This post contains a undergraduate essay answering the question, ‘Have recent movements in historical thought and practice carried history as a discipline beyond the ‘linguistic turn’?’. Written for a philosophy of history module, it covers recent movements related to neurohistory and material culture and how they have moved historical thought beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. Nevertheless, I also argue they have not altered the everyday practicalities encountered by the historian. It is my belief that the full potential of the ‘linguistic turn’ has still not been fully realised and if I were to write the essay again I would probably emphasise this more.

Recent movements in historical thought have carried history as a discipline beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. However, they have not altered the practice of history. I will show this in three sections, the first highlights how new approaches to material culture and science have changed historical thought. The second argues that although these movements have changed how we think about the past, they have not altered the everyday problems and practicalities of the historian raised in the ‘linguistic turn’. I define historical thought, as an understanding of how the past operates, in this context covering agency and causality. By the practice of history, I refer to the processes of research and writing that produce the monograph, the primary communicative device for the historical discipline. In this discussion, the ‘linguistic turn’ is understood as a movement from the 1970s onwards, advanced by scholars like White, which emphasised the role of language and narrative in shaping historical accounts. Nevertheless, in the final section, I will examine the implications of my argument and why it suggests we should abandon the idea of linear progression in the discipline between different ‘turns’.

A recent movement to carry historical thought within the discipline beyond the ‘linguistic turn’ can be found in material culture studies. Actor-network theory (ANT) has been the main catalyst in this change, as it shows historians cannot ignore the role objects have played in past societies. Latour suggests as objects modify states of human behaviour, it is wrong to ignore their role in societies, as ‘no science of the social can even begin, if the question of who and what participates in the action is not first of all thoroughly explored.’[1] This is illustrated by the analogies Latour uses, it is impossible to hit a nail without a hammer or fetch provisions without a basket.[2] However, The ‘material turn’ has limitations. ANT, the most influential approach in historical thought, does not claim objects cause actions, despite their agency.[3] Unlike its rivals, such as Object-oriented-ontology (OOO).[4] Nevertheless, ANT has still seen a shift in the discipline from the ‘linguistic turn’ when thinking about past objects and their agency.

This is reinforced by recent historical studies. Mcshane has shown how objects have often signified emotions of love towards the state, such as through seventeenth century pans, stating ‘God Save King Charles’ or courtship lockets containing images of Charles II and Catharine of Braganza.[5] Meanwhile, Price has shown that books in the past had uses other than reading, like buying and displaying.[6] These examples show how recent approaches to material culture have moved historical thought moved beyond the ‘linguistic turn’, ending the prioritisation of humans and by showing objects must also be understood as actants within historic societies.

Recent movements in scientific thought have also changed how the discipline thinks about past societies, questioning the role of agency and causality in human actions. The first shift emerged from popular scientific literature on biology and human behaviour. Pinker suggests scientific research proves all human thoughts and feelings are manifestations of the brain.[7] Culture impacts humans due to the brain’s mental algorithms.[8] This suggests for historians, the causality of human behaviour in past societies was biological, therefore questioning human agency and free will. The impact of evolutionary psychologists, like Pinker, within the historical discipline was limited. Their work was a reaction to the post-war movements that emphasised culture’s role in society, which Pinker terms under the Standard Social Science Model. Believing this was a backlash against the racial pseudosciences of modernity, writers like Pinker themselves reacted by overemphasising biology’s role in behaviour.[9] This is shown by Pinker’s struggle to incorporate moral issues into his argument.[10] Therefore, this popular literature only partially moved views of causality and agency in the discipline beyond the ‘linguistic turn’, but allowed later changes by encouraging discussion of biology’s role in the past.

