‘Where is history going?’ examines some of the most recent innovations in historical scholarship, and considers how they have affected the relationship between history and literary studies. The core text for this unit, W.G. Sebald’s mesmerising prose fiction The Rings of Saturn, anticipates and exemplifies many of these developments, and sketches a whole philosophy of history in its exploration of the dynamics of destruction, memory, and artistic creation. In his ramblings across the landscape of coastal Suffolk, Sebald’s narrator encounters manifestations of empire and global connection, such as decaying stately homes and a railway that he imagines might have been built for the Chinese imperial court. His meditations on the problems of historical perspective, and on the seemingly inexorable processes of destruction that nature and humanity visit upon each other and themselves, raise issues that apply to the entire module as well as to the readings for this unit.

W.G. Sebald, 2001 (Jillian Edelstein)

This podcast on The Rings of Saturn has some interesting moments, particularly at 43'59'' (an audio clip of Sebald talking about his use of images - as, among other things, a certain way of representing his attempt 'to rescue something out of that stream of history that keeps rushing past'). Grant Gee's documentary Patience (After Sebald)* may also be enjoyable and/ or helpful for reading Sebald.

*available here - search for the title and use Warwick log-in credentials

This New Yorker article also provides an introduction to some of the distinctive features of Sebald's writing, and its place in contemporary literature.

 

Week 17: The Affective Turn

Sebald’s novel carries a powerful emotional charge which can easily be overlooked as we follow his narrator on his walks around Suffolk: on the very first page of the book he describes ‘the paralysing horror that had come over me at various times when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past, that were evident even in that remote place.’ One of the most influential recent developments in literary scholarship has been a turn towards the exploration of emotion and the elaboration of ‘affect’ theory. Emotion, like trauma, might appear to be part of the private, interior life of individuals that is outside history insofar as we can only examine its linguistic or symbolic traces. But scholars investigating the emotions point to its inherently social nature, and explore how the range and intensity of emotional response is governed by the repertoires of linguistic and symbolic expression that are available in a particular time and place in history. ‘Affect’ theory takes this development further by seeking to examine pre-conscious forms of experience and bodily response to stimuli that are fundamental elements of contemporary and historical cultures. In place of a conventional focus on cognitive and deliberative subjectivities, this approach weakens or breaks down the distinction between a thinking and feeling subject and an external world of objects. (An introduction to ‘affect’, and its distinction from ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling’, is provided in Eric Shouses’ short article.) Scholarship on ‘affect’ can therefore claim to open new fields of historical knowledge, but some of its claims have also been met with scepticism on grounds that are explored in Ruth Leys’s essay.

Readings:

• Eric Shouse, 'Feeling, Emotion, Affect', M/C Journal - an excellent, brief introduction to 'affect'
• Michael Taussig, 'Tactility and Distraction', Cultural Anthropology 6:2 (1991, 7pp.)
• Lauren Berlant, 'Thinking About Feeling Historical', Emotion, Space, and Society 1 (2008, 6pp.)

Suggested further reading:

• Ruth Leys, 'The Turn to Affect: A Critique', Critical Inquiry (2011, 39pp.)
• Linda Zerilli, 'The Turn to Affect and the Problem of Judgment', New Literary History (2015, 25pp.)
• Giorgio Agamben, "Notes on Gesture," in Means without Ends: Notes on Politics (2000, 11pp.)
• You may also find this essay on Lauren Berlant in the New Yorker interesting

Seminar questions:

• What is ‘affect’, and how is it distinct from feeling and emotion?
• Is affect outside the scope of historical knowledge – or is our way of knowing it no different than for anything else?
• The French historian Lucien Febvre claimed that without a history of emotion ‘there will be no real history possible’ (his emphasis). Why might this be the case, and do you agree?
• What does Michael Taussig mean by ‘distraction’ (as distinct from contemplation), and ‘tactility’?
• What possibilities does Taussig’s call for ‘a distracted, collective reading with […] a tactile eye’ offer, and what problems does it raise?
• What affects and emotions are depicted in The Rings of Saturn, and is our response to this question unavoidably coloured by our own affect and emotion upon reading the book?
• Is the study of history a melancholy undertaking?

 

Week 18: Global History

New directions for historical understanding have also been set by the development of ‘global’ history, a form of inquiry that seeks to transcend the particular by exploring connections, comparisons, and various forms of integration. By these means global historians have claimed to overcome the preoccupation with national histories that marked the formation of history as an academic discipline during the nineteenth century; and ‘global’ perspectives of various kinds are now sought by historians working in a range of sub-fields. But global history has also been subjected to criticism in recent years, on the grounds of its Eurocentrism, its focus on economic history, and the exclusions and teleologies that its focus on global connections can produce. Despite these challenges, global history remains at the forefront of much scholarly research, and its prospects and possibilities are explored from different perspectives in the essays by Adelman and Dusinberre.

Readings:

• Jeremy Adelman, 'What is Global History Now?', Aeon (10pp.)
• Martin Dusinberre, 'Japan, Global History, and the Great Silence', History Workshop Journal 83:1 (2017, 21pp.)

Seminar questions:

• What is meant by ‘global history’ and why has it been so influential in the academic study of history in recent years?
• What ‘silence[s]’ does Dusinberre discuss in his essay, and are they something that historians must acknowledge without ever being able to fully overcome?
• How do the issues raised by Dusinberre’s relate to the difficulties of writing “history from below“ outlined by Farge, Trouillot, and other scholars we’ve read this year?
• What criticisms does Jeremy Adelman make of the recent turn to global history, and how far do you agree with them?
• Are the issues raised by the global turn different for history and for literary studies? Is it easier for one discipline to respond to them than for the other?
• One advocate of global history has described the focus on nations as a ‘birth defect’ of history as an academic discipline (Sebastian Conrad, What is Global History? (2016), p.3). Do you agree with this characterisation, and with its rejection of the nation as a unit of historical inquiry?

 

Week 19: The Non-Human Turn

Lecture slides

Bonus online lecture from 2021 (Dr. Jonathan Skinner): 'Peripatetic Liminality' (41'11'')

Readings:

• Bruno Latour, 'Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations', in Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (2005, 1-17)
• Dipesh Chakrabarty, 'The Climate of History: Four Theses', Critical Inquiry 35:2 (2009, 26pp.)

Suggested further reading:

• Michel Callon, 'Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay', The Sociological Review 32:1 (1984, 35pp.)
• Jennifer L. Roberts, “Introduction” and “Spiral Jetty/Golden Spike,” in Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History (2004, 44 pp.)

Seminar questions:

• Why has ‘humanity’ been the central focus of historical study, and is its enduring currency merely a redundant legacy of enlightenment?
• Does a history of the Anthropocene demand a reduction, or an intensification, of our focus upon the human?
• Is the thought experiment that Dipesh Chakrabarty proposes in ‘The Climate of History’ a way of thinking that historians engage in anyway?
• Is Michel Callon a scallop?
• Does Callon’s recourse to similes that liken non-human to human agents point to a fundamental weakness in his argument?
• In what respects might the turn to ‘affect’ also contribute to a turn towards the non-human?