Wallerstein - Wrold-Systems Analysis

Ch 1 historical Origins of World-systems Analysis
1ff) He constructs the history of the development of historical/social sciences through the 19th and 20th centuries. This begins with building up the systems which existed in the positivist/modernist world, the construction of the contemporary university system of arts/letters. Eventually this begins to collapse through the post WWII era. He names a few specific events which caused this: 1945 - the US becomes hegemonic world power; 1953 - Stalin dies. 1968 - world revolution in how things were thought.
18ff) Marxist theory starts to dissolve and morph. Braudel posits that monopolies were the end goal of capitalism, but that they were antagonistic to markets.
19ff) World-systems analysis are unidisciplinary. That is, they ignore traditional disciplines. This analysis shows a system which is bound in spacetime and the system changes as it moves through spacetime.
22) "To the extent that we each analyze out social prisons, we liberate ourselves from their constraints to the extent that we can be liberated."

Ch 2 The Modern World-System as a Capitalist World-Economy
23ff) World-Economy: large area in which there is a division of labor and an e xchange of goods. Capitalist is where there is a system in place for the accumulation of endless capital: accumulate wealth to make more wealth. The modern world is a capitalist world-economy.
25ff) Capitalism does not want a truly free market. Such a thing would radically reduce profits and inhibit the accumulation of wealth. That said, pure monopolies are problematic as well, as they allow Capitalism full control over the systems, and empires/governments tend not to allow that. Beyond monopolies, plundering can create profits, but they burn themselves out in the middle-term. Meanwhile, there's core-periphery issues. Households are complicated groups of people with various forms of income. Further, there are identity groups which makes things even more complicated. Both households and identities attempt to control behavior. There are also Universalism and Anti-universalism systems which push things together and apart.

Ch 3 The Rise of the State-System
42ff) Sovereignty grows out of the Treaty of Westphalia as does the state-system, the politlcal(ish) sub-system of the modern world-system. It assumes the existence of a state, and then posits that the state controls what is within its borders. Reciprocal recognition allows multiple state-systems to exist in the wider interstate systems.
45ff) Firms interact with states in several ways. They deal with border issues, property rights, taxes, interstate issues, etc. Often is it not that the firms want -no- state interference, but rather no negative interference with their decisions.
49ff) Class develops and the working class was relatively slow in gaining the political power to demand a more equal distribution of wealth. The French Revolution spurred much of the democratization of power on by promoting the idea of sovereignty originating from the people. However, the definition of "the people" has been a messy one over the centuries.
52ff) Strong states are ones which can carry out their political decisions. Weak states cannot. This does not mean how much power is in how few hands, rather it is a measure of the mechanism of the state contra mechanisms such as bribery, etc., breakdowns of the state system. These varied powered states interact in various ways. Often there are attempts at either world-empire or hegemony. The former seeks absolute control but rarely succeeds, the latter gains near-absolute influence/power, but inevitably fades.

Ch 4 The Creation of a Geoculture
60ff) The political realities of the French Revolution - the placement of sovereignty in the hands of the citizens, the ability for governments to radically change quickly, etc. - helped to birth a number of ideologies which began working toward and against these new ideas. Conservatives formed to react against change as the cause of the upheavals. Liberals formed to divorce change from the radical upheaval, saying change in inevitable and thus we should guide along the best path. Radicals called for the radical upheaval as a means to wipe away the current problems. 1848: The Spingtime of the Nations birthed the radical movement.
64ff) After 1848, all three wings saw their strategies evolve. Conservatives realized that harsh repression did not work, and opted for more moderate approaches. Liberals grew timid and proposed a very modest program of change. Radicals saw that flashes of violence only produced immediate repression and sought to push the liberals for further social change. In the end, the three work together to birth the modern liberal nation-state. This led to an increase (or birth of) nationalism which was strongly harnessed. While some intra-European competition was introduced, most of the violence was directed at non-European cultures, which saw Western powers as civilized and sought to push that out to the other nations.
67ff) Anti-systemic groups began working to expand the notion of "citizen", thus allowing greater change in the system by changing who was helping to make the decisions. Most of these groups started with competing ideas and goals, but in the end they tended toward a 2-step solution: 1) gain political power 2) enact desired change. These groups (socialist, feminist, or ethnic/racial) tended to view each other at best warily. In the end, most of these groups had achieved step 1 but none had achieved step 2.

Ch 5 The Modern World-System in Crisis.
76ff) Historical systems eventually come to a time of crisis and face some sort of choice in direction on how to move beyond their borders and evolve. The current system is having a crisis of profitability. The problem stems from rising cost of employment, a rising cost of materials (both tech and raw/semi-finished materials), and taxes.
83ff) Then 1968 happened. Since step 2 above never came to fruition, growing numbers were disillusioned with the liberal social hope. Rather than try to expand the majority, the revolutions of 1968 sought to promote the liberty of the minority.

Reaction
The analysis he provides allows for a complicated (even complex) imagining of the process of history. He covers a number of interacting arenas in history and shows how they interact in the modern world. In the last two chapters, he describes 1848 and 1968 as key crises which birthed and changed the system, however I am unconvinced that they are as key, or as individual event-sounding, as he makes them out to be. Both of those years had a number of influences leading into them which helped bring about those revolutions. Yes, they provide useful structural points to base the analysis on, but I think focusing on such events (even multiple inter-related events) is too simplistic a notion to explain changes within a world-system.
Rather I think there is a constant evolution of the world-system. There are events which provide useful conceptual focuses, that allow clear contrasts to be made between things on either side of them, but those events are not without causes in the prior world-system-state. 1968 requires a 1967. And a 1966. Why is 1968 more important than 1967? Why is Luther more important to the Protestant Reformation than Gutenburg?

