Rec1aiming the Political in Latin American History

E S S A Y S F R o M T H E N o R T H Edited by Gilbert M. ]oseph

Duke University Press Durham and London 2001

T

. CJr !lO <:'c.-ib¡,. ni sUbraYfli1..,,, libros y revistas Gr~ci"n

SiateIl:la de :8ibliotlC<¿í'.4,

·t1l1ba1adacl de lCl1t Aa6r

AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS/GLOBAL INTERACTIONS

A series edited by

Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily s. Rosenberg

This series aims to stimulate critical perspectives and

fresh interpretive frameworks for scholarship on the his­

tory of the imposing global presence of the United

States. Its primary concerns include thé deployment and

contestation of power, the construction and decon­

struction of cultural and political borders, the fluid

meanings of intercultural encounters, and the complex

interplay between the global and the local. American En­

counters seeks to strengthen dialogue and collaboration

between historians of u.s. international relations and

area studies specialists.

The series encourages scholarship based on multi­

archival historical research. At the same time, it supports

a recognition ofthe representational character ofall sto­

ries about the past and promotes critical inquiry into

issues ofsubjectivity and narrative. In the process, Amer­

ican Encounters strives to understand the context in

which meanings related to nations, cultures, and politi­

cal economy are continually produced, challenged, and

reshaped.

© 2001 Duke University Press

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980 Don(2214

Contents,

Acknowledgments vii

1The Politics ofWriting Latin American History

v Gilbert M. Joseph, Reclaiming "the Political" at theTurn ofthe Millennium 3

Emilia Viotti da Costa, New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:From Economic Reductionism to Cultural Reductionism­

in Search ofDialectics 17

Steve J. Stern, Between Tragedy and Promise:The Politics ofWriting Latin American History in the

Late Twentieth Century 32

TIThe Contestation ofHistorical Narratives and Memory

Barbara Weinstein, The Decline ofthe Progressive Planterand the Rise ofSubaltern Agency: Shifting Narratives of

Slave Emancipation in Brazil 81

Mary Ann Mahony, A Past te Do Justice to the Present:Collective Memory, Historical Representation, and Rule in

Bahia's Cacao Area I02

j@ey L. Gould, Revolutionary Nationalismand Local Memories in El Salvador 138

IIIArticulating the Political: The Intersection of

Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Generation

Diana Paton, The Flight from the Fields Reconsidered:Gender Ideologies and Women's Labor

Mter Slavery in Jamaica 175

Greg Grandin, A More Onerous Citizenship: Illness, Race,and Nation in Republican Guatemala 205

Thomas MílIer K!ubock, Nacionalism, Race, andthe Politics ofImperialism: Workers and North American

Capital in the Chilean Copper Industry 231

Heidi Tinsman, Good Wives, Bad Girls, and Unfaithful Men:Sexual Negotiation and Labor Struggle inChile's Agrarian Reform, 1964-73 268

NHistorians and the Making ofHistory

Florencia E. Mallon, Bearing Witness in Hard Times:Ethnography and Testimonio in a Postrevolutionary Age 3II

Danie!james, Afterword: A Final Reflectionon the Political 355

Contributors 365

Index 367

vi Contents

Acknowledgments,

This collection, a labor of love on the part of the editor and contributors,affords us a means of celebrating the distinguished career of our mentorand colleague Emilia Viotti da Costa. The volume originated in the home­nagem to Emilia at Yale University over the course of several days in May1998 on the occasion ofher completion oftwenty-five years ofservice to theuniversity. My first debt, then, is to thank Yale's History Department, Coun­cil on Latin American and Iberian Studies, and Center for International andArea Studies for sponsoring the conference "Reclaiming 'the Political' inLatin American History," and the Kempf Memorial Fund at Yale and theAndrew W. Mellon Foundation for providing the lion's share offunding.Their support enabled us to host thirty of Emilia's former graduate stu­dents and closest colleagues, who gathered in New Haven not only tohonor Emilia's agenda-setting scholarship and provocative teaching, butfor stimulating and often rambunctious debate-with Emilia character­istically leading by example. Her contribution to this volume originallyserved as the keynote address for the Yale conference in her honor. Inaddition to the colleagues whose work appears in this volume, we are alsoextreme!y grateful to Marjorie Becker, Susan Besse, Nelson Boeira, JoséCelso de Castro Alves, John French, Seth Garfield, Steven Hahn, KathleenHiggins, Reeve Huston, Michael Jiménez, Bryan McCann, David Mont­gomery, Murie! Nazzari, Julio Pinto, David Sanders, Stuart Schwartz, JamesScott, Sol Serrano, and Peter Winn, whose formal and informal interven­ciones in New Haven substantially improved the discussion in these pages.

