Hayden White's Metahistory

Hayden White initiates his study in Metahistory with an argument that all historical explanations are rhetorical and poetic by nature. He then formulates methods for classification and analysis and applies these to the “great” 19th Century historians (Michelet, Tocqueville, Ranke, and Burckhardt) and the “great” 19th Century philosophers of history (Nietzsche, Marx, Hegel, and Croce). For White, history as we know it is inherently poetic because each historical account is a story with a beginning that lead to and end (as opposed to a chronicle which begins and ends rather haphazardly), satisfying not just the question ‘what happened?’ but also ‘what is the point?’ To tell his story, then, each historian chooses a mode of emplotment (as indicated by Frye), a mode of argument (a particular apprehension of the historical field, as indicated by Popper), and a mode of ideological implication (as indicated by Mannheim). White then suggests “an elective affinity between the act of prefiguration of the historical field and the explanatory strategies used by historians in a given work.”(427) These relationships are related in the following chart, which show particular forms conducive to various ideologies of historical writing in the 19th century:

[note: the infamous chart will reappear once I can figure out how to change a pdf to a jpg]

Some thinkers consistently use more than one trope. Marx, for example, quite often uses Synecdoche in his analyses. Also, Conservatives and Liberals can both take advantage of the Irony trope as there exist a number of mixed emplotments (Comic Satire, Tragic Satire, Satirical Comedy, etc.), although, “the very notion of a Romantic Satire represents a contradiction in terms”(9). So the historian can, to a certain small degree, use different emplotments and apprehension for his ideological purposes, but these are the relationships best lent to one another. There do exist other possible emplotments, beyond the four already mentioned, such as Apocalyptic, Fascist, and Reactionary. These, however, fundamentally differ from the four mentioned as “they do not regard it as necessary to establish the authority of their cognitive position on either rationalist or scientific ground.”(23) It may be noted that Irony is considered to ‘transcend’ because it is aware of its own function of negation, and therefore seems more sophisticated and with greater perspective than the other tropes (37): “Like philosophy itself, Satire ‘paints its gray on gray’ in the awareness of its own inadequacy as an image of reality.”(10)
White comes to eight primary conclusions in his study(xi):

1. “There can be no ‘proper history’ which is also not philosophy of history.” They can only differ in emphasis.

2. The possible modes of historiography are the possible modes of speculative philosophy of history.

3. These modes are by nature 'poetic’, used to give historical events an ‘explanation’ and a ‘point’. Strict chronicles are neither aesthetically nor ‘historically’ satisfying.

4. There are no grounds on which one is more ‘realistic’. This means that one being held as more ‘truthful’ than the others can only be seen as biases of the related establishment or author.

5. We choose modes among existing contenders in a given historical account.

6. The best grounds for choosing are moralistic (‘we must help the poor’, or ‘history is doomed to repeat itself’) or aesthetic (telling a better story), not epistemological.

7. The scientifization of history can only mean a statement of preference for a particular mode as the epistemological justification has not been proven. This book itself is cast in the mode of Irony.

8. We may say that the dominant apprehensions have a historical progression; at certain times one (or two) mode(s) seems to really ‘tell it like it was,’ as opposed to the flawed and biased histories of the ‘past’. Irony tends to be followed by Romanticism, to return to the conviction of belief and vigor that Irony seems to deny. The Tragedy is logically followed by the Comedy, “for it represents an affirmation of the needs of life and its rights against the Tragic insight that all things existing in time are doomed to destruction.”(117) Comedy is in turn usually followed by Irony, such as late-Enlightenment historians as well as the historians at the end of the 19th Century, during the so-called ‘crisis in historiography.’ These periods of Irony coincide with renewed interest study in the study of the philosophy of history. We at our present time are “locked in the ironic mode.”(431) Contextualist and Formist are now the main candidates for historiographical orthodoxy.