White, "Metahistory", Ch 7&8

Pt III - Repudiation of "Realism" in Late Nineteenth Century Philosophy of History
Ch 7 - Historical Consciousness and the Rebirth of Philosophy of History
(267ff) The mid-19th century had effectively ignored Marx and Nietzsche. Historians at large had their ideas of how history should be written and ignored philosophical questions of etiology. Marx and Nietzsche on the other hand were questioning the idea of objectivity as historically bound, which effectively makes any attempt by the historian to be objective by its very nature subjective (or at least, culturally bound).

Ch 8 Marx
(281ff) Marx saw society as the force that (in his day) was both liberating humanity from nature and at the same time alienating humans from each other. However, he had a Romantic turn to his history. Society progressed and would eventually lead to transformation of society into community, wherein humans were liberated both from fear of nature and fear of other, leaving only the self as the obstacle to contentment.
(282ff) Historians of Marx's day preferred to portray history without attempting to make ethical or moral judgements of it. Marx countered that the entire point of studying history was to learn a better way to "do" society. Historians should not just depict historical events, but should posit how better things might be done.
(285ff) Humanity, for Marx, is in a tragic condition on the micro level. However, with a more macro-scale lens, humanity will eventually end up in the communistic utopia, that is, history is ultimately comic, even if on the individual scale it is tragic.
(287ff) For Marx, Value evolves. At first, value is determined through barter. Chickens for wheat, Wheat for pottery, but those relationships do not correspond with each other. Then a commodity establishes its value in all other forms (a chicken is worth X wheat, Y barley, Z pottery). Third, all commodities eventually are valued upon one (still socially useful) commodity (Wheat, Barley, pottery are all valued in chickens). Fourth, value is set to a meaningless commodity: Money (gold for him). Interesting that in the modern world, gold has found a se beyond simple decoration.  Value of commodities represents, in some way, the abstraction of human labor which went into a particular commodity. The final layer of abstraction becomes Ironic: that is, everything is valued in gold/money, but gold/money is itself valueless.
(297ff) Humanity differentiates itself from nature not through consciousness, but rather though its will to change its environment and its imaginative efforts to do so. Society forms out of this, starting first with the tribal world, then slave, then Feudal, then Capitalist.  Humanity begins to divide itself from nature and from each other as soon as it moves out of this "Primitive Communism" of a proto-tribal world. Eventually, this estrangement is strongest when Capitalism comes to bear.
(303ff) This estrangement grows. As technology advances, it does not alter the basis of society, rather it only incrementally solves particular problems in the base of a culture. Humanity is further trapped in the social construction of its own making. Individuals are trained into highly specialized tasks, and in the end that is all they are allowed to do. We, as humans are rendered into mere cogs in the machine. The irony in this is that we, humans, made the machine. Thus, what is necessary to fix the problems of the machine of society is a complete dissolution of the society at hand and its [ethical] reconstruction.
(309ff) Marx emplotted his history in a tragic-comic method, and saw much of the traditional elements of the acts of drama in his own history. The proletariat would slowly awaken to its own exploitation and eventually rise against their exploiters. Since the money system of Capitalism was the use of an absurd item as the symbol of value, it would eventually collapse when the proletariat learns this and begins to value labor itself. Then, Communism/Socialism can arise.
(317ff) In a concrete example, Marx uses this same idea of progression to explain the problems with the 1848 French revolution/civil war. At first, it begins with a "beautiful" revolution, because the bougious and the proletariat are working together. It falters when they turn on each other in June.
(320ff) This revolution (1848) was a farce of the tragedy of the 1789 revolution. Rather than hopes being dashed, no one seemed to have those hopes to being with, and in the end they end up in a situation worse than before the 1789 revolution. This absurdity would only grow, said Marx, through time, since after all, the economic system put its worth in something as worthless as gold. What would he say today with the complete abstraction of money?
(327ff) Marx sees the individual acts of history as Tragic, but he had the belief that the ultimate end of history would be Comic. That is, through our failures, Humanity would eventually transcend its alienation.

More on Marx

A thought occurred to me during our class working through the Base/Superstructure dichotomy of society in Marx. What happens when labor has been more-or-less removed from the Base?

This may sound completely impossible. And I suspect that as long as it is cheaper to exploit some worker (in some likely Third World/Developing Nation) and then import the product than it is to let robots do all the work, we are not likely to see this. But even so, there are some jobs which cannot be moved from their territorial locations (agriculture), and those are becoming even more automated.

Agriculture is a prime example. This would at first seem to be something that is destined to be perpetually labor-intensive. Someone has to plant and harvest. Yet modern farming equipment is becoming more technologically advanced.

Looking primarily at grain (corn/soy/wheat) production, the implements which are used in their planting, care, and harvest could become automated. Modern tractors can include GPS-based tracking of fields. This allows the driver to maneuver through the field down the exact same path that they went through it last time. With just a little automation in the steering, this could be adapted to effectively mean that after the initial plowing of a field, the tractor steers itself through planting, spraying, and harvest, the human farmer likely only determining when such actions take place and perhaps monitoring the progress. Additionally, computing optimal planting paths could likely be automated, thus even the initial path of the tractor might be computer generated. While this doesn't fully remove the human from the process, it does mean that they are involved in much less of the work, and what work they do have to do is increasingly indebted to the superstructure (education).

This may not work for everything, but I suspect that we will increasingly find ways to remove human labor from the workforce, especially as exploited work forces begin to make the same demands that Western labor made in the early 20th century. Could it be that the revolution Marx saw was not to be as violent as he might have thought? (Or as abrupt?)

I'm curious how much of the Base Marx thought could be replaced with technology. Or does the Base shift to include the technicians at that point?

Marx and the Post-Scarcity Economy

After finishing Wolff's book Why Read Marx Today, I find myself questioning some of the conclusions made in the book. Specifically, Wolff (and many others today) claims that communism failed. While it is true that the communist experiments of Eastern Europe fell and Chinese communism is in the process of moving to capitalism, I feel none of these really embody what Marx was speaking of when he talks of communism. Especially, if as Wolff says, he felt that a certain level of abundance was required, I'm not sure we could say any of the 20th century communist experiments attained this level of abundance. What was lacking is what is called in science-fiction/futurism the Post-Scarcity Economy.