Thanks also go to Nancy Phillips, then senior administrator ofthe Coun­cil on Latin American Studies, for her deft logístical management of anevent that gathered together the members ofEmilia's far-flung intellectual

clan from acro.. th.l.n.ch and breadth ofthe Americas. Nancy and 1wereably alll.ted by a campu. commlttee of Latin American history doctoralstudent. (rwo of whom have .ub.equencly graduated and taken up full­time acad.mlc po.llIon. el.ewhere): Seth Garfield (now at the University ofTexas, Au.t1n), Bryan McCann (University of Arkansas), David Sanders,Amy Chazkel. los~ Celso de Castro Alves, Andrew Sackett, and ToddHartch.

As we moved from the conference to the book, I was aided by BarbaraWeinstein and Heidi Tinsman in selecting this volume's ensemble of es­says. (Emilia set the parameters somewhat in requesting that the volumefocus on the work ofher North American students.) Editorial and clericalcosts associated with the preparation of the book were covered by a grantto Yale's Latin American Council from the William and Flora Hewlett Foun­dation. The manuscript benefited immeasurably from close readings byBrooke Larson and Peter Winnj and the essays by Steve Stern, Heidi Tins­man, and me are much the better for the commentary provided by Cathe­rine LeGrand-and the lively exchange with the audience that ensued-atthe panel "Reclaiming 'the Political' in Latin American History" during the]anuary 2000 meeting ofthe American Historical Association. Yale doctoralstudent]. T. Way provided valuable help in preparing the final manuscript.As always, 1 have been supported at every stage ofmy editorial work by myeditor and dear friend at the Duke University Press, Valerie Millholland.

viii Acknowledgments

1The Politics ofWriting Latin American History,

Gilbert M. ]oseph

Rec1aiming "the Political" at the

Turn of the Millennium,

These are unsettled times for historians of Latin America. As the regionenters a new millennium in the viselike grip of neoliberalism-a globalproject which in the name of "flexible" economic choices, "democratiza­tion," and the "rights" of individual investors implements policies thatsow insecurity and promote the methodical destruction ofcollective struc­tures, habits, and forms of sociability-there are few inspirational para­digms for connecting scholarship to action. 1 Indeed, many lament that the

4itate of historical scholarship, teaching, and "the p~~fession" itself has.n.~ver be~~..!E:~r~.~i~oriented,. fragmented, ¡lIld.~0!1tentious (though it isperhaps comforting to know that Alphonse de Lamartine engaged in simi­lar lamentations regarding intellectuallife in nineteenth-century France!).2

'v ':!fe hav~~~~:~~ed the explosion ofonce-comforting master narrativesand ....have heard celebratory proclamations about ~e!}_d.()n~eolQgyand historyitsel[ Recently we have also observed esteemed colleagues on the Leftprotest "identity politics," "political correctness," and the "trivialization"of the research enterprise, bitterly attacking new trends in cultural his­tory and area studies, their voices now barely distinguishable from more­traditional opponents on the Right. 3 Sorne of these colleagues have goneon to establish a new "Historical Society" to further their pursuit of"objec­tive reality" based upon verifiable hypotheses.4 Unfortunately, however,much of the "newer" social and cultural history also defangs or expungesthe political, fetishizing "experience," "mentality," or "identity," revelingin the "unfixity" of meanings and dissolving the subject and ultimatelynullifYing agency.5 Alternatively, others of its practitioners have sentimen­talized "-resistance" and "agency," seeing it everywhere and thereby dilut­ing political analysis to the point ofirrelevance.·

