The Revival of Narrative: Reflections on a New Old History ...

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THE REVIVAL OF NARRATIVE '3many valuable new findings and a few major contributions to therelatively small corpus <strong>of</strong> historical works <strong>of</strong> permanent value. But ingeneral the sophistication <strong>of</strong> the methodology has tended to exceed thereliability <strong>of</strong> the data, while the usefulness <strong>of</strong> the results seems -up toa point -to be in inverse correlation to the mathematical complexity<strong>of</strong> the methodology and the grandiose scale <strong>of</strong> data-collection.On any cost-benefit analysis the rewards <strong>of</strong> large-scale computerizedhistory have so far only occasionally justified the input <strong>of</strong> timeand money and this has led historians to cast around for other methods<strong>of</strong> investigating the past, which will shed more light with less trouble.In 1968 Le Roy Ladurie prophesied that by the 1980s "the historianwill be a programmer or he will be nothing".13 <strong>The</strong> prophecy has notbeen fulfilled, least <strong>of</strong> all by the prophet himself.Historians are therefore forced back upon the principle <strong>of</strong> indeterminacy,a recognition that the variables are so numerous that at bestonly middle-range generalizations are possible in history, as RobertMerton long ago suggested. <strong>The</strong> macro-economic model is a pipedream,and "scientific history" a myth. Monocausal, explanationssimply do not work. <strong>The</strong> use <strong>of</strong> feed-back models <strong>of</strong> explanation builtaround Weberian "elective affinities" seems to provide better tools forrevealing something <strong>of</strong> the elusive truth about historical causation,especially if we abandon any claim that this methodology is in anysense scientific.Disillusionment with economic or demographic monocausal determinismand with quantification has led historians to start asking aquite new set <strong>of</strong> questions, many <strong>of</strong> which were previously blockedfrom view by the preoccupation with a specific methodology, structural,collective and statistical. More and more <strong>of</strong> the "new historians"are now trying to discover what was going on inside people'sheads in the past, and what it was like to live in the past, questionswhich inevitably lead back to the use <strong>of</strong> narrative.A significant sub-group <strong>of</strong> the great French school <strong>of</strong> historians, ledby Lucien Febvre, has always regarded intellectual, psychological andcultural changes as independent variables <strong>of</strong> central importance. Butfor a long time they were in a minority, left behind in a remote backwateras the flood-tide <strong>of</strong> "scientific history", economic and social incontent, structural in organization and quantitative in methodology,swept past them. Now, however, the topics they were interested inhave quite suddenly become fashionable. <strong>The</strong> questions asked, however,are not quite the same as they used to be, since they are now <strong>of</strong>tendrawn from anthropology. In practice, if not in theory, anthropologyhas tended to be one <strong>of</strong> the most ahistorical <strong>of</strong> disciplines in its lack <strong>of</strong>interest in change over time. None the less it has taught us how a wholesocial system and set <strong>of</strong> values can be brilliantly illuminated by the'3 Le Roy Ladurie, Le territoire de I'historien, i, p. 14 (my translation).
14 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 85 searchlight method <strong>of</strong> recording in elaborate detail a single event,provided that it is very carefully set in its total context and verycarefully analysed for its cultural meaning. <strong>The</strong> archetypal model <strong>of</strong>this "thick description" is Clifford Geertz's classic account <strong>of</strong> aBalinese cock-fight.14 We historians cannot, alas, actually be present,with notebooks, tape-recorders and cameras, at the events we describe,but now and again we can find a cloud <strong>of</strong> witnesses to tell us what itwas like to be there. <strong>The</strong> first cause for the revival <strong>of</strong> narrative amongsome <strong>of</strong> the "new historians" has therefore been the re~lacement <strong>of</strong>sociology and economics by anthropology as the most influential <strong>of</strong> thesocial sciences.One <strong>of</strong> the most striking recent changes in the content <strong>of</strong> history hasbeen a quite sudden growth <strong>of</strong> interest in feelings, emotions, behaviourpatterns, values, and states <strong>of</strong> mind. In this respect the influence <strong>of</strong>anthropologists like Evans-Pritchard, Clifford Geertz, Mary Douglasand Victor Turner has been very great indeed. Although psychohistoryis so far largely a disaster area - a desert strewn with thewreckage <strong>of</strong> elaborate, chromium-plated vehicles which broke downsoon after departure -psychology itself has also had its effect on ageneration now turning its attention to sexual desire, family relationsand emotional bonding as they affect the individual, and to ideas,beliefs and customs as they affect the group.This change in the nature <strong>of</strong> the questions being asked is alsoprobably related to the contemporary scene in the 1970s. This hasbeen a decade in which more personalized ideals and interests havetaken priority over public issues, as a result <strong>of</strong> widespread disillusionmentwith the prospects <strong>of</strong> change by political action. It is thereforeplausible to connect the sudden upsurge in interest in these matters inthe past with similar preoccupations in the present.This new interest in mental structures has been stimulated by thecollapse <strong>of</strong> traditional intellectual history treated as a kind <strong>of</strong> paperchase<strong>of</strong> ideas back through the ages (which usually ends up witheither Aristotle or Plato). "Great books" were studied in a historicalvacuum, with little or no attempt to set the authors themselves or theirlinguistic vocabulary in their true historical setting. <strong>The</strong> history <strong>of</strong>political thought in the west is now being rewritten, primarily byJ. G. A. Pocock, Quentin Skinner and Bernard Bailyn, by painfullyreconstructing the precise context and meaning <strong>of</strong> words and ideas inthe past, and showing how they have changed their shape and colourin the course <strong>of</strong> time, like chameleons, so as to adapt to new circumstancesand new needs.<strong>The</strong> traditional history <strong>of</strong> ideas is concurrently being directed into astudy <strong>of</strong> the changing audience and means <strong>of</strong> communication. <strong>The</strong>re14 C. Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cock-Fight", in his <strong>The</strong> Inrerpreration<strong>of</strong> Culrures (New York, 1973).
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