Renaissance Forum: Volume 6, Number 2, Winter 2003: Nicholas Jagger

Catherine Gallagher and Stephen Greenblatt. 2000. Practising New Historicism. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. 249 pp. ISBN 0-226-27934-0. £17.50/$25.

Practising New Historicism is a peculiar book indeed. In part it is a reminiscence, yet it also contains fairly traditional exposition. The authors acknowledge right at the beginning of the introduction that 'the underlying coherence of all this may not be self-evident' as the chapters, in effect separate essays, concentrate on anecdote in historical narrative, a great deal on Eucharistic doctrine, the potato, and the nineteenth-century novel. The two different trajectories – reminiscence and exposition – sit relatively uncomfortably, as the analysis of what New Historicism was about at its inception necessarily increases the reader's critical awareness of the terms of the exposition in other chapters of the book. There is no escape from the fact that history is a discipline subject to rules and conventions, and that at deep archaeological levels, undisclosed presuppositions operate even in the work of illustrious New Historicists.
The impression given is that New Historicism aimed to recover the forgotten subjects 'to counter the history of the victors with that of the vanquished' (53). That is a political aim, but does nothing to illuminate the nature of the writing of history, and why pre-existing binary oppositions might need to be unpacked rather than allowed to dictate responses. I frequently wanted to stop and ask why these were allowed to slip by. They ranged from, Jew and Christian, Protestant and Catholic, potato and grain, victor and vanquished, historical materialism and the linguistic turn, reading with and reading against, Marxism and New Historicism, wholesome and unwholesome, and even, in the tradition of funerary sculpture, representacion au vif and representacion de la mort.
I felt a further avoidance strategy was in play in beginning chapters by offering narrative. Chapter 5 begins by discussing the Passover Seder. The strength of this passage seemed to emerge from an implicit autobiographical basis, the description seeming almost an aside, an anecdote in itself. It is only four pages further on that some argument emerges concerning the paradox of the Eucharist, but ten pages later there begins another section on Hamlet, the conclusion of which begins the next chapter. Once again there rises the spectre of the binary opposition, anecdote and fact, flesh and spirit, pure and impure, destiny and self-determination. I would be hard put to précis the argument, but merely observe that at the end of most chapters there was either no attempt at conclusion, or a familiar recourse to smoke and shadows: 'Aporias are not places where forms refer only to themselves, but are rather the tears where energies, desires, and repressions flow out into the world' (p. 109). Perhaps at the end of an undergraduate lecture, such a rhetorical flourish could command a gasp from the audience, but in print it does not work quite so well.
Perhaps the most significant chapter for highlighting what New Historicism saw as its project is chapter 2 'Counterhistory and the Anecdote'. An interesting analysis of E. P. Thompson is full of asides which could fuel a seminar, such as, 'the very nature of his enterprise required him to reconstruct not only what happened, but also what might have happened' (57). The name of Philip K. Dick is invoked for proposing 'alternate histories', conjectural scenarios for the course of history, whilst a couple of pages further on is the liberating view that 'the present is not necessarily a superior objective vantage point, but is often, instead, a reductive one' (57). What might make it reductive is not discussed.
Whilst the political climate from which the work was produced is mentioned, I missed an analysis of how this also produced the new historians. One recalls one of the great phrases of The Archaeology of Knowledge: 'who speaks?'. A more explicit treatment would have been welcome of figures such as Foucault, whose academic career seems so related to his life and work as to have been only possible at one historical moment. I recall the bitter attacks against Foucault recently concerning his anonymous sexual activity as an HIV+ gay man. Did he know, did he care? Certainly for some of those taking part in the debate, the whole credibility of Foucault's work hinged on his personal ethics. Yet there are also other, professional, responsibilities and allegiances. I recall the anecdote that each time he met Georges Canguilhem, the two exchanged a formal academic greeting. What is at stake in producing history goes far beyond the coolly academic.
The strong note of self-identification of the New Historicists with their work inevitably invites a level of biography unknown to pre-linguistic-turn historians. Yet this does not make the spade-work any different in terms of the difficulty of writing history, as can be ascertained in reading this book. The first two chapters, on methodological matters, are often interesting and stimulating, but the others relating to the Eucharist, the potato and the novel show New Historicism in navel-gazing mid-life crisis.

NICHOLAS JAGGER