4 Gilbert M. ]oseph ReclaiminB "the Polítical" 5

historians, our scholarship, and our teaching are powerfully shaped by(and involved in the shaping 00 political contexts, structures, and forces.The challenge, therefore, is not to retreat back to a more conventional,bounded political history and claim a piece of it; it is, rather, to revisit thepolitical-both as a theme ofhistorical analysis and as a stance for histor­ical practice-and to inquire, to what extent has the political undergone animportant transformation as we enter the new millennium? We also need

J

to ask, as Steve Stern does in his essay, "How do we specifY the new)9iJ"-.J demands placed by historical and intellectual experience upon the politic~

ofwriting and teaching Latin American history?" ~

In their attempts to contribute to that enterprise, the volume's authorsexplore sorne ofthe strategic realms in which the political might be stud­ied, as well as the new theoretical and methodological tools that might beemployed. In a pair of broad-ranging essays in the book's first section,

r-"The Politics ofWriting Latin American History," Viotti da Costa and Sternexamine how the political has continually been remade in the North sincet~.e 1960s, and they present somewhat different views on what the future of"the political" should look like. Viotti da Costa's contribution, the rework­ing of an essay criticizing many of the postInodern and poststructuralisttrends in recent historiography, is a revealing point of departure for theessays ofher students, several ofwhom, such as Stern and Florencia Mal­Ion, have been leaders in the selective application of recent "posts" and"turns" to Latin American history.

The essays in the second part of the volume-by Barbara Weinstein,Mary Ann Mahony, and Jeffrey Gould-address how pivotal dimensions ofthe Brazilian and Central American past are remembered. Sifting throughthe sedimentation of local and national historiographies, scrutinizing anarray ofprimary documentation and oral testimony, and in Mahony's case,also exploring local archaeological remains, these authors wrestle withhow historical narratives of slavery and emancipation, modernization andbackwardness, ethno-racial and national identity-and collective memoryitself-are politically mediated, contested, invented, and reinvented.

In part 3, the largest and most diverse section ofthe book, four youngerscholars provide fine-grained studies of how p.()_ILti.s.~Jª-I1d~~xl2aI!~_ed

notion ofthepolitical) informs and interse,¡;:tsvvith C?!1structions of class,-"v -;:;~~-;:~d·~thiii~¡tY.·-g~~d~r~pd se~ualirY,'ge~e~~ti~n!d¡sea~e, an¡i·th:;~~~.~l1

Ü:.IliIleteenth-century Jamaica and Guatemalaandtwentieth-c~I1tu9:'.ºhiJ~These case studies explore new theoretical concepts and meÍ:lÍods, andreexamine a variety of conventional wisdoms. Diana Paton contributes anessay in subaltern history as she attempts, on the basis ofelite documenta­tion and the fragmentary, state-mediated testimonies offreed black slaves,

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It seems entirely appropriate at this critical juncture, then, to rethink,remake, or reclaim the political in our work-in the sense of elaboratingricher, more sophisticated approaches to politics and broader arenas ofpower. After all, there has never been an abandonment ofpolitics within thehistorical profession: this is true at the most prosaic level in terms of thecontinued study ofconventional politics, war, and diplomacy among NorthAmerican historians ofboth the United States and Latin America. Moreover,politics-and political power-has never been underemphasized in theLatin American contexto Historian and po~ª~!tng~~J~~.!~r_S.P.1i!!Lhas

,?~served that whereas~.~.r:Y North Ame~~~n.~!J.l!i.h~ tut:.I!.a!V~ frQ!l1Poli.~tics as an act of rejection based on the assumed "ineffectiv~ll.CJS," "irrele­~~?ce," or imm<?~I!tYo{politics, Latin Ámerica~sh~~e no such.~uxuiY~Thestakes are too high¡ the conflicts too real. Politics and political action arecrucial determinants ofeveryday existence. Politics entails more than style,image or nuance: "It can be, quite literally, a matter oflife and death. "7

