblematicallyo somethingoutsidethe text; they are, rather, oncrete materializations f a numberof mechanismsofproduction hat made thesetextspossible.57

One of the central conditions of possibility underlying historiography s,accordingto Certeau,the fact that historicalpracticeitself is related to whathecalls the rise of a "scriptural conomy"in seventeenth-century urope:an econ-omy of writing,in which texts are regardedas-to borrow Nelson Goodman'sphrase-"ways of worldmaking."58n Certeau'sview, however, the image is notnecessarilyas innocent as it is in Goodman's: he textual makeupof a world(inthe concrete case of L'Ecriturede 1'histoireof the New World) nvolves a ruth-less appropriation f an extratexualreal which is given meaning, that is, uponwhich a meaningis forced. Certeau s interested n the extent to which, similar-ly, the historian'swritingbetraysan attempt o produce(literally: o figure forth)the past in its singularity-a necessarilyfrustratedattemptat that.Writingwillforeverremain n search of this otherof the past which, in its turn,will foreverresist appropriationn the scriptural conomy.At best-and this is the ideal towhichCerteauhimselfstrove-the practicinghistorianwill tryto make felt in hiswritingthis continuous and mutualprocess of exclusion, inclusion, and resis-tance. The heuristicsof the anecdote or the microstoria s one of the instrumentsthatmay contribute o the success of such an approach.

55. Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoire, 58.56. In "Psychanalyse t histoire"Certeaudrawsan outline of the parallelsbetweenthe tasksof the

analyst and the historian. Certeau,Histoire et psychanalyse entre science etfiction, 97-117.)57. Cf. Certeau,L'Ecriturede i'histoire, 19-20.58. "[S]i l'histoire est une institutionet une pratique,elle est aussi, et peut-etresurtout,une ecrit-

ure,"RogerChartierwritesin his apt analysisof Certeau'shistoriography in Michel de Certeau,ed.Luce Giard [Paris, 1987], 160). Certeau ntroduces he concept in Michel de Certeau,L'Inventionduquotidian.1. Artsdefaire [1980] (Paris, 1990), 195-224.


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NEW HISTORICISM 37A more thoroughanalysis of Certeau'sown practicewouldleadme farbeyond

the bounds of a single article. In what follows, then,I will confine myself to out-lining the way in which Greenblatt'swork can be related to the projectof het-erology.S9n order o do so, thekey terms which I have introducedn my descrip-tion of Certeau'sown readingof its program-"dispersal"and"estrangement"-are of immediateuse: the twin terms by meansof which Greenblatthas tried tocapturehis own project-"resonance"and"wonder"-are in more than one wayanalogousto those singled out by Certeau.Greenblatt'smost direct treatmentofthe dialectics of resonanceand wonder s to be foundin the essay thatbears theirname.60n the conclusionof this essay Greenblattasserts that"itis the functionof the new historicismcontinually o renewthemarvelousat the heartof the res-onant."61 he programmatic riftof the arguments clear: thereadingpracticeofthenewhistoricismneedsto takeinto accountboth the contextualcircumstancesthatlie at the basis of a work of art(circumstances hat haveproduced t and forwhich, in time, it has come to stand) and its autonomyas a formal, aestheticstructure;t needs to keepaneye bothon the singularityof a workof art(on whatit is in and of itself) and on the way(s) in which it serves as an illustrationofsomethingthat lies outside it. "By resonance,"Greenblattwrites,I mean the power of [an object] to reach out beyond its formal boundariesto a largerworld, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it hasemerged andfor which as metaphoror simply as metonymy it may be taken by a viewerto stand. By wonderI meanthe power of [an object] to stop the viewer in his tracks, toconvey an arresting ense of uniqueness,to evoke an exalted attention.62Even though n this essay Greenblatthimself does notprovidea linkbetween thedialectics of resonanceand wonder and his prominentuse of historicalmicrosto-rie, the anecdotemay serve as the prime point at which this dialectics manifestsitself. The anecdote is the supreme example of Greenblatt'sanalytical logic ofunity in difference:it offers a view of history as a site of potential conflictbetween a culture and its 'so-calledrepresentatives, site which presentsa cul-ture as a dynamic,structural ystem of rules of in- and ex-clusion. As such, itallows the historian o interprethistoricalmaterialsas simultaneouslyrepresen-tative andnon-representative.

