The Discourse Of History

The manner in which people have been talking and writing about ‘development’ and the rules according to which they have done so have evolved over time. Development Discourse and Global History uses the archaeological and genealogical methods of Michel Foucault to trace the origins of development discourse back to late colonialism and notes the significant discontinuities that led to the establishment of a new discourse and its accompanying industry. This book goes on to describe the contestations, appropriations and transformations of the concept. It shows how some of the trends in development discourse since the crisis of the 1980s – the emphasis on participation and ownership, sustainable development and free markets – are incompatible with the original rules and thus lead to serious contradictions. The Eurocentric, authoritarian and depoliticizing elements in development discourse are uncovered, whilst still recognizing its progressive appropriations. The author concludes by analysing the old and new features of development discourse which can be found in the debate on Sustainable Development Goals and discussing the contribution of discourse analysis to development studies. This book is aimed at researchers and students in development studies, global history and discourse analysis as well as an interdisciplinary audience from international relations, political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, language and literary studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315753782, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

In the last decades, there has been an intense debate on the relationship between literature and historiography, often linked to the debate between “empiricists” and “postmodernists”. The aim of this collective work is to address this debate, and to search for new ways of thinking and encountering the past. The key note for the book comes from Hayden White, one of the leading academic figures, whose role in launching the contemporary history/literature debate has been crucial. It is followed by three critical readings of his work, all suggesting new ways to apply or challenge his views. In other chapters of the book, history / literature question is then addressed from three points of view: narrativity, history as literature, and literature as history. Tropes for the Past is an ideal introduction to the literature/historiography debate and Hayden White’s role in it. It will be of use for all students and scholars in the philosophy of history and in historically oriented literary, cultural, and social studies.

From History to Theory describes major changes in the conceptual language of the humanities, particularly in the discourse of history. In seven beautifully written, closely related essays, Kerwin Lee Klein traces the development of academic vocabularies through the dynamically shifting cultural, political, and linguistic landscapes of the twentieth century. He considers the rise and fall of "philosophy of history" and discusses past attempts to imbue historical discourse with scientific precision. He explores the development of the "meta-narrative" and the post-Marxist view of history and shows how the present resurgence of old words—such as "memory"—in new contexts is providing a way to address marginalized peoples. In analyzing linguistic changes in the North American academy, From History to Theory innovatively ties semantic shifts in academic discourse to key trends in American society, culture, and politics.

An important analysis of the language of time, cause and evaluation in historical texts studied by students at secondary school, looking at the implications for making meaning in historical writing.>

In The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power, Ronald E. Day provides a historically informed critical analysis of the concept and politics of information. Analyzing texts in Europe and the United States, his critical reading method goes beyond traditional historiographical readings of communication and information by engaging specific historical texts in terms of their attempts to construct and reshape history. After laying the groundwork and justifying his method of close reading for this study, Day examines the texts of two pre–World War II documentalists, Paul Otlet and Suzanne Briet. Through the work of Otlet and Briet, Day shows how documentation and information were associated with concepts of cultural progress. Day also discusses the social expansion of the conduit metaphor in the works of Warren Weaver and Norbert Wiener. He then shows how the work of contemporary French multimedia theorist Pierre Lévy refracts the earlier philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari through the prism of the capitalist understanding of the “virtual society.” Turning back to the pre–World War II period, Day examines two critics of the information society: Martin Heidegger and Walter Benjamin. He explains Heidegger’s philosophical critique of the information culture’s model of language and truth as well as Benjamin’s aesthetic and historical critique of mass information and communication. Day concludes by contemplating the relation of critical theory and information, particularly in regard to the information culture’s transformation of history, historiography, and historicity into positive categories of assumed and represented knowledge.

This book discusses how literary writers re-envisioned species survival and racial uplift through ecological and biogeographical concepts of dispersal. It will appeal to readers interested in nineteenth-Century American literature and Literature and the Environment.

Hayden White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of meaning—its production, distribution, and consumption—in different historical epochs. In the end, he suggests, the only meaning that history can have is the kind that a narrative imagination gives to it. The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in "the content of the form," in the way our narrative capacities transform the present into a fulfillment of a past from which we would wish to have descended.

What legitimate form can history take when faced by the severe challenges issued in recent years by literary, rhetorical, multiculturalist, and feminist theories? That is the question considered in this pathbreaking book. Robert Berkhofer addresses the essential practical concern of contemporary historians.