It is no doubt for this reason that most Latin Americaa scholars did notblithely follow the North American academy down the fashionable roadtoward social history (and away from political history) in the 1960s and'7os-or toward cultural studies and postmodernism in the 1980s and '90S;.Fifteen years ago, Brazilian historian ;~i.!i~_Yiº-ru.d;LC()stªp~111~e~_0.llt

that the "new history" of"experience" and "mentalities" carriedwith it a·serious risk. It -gave' us"a.·frigmenred plcture oE . .. society a'¡{d~ft~~ ."madeusTc:'-se ~fght'ofthe interco~nertions among economic, social, politicalaÍJ.(lae()loá¡c~liñsi:.i.tu'tions and structures." Viotti da Costa wrote: "Inmodern societies: even more than in1;he past, "poÍiticsis at the center ofhumaiil¡fe':"fhis c~ntralitY ofpolitics is a result ofboth the incorporation()f)~n.c:~~a~¡.!1iD:umbers of pe,ople into the market economy and the over­whelrning presence ofdie state in the lives ofpeople. As a consequence ofthese two pr~cesses, which are intimately related, polii:.i.cal decisions havecome to affect economic and sociallife in ways never seen before. The lifeofa peasant in somelost village in the backland, the labor conditions of aworker in a factory, a woman's status in a society, the opportunities deniedprgpened to a black person-all depend not only on their own struggle or?n thecólª)og,icof the market, but also on decisions taken by those ini?ower. : .. It is impossible to understand the history of the powerless'without understanding the powerful. History from the bottom up can be as i. . -. "-'

meªgingless as history from the top down."·The present volume, composed of original essays by Viotti da Costa and

several generations of her North American students, embraces the chal- \lenge of writing a social and cultural history of Latin America that is notdivorced from power and the political. It is inspired by her beliefthatwe as

to explain why former slave women refused to work in Jamaican plantationfields after 1837. ~~Ci_r~l1diz.1 follows with an exploration of disease asan elite metaphor for indigenous society and national backwardness innineteenth-century Guatemala, which he then relates to the trope ofanti­communism in the twentieth century-a discourse which would be used tojustifY the massacring of 200,000 Mayans during the civil war of the late1970S and '80S. Thomas Klubock revisits his earlier research on Chileancopper miners, but this time to examine the role of race and ethnicity, notgender, in connection with nationalist ideologies, class politics, and strat­egies of social control employed by North American corporate capital.Heidi Tinsman uses both gender and generation to analyze the differentialeffects of agrarian reform on married women and teen-age girls; in the

,,~ process, she tells us a great deal about the role that notions of masculinityand sexuality played in Salvador Allende's attempted socialist transitionin Chile. Each author demonstrates that ~~U¿e~!iti~s (~E2~2!Lc.a!aHSls 9~'i*\,:s:_~}!ltiple, o~~I~l'?}~g,. andoft~?:=_~~a~i_~tory-~~ye!st_ati~._C?~\. e/~_~~. Thus, race, ethnicity, or sexuality is not the same for men andwomen, and class, contrary to earlier formulations, does not eliminateethno-racial, gendered, or generational identities, though it may speakthrough them with important consequences for collective political action.

In the book's concluding section, "Historians and the Making ofHis­tory," Florencia Mallon examines the everyday politicallinkages betweenintellectuals and subaltern groups. She not only focuses on the historicalrole oflocal "organic intellectuals" in Chilean indigenous (Mapuche) so­ciety, but also explores the evolution of her own interactive and oftenproblematic relationships with the subjects ofthese communities and withtheir struggles-past, present, and future. In this essay, we are providedwith a bittersweet meditation on the promise and pitfalls of ethnographicand testimonial strategies as the historian attempts to "bear witness inhard [post-revolutionary] times."" In the tradition ofher other recentwrit­ings, Mallon candidly ponders the need to elaborate different narrativestrategies, analytical categories, and modes of argumentation in order towrite a multidimensional history of subordinate groups in societies andcontexts that no longer rivet the world's attention. Her ruminations on thecomplex relationships between historical research, historical memory, andcurrent politics, both collective and personal, synthesize a number of thecollection's crosscutting themes. The volume concludes with a final refiec­tion by Daniel James, Viotti da Costa's longtime colleague, which locatesthe significance ofthese new readings ofthe political dimension ofLatinAmerica's past in a celebration ofher most importantwork.