Dupré, writing after Pinker, provided a view of science more palatable for historians, taking thought further beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. He argues humans are both shaped by their structure, their biological inclinations to act, and the context to which these are exposed.[11] Nuanced interpretations like this have allowed historians to incorporate biology into the past better than Pinker’s thesis allows. Smail has connected the dopamine reward and stress relief systems within the brain to cultural and psychotropic stimulants throughout history, suggesting they have affected human behaviour through balancing pleasure with stress.[12] Therefore, the causality of human actions in the past can be linked to biology without being detached from culture. Recent movements in science have therefore moved historical thought away from the ‘linguistic turn’; firstly, allowing biology’s role to be discussed again and secondly by showing it has partially impacted agency and causality in past societies.

Recent movements in science and material culture have impacted historians’ thoughts on causality and agency in past societies, but they have not taken the practice of history beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. The research process for material goods still encounters issues raised by the ‘linguistic turn’. Many approaches to materiality still rely on textual sources. Price, was right in noticing that books have been neglected as material objects, but she still uses written ‘it-narratives’, like The History of an Old Pocket Bible (1812) to explore different uses of books.[13] Therefore, while historians may now understand the importance of objects, this does not mean they have moved past using textual sources or the ‘linguistic turn’ to understand them.

 Secondly, even when using material sources directly, historians still encounter issues of subjectivity raised by the ‘linguistic turn’. Davidson shows this in her study of nineteenth century non-conformist graves in London. She describes her emotional reactions, such as grumpiness due to difficulties in making connections between graves and her team’s reaction when opening a baby’s coffin; curiosity, poignancy and disgust.[14] The ‘material turn’ has therefore not answered the criticisms raised by the ‘linguistic turn’ regarding the historian’s ability to use sources objectively in research. Many of these issues can even be traced further back than the ‘linguistic turn’ to the debates between Elton and Carr in the 1960s over objectivity.[15]

Finally, the ‘material turn’ has also not moved beyond the ‘linguistic turn’ on the researcher’s practice and the environment they encounter objects in. Derrida and Steedman describe ‘Archive Fever’, as how an archive creates a desire to possess a moment, resulting in fear of leaving something unnoticed or untranscribed.[16] The ‘material turn’ risks an illusionary return to certainty, suggesting the researcher has the physical presence of past actants available, unlike texts which only offer traces of actants. However, many objects are still encountered in similar environments to written sources. For example, the V&A Textiles and Fashion Collection currently holds over 75,000 objects in a archival setting.[17] The material researcher is therefore still influenced by where they encounter their sources and the ‘fever’ they get for leaving an object unnoticed or untranscribed. This again suggests research, in practicing history, has not went beyond the ‘linguistic turn’.

Furthermore, recent movements have not influenced the practice of writing in the historical discipline, this is especially true when using science. The issues of narrative in historical accounts raised during the ‘linguistic turn’ have still not been addressed. Smail’s thesis on neurohistory may be correct, but by putting this into written form he constructs a grand narrative. This causes generalisation, for example he states the medieval church was a cultural stimulant in the diaclectic between the dopamine and stress relief systems.[18] However, this presumes the church offered similar stimulants in different geographic and temporal settings. The medieval church was not this homogenous; Theodoric the Great’s tolerance towards Catholicism and Arianism cannot be compared to Gregory of Tours’ negative portrayal of the Arian Aglian,‘a man of low intelligence.’[19] Smail confesses that neurohistory must inevitably be large-scale, but it does not detract from the generalisations he uses to construct a narrative.[20]  Therefore, recent movements in science have not answered  issues raised during the ‘linguistic turn’ about writing and the practice of history.

Additionally, these recent movements have not went beyond the ‘linguistic turn’ by ignoring the role of metaphor in writing history. Even before the new movements, White showed the impossibility of claiming scientific texts are free of the linguistic tools used in historical writing. He shows how Darwin, writing about evolution, transformed related particulars into an image of orderliness, using the metaphor of beings belonging to ‘families’ linked by genealogy. Darwin attempted to represent reality, but made his argument coherent, in contrast to his Vitalist opponents, by using this metaphor.[21] Consequentially, recent movements in science have still not addressed how metaphors are used in the writing and practice of history, therefore not going fully beyond the ‘linguistic turn’.