What is the Post-Scarcity Economy? Go find an episode of Star Trek (any series, but The Next Generation might be the best example). How do the people on the ship deal with property? Mostly, they don't. In the many of the modern series (TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager), technology they call replicators effectively bridge the matter-energy barrier, allowing things to be created out of thin air. Since Star Trek already assumes abundant (meaning, easily available in virtually any quantity) energy, being able to create matter out of energy effectively removes any barrier to owning goods (or food, or clothing, etc.).

But that was the far future, right? Maybe not. Today, there is the MakerBot. There is an internet video linking the MakerBot to the emergent Post-Scarcity Economy, it can be found here. Yes, it's full of internet humor and cultural references, but the point is still there. If 3D printers (and the elements required run it) become as ubiquitous as home computers and printers are now, goods effectively become abundant.

What does this have to do with Marx? Could it be that Marx was more prescient than he knew, but was just off by a few centuries? Star Trek after all presents a world where money is virtually unused, save possibly between cultures. The Federation seems effectively to be a communistic culture per Marx: people do their jobs because they want to, goods are virtually free, and there is little want. (There are episodes pushing the boundaries of this, but I am focusing primarily on the Federation at its best.)

What would Marx do with a MakerBot? Is this the level of abundance that he was looking for? We already see some of the failure of capitalism in non-physical goods (music, videos, books, information) with the internet. Despite the vast amounts of money that traditional media companies have thrown at piracy, it still occurs. Further, there is a growing body of artists, programmers, authors, etc. who have embraced new methods of distribution and sales, many of which are done from a post (information) scarcity position, after all, there is no cost to making another pdf copy of a book, another mp3 of music, etc. If supply never bounds supply, how does supply/demand work? Does it work at all? Is this the collapse of capitalism that Marx foretold?

White, Hayden: Metahistory

(18ff) Contextualists start with an element (large or small) and pick out the relationships of other important elements within its context. Contextualism and Formism are the dominant methods. Organicism and Mechanicist thought tend to be "lasps" or "wandering into Philosophy"
(21) "There does, in fact, appear to be an irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality."
22ff Explanation of Ideological Implication
(23) Why does no one have a good definition of Fascism yet everyone uses it?
The four political attitudes: Anarchist, Liberal, Conservative, Radical
Conservative - change should be delayed and slow.
Liberal - change is a number of small changes made to attune society
Radical - reconstruct society from the ground up
Anarchist - abolish wider "society" in favor of smaller "communities"
29 ff The problem of Historiographical Styles
Historiographical Styles are combinations of the three elements: emplotment, Mode of Argument, Mode of Ideological Implication. However, not all combinations are possible.
Historians first identify and classify the elements of the historical field. Then attempt to define the relationships between them and offer an explanation based on this.
Tropes provide a way to classify the possible explanation strategies.
31ff The Theory of Tropes
Four Tropes: Metaphor, Metonymy, Synecodoche, and Irony
Metonymy. Synecodoche, and Irony are kinds of Metaphor.
Excellent nuancing of all the tropes
38ff The Phases of Nineteenth Century Historical Consciousness
First was Ironic at the opening.
Pre-Romantics react against this. Eventually end up with a Synecdochic/Organicist view. Three big "schools": Romantic, Idealist, Positivist
Marx attempts to react against this, tending toward a combined Synecdochic and Metonymical strategy.
Nietzsche champions a rebirth of Irony.

White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Initial thoughts on Van Seters' "The Biblical Saga of King David"

Van Seters traces an original story and a later expansion of the story of David's rise to power and reign. The original account he ascribes to the Deuteronomist (Dtr) and places its composition at the end of the monarchy. (Though he argues that even if Dtr is was composed later, it still precedes the other account.) The expansion of the narrative he labels the David Saga (DS). This text, which is effectively 1 Sam 16:14-1 Kings 2 as we have it, takes the original Dtr account of David and radically subverts the themes within it.

Van Seters claims that the Dtr account of David functions as the center of the larger Dtr corpus. The establishment of the iconic king is necessary for Dtr in order to link the traditions of the north/Israel (Moses, the judges, etc.) with the Judahite tradition of David. Thus, David function to unite the kingdom and established an archetype for the ideal king.

In the DS account, the author subverts nearly all of the main parts of Dtr's ideology. David is portrayed as manipulative with a number of key characters in the narrative. Yet at the same time, David is constantly manipulated by Joab, among others. In the end, the very prophet who condemns David in his adultery with Bathsheba manipulates David's choice of heir. David and his family are shown breaking law after law (murder, adultery, incest-rape, theft, etc.) while the Dtr account claims that David was the king par excelance. By the end of the narrative, DS is subverting the very nature of the monarchy (Saul does no better than David, nor Solomon).

Van Seters places the composition of DS in the late Persian era. The court and military portrayed in it match Persian culture. With the end of exile, there would have been many political questions being asked. DS poses the question: Do we really want a monarchy? Van Seters points to Chronicles as the response to DS, in which the monarchy is presented as much more palatable.

Van Seters labels the genre of the account by Dtr as historiography. He calls DS a saga. In the case of Dtr, he claims it was an attempt to de-mythologize the past of Israel-Judah. For DS, the sagas he compares it to are the Icelandic sagas, specifically Njal's Saga. Sagas were used to create serious entertainment from history. Historiographical works were often used as sources. Feast, violence, and feuds are just some of the hallmarks of these sagas. All of these items are found in DS. However, like Njal's Saga, DS uses these ironically to remove the nostalgic veneer from the past.