A few observations are in order about the goals and parameters ofthis

6 Gilbert M. ]oseph

volume. It seeks to pose timely responses to sorne ofthe larger questionscurrently preoccupying Latin Americanists and scholars in other fields anddisciplines, namely: How does politics, broadly construed, articulate withother variables and categories ofanalysis? Hº-~ isthe politicalrealmmedi-

~ated through historical memory? And how doe;a poütic~ sensibility infiu~

ence the writing and teaching we do, and the roles we play in the academyand society? In this sense, the book is meant to stimulate discussion anddebate, rather than resolve current disputes. In discussing generationalremakings of the political in his contribution, Stern suggests that majortheoretical advances have come about through what he calls "reverbera­tions": "imperfect intellectual conversations, echoes, and trackings acrossresearch projects and across specialized fields." These reverberations giverise to "unplanned convergences" and provide an antidote to the scholarlyfragmentation so lamented of late. It was in the spirit of fostering suchreverberations that Stern and Allen Isaacman launched the collaborationbetween Latin Americanists and Africanists that yielded the fruitful volumeConfronting Historical Paradigms (1993); itwas in the same spirit that my threemost recent collaborations were born: Everyday Forms of State Formation(1994), which brought together Mexican revolution scholars and socialtheorists working on Europe and Asia; Close Encounters of Empire (1998),which prodded Latin Americanist historians and anthropologists northand south of the Rio Grande into dialogue with U.S. foreign relationshistorians to reassess the multistranded engagement ofthe United Stateswith Latin America; and the recent issue ofthe Hispanic American HistoricalReview (1999), on Mexico's "new cultural history," which brought post­structural cultural historians into freestyle combat with their more positiv­istic antagonists. 1O It is our hope that this volume will trigger similarlyuseful "reverberations."

If there is a common denominator in the volume's essays, it is theirprescription for a politics of history writing that is integrative. In theirsynoptic papers, Viotti da Costa and Stern advocate a dynamic approach topolítical analysis that engages multiple levels of the world system, em­braces both the state and its subjects, and understands that political dis­courses, symbols, and identities are intimately related to social relations,economic processes, and power. Thus, Viotti da Costa calls for "a synthesisthat will avoid all forms ofreductionism ... (whether economic, cultural,or linguistic), that will not lose sight ofthe articulation between the micro­and macrophysics of power, that will recognize that human subjectivity isat the same time constituted by and constitutive ofsocial realities."" Argu­ing along roughly similar lines (though somewhat more partial to post­structuralist trends in the "new cultural history"), Stern defends what he

Reclaiming "the Política!" 7

sees as a "partial transition"-"more a matter of emphasis than absolutecontrast"-from studies ofLatin American "politics and society" to studiesof "politics and culture." Whereas the former "placed a premium on thecomplex interplays of agency and structure within the unfolding politicaleconomy of regions," the latter "asks how people constructed their po­litical imagination within the (power-laden process] of state formation."Though their emphases differ, both Viotti da Costa and Stern counselagainst a celebration ofsubaltern agency and emancipation that minimizesquestions ofpower, structure, and hegemony. The contributions that fol­low Viotti da Costa's and Stern's keynote essays represent attempts toharness materialist analysis with "the interrogations of consciousness,constructions of political language, meanings, and authority" by bothpower holders and subordinate groups that Stern sees as emblematic ofthebest work of the 1990S on politics as cultural formation.

Thus, these essays move us beyond fruitless current debates aboutwhether we should privilege material or cultural analysis-structure oragency-in our work. Such debates have often had divisive consequencesand risk setting back certain fields, particularly Latin American labor his'tory, where sorne infiuential practitioners adamantly argue the need tostudy questions ofproduction and the workplace to the virtual exclusion ofother sites and dimensions ofworking-class life.12 But as theorists such asFernando Coronil, William Sewell, Ricardo Salvatore, and Bill Roseberryhave persuasively shown, " 'political economy' and 'culture' are ambiguoustheoretical categories that refer both to concrete social domains and to theabstract dimensions of any social domain. (An exclusive preoccupationwith material analysis] entails a neglect not only of domains outside theeconomy, but also ofthe cultural dimension ofeconomic processes them­selves" (e.g., the meanings that male and female laborers put on the workthey do and the goods they produce)." Similarly, an exclusive preoccu­pation with representation and discourse ignores the material underpin­nings of cultural practices.'4 Explicitly in the case of Stern's, Viotti daCosta's, and Barbara Weinstein's essays, more implicitly in the volume'sother essays, the contributors take a stand against segregating materialand cultural/discursive analysis-a dichotomy that is itself culturally con­structed and rife with political meaning and consequence.1S

