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Title: History As an Art of Memory by Patrick H. Hutton ISBN: 0-87451-637-4 Publisher: University Press of New England Pub. Date: 15 December, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (1 review)
Rating: 3
Summary: History without the insults
Comment: This book on mentalities has many strands, and this attempt to explain its themes will involve much simplification. As a scholarly work, it maintains a certain dignity which avoids the insults that I have come to expect when reading poets like Archilochus, or Heine, and also found in the coarse German philosophers, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Written in the wake of the bicentennial of the French Revolution, the longest chapter is called "The Role of Memory in the Historiography of the French Revolution." (pp. 124-153). The book mentions only a few philosophers, mainly Vico and Foucault.
Vico was one of the first to claim that Homeric epics were not written by an individual but emerged from a group of blind seers who for hundreds of years were "an emblem of the collective authorship of the epic poetry that bears the name." (p. 43). HISTORY AS AN ART OF MEMORY by Patrick H. Hutton supports Vico's attempts to determine the significance and meaning of some of the world's most ancient literature. "Rhapsode, he explained, literally meant `stitcher-together of songs,' and Homer was such a `binder of fables.' " (p. 44). Vico's ideas are compared with the book PREFACE TO PLATO (1963) by Eric Havelock, in which, "Havelock was struck by the vehemence with which the philosopher Plato in his famous essay THE REPUBLIC banished the poet Homer from his projected ideal society for the `crippling effect' his poetry might have on the mind. Although scholars had long construed Plato's judgment as a philosophical position between ancients and moderns, Havelock pointed out that the quarrel was better appreciated as a clashing of incompatible mentalities, not merely of opposing ideas. . . . Plato scorned Homer because he formed his thoughts in an altogether different way." (pp. 45-46). Rather than blaming philosophy, it might be possible to blame Plato for attempting to think on behalf of a state that counted on loyalty far more than it valued thought. Postmodern people who have encountered such curses (a few surfaced on some Nixon White House tapes in the 1970s) know that this long tradition of those who believe strongly in duty is not likely to disappear from history anytime soon.
Rather than joking about how much cursing a postmodern world has shown itself capable of producing, I should admit that I was also looking for jokes in this book, and found that jokes were mentioned in the discussion of Freud's study of "the unconscious mind's compulsion to repeat its unresolved dilemmas." (pp. 64-65). Jokes which work by association with things that no one should ever forget help uncover the past. "These places of memory are marked in many ways: among them, parapraxes (slips of the tongue); jokes; dreams; screen memories; and even compulsive behavior." (p. 65). Those who have been compelled to do many unpleasant duties might find some of them more absurd than the usual joke, but as such instances are quite common in history and still possible in postmodern times, "parapraxes and jokes mask the memories that lie closest to the surface of consciousness, and the unconscious conflicts that they hide are easiest to discern." (p. 66). When a lie is really close to consciousness, the conflict that is easiest to discern is about who gets to spread lies and who is supposed to take it with stomach in, chest out, trap shut.
Seriously though, I thought about whether a few lines in this book might be considered insults. Maurice Halbwachs is described as "admirer of the socialist tribune Jean Jaures and himself a committed socialist. His writings display his thorough grounding in economics, not to mention a passion for statistical analysis seemingly at odds with the focus on imagery and imagination that the topic of memory requires." (pp. 73-74). If that seems to start with something that looks like an insult, it largely escapes from it by changing the subject. Published posthumously in 1950, Halbwachs managed to escape responsibility for things he hadn't done due to the war. "One senses, too, that his thoughts on the subject were still provisional at the time of his death in 1945 in a concentration camp at Buchenwald, a victim of Nazi persecution." (p. 74). If anything appeals to the idea of collective memory, not finished under those circumstances, his book is on the right topic.
Chapter 6, Michel Foucault, History as Counter-Memory, is quite free of insults, for a chapter that discusses "insanity" (p. 106), "the crazed, the nonconformist, and the eccentric" (p. 106), "Madmen" (p. 106), "ship of fools" (p. 106) "pariah" (p. 106), "insane asylums" (p. 107), "Foucault's tableau of the madhouse" (p. 107), "The Foucault phenomenon well illustrates the turn from social to cultural history in French historiography since the early 1970s. An emblem of that shift, Foucault also contributed to its accomplishment." (p. 108). "Like Nietzsche, Foucault was challenging the Hegelian notion that history unfolds logically from primordial beginnings. Most historians practicing today would consider this an intellectual battle long since won. Few would place their faith in metahistorical designs. But Foucault's argument took the challenge a step further by charging that an historiographical tradition unwittingly perpetuates belief in such a design." (p. 112). "Laments about the demise of coherent traditions of literature or patterns of history invoke myths invented to serve the ends of those presently in power." (p. 114). Getting really postmodern, "The imperative to speak openly about sexuality as a means of finding out the truth about ourselves, he observed, is the true sexual revolution of our times." (p. 114). "Looking into the psyche, therefore, is like looking into the mirror image of a mirror." (p. 115). I really skipped a lot. Then, "He could be thin-skinned about criticism of his method by professional historians, as his angry reply to a review . . ." (p. 115) certainly showed how reflective he could be when provoked in a postmodern way.
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Title: The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature) by Mary J. Carruthers ISBN: 0521429730 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $33.00 |
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Title: Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford Paperbacks) by Michael Baxandall ISBN: 019282144X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1988 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Invention of Tradition (A Canto Book) by Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger ISBN: 0521437733 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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