HAYDEN WHITE
HAYDEN WHITE. „THE VALUE OF NARRATIVITY IN THE REPRESENTATION OF REALITY.“
THE CONTENT OF THE FORM. LONDON: J. HOPKINS UP, 1987. PRINT.
What, according to Hayden White, are the major differences between medieval annals, chronicles and modern
historiography (‘proper history’)? In how far can they be seen “ as particular products of possible conceptions
of historical reality”?
“I treat the annals and chronicle forms of historical representation […] as particular products of possible
conceptions of historical reality, conceptions that are alternatives to, rather than failed anticipations of, the
fully realized historical discourse that the modern history form is supposed to embody.” (5-6)
 What kind of notion of reality leads the writers of those three different kinds of historical discourse to
represent it in the form of annals, chronicle or narrative?
ANNALS
- List of events
- Chronological order
- events
are
not
structured according a
linear/horizontal axis
(no cause-and-effectrelations
between
events)
- No central subject
- No
well-marked
beginning, middle, end
- No narrative closure
- No
author;
no
narrative voice
EXAMPLE: Annals of Saint Gall
List of events: no gaps
 coherence
fullness (of
“years
of
and
the
the
CHRONICLES
- List of events
- Chronological order
- Organisation
of
materials “by topics
and reigns” (16)
- Greater
narrative
coherency (16): “the
chronicler represents
[reality] as if real
events appeared to
human consciousness
in
the
form
of
unfinished stories” (5)
- Central subject: the life
of an individual, town
or
region;
an
institution, a great
undertaking ... (16)
- No narrative closure
“the chronicle […] is
merely a different kind of
representation, marked
by the desire for a kind of
order and fullness in an
account of reality that
remains
theoretically
unjustified, a desire that
is, until shown otherwise,
purely gratuitious.” (17)
EXAMPLE: Richerus of Rheims.
History of France
MODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY
- Chronological order &
order
of
meaning
(cause-and-effectrelations
between
events)
- “proper concern for
the judicious handling
of evidence” (4); has to
deal in real events
- narrative form: reality
supposedly presents
itself in form of a story
 claims
to
be
objective
- well-marked
beginning, middle and
end
(narrative
closure)
- central subject: sociopolitical centre (“the
state”)
- moralizes (implicitly):
Hayden
White:
narrativizing without
moralizing
not
possible
Narrative organized around a
social centre: archespicopal
see of Rheims; geographical
BUT: not recognized as
modern, “objective” account
Why? -> openly moralistic
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EXAMPLE:
Cronica
Dino
Compagni.
Lord”)
 “The
modern
scholar
seeks
fullness
and
continuity in an
order of events;
the annalist has
both
in
the
sequence of years.”
(9)
 ‘Meaning’ of those
events =
their
registration in this
list (8)
But: scarcity of the events
no
qualitative
distinction
between natural catastrophes
and political events
No meaningful entity that
provides ethical or moral
significance -> no ranking of
events
 “it is a product of an
image
of
reality
according to which the
social system […] is
only
minimally
present
to
the
consciousness of the
writer […] The account
deals
in
qualities
rather than agents,
figuring forth a world
in
which
things
happen
to
people
rather than one in
which
people
do
things.” (10)
centre: Gaul; Central subject:
“the conflicts of the French”
“a proper beginning” but no
end/ narrative closure
Chronological order
Self-conscious narrator (not
“objective”)
Central conflict: problem of
authority: “It is because there
was a contest that there is
something to narrativize for
Richerus” (19)
But: moral principle lacking
 “What was lacking for a
proper
discursive
resolution, a narrativizing
resolution, was the moral
principle in light of which
Richerus might have
judged the resolution as
either just or unjust.
Reality itself has judged
the
resolution
by
resolving it as it has done.
[…] There is no justice,
only force, or, rather, only
an authority that presents
itself as different kinds of
forces” (20)
Absence of any consciousness
of a social centre, i.e. subject:
without a subject, I cannot
establish where this subject's
history might begin or end
 Begins in medias res,
no narrative closure
 No
principle
for
assigning importance
or
significance
to
events
 Those
events
just
happen (divine will)
 “calls up a world in
which […] scarcity is
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ending
the rule of existence”
(11)
God could be seen as the
“subject” of this text: he exists
outside time -> narrative not
possible
[4th form: philosophy of history]
What is the value that modern historiography attached to narrativity in the representation of real events?
What is the “content” of this “form”? Do things really “speak for themselves” in this form?