Although this volume represents a view of the Latin American politicalthat comes preponderantly from the North, the contributors' training byone of Latín America's most distinguished and broad-gauged historianshas powerfully af'fected their encounters with the region's pasto Indeed, themanner In whlch so many of Viotti da Costa's students have set theirstorle. In broader contexts of power and culture, and sought, like their

8 Gllbm M. josrph

mentor, to achieve "a synthesis that will result in both a new hisrorlogrll­phy and new political stra~egies," has forged them into a somewhat dls­tinctive discursive community within the profession.'d Consequently, thisvolume does not pretend to exhaust or represent all North American schol­arship on the political in Latin American history-a point made emphat­ically by Stern in his survey ofthe field over the last several decades-to saynothing ofLatin American approaches to politics. Nevertheless, the natureofthe intellectual encounter it does embody is significant in its own rightand points up incipient trends of hemispheric convergence in the study ofLatin America' s pasto

Multiple ironies surround Emilia Viotti da Costa's mediating role in thisNorth-South intellectual encounter. Harassed by Brazil's U.S.-supportedmilitary regime and ultimately forced to retire from the history departmentof the Universidade de Sao Paulo in 1969, Viotti da Costa carne to theUnited States, eventually securing a position in the history department atYale University in 1973. Over the next quarter century, she reestablishedand redirected her academic career, training generations ofNorth Ameri­can students, a good number of whom became critics of the kinds ofrepressive regimes that brought her into contact with them." Formerly atthe center of a cohort of young historians and social scientists who wererecasting the history of slavery, abolition, and race relations in Brazil­intellectuals infiuenced by French and European formulations ofdialecticalmaterialism leavened with new forms of cultural and textual analysis­Viotti da Costa was now forced to engage with a North American academythat did not prize her incisive critiques of the liberal historiographicaltradition.'· Ironically, as she herself testifies, it was in the United States, indialogue with maverick Americanist colleagues such as Eugene Genovese,Elizabeth-Fox Genovese, C. Vann Woodward, David Montgomery, and Ed­mund Morgan, as well as with her own restless graduate students, that she"discovered" Latin America. As a younger Brazilian colleague ofViotti daCosta has observed: "This was a fortuitous surprise that permitted her torefiect on Brazilian and U.S. history and culture from a comparative per­spective and to lend her analysis a new and enriching dimension."" Ad­mired over the years in Brazil for her contributions to the specialized litera­tures on Brazilian slavery and abolition and the history of the Brazilianempire, it was only with the translation ofher recent essays on Latin Amer·ica's new labor and cultural history and her widely acclaimed 1994 book onslave rebellion in nineteenth-century Guyana, Crowns ofGlory, Tears ofBlood,that Brazilian historians took notice ofthe expansion ofher interests.

In a 1998· essay in the Latin American Research Review, U.S. Brazilian­ist Thomas Skidmore acknowledged the intellectual resulta of Viotti da

Rrclaímin.q "thr PoUtical" 9

-Costa's encounter with her North American students. Skidmore featuredthe work of several of her students-a group he dubbed "The Integra­tors"-to illustrate wholesome trends ofhemispheric convergence in LatinAmerican historiography. It is these scholars' preoccupation with com­parative history, their penchant for integrating global, national, and locallevels ofanalysis, and with elaborating anthropologically informed studiesofpower and popular culture (particularly "the subtle ways in which non­elites have shaped the cultures and discourses of elite-dominated institu­tions"), that Skidmore believes characterizes their work and combats thefragmentation that has bedeviled humanistic and social science researchon Latin America.20

