This article argues that, although psychoanalysis and history have different conceptions of time and causality, there can be a productive relationship between them. Psychoanalysis can force historians to question their certainty about facts, narrative, and cause; it introduces disturbing notions about unconscious motivation and the effects of fantasy on the making of history. This was not the case with the movement for psychohistory that began in the 1970s. Then the influence of American ego-psychology on history-writing promoted the idea of compatibility between the two disciplines in ways that undercut the critical possibilities of their interaction. The work of the French historian Michel de Certeau provides theoretical insight into the uses of incommensurability, while that of Lyndal Roper demonstrates both its limits and its value for enriching historical understanding.
Comentario sobre Confounding Gender de Hawkesworth. Joan Wallach Scott
Laura Downs' title-"If 'woman' is just an empty category, then why am I afraid to walk alone at night?"-indicates, as a good title should, what is to follow in her subsequent essay. Unfortunately in this case the title reveals right from the beginning her profound misapprehension of the texts and questions she proposes to discuss. "Either she doesn't get it all," an undergraduate conversant with Women's Studies said to me when she heard the title, "or she's deliberately misrepresenting what you've written." Having read Downs' essay and worked on this response, I can only conclude that ignorance and misrepresentation go hand in hand, whatever the author's intent.I am deeply troubled by the cavalier way in which Downs treats disciplines-philosophy, psychoanalysis, literary studies-not her own. Interdisciplinary borrowing has always seemed to me a difficult and risky business, requiring that we respect high standards of scholarship as we acquire new ways of analyzing and thinking. Criticism of the methods and approaches developed by other disciplines is even more challenging because it demands that we fully engage with and understand, in their terms, the ideas we want to dispute. Indeed, it seems to me that one earns the right to criticize work in another field only by the hard effort of learning that field. The glib use of technical terms, superficial familiarity with a few phrases, and schematic portrayals of main themes, do not constitute serious interdisciplinary work; rather, they represent an abdication of professional responsibility.Downs' piece is an example of what happens when interdisciplinarity is not pursued seriously. Since CSSH has decided to print it, and since that may be taken by readers as an endorsement of its adequacy to the problems addressed, I will proceed by commenting on her misapprehensions. As I do so, I hope it will become clear why this piece cannot be the basis for a serious discussion of the issues raised by post-structuralist and psychoanalytic theories for history.First, the title of the article suggests that there is a direct relationship between theory-the analysis of concepts like "women"-and the lived experiences of women. But there is not such a direct relationship. First, theory analyzes how knowledge is produced; theory does not produce either real life or practical politics. Second, those who interrogate the concept "women"
Institute for Advanced Study The three critiques of "On Language, Gender, and Working-Class History" (ILWCH, spring 1987) fall into two categories: Bryan Palmer and Christine Stansell share a fundamental disagreement with my emphasis on "language," arguing instead that material reality, social experiences, real or concrete events are the stuff of social history, while "language" is ephemeral, epiphenomenal, an "idealist" preoccupation. Andy Rabinbach endorses and expands on my analysis, pointing up some rigidities of argumentation and the interpretive pitfalls of overly formalized distinctions. For him "language" holds no terror or implication of betrayal of the "real" subject of politically correct history ("woman" for Stansell, "the working class" for Palmer). Rather, he accepts the notion that there is no transparent "real" that exists apart from conceptualization and that complex analysis of how meaning is made might have (politically) useful payoffs. Since the two positions are worlds apart, it seems most efficient to deal with each in turn. The Horse's Nostril School of Social History Bryan Palmer's dramatic opening scene is meant to persuade his readers that there is a reality so compelling, an oppression so vivid, a force so naked that we need never doubt our perceptions of what they mean. Not only that, they transcend the limits of historical context; their meaning is apparent whatever the time or place: "Looking up into the flared nostrils of the state's steed reminds me of a similar view I 'experienced' fifteen years ago at a May Day anti-imperialist rally in Washington." Here Palmer makes certain to remind us that his credentials are impeccable as a political activist and hence as a social historian. By putting experience in quotation marks, he also ridicules my suggestion that experience may be a problematic concept. In his presentation of it, the meaning of an event is inherent in the event itself. Experience is thus a direct, unmediated sensation; the experience of class struggle is directly knowable except to those with false consciousness or perhaps none at all. In Palmer's little scenario, direct confrontation with the repressive forces of the
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.