Narrative seems to be a “general human rather than culture-specific way” (1) to communicate about the world
BUT: historiography does not necessarily have to take the form of narrative
What makes the narrative form of history possible? What does the choice of this form imply?
-
-
A narrative needs a subject. Only that makes it possible to “envision a set of events as belonging to
the same order of meaning” (16).
“When […] it is a matter of providing a narrative of real events, we must suppose that a
subject of the sort that would provide the impulse to record its activities must exist.” (13)
What kind of subject? “a genuinely historical account had to display not only a certain form, namely,
the narrative, but also a certain content, namely, a politicosocial order.” (11)
“neither [historicity nor narrativity] is possible without some notion of the legal subject that
can serve as the agent, agency, and subject of historical narrative in all of its manifestations”
(13)
“the growth and development of historical consciousness, which is attended by a concomitant
growth and development of narrative capability […] has something to do with the extent to
which the legal system functions as a subject of concern” (14)
“this raises the suspicion that narrative in general […] has to do with the topics of law,
legality, legitimacy […] authority” (13)
-
-
The plot of the historical narrative centres around a conflict.
“The more historically self-conscious the writer of any form of historiography, the more the
question of the social system and the law that sustains it, the authority of this law and its
justification, and threats to the law occupy its attention.” (13)
The narrative form imbues reality with meaning, it gives it “the odour of the ideal” (21). “narrative
[…] substitutes meaning for the straightforward copy of the events recounted” (2)
At the same time this form of historiography (“proper history”) claims that the story form is the
“natural” form of history, it “feigns to make the world speak itself and speak itself as a story” (2).
It “displays to us a formal coherency to which we ourselves aspire. The historical narrative […]
reveals to us a world that is putatively “finished”, done with, over, and yet not dissolved, not
falling apart. In this world, reality wears the mask of meaning, the completeness and fullness
of which we can only imagine, never experience.” (21)
-> modern historiography tries to hide the fact, that the narrative form is something which is imposed
upon the world, that the meaning of history is created in the process of narrativizing history
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-
-
-
-> it tries to present the plot of the historical narrative as “”found” in the events rather than put there
by narrative techniques” (21)
History written in the form of a narrative always moralizes. Otherwise narrative closure would be
impossible: A sequence of real events does not actually come to an end!
“The demand for closure in the historical story is a demand […] for moral meaning.” (21);
“only a moral authority could justify the turn in the narrative that permits it to come to an
end” (23)
“What else could narrative closure consist of than the passage from one moral order to
another?” (23)
“Such events could only seem to have ceased to happen when meaning is shifted, and shifted
by narrative means, from one physical or social space to another.” (23)
When the basis for such moralizing is lacking or only potentially present in the world the
historiographer inhabits, narrativity seems to be impossible, as is meaning and the “means to track
such shifts of meaning” (24)
Modern historiographers have “made narrativity into a value” (24) It is supposed to signal the
objectivity, seriousness and realism of a historical discourse (cf. 24). ->Why? Because we want reality
to “display […] coherence, integrity, fullness, and closure” (24), we want some kind of meaning to be
immanent in (historical) events – According to Hayden White this can only be imaginary! The world
does not tell itself as a story and there can never be the kind of closure or fullness the historical
narrative offers. The form of annals or chronicles is closer to the truth, White claims. The historical
narrative is a dream about what reality should look like in order for it to make sense to us, to have
meaning. It can never be real!
“Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made stories, with
central subjects, proper beginnings, middles, and ends, and a coherence that permits us to
see “the end” in every beginning? Or does it present itself more in the forms that the annals
and chronicle suggest, either as mere sequence without beginning or end or as sequences of
beginnings that only terminate and never conclude? And does the world, even the social
world, ever really come to us as already narrativized, already “speaking itself” from beyond
the horizon of our capacity to make scientific sense of it? Or is the fiction of such a world,
capable of speaking itself and of displaying itself as a form of a story, necessary for the
establishment of that moral authority without which the notion of a specifically social
reality would be unthinkable?” (24-25)
It seems possible to conclude that every historical narrative has as its latent or manifest
purpose the desire to moralize the events of which it treats” (14)
“narrativity […] is intimately related to , if not a function of, the impulse to moralize reality,
that is to identify it with the social system that is the source of any morality that we can
imagine.” (14)
“Every narrative, however seemingly ‘full,’ is constructed on the basis of a set of events that might have been
included but were left out; […] And this consideration permits us to ask what kind of notion of reality
authorizes construction of a narrative account of reality in which continuity rather than discontinuity governs
the articulation of the discourse.” (10)
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