Viotti da Costa's students and colleagues have certainly played a part infomenting the proliferation ofinternational cross-disciplinary research in­itiatives that have brought Latin American and North American scholarsinto ever doser contact in recent years. It is "this widening and deepeningofthe scholarly infrastructure," as Skidmore terms it, that has hastened "aconvergence of professional standards and the creation of a genuinelyinter-American scholarly community."" Stern, for example, has been anintegral member ofthe Social Science Research Council's continuing inter­national project "Memory and Military Repression in the Southern Cone,"led by Argentine sociologist Elizabeth Jelin, whose goal is to train a newgeneration of Latin American and North American researchers aroundcutting-edge approaches to this critical cultural and political issue. Work­ing with anthropologist Charles Hale and ten Central American historiansand anthropologists, Jeffrey Gould has mounted a multiyear research ini­tiative, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, to examine"Memories ofMestizaje and Cultural Politics Since the 1920S" in five Cen­tral American nations. Daniel James is currently in the final stages ofa similarly ambitious N EH collaborative research effort, "The BerissoObrero Project," codirected by Argentine labor historian Mirta Lobato,which to date has gathered the testimonies of 250 male and female meat­packing workers as part of a broader effort to write a gendered history ofwork in this small industrial city south ofBuenos Aires.22 Greg Grandin'sresearch on Mayan constructions of the Guatemalan nation has contrib­uted to and benefited from related research initiatives at the Centro deInvestigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica (CIRMA) and the Asociaciónpara el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala (AVANCSO)¡ as aresult ofthis ongoing collaboration, Grandin was invited to participate asa consultant to the Guatemalan Truth Commission, whose historic reporton the origins of twentieth-century violence and repression he helped towrite,>3 Similarly, Thomas Klubock, Heidi Tinsman, and Florencia Mallon,

lO Gílbert M.]oseph

as well as Barbara Weinstein and Mary Ann Mahony, have fashioned re­search strategies that are highly integrated with the agendas oflocal uni­versities and institutes in Chile and Brazil, respectively. At present, DianaPaton is launching a multinational collaborative project whose goal is toproduce a gendered history ofslave emancipation in the Atlantic world.

Of course, the recent "hemispheric convergence" that Skidmore andothers are touting has hardly brought an end to scholarly fragmentation.Indeed, inter-American collaboration proceeds on a variety ofplanes, andnot without sorne voices raised in opposition. In addition to the con­vergence around a "new politicallcultural history" of Latin America, re­flected in this volume, one could also point to the vital North-South collab­oration linking postrnodernist literary critics and cultural studies scholarsin the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group24 and the Red Interameri­cana de Estudios Culturales; the incipient working group on Latin Ameri­can law and society;2S and the network that has galvanized neodassicalexponents of a "new Latin American economic history," sorne ofwhosemembers have been rather antagonistic to the other patterns of conver­gence,>6 No doubt a variety of factors has enhanced these diverse inter­American collaborations-to_ wit, the revolution in electronic forms ofcommunication, the recent surge in academic exchange between LatinAmerica and the United States (particularly the migration north of evergreater numbers ofLatin Americans to pursue advanced degrees and holdvisiting appointrnents), and the internationalization ofU.S.-based fellow­ship competitions, foundation boards, and elite research centers, whichhas enhanced the participation of Latin American scholars. Yet for manyLatin American leftist and nationalist intellectuals, these trends merelyunderscore the penetration and ascendancy ofthe (neoliberal) "New WorldOrder" and provoke from them a tepid if not negative response.27 SorneMarxist scholars are as opposed to the "new politicallcultural history"­which, by accentuating agency, language, and multiple axes of "differ­ence," undercuts more traditional, monochromatic explanations centeredon class and imperialistic oppression-as they are to neodassical para­digms centered on the market and rational choice.2•

The essays in this volume argue that historians can and should bearwitness to the ways in which abstract historical processes and institutions(e.g., markets, states, wars, capitalism, imperialism, positivism, slavery,patriarchy, dictatorship, and "modern" medicine) are inscribed on thebodies and memories ofreal people.29 They eschew modernist binaries andteleologies in their analyses, and try to show that dass, gender, and ethno­racial hierarchies and forms of oppression, although connected, do notmove in lockstep and often have distinct logics and trajectories. In the

