The New Historicism

by H. Aram Veeser (Editor)

Following Clifford Geertz and other cultural anthropologists, the New Historicist critics have evolved a method for describing culture in action. Their "thick descriptions" seize upon an event or anecdote--colonist John Rolfe's conversation with Pocohontas's father, a note found among Nietzsche's papers to the effect that "I have lost my umbrella"--and re-read it to reveal through the analysis of tiny particulars the motive forces controlling a whole society. Contributors: Stephen J. Greenblatt, Louis A. Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Gerald Graff, Jean Franco, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Frank Lentricchia, Vincent Pecora, Jane Marcus, Jon Klancher, Jonathan Arac, Hayden White, Stanley Fish, Judith Newton, Joel Fineman, John Schaffer, Richard Terdiman, Donald Pease, Brooks Thomas.

Genres: History, Literary Criticism, Theory, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collection of essays, some better than others, some pro, some contra. Foucault this, Geertz that. Predictable, &c. Worthwhile for literature students who are interested in late 20th century developments.

Spivak's contribution is top notch. Fineman's reading of Thucydides is also slick, as is Shaeffer's reading of Vico. The standout is Pecora's interpretation of Geertz's work on Indonesia, which juxtaposes "local knowledge" and "thick description" against the 1965 CIA coup, which resulted in 500,000 murdered human persons and 900,000 unlawful detentions, whereof Geertz was constrained to a bizarre quasi-silence.

There's a few essays on feminism, and on marxism, and on various aspects of specific periods of literary history--all of which are a bit less memorable. The two afterwards, by Hayden White and Stanley Fish, respectively, aren't particularly memorable, either; ditto, Greenblatt's introduction. Graff and Lentricchia each also make contributions--but I've already forgotten their arguments, too.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

By turns fascinating and irritating. Some of the essays in this volume, including some of both the laudatory and the critical essays, provide insight. Others are rants.

There are two convictions, it seems to me, at the base of New Historicism. First, there is the conviction that everybody is caught in history; no one, including the scholar, is free from the constraints of her context (material as well as ideological), yet neither has anyone unmediated access to material facts of reality. Second, human life consists of many competing voices and tendencies, so the context is not a single big idea that someone can rebel against (or channel, for that matter); resistance and consensus alike are forms of participation in a shifting conversation. Human thought and communication, at least in the modern and secular world, are therefore markets all the way down -- and all the way up.

The editor of this collection, Aram Veeser, divides these into five main assumptions:

1. that every expressive act is embedded in a network of material practices;
2. that every act of unmasking, critique, and opposition uses the tools it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes;
3. that literary and non-literary "texts" circulate inseparably;
4. that no discourse, imaginative or archival, gives access to unchanging truths nor expresses inalterable human nature;
5. finally (...) that a critical method and a language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe.

Now, these assumptions can be taken in a politically and culturally conservative or a politically and culturally radical direction. What they rule out is any form of the belief that the scholar's own views are the endpoint and supreme judge of history. (At the same time, they propose that the scholar is necessarily a judge in history -- as a participant in an exchange, not an impartial observer.)

Seemingly, the critics in this volume cluster in two disciplinary camps. The historians say, "Ugh! Why don't you just do history?" The literature scholars say, "Ugh! Why don't you just do politics?" The obvious answer to the former is, "We're trying to make a space for voices that tend to get shut out of your grand political and economic narratives." The obvious answer to the latter is, "Get a life."

The best of the critics find ways to point out the limits of New Historicism. Which is entirely in the spirit of the thing, considering that New Historicism appears to be all about limits. But on the whole, I think there's more heat than light here.

[Hubert]

Too steeped in details of literary culture debates of 80s and 90s. Passing for now.