Engaging White's terminology, I would label the Dtr account of David as a Conservative Romance with a Mechanistic argument: change occurs at YHWH's decree, David emerges victorious and establishes an utopian (or proto-utopian) kingdom.  The DS account is then an Anarchist* Satire with a Formist argument and heavy use of irony: David, the "perfect king," abuses royal and religious power, which is something every king does. The Anarchist designation is a bit arbitrary. DS mostly critiques the Dtr account. DS paints change as the arbitrary outcome from the personal machinations of political actors. As Van Seters has defined it, DS does not present how change should happen nor the society it envisions as ideal. It shows the possibility of abrupt change, but its argument is mostly aimed turning away from a particular vision, rather than presenting its own.

Further Foucault

Working through Foucault, one issue that comes to mind is how many times do you continue the circle of questioning traditions/basis? How low-level do we need to start before we can actually work out what we know?

For example, in biblical studies, the very nature of the discipline is built on a tradition: the text of the Bible. The notion of canon would need to be questioned. Do we go further? If the texts in the canon were written in conversation with other texts, which are now lost, can we even say anything about the texts?

In more general history, does our task get further complicated (or made impossible) the further back we go in time? If we suspect there are further texts available, do we need those before we can claim complete work?

Further, how do Foucault's theories work in the light of complexity/fractal theory? Complexity/fractals would claim that the rules providing us with the infinite complexity can be stated simply. While mathematics (in which I have engaged complexity theory the most, though not recently), the rules/terms of the system are often perhaps more easily stated than perhaps in history or literature, this does not mean that it wouldn't apply to other areas. History in particular lends itself to complexity's infinite (or near infinite) inputs into a system, regardless of how simple the rules of the system might be. Foucault lets (encourages) us render a discourse down into the specifics that we need to see how complex this actually becomes.

White, Hayden: Metahistory

1ff Introduction
Modern historical thought assumes that Western Culture can be shown to be better than those before it and those around it through the use of "history". White intends to explore the historical consciousness of the West, specifically by looking at the artifacts it produced: historical narratives and their form. He will endeavor not to critique the content of the works, but rather see if they draw upon a similar form. To do this, he will need to deduce a sample form from which they can be drawn.
5ff
White gives his terminology. Chronicles give sequences of events. Stories link certain events together to form a consistent narrative. Stories end, chronicles do not. Historians like to claim they "find" their stories in the historical data while novelists "invent" theirs, however this belies the amount of invention in historian's works. Framing, inclusion/exclusion, and narrative flow all alter the perception of events. Historians should attempt to argue for a particular story over and against others which could be drawn from the same data.
7ff
Emplotment is narrating a historical story using the techniques of particular literary frame: Tragedy, Comedy, Romance, and Satire. One of these is used by every history. They form a set of two axes, so a work might draw on a pair of them (Tragedy-Comedy and Romance-Satire). All of these are tools a history might use ti prove her/his point.
11ff
Formal Arguments can be used to make the point a historian is attempting to show through her/his story. These arguments happen through multiple methods: Formist, Organicist, Mechanistic, and Contextualist. All of these, applied to the same data, can generate differing ideas and reasons behind historical events. Formists look for sets of characteristics of events/plots. It shows the uniqueness of elements of history. Organicists depict events of history as "components of synthetic processes." They tend to show how things "grow out of" what came before. Less focused on "Laws" than "Ideals." Mechanistics tend "to be reductive rather than synthetic." They hold that there are causal laws within history. Formists would note that both Organicists and Mechanistics render individual agency out of historical fact. Contextualists want to inhabit a world where ideals/laws/truths are possible but that also does not lose individual agency.


White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1973.

Reactions to Foucault

Foucault makes the point that discourse is not the translation of an idea into language. Rather, language is involved in the formation of an idea even before it is committed to some form of interpersonal communication. Language will therefore shape the thoughts we have them even before we attempt to speak them. Since language is inherently structured, what is produced with language will be structured. This structure within discourse in turn creates the structures and systems we might call "academic fields," even those these fields might contain drastically contradictory theories.

Within Biblical Studies, we can see this happening. Modern biblical scholarship ranges from scholars who assert the "inerrant fact" of Scripture and those that assert that Scripture is an anthology of fictional narratives. The analysis both of these methods produces varies wildly, and yet both fall under the aegis of "Biblical Studies." They are studying the same core text, but do so in radically different ways and with different tools. They would not need to be considered the same field. A chemist and a physicist can both study elemental hydrogen, but would do so with different goals in mind. They also would not be considered the same academic discipline.

The minimalist and the maximalist both contribute to biblical studies. Both attempt to find the "truth" which is believed to be found within the text of sacred writings. This truth varies for each of them. It could be what the ancients believed a text to mean, what the text can mean today, what historical reality can we find from the text, how the text points to doctrinal statements made/held today, etc. This web around Scripture and "truth," with varying definitions of all of the included terms, can be held to be "Biblical Studies."

Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge: Part II

9/12/12
Part II The Discursive Regularities
Ch 1 The Unities of Discourse
(21f) We must rid ourselves of the notions over-arching systems which tie events, people, and ideas together: tradition, "spirit", influence, and evolution/progress. We must at least question them. Further, we must question/discard divisions of disciplines: politics, religion, literature, etc. The unity of works themselves becomes problematic, since texts pull from any number of previous sources. We must also be willing to allow events to occur without (knowable) causation.
(25f) Not all of these needs be rejected out of hand. Rather, must be questioned and their assumed nature challenged. Must start with a group of descriptions of discursive events and build out of it any such structure that might be within it. Even with all the questioning and discarding above, we may end up with a very similar set of unities built out of our set.
Must be willing to disregard preconceived ideas of how things are related. In biblical studies, perhaps we need to question the unity of the books themselves along with the traditions which hold them together. We might even push further and question the existence of the traditions themselves. Thus, to claim a "priestly" source, we would need to examine the evidence of a priestly caste and look for its presence. This could be done purely textually, but we would need to establish the nature of the texts themselves. We often assume a priesthood which performed acts at holy sites, but what evidence that it was unified (as presented in the Torah) is there?
Ch 2 Discursive Formations
(31f) Two questions arise: what are these "statements" (which he will deal with later) and what is the nature of the relationships between two (or more) statements? Are these relationships completely socially constructed or are they something which was formally set down in the past, evolving into their present status?
(32f) First hypothesis: statements are related if they are about the same thing. However, this ends up too narrow, or with so broadly defined an "object" as to be useless.
(33f) Second hypothesis: connect statements based upon form and kind. This one breaks down because style is constantly changing; the nuances of making statements and tools used to do so constantly change, making forging a unity out of them difficult.
(34f) Third hypothesis: base the relations on definitions. The problem here is that definitions are adapted, discarded, and created as a field progresses.
(35f) Fourth hypothesis: identify persistent themes between statements. This leads to multiple kinds of discourse on the same theme: a discourse based on unity to and one based on disjunction from. Rather than work with themes, one might work with possibilities over persistence.
(37f) None of these hypotheses are sufficient to describe disciplines enough to project a history of them. Rather, are going to look for a "system of dispersion" among elements in a group, calling this a "discursive formation". This approach does not promise to provide us with the clean unities we are holding in abeyance.
Here we will have to disregard the Bible as we have it, along with the "Traditional" understanding of methodology. We might be able to define the text by showing a history of what is included (in a particular book, in a particular canon, etc.). What would need follow would be a construction of a system of study, followed by application.
Ch 3 The Formation of Objects
(40f) Looking at the objects which fall into an (admittedly arbitrary) system of distribution, can we find similarities between them? He explores psychopathology beginning in the 19th century as an example. In the example, psychopathology is not defined by a group of objects in a clear dispersion, but rather from disparate objects which have been linked together to create a system. The objects exist under a complex system of connections. These relationships are extrinsic to the objects themselves. Further, there are kinds of relations: primary (clearly evident ones), secondary (ones which are produced in talking about the primary ones) and discursive ones (as yet undefined but dealing with the links between primary and secondary). Discursive relations exist at the boundaries: they define the areas in which the discourse is to take place.
(46f) Returning to the idea of disciplines, are they simply linked attempts of discourse? Rather, they are bound by a set of rules. This leaves us discussing not objects themselves, but analyzing them based on rules and the evolution of those rules through time. Definitions of specific objects are beyond the scope of historical discussion, to some extent. One can state what a term means, but not if that was accurate. (?)
What do we do here with regards biblical studies? Do we avoid debates on what a "priest" is (or should be) and rather attempt to present how they were described? Is this not particularly helpful? What "rules" would be extant for biblicists?
Ch 4 The Formation of Enuciative Modalities
(50f)
09/24/12
What is a physician and why are they allowed to make such statements as they are? These statements are built from 1) the social construct of what the title "Doctor" confers on the speaker, 2) the location(s) in which they are made, 3) The position within the wider range of the medical field (specialty, sub-specialty, plotical/social rank, etc.)
The act of discourse does not involve encoding an existing thought into language. Rather, language itself is required for the thought. Thoughts are discursive even when they are still in our head..
Ch 5 The Formation of Concepts
(56f) Knowledge structures (fields) are not built stone-by-stone as a building is. There is construction going on, but it is far more fluid than material building is. 1) Knowledge statements are successive (That is A leads to B, for varying definitions of the phrase "leads to") 2) statements coexist within a field (differing theories to the same problem), between fields (physics can impact biology), and in memory (old, discarded ideas still hold influence) 3) Fields have methods of interacting with their statements.
All of these parts are going on simultaneously and also form knowledge statements within the field themselves that can be shared between fields. They also shape the work that is (and can) be done within a particular field.
You do not state pre-extant "facts" through discourse, but rather discourse is producing a description of the relationships between elements within a field based on the realities of the field.
The structures of a field were not consciously constructed by a group/individual. Rather, they emerged over time from the relationships between discourses. Concepts are not formed from some concept of Platonic Forms nor through empirically finding ideas.

Ch 6. The Formation of Strategies
(64f) Strategies (themes/theories) within a field - do these emerge out of necessity? randomness? Is there an underlying structure to how theory is developed? How can we tell? 1) Identify where 2 (or more) ideas which coexist in some fashion are mutually exclusive, but one can present how these options arose in parallel, despite the positions themselves being mutually exclusive 2) Some possibilities are not realized -> explore the why of this 3) the function of a field of study is determined to soem degree by non-academic endeavors (capitalism drives the study of economics)
Can show a field extant if one can describe how its various strategies and discourses arose, even if those elements have some level of antagonism to one another.

Ch 7 Remarks and Consequences
(71f) How helpful is this current analysis over against other forms of defining field? - answered later in the book
Can we speak of unities (given this established method of defining them)?
1) Fields are not just discrete elements of knowledge, but also the relationships between them
2) The systems of a field (and discourse in general) arise from discourse itself. They are not imposed upon it from outside by participants nor are they pre-ordained (divine) structures which are necessary. Thus, systems are organic and complex, altering over time.
3) These systems are not the final part of the field. They are not the produced texts. They are where analysis occurs
"Discourse and system produce each other - and conjointly - only at the crest of this immense reserve" [of development and analysis].


Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.

Foucault, Michel - The Archaeology of Knowledge (Introduction)

Part I

Introduction (3f)

Foucault begins by documenting a shift in what history is focusing on, from particular events/ideas to an attempt to define the underlying systems behind those ideas. The focus started to be on the discontinuities and how they fit into a structure. The question then becomes: how different is different? Furthermore, while history starts looking for unified systems, philosophies in other disciplines are dealing with "How the same does something have to be in order to be unified?"