I have established recent movements in historical thought have moved beyond the ‘linguistic turn’, but the practice of history has not. Consequentially, I will now show why this suggests we need to question whether we should be moving beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. The essay question presumes a view of the historical discipline, like Kuhn’s paradigms of science. In which, a cycle of tradition goes through confusion and anomaly before moving towards another secure tradition.[22] There are several reasons to abandon this linear view of the discipline. Firstly, as shown, it is inaccurate. There is no evidence to suggest that the discipline is moving towards a secure tradition, the ‘linguistic’ turn is still relevant to the practice of history, while recent movements in science and material thought are also contributing to the discipline. We therefore need to abandon paradigms or turns as concepts as they do not represent the discipline.

Secondly, we need to abandon this view of the discipline moving between traditions, as it implies the latest conceived turn is more authoritative than the last. This has political implications, as it could allow one disciplinary approach to monopolise the past. White has shown how Marxist and bourgeoise approaches to history fundamentally limit political thinking by imposing authority on the past.[23] The turns examined here have similar potential. Pinker is monopolising the past when irrefutably defending the mind’s unity with nature against the so-called ‘academic left and the religious and cultural right.’[24] Abandoning a linear view of the discipline developing, would prevent historical thought and practice from being used like this, showing how the concept of secure traditions is fiction.

I have shown that we need to abandon the linear view of the historical discipline in the essay title, so how might we do this? The first step would involve historicising different movements. Rorty’s concept of a Liberal Ironist, as someone who recognises their current vocabulary and beliefs are contingent creations would be useful for this.[25] The ‘linguistic turn’ would be recognised as a product of the post-war era, whereas new movements in science and material culture would themselves be shown as reactionary desires for certainty. As historical products, these turns would be no more valuable than each other, while all still offering useful ideas for the discipline. Multimedia may be pivotal in doing this, technologies are making it difficult to think of authoritative ideas such as ‘turns’ or paradigms. For example, the internet is a continuous flow of ideas, between potentially unlimited authors. [26] Technology, alongside, Rorty’s idea of a Liberal Ironist, allows the abandonment of concepts such as ‘turns’, by showing the contingency of any disciplinary tradition.

This essay has shown that although recent movements in scientific and material thought have changed how the discipline thinks about the past, they have not taken the practice of history beyond the ‘linguistic turn’. I then highlighted why we need to abandon this linear view of the historical discipline and how we might do this. By unsettling the view of progression between different turns, I have hopefully opened doors for future research.  For example, could approaches to the material book also be applied to the monograph? Therefore, borrowing from the ‘linguistic’ and ‘material’ turns. Nevertheless, I have revealed the untenability of viewing the historical discipline as simply moving beyond the ‘linguistic turn’ towards these new material and scientific movements.

Bibliography:

Carr, Edward H. What Is History?: The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, January – March 1961.  London: Penguin, 1961.

Davidson, Hilary. “Grave Emotions: Textiles and Clothing from Nineteenth-Century London Cemeteries.” TEXTILE 14, no. 2 (2016): 226-43.

Downes, Stephanie, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles. “A Feeling for Things, Past and Present.” In Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History, edited by Stephanie Holloway Downes, Sally and Sarah Randles, 8-26. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Dupré, John A. Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Elton, Geoffrey R. The Practice of History. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1967.

Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum translated by Lewis Thorpe in The History of the Franks. London: Penguin, 1974.

Excerptum Valesiana II translated by Bill Thayer. Accessed 28 Nov 2018, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Excerpta_Valesiana/2*.html.

Hollinger, David A. “T. S. Kuhn’s Theory of Science and Its Implications for History.” The American Historical Review 78, no. 2 (1973): 370-93.

Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

McShane, Angela. “Subjects and Objects: Material Expressions of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth-Century England.” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 4 (2009): 871-86.

