马克思主义与21世纪史学编纂

by Chris Wickham (Editor), 克里斯·威克姆 (Editor), 段愿 (Translator)

英国马克思主义历史学派是新史学的重要代表，以独特的史学魅力长期屹立于国际史坛。在历史研究过程中，该学派密切关注普通民众，开创了“自下向上看历史”的历史研究方法，提倡从经济、政治、文化等方面总体考察与研究某一历史事件和历史人物，主张用“总体史观”研究历史。其研究方法和模式，被世界史学界广泛研究与运用。2007年，牛津大学出版社以“英国国家学术院第9期专刊”的形式出版了《马克思主义与21世纪史学编纂》，书中收录了8位当代英国马克思主义历史学派代表人物的重要学术论文。这8位学者对当前史学研究的状况，以及马克思主义理论在其中发挥的作用等方面做了深入阐释。所有观点都基于一项基本共识——1989年以后，很多人声称马克思主义历史理论已经过时，但历史并未终结，在对各个时期的历史做出解释时，马克思主义历史理论提供了许多缜密的研究方法。

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Theory, Philosophy

204 pages, Paperback

First published August 16, 2007

About the author

"Chris Wickham is Chichele Professor of Medieval History, and Faculty Board Chair 2009-12.

I have been at Oxford since 2005. Previously, I was Lecturer (1977), Senior Lecturer (1987), Reader (1988), and from 1995 Professor of Early Medieval History, University of Birmingham; and I was an undergraduate and postgraduate at Keble College, Oxford, from 1968 to 1975.

I am a Fellow of the British Academy, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, and a socio of the Accademia dei Lincei."

Reviews

[Malcolm · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a useful and intriguing collection of papers from a conference organised by the British Academy in 2004 that draws together Marxist and non-Marxist historians and others to explore the relevance and shape of Marxist and Marx-influenced history writing in the current era. There are three forms of paper – some explicitly historiographical looking at developments in Marxist historiography of (Roman) antiquity, medieval Europe, and the 20th Century; two papers consider challenges to Marxist writing (Catherine Hall's close reading of key developments in British politics in the late 1820s and early 1830s as needing more than class as explanatory tools is a potent peice of friendly criticism); and one by Robert Brenner that looks again at what we used to call the transition debate (from feudalism to capitalism) to provide a model of comparative history, and to significantly challenge many received wisdoms of contemporary economic history. His work in the 1970s caused us to look again at a big block of economic history, and extended many of the then understood and accepted Marxist explanations for the transition: this long essay issues new challenges and is worth buying the book for by itself.

But, Marxist approaches have often presented challenges for historians and, as the non-Marxist historical sociologist W G Runicman points out in the opening essay, there is a tension between Marx the diagnostician and teleological Marxism – that is, between Marx the analyst of 19th century capitalism, and Marx the visionary. Runciman, like many other, favours discarding the visionary and retaining the dianostician – but alas that means abandoning the third Marx – the political activist and social transformer. I'm not convinced that we can have one without the other: Marxism as an academic model is all well and good, but it becomes Marxism without politics, Marxism without struggle, and ultimately Marxism without relevance. That said, the need to step beyond crude interpretations of Marx's teleological view is vital – if history is only understood by where it is projected to be leading to (or where it has got us to) then we fail to understand how and why history's actors made the decisions they did.

In an aside, Wickham (the editor) adds to Marx's observations in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon when he suggests, given the contemporary trend to nostalgia and kitsch, that the "great events and characters of world history occur ... three times: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce, the third as shopping". Many a true word slips into a footnote.

[Tiarnán · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Brenner (and Wickham) essay(s) is worth the price of entry alone. The Callinicos and Hobsbawm essays are okay but nothing special. But the Hall and Stedman-Jones essays (and Runciman's smug introduction) are truly diabolical, emblematic of the morass of post-structuralist academia in their wordiness and meaningless, and - as a collection of essays assembled for the British Academy - are indicative of the definitive shift of the locus of serious Marxian scholarship across the Atlantic in the 21st century.

[lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

niektoré články zaujímavejšie ako iné, odporúčam článok od brennena prečítať, tabuľky ❤️