(6f) History used to deal with documents and attempted to reconstruct the past out of the document(s). Now, history is attempting to dissect the document into its parts and then find how those parts relate to one another. History used to turn the monuments of memory into documents, now it is turning documents into monuments. History used to take a series of events and attempt to connect them through relationships. Now, it is questioning the series and what belongs in that series (before even attempting the relational aspects). The nature of discontinuity has changed as well: rather than attempting to obliterate through discussion discontinuity from history, discontinuity is highlighted. The idea of total history, wherein the nature of civilization is distilled, begins to vanish and the idea of general history arises, wherein the form(s) of relation(s) between different historical series can be distilled. Finally, new history has problems with methodology, which doubtless existed before, but are now in the forefront: how are documents treated, how are they related, how much statistics plays in it, etc.

(11f) In history, there has been a particular distaste for dealing with the Other. This is because history has been an attempt to identify a unified human consciousness and to enshrine it as evolving constantly, but within a specific system wherein it progresses toward something better. History kept humans (specifically consciousness) at its center. Marx began to decentralize it by focusing on economics rather than humans, explaining human actions not as acts of will alone, but influenced by economic factors. History stopped being the sacralized citadel it had been, and became alive.

(14f) He puts forth his objectives, which are as follows:

• To show the changes within "historical thought" which are happening on their own, not to specifically introduce the idea of structuralist history
• His use of systems and structures is not to support them, but rather to bring them into question.
• To attempt to take anthropological concerns (that is, humans and human consciousness) out of the center within a historical method.

(16f) He explores problems within his previous works.

In the introduction, Foucault attempts to point out that "old history" used to use documents to propose a series of events between which it attempted to establish (usually causal) relationships. "New history" attempts to dissect the documents (giving a history of the document, in one sense) and then attempt to obscure distinct events into larger systems operating over time. This is an interesting comparison to biblical studies, wherein the documents have been dissected for decades if not centuries. The later shift in biblical studies has been shifted back toward whole documents. An attempt to "decentralize" the bible from biblical studies is something which would probably nearly cause a riot. How would this be done? Likely this question is a bit naive at this point, so perhaps a better one might be: What does it mean that biblical studies hold the Bible as central to its study? What questions would this status invalidate?

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colophon Books: New York, NY, 1972.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 4)

This chapter aims to explore how specific groups broached new methods of historiography. These same groups continued to show the influences of positivism in their works and continued to bar philosophy ad theory from much of their work, even though they began focusing on under-attended areas of history.

In France, the journal Annales d'histoire économique et sociale (Febvre and Bloch) worked to counter positivism in France. It used Ranke's technique, if not his theory, when writing history. The journal's influence reached far beyond France. Their goals included an attempt to present history as framed by the questions posed by the historian. Rather than "submit"  to documents, Febvre put forth that there is no history, only a historian and her questions and hypotheses. History then becomes "a way of organizing the past."

The Annales also rejected the focus on events of history. Rather than focus on a series of events, they attempted to find ways of constructing a history of those affected by major events but not causing them. Their focus was often on those out of power rather than the "movers-and-shakers" of traditional history. This shifted focus from individual power brokers to institutional causes in a number of cases.

Another focus of the Annales was on analysis. The question/problem being studied must be identified before any other work can be done. Thus, the object of study for a historian is created by the question(s) she asks of the past (and present).

The tools used by the authors of the Annales were interdisciplinary. They pulled in a number of methods from numerous disciplines (especially social sciences) in an attempt to answer the questions they posed.

The latter members of the Annales shifted toward a history of ideas rather than structures. Structures were too tied to events, despite their clearly constructed nature. Thus, a number of mental constructs began to be studied. 

A reaction grew against the Annales for its lack of addressing philosophical issues around history. Even here, history was conceived of as concept-driven, not event-driven.

Veyne begins working against a number of these theories. He takes a decidedly unique approach and deals with epistemology and other philosophical issues. Additionally, he pushes history toward literature rather than science, pointing out that literature share much more with history, the only real difference is that history is about the "interesting" and the "true," lacking any way to construct "Good" or "Evil." 

Structuralism began to fall out of grace in the 70s as events caused by individual actions (say, the revolutions of '68 in France) began to cause problems for those writing the histories. Intertextuality begins to alter how texts are viewed.

Another movement of historians were the micro-historians. They rejected looking for over-arching structures or long periods of time, rather they focused on small areas, populations, and time frames. This focus was argued to present the "lived history" of a group of people and much more aligns with life experiences. Problems with this approach include turning history into fairy tales. These stories involve a good deal of invention on the part of the historian. Another problem is that the microhistorians often took their document sources at face value.

In Britain, Marxist historians favored attempts which paralleled the Annales in some respects. They endorsed view focusing on the lower classes, dealing with class issues and human agency. However, they did not address the philosophic issues of epistemology and language. Thompson and Althusser debated just how humanist Marx was: did Marx fill his revolutions with people or with structures of class?

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 3)

Structuralism changed from interest in referent and observed to components of a system. It challenged a number of dominant theories (Marxist, existentialism, phenomenology, etc.), however it fell about as quickly as it rose. It grew out of the shift with respect to earlier linguistic, quantum physics, and other developments which began to destabilize other disciplines.

Structuralism began to lead the the destabilization of history. It did this by beginning to focus on the object and attempting to name the structures within. This deconstruction isn't possible on such a historic object.

Saussure started structuralism by beginning with language. Breaking with the tradition that language was a series of actual elements, he posited that all the elements of language were arbitrarily assigned (by the culture using the language) to the items they signified. Thus, much (all) of language is arbitrary and socially constructed. Thus, language is a system of arbitrary signs. Many linguists which followed insisted that Saussure only intended this to be applied to language, however there is evidence that he was thinking much larger. The real becomes known through these signs (both innerlanguage and interlanguage signs). One must for the moment accept that there is a real to perceive and process linguistically.