Pinker, Steven. “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine.” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 21 (April 20 and 21, 1999): 179-210.

Price, Leah. “From The History of a Book to a “History of the Book”.” Representations 108, no. 1 (2009): 120-38.

Rigney, Anne. “When the Monograph is No Longer the Medium: Historical Narrative in The Online Age.” History and Theory 49, no. 4 (2010): 100-17.

Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Smail, Daniel L. “An Essay on Neurohistory.” In Emerging Disciplines: Shaping New Fields of Scholarly Inquiry in and Beyond the Humanities, edited by Melissa Bailar, 111-22. Houston: Connexions, 2010.

Steedman, Carolyn. “Something She Called a Fever: Michelet, Derrida, and Dust.” The American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2001): 1159-80.

Victoria and Albert Museum. “The V and A Textiles and Fashion Collection”, 2016. Accessed 28 Nov, 2018, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/the-v-and-a-textiles-and-fashion-collection/.

White, Hayden. “Fictions of Factual Representation.” In Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism, 121-34. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

———. “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation.” Critical Inquiry 9, no. 1 (1982): 113-37.

---

[1] Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 71-72.

[2] Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, 71.

[3] Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory, 72.

[4] Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles, “A Feeling for Things, Past and Present,” in Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History, ed. Stephanie Holloway Downes, Sally and Sarah Randles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 8.

[5] Angela McShane, “Subjects and Objects: Material Expressions of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth-Century England,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 4 (2009): 875.

[6] Leah Price, “From The History of a Book to a “History of the Book”,” Representations 108, no. 1 (2009): 210.

[7] Steven Pinker, “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” The Tanner Lectures on Human Values 21 (April 20 and 21, 1999): 183.

[8] Pinker, “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” 187.

[9] Pinker, “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” 193.

[10] Pinker, “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” 194-203.

[11] John A. Dupré, Darwin’s Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 79.

[12] Daniel L. Smail, “An Essay on Neurohistory,” in Emerging Disciplines: Shaping New Fields of Scholarly Inquiry in and Beyond the Humanities, ed. Melissa Bailar (Houston: Connexions, 2010), 114-15.

[13] Price, “From The History of a Book to a “History of the Book”,” 124.

[14] Hilary Davidson, “Grave Emotions: Textiles and Clothing from Nineteenth-Century London Cemeteries,” TEXTILE 14, no. 2 (2016): 231, 39.

[15] Edward H. Carr, What Is History?: The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge, January – March 1961 (London: Penguin, 1961), 1-24; Geoffrey R. Elton, The Practice of History (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1967), 51-66.

[16] Carolyn Steedman, “Something She Called a Fever: Michelet, Derrida, and Dust,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 4 (2001): 1160-63.

[17] “The V and A Textiles and Fashion Collection” Victoria and Albert Museum, 2016. Accessed 28 Nov, 2018, http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/v/the-v-and-a-textiles-and-fashion-collection/.

[18] Smail, “An Essay on Neurohistory,” 118.

[19]Excerptum Valesiana II:60 translated by Bill Thayer. Accessed 28 Nov 2018, http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Excerpta_Valesiana/2*.html; Gregory of Tours, Decem Libri Historiarum V.43 translated by Lewis Thorpein The History of the Franks (London: Penguin, 1974), 307-312.

[20] Smail, “An Essay on Neurohistory,” 116.

[21]Hayden White, “Fictions of Factual Representation,” in Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 133.

[22] David A. Hollinger, “T. S. Kuhn’s Theory of Science and Its Implications for History,” The American Historical Review 78, no. 2 (1973): 374.

[23] Hayden White, “The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation,” Critical Inquiry 9, no. 1 (1982): 129.

[24] Pinker, “The Blank Slate, the Noble Savage, and the Ghost in the Machine,” 189.

[25] Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 73.

[26] Anne Rigney, “When the Monograph is No Longer the Medium: Historical Narrative in The Online Age,” History and Theory 49, no. 4 (2010): 116.