The most extensive treatmentof Greenblatt'suse of anecdotes is that of JoelFineman.Fineman reatsGreenblatt's se of the anecdote n lightof both its narra-tivist and tsheterologicalpotential. narguinghat"[t]heanecdote,as thenarrationof a singularevent,is the literary ormor genrethatuniquelyrefers to thereal,"63Finemanalreadypointsout its doublefunctionality.While it keeps drawingatten-tion to its narrativistontology" to the extentto which it reflects he historical dea

59. In my article "Gazingat the Bordersof The Tempest: hakespeare,Greenblatt nd de Certeau,"in Constellation Caliban: Figurations of a Character,ed. NadiaLie and Theo D'haen (Amsterdam,1997), 61-79, I have tried to relate Greenblatt'swork to thatof Certeau n a more elaborateway.

60. In Greenblatt,Learningto Curse, 161-183.61. Ibid., 181.62. Ibid., 170.63. In The New Historicism,ed. Veeser,56.


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38 JURGENPIETERSthatstructureshehistorian'sdiscourse), heanecdotenevertheless etainsa unique,referential ondwith the past reality rom whichit is taken.Put in the termswhichRolandBarthesdevised n order o analyze hereferentialllusion of historical andother) discourse,one could say that the anecdotecombines the joint functionsof"prescription"nd "notation"64:there s somethingabout he anecdote,"Finemanwrites,"that xceeds its literary narrativist]tatus,and this excess is preciselythatwhich gives theanecdote ts pointed,referential ccess to the real."65

The referenceto Barthes serves as a reminder as does Fineman's "access tothe real") that what the anecdotepresents, f the past can be nothing more thanan image of it. While to some the remindermay seem somewhatsuperfluous,unnecessary ven, others still take the referentialpromise opened up by the"effetde reel" for a fact and considerhistoricalanecdotes as places that allow the read-er to stand face to face with the past"wie es eigentlich gewesen."

If we restrictourselves to Greenblatt'sown reflectionsof the heuristics of theanecdote,it is difficult to decide once and for all to which of the above groupsGreenblattbelongs.66While his treatmentof the subject in several essays inLearning to Curse focuses upon the way in which the anecdote functions pri-marilyas a mechanismof estrangement,a recentessay on the impact of CliffordGeertz'santhropologicalwritingson boththe theoryand the practiceof the newhistoricism drawsa partly differentpicture. In this text, Greenblattstresses thefact thatanecdotes,thoughthey seem to be "raw"pieces of past reality,arein factpieces of narrative.67 et he also arguesagainst the use of the anecdoteas a mererhetoricalploy: "If it is only a matterof rhetoric,"he argues,"thenonly a reali-ty-effect is conjured and nothing more."68 Only a reality-effect: if postmodernhistoricism (bothin its narrativist ndin its heterological form)has persistentlyconfronted iteraryand culturalhistorianswith the impossibilityof encounteringthepastin its full immediacy, t seems also to haveinspired hem to come upwithnew ways by meansof which to sidestepthis problem. Granting hat the "effetde reel"is whatBarthesandothersbelieved it to be-une illusion-Greenblattwants the historianto be true to his calling and become a "conjurer" un illu-sioniste)who presentsthe pastas if it were real.Universityof Ghent

64. RolandBarthes,"L'effetde reel," n idem,Le bruissementde la langue (Paris, 1984); see alsoAnkersmit,Historyand Tropology,125-161.65. In TheNew Historicism,ed. Veeser,56.66. The same ambivalence,so I have argued n anotherplace (Jirgen Pieters,"FacingHistory,or

the Anxiety of Reading: Holbein's 'The Ambassadors' according to Greenblattand Lyotard," nLiterature nd History, ed. TamsinSpargo [Houndmills,Eng., forthcoming])comes to light in a con-frontationbetween Greenblatt'sconcept of the "dialogue with the dead" and his analysis of HansHolbein's "TheAmbassadors" n Renaissance Self-Fashioning.67. Greenblatt"TheTouch of the Real,"27.

68. Ibid.,21.

pieters.historiography posmoderna

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