Levi-Strauss takes this new linguistic model and applies it to Anthropology. By reading culture as a series of signs, he reworked how anthropology had been done. He hoped to create a "scientific" anthropology. His shift also distanced himself from historians of the time, which he considered to just be studying events of the past. He viewed myth as an attempt by a culture to deal with the past and apply its lessons to the present. Thus, he saw myth as removing time from the system of culture. This in turn leads to questioning history in the Western sense.

Levi-Strauss has been labeled as anti-historic and anti-humanist by his detractors. He is not fully either, but he is against certain forms of history and certain forms of humanism, especially positivistic ones. He also very strongly defends the position that histories are "history-for." There will always be elements left out of any historian's narrative. This will inevitably lead to a history which is biased and lacking pure objectivity.

Four major critiques explored:

Ricoeur: He argued that structural linguistics presented a closed system with no outside referent (reality). This clearly violates the lived experience of human language. However, parts of structuralism were useful when applied properly. He thought that Levi-Strauss limited himself to the "savage mind" which made it nearly impossible to apply his tools to other modes of beings (say, modern humans). Ricoeur suggested that Levi-Strauss should have studied texts such as the Hebrew Bible or Greek Myth. Levi-Strauss points out that these myths have been turned into texts and thus removed from their original purpose and setting. (This act of "canonization," both the original formation of the texts as they are and the development of a "holy book" would certainly have altered the perceived meanings of the texts with the ideology of the redactors. Can this ideology be recovered? If so, can this ideology be removed from the texts in order to attempt a recovery of the original intent?) Levi-Strauss also argued that the "savage mind" is not so foreign from our own, despite our "higher" level of understanding.

Derrida: He argues that Saussure's demotion of writing under spoken does not align with Saussure's position that symbols are arbitrary. Derrida argues that the written word signifies two things: the sounds of the spoken word and the thing signified by that word. (This is a very alphabet-centric concept of writing, ignoring pictographic systems of writing where signs have multiple phonetic values.) He argued against Levi-Strauss' continued demotion of written language and his presentation of the written word as being the implied downfall of native cultures.

Anderson: He shows that Levi-Strauss's paralleling of linguistic "objects" to physical objects is not logically sustainable. Language is moreover the product of individuals while culture is the product of culture groups. (Uncertain how applicable this criticism is, as while a specific bowl may only be used by one individual, the concept of a bowl can be used by whoever might fashion one.)

Macherey: He argued that structural literary theory assumes meaning is "in" a text and can be discovered, with this being not very different from traditional literary theory. Macherey would argue that a text must be read in light of what it does not say just as much as what it says. The critic must be able to show a work to be more than what that work is alone by bringing in what the work does not explicitly or implicitly do itself.

Structuralism does provide a number of useful emphases: rigor, the goal of a "meaningful whole" and the admission that language is more than what it states itself to be. Further, structuralism has influenced history by removing much of the positivist baggage from it: cultures are not necessarily "natural," language signs (and other signs) are arbitrary, culture much like language is a system of signs, and so on.

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 2)

Anglophone philosophers turned to language with the hope that they could, through precision, remove a number of the problems that philosophy of history had run into. Eventually, they move out of science and into the realm of narrative and its relationship with history. The appeal to "science" assumed a fairly uniform method throughout all sciences, which was far from what existed in actuality.

Popper posited that historians and natural scientists both attempted to use "prediction" to explain phenomenon and point to universal laws. History cannot be a science, though, because of the nature of its data: unique, unrepeatable events. Thus if those laws exist, they cannot be firmly found. Hempel attempts to push back against Popper's position that the laws are not extant, pushing back toward casual explanation as part of history. Hempel's disciples attempted some form of experimentation, but since history's events are unique by nature, this proved less than useful. Dray argued that Hempel's insistence on law be abandoned as it was not helpful.

Danto argues that simply because history's data is not directly observable does not make it any less scientific than, say, physics. History's meaning cannot be seen in the present of an event, but only from a point after the event (and its repercussions) have unfolded. In the end, the issue became that historians and philosophers were interested in different questions, so any discussion which might have occurred ended up not affecting the practice of historiography.

Most modern historians do not attempt to define their approach to historiography, despite however much this might be "best practice". Most fall into one of two camps: Putnum's pratical/internal realism or popular pragmatism (Rorty contra Pierce).

Putnum argues that there is no possible way to view history from a "God's eye view." That is, the omniscient narrator is an impossibility for a human author, despite the long history of attempts by historians to provide such a perspective. He argues for an "objectivity for us" with an admission that such a perspective will never attain the objectivity desired from the "God's eye view". But what we can attain is a "good enough" attempt which is internally consistent with itself, reason, and with the historian's [given] social-historical setting.

Rorty argues that Putnum's approach is uncontroversial. Further, he argues it is unnecessary. Histories are written for a specific audience, thus it is through use that a history provides meaning, not through some appeal to a hidden truth,

These theories are widely used, but often misunderstood. Rather than disavow the attempt at moving toward a pure objectivism, modern historians will often claim that these approaches allow them to be purely objective. This misses many of the positions that both Rorty and Putnum rejected.

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.

The End of Positivism?

Looking at Positivism from a post-modern perspective presents a number of issues. When potential causes of the 19th/early 20th century phenomenon are labeled, arguments against such claims virtually build themselves. Further, positivism's influences waxed and waned in different fields at different times. This causes a number of issues if one attempts to establish causation for different philosophical phenomenon that are linked to positivism.

Positivism and Modernism are linked, thus working definitions should be established for both. Positivism is the belief that knowledge-seeking endeavors ("sciences", including social sciences and the humanities in some incarnations) should be done by collecting empirical sense data and then theories and laws extrapolated from that data. It holds that this is true in all forms of study, whether this be a "pure" science such as mathematics or a social science such as psychology. Modernism takes the Positivist ideal and postulates that since the current (modern) era has more data available to it than previous eras, it must therefore be empirically better than previous eras. It might further argue (especially in its 19th/early 20th century contexts) that societies which have adopted the newest technologies and scientific theorems are empirically better than other societies.

