HISTORY AND LIBERTY?

HISTORY AND LIBERTY?

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1900-Present (Modernism and Post Modernism)

Vol XCIII, No. 311

Modernism and History

"MAKE IT NEW"

Various Views of History

http://www.sabresocials.com/kevin/Theories%20of%20History.ppt

Modernism: an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.

In twentieth-century literature, the elements of reprise have been obsessive, and they have organized precisely those texts which at first seemed most revolutionary. 'The Waste Land', Ulysses, Pound's Cantos are deliberate assemblages, in-gatherings of a cultural past felt to be in danger of dissolution. The long sequence of imitations, translations, masked quotations, and explicit historical paintings in Robert Lowell's History has carried the same technique into the 1970s. [...] In Modernism collage has been the representative device. The new, even at its most scandalous, has been set against an informing background and framework of tradition. Stravinsky, Picasso, Braque, Eliot, Joyce, Pound—the 'makers of the new'—have been neo-classics, often as observant of canonic precedent as their seventeenth-century forbears. (Steiner 490)

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

― James Joyce, Ulysses

Postmodernism and History

Remember,postmodernists doubt that any language or system can stably explain things: thus any description or classification of history is suspect and not necessarily better than another (relativism)

Jean-François Lyotard:

"Simplifying to the extreme, I define the postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives."

“the great trajectories that historiography has built

around nation, class, and religion are grand narratives that confer an illusory sense

of direction on people who think they know about the past” (Tosh, 2004).

1) “Cyclical Theory:”

History repeats itself; there is no real “progress.” This theory holds that history is a series of patterns that recur in different forms around the world. Civilizations rise and fall, often for similar reasons. Understanding history is about understanding patterns. For example, this is a traditional model for understanding the dynastic history of Central Asia.

2) “Linear Theory:” History is about progress. The world is constantly improving and heading in an ultimate direction. There are no real repetitions in history, although they may appear to exist every once in a while. This theory is heavily based on the idea of cause and effect: "this happened, and then that happened; that happened because this happened first."

3) “Great Man Theory”:

Individual people and/or small groups of people, through the power of their character or intellect, determine the course of history. This view of history was popular in the 19th century. It is summarized by Thomas Carlyle’s quote, “The history of the world is but the biography of great men.”

4) “Everyman Theory”:

The world is shaped by the efforts of ordinary people, not small elite groups or individuals. This theory holds that social groups and everyday people (e.g. farmers, merchants, religious figures) shape history. To fully understand history, you must also understand the everyday lives of these groups. One of the most well-known books that presents this viewpoint is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.

5) “Geographic Theory”:

Geography is destiny. The natural environment is a major determinant of history, determining the potential and needs of groups of people. This theory is often associated with Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel, which argues that certain peoples are destined for greater success based on their geographic location and access to resources.

6) “Marxist Theory”:

History is the story of struggle between different social classes: powerful groups that control wealth and resources, and the powerless groups who struggle to survive. In other words, “it’s all about the money” – economics determines everything. People, leaders and nations act out of economic self-interest. As Karl Marx stated in his famous work, The Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

(http://nshslibrary.newton.k12.ma.us/CassellTheories)

POSTMODERNISM

"the disappearance of a sense of history, the way in which our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual present and in a perpetual change that obliterates traditions of the kind which all earlier social formations have had in one way or another to preserve... The information function of the media would thus be to help us to forget, to serve as the very agents and mechanisms of our historical amnesia" (Frederic Jameson).