These claims show why a given historian is dependent on the public’s precritical preference for acceptance of his chosen mode. For example, Marx “has no authority in a public which is precritically committed to the prefiguration of the historical field in the mode of Irony, Synecdoche, or Metaphor.”(430) He also provides insight into the reasons why philosophy of history (coinciding with the general prefiguartion in the mode of Irony) is stressed at certain periods rather than others. A further insight is related to the disputes among historians from the French Revolution to the First World War, which White sees as a struggle for supremacy among the contending modes as ‘the most truthful,’ or apprehending history, ‘as it really was.’

Examining such historians (and then historical philosophers) of the 18th Century, each one claiming his own mode to be the most ‘realistic,’ takes up the largest sections of the book, where White applies his formulation of the affinities among modes. Michelet is indicative of the Romantic historians, as he “repudiated all formal systems of explanation and tried to gain an explanatory effect by utilizing the Metaphorical mode to describe the historical filed and the mythos of Romance to represent its process.”(143) Ranke is the Conservative historian, as he uses the trope of Synecdoche to integrate parts into a larger historical whole. “Struggle, strife, and conflict are dissolved in the realization of perfect harmony,”(190) providing a sense of satisfying resolution, reconciliation, and organic completion in the present. Tocqueville’s purpose in history was therapeutic, much like that of the tragic poet, showing human failure as a historical given, for “a chaste historical consciousness would help to exorcise the residual fear of old gods and prepare men to assume responsibility for their own destinies.”(204) Burckhardt viewed historical reality through Satire, as this seemed to him the most sophisticated and the least ideological mode. He “always denied that he had a ‘philosophy of history,’ and he spoke with open contempt of Hegel.”(236) White follows these accounts with analyses of historical philosophers to show how claims of historical realism are arbitrary and how comments such as Burckhardt’s about lacking or repudiating ‘philosopher of history’ are ultimately misguided. It is no mistake, White notes, that most of the great philosophers of history in the 19th Century were also great philosophers of language.

The relevance of White’s work is to be able to examine and classify historians and historical accounts and to better understand and mitigate clashes over historical technique. It is also to add perspective to the debate on ‘historical objectivity’ by showing that there really is no such thing as ‘complete objectivity.’ What is important for White, it seems, is not to be ‘completely realistic,’ but to rather disclose the purpose and aim behind the chosen apprehension of the historical field; that is, to be clear regarding why one chose a modes over the other contenders. Again, the best way for this to be done is moralistic or aesthetic explanation; to lay one’s cards on the table, so to speak. Using White’s formulation and method, one is also able to recognize and analyze the type of story in a given historical account (Comedy, Tragedy, Satire, Romance, or Epic), and this emplotment accounts for the inclusion or exclusion of certain details, as well as why the historian finds some details more ‘important’ than others.

In my presentation, I attempted to show the relevance of these strategies by demonstrating how different accounts of current American politics differ depending on the ideological premises, which determine the way the story of political events will be told, which determines the casting of the dominant rhetorical trope, which determines which details are likely to be included, how they will be viewed, and how they will all be put together.

White, therefore, gives some insight into why given ‘events’ (such as Why America was Attacked on 9/11/2001) can be much more easily discussed among ideologically similar thinkers, for they may have extremely ‘meaningful’ debates on the inclusion or interpretation of details, as they share the same assumptions (they emplot the story along similar lines and then, so the discussion is mainly with this taken as a pre-critical given). Extreme conservatives and extreme liberals will most often becomes frustrated and find difficulty having ‘meaningful’ debates because they attempt to debate the inclusion or interpretation of details, but both based on wholly different assumptions which they take as ‘obvious’ or ‘common-sensical,’ coming from different ideologies and thus emploting the story differently. They will not really be talking about the same thing; they perhaps should be talking about their assumptions rather than the details their assumptions inevitably lead them to focus on. Ultimately, this book is the demystification of histories, historians, journalism, and journalists who claim to present things ‘as they are,’ while providing some brilliant methods for determining in what ways a given account lacks ‘complete objectivity’ and how it can be seen as ultimately ideological.


[disclaimer: this is by no means meant to be an exhaustive survey of professor white's book, it is simply a study tool designed for those who have little or no knowledge of the book and would like a starting point. here's the background on this essay]