One of the primary influences on these theories was the so-called Industrial Revolution. The benefits to industrialization for a society were seen as inherently better than the best pre-industrial societies could offer. This pushed a view that the Western powers which had been the first to industrialized were "better" than the rest of the known world. Since many of the problems of industrialization were virtually invisible to the upper classes of society of the time due to those problems affecting lower classes disproportionately, there was little negative attention in much of "high society" of the time.

This is clearly a generalization. Many persons were very vocal about the problems of industrialization, both in the upper class and the lower ones. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is an example of attempts to correct these problems. The beginnings of the labor movement is another. However, the insular nature of many of those in the "thinking" class often lead to them being inured from much of this criticism until it becomes too loud to ignore.

For the theological example, one can look at the dominance of Schliermacher in German theology up until the Second World War. Barth's criticisms of Schliermacher's general optimism and positivist attitudes in the 20's and 30's highlight much of the tension that came to focus around positivism/modernism in the period between the World Wars.

It was these wars which forced much of the world to question the value of modernism and positivism. Since the conflict of the First World War essentially boiled down to Europe's attempt to decide the "best" western power (at thus the "best" race-nation in the world), its complete failure to produce this in any empirical sense began the process of destroying the tenants of positivism. The Second World War is now seen as the inevitable continuation of the First, due in large part to the world power's failure manage any real sort of change in attitude. At the conclusion of the First World War, Europe effectively attempted to continue much of the same policies and thought processes which led to the war itself with only a few minor rule changes.

While the two World Wars are the clearest voices to grow out of the problems of Modernist and Positivism, they are not the sole causes of their downfall. Industrialization itself made many of its problems known to those who were looking for them well before industrial war brought them screaming into the headlines. Yet these two wars are perhaps the clearest voices of the dangers of this sort of thinking.

Despite the deep scars the wars left, there are still academic areas which have not engaged this challenge to modernist thinking. Many biblicists still approach texts as if there is a single "correct" meaning which can be drawn from the data (the text), provided one is objective enough. Arguments on objectivity aside, searching something as vague as language for a concrete, singular meaning ignores work from current linguistic scholars on the vagaries of language (see Relevance Theory). There are clearly "more correct" interpretations than others, but there cannot be a single "correct" interpretation of a text, especially ones which are now so removed from their original context and intent as religiously canonical writings.

Clark: History, Theory, Text (Ch 1)

Chapter 1 - Defending and Lamenting History

This chapter explores 19th century (German) attempts at a objective/scientific history.

While not the first, Leopald von Ranke was perhaps the most well known proponent of the "scientific" historical method, which focused much of its attention on reading document as windows to the past. Nietzsche strongly criticized this method, claiming it stripped the life from history (and modern living). More moderate critiques (such as Dilthey) took something of a middle road. Rather than reject the documentary method and move to art, there was the rejection of positivism (to some extent).

Ranke comes to the US and history starts pushing toward attempting to be objective, "what actually happened". That said, the later critique was not brought over. Furthermore, the more recent German historians become tainted with Nazism. The resulting historical approach divests itself of questions of philosophy or theology. Truth becomes unitary and not perspectival. One went to the archives after divesting oneself of one's own biases. Meanwhile, in the sciences, objectivism was being undercut by relativity. However history continued to revel in the concept of an objective perspective.

The biggest problem facing historians then became questions of epistemology: how can they show that their reconstruction of a past event is "what actually happened"? Historians had no ready answer for this. Further, their methods (which involved digging into documents and archives), could not answer this question.

History lacks a direct object from which to extract empirical data. Rather, all history is done by examining documents and other "texts" which have been constructed by other persons. Thus, we cannot observe the past and create "eyewitness" accounts after the fact, but instead we are constructing a view of the past with multiple (at least 2) layers of bias to be dealt with -- our own bias and the bias of the creators of the archived material. (To say nothing of the bias of archivists, any possible redactors, and the randomness of what survives and what does not.)

Structuralism might argue that one still must attempt and objectivist history, or at least one in which one does not inject one's own bias into the retelling. Conversely, many post-structuralist histories (feminist, ethnic, sexual identity, etc.) argue that one's own bias is unremovable, thus one should embrace it and create histories which will conform to one's own bias. While the argument against this is based on the idea that these are appropriating history for one's own goals, Harlan argues that this approach is actually bringing forgotten/hidden voices out of the graveyard of history and letting them speak again.

With the advent of feminist historians and historians of color, history as a discipline was thrown into chaos. The traditional historians argue that objectivity could be attained and that to embrace one's own bias in one's history pollutes it. These new historians argued that the "objectivity" claimed by traditionalists was an illusion: it was simply the accepting as "normal" the biases of a white, male historian (and we might add cisgendered, Christian to the list of assumptions).

This leads to the fear of relativism. If these blatantly biased histories become accepted as valid, does history itself become completely relative? Is any interpretation equally valid in all circumstances? Shifting from relativism to "ethnocentrism", the claim becomes a bit different. Now, there are possible universal (or near-universal) claims which can be made, however, one must acknowledge one's social/historical location.

The ensuing "war" between traditional and theorist historians left some to fear for history itself. It was not history that was being besieged, but rather historians. Thus, traditional historians bemoan what they felt was a lack of academic rigor in theorists' work. The theorists felt they were being misunderstood, their work no less meticulous than the traditional historians. Today, most historians would admit that any single work cannot present the fullness of any event in history, though they may still present a traditionalist understanding and a desire to attempt as full and objective a history as possible. On the other side, theorist historians will fully admit their biases, but will also carefully work through nuances of texts (in all their forms) to find historical meaning.

Clark, Elizabeth A. History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA: 2004.