Reclaiming "the Political" XI

process, the volume's contributors seek to reframe and reclaim the politi­

cal in Latin American history.The very fact that the political needs to be "reclaimed" says much about

the state of the field and intellectual life more broadly. The failure ofrevolutionary struggles in Latin America, the lack of a cohesive socialmovement in the United States, and the explosion, as Steve Stern puts it,of "paradigms of inspiration" that might connect ideas to purposefulaction-all add up to what Florencia Mallon describes as intellectual "hardtimes." Of course, progressive intellectuals have always contended withdifficult times. Referring to the totalitarian and fascist forms of"darkness"of a previous generation, Hannah Arendt wrote of "the disorder and thehunger ... the outrage over injustice and despair 'when there was onlywrong and no outrage.' "30 Yet, "even in the darkest oftimes," Arendt wenton, "we have the right to expect some illumination, and ... such illumina­tion may well come less from theories and concepts than from the uncer­tain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in theirlives and their works, will kindle under almost all circumstances and shedover the time span that was given them on earth.... Eyes so used to

darkness as ours will hardly be able to tell whether their light was the light

ofa candle or that ofa blazing sun. "3>

For many ofher students and colleagues, Emilia Viotti da Costa has beenthat blazing sun. And although she herself does not believe that the politi­cal needs to be reclaimed-for her, real history is always political-it is afitting theme for a book in Emilia's honor. She has constantIy remindedher students ofthe obvious: that history changesj that cycles ofdespair andhope are inextricably bound up with that changej and that what is impor­tant about methods for understanding the past is not their cleverness ortheir effectiveness in debunking what came before, but their usefulness inhelping us engage politically with the world. At the end ofher contributionto this volume, Emilia surveys the new hegemonic strategies that accom­pany the internationalization and technification of the economy under

neoliberalism. She draws our attention to

rhe improvement of the conditions of living of sectors of the workingclass at the expense of others ... and the consequent intensificationof erhnic conflicts which makes it difficult to promote class solidarity;rhe expansion ofthe informal sectors (where workers have no poweror rights); the extraordinary increase in the participation ofwomen inrhe labor force (generaring conflicts in the domestic sphere)j the re­newal ofputting-our systems (isolatingworkers); the multiplication ofremporary workers (which makes it increasingly difficult to organizerhem in rradirional ways)¡ the transformations ofresidential patterns,

11 Gllbrrt M. Joseph

with the disappearance ofworking-class neighborhoods (whlch tradl·tionally had been centers ofworking-class activity); changes in formsof leisure (isolating the workers in fronr of TV sers); rhe growingimpact of a media in the service of the state and of business corpora­tions; and finally, the generalization of a consumer mentality thatintensifies the tension between privation and desire and emphasizesthe individual at the expense ofthe social.

"This extremely complex scenario, which varies from one society toanother," Emilia contends, must inform political practice and theory, aswell as the new his tories we write, for "the mere reproduction oftraditionalinterpretations cannot account for this new reality." She recognizes, more­over, that despite the formidable challenges it poses to subaltern groupsand activist scholars alike, the present political and intellectual moment isalso alive with new possibilities. No matter how cruel neoliberalism orcorrupt democracy tend to be in Latin America these days, no matter howcorrosive of old solidarities, the current period is also redolent with newforms ofidentity and new modes ofpolitical and intellectual engagement­many ofwhich are discussed in the pages that follow. It remains to be seen,of course, how influential or lasting Skidmore's notion of "hemisphericconvergence," fueled by scholarly diasporas and enhanced communica­tion, will be, either in intellectual or political terms. But it has alreadythrown shafts of light across these "dark times," facilitating strategies ofNorth-South (and South-North) collaboration among scholars, labor orga­nizers, environmentalists, feminists, and Native American activists, to citethe more celebrated cases.

This emphasis on the need to integrate, to achieve a historiographicalsynthesis that "will avoid all forms of reductionism and reification," hasanimated Emilia Viotti da Costa's discussions with her students for thepast quarter century and is centrally at issue here. "The work ofthe histo­rian," Emilia maintains, "is always a dialogue between past and present,"and the good historian transcends earlier understandings and modes ofanalysis by means ofdialogue and argument, rather than simply by displac­ing them. "Ideas do not die," Emilia reminds her students, even as someintellectuals declare the end of ideology, and of history as well: "Ideasnever die; 1848 will come again. And when it does, you better be able torecognize it."

Notes

1 am grateful to Brooke Larson, Peter Winn, Iohn French, and Steve Srern for rheirthoughrful commenrs on an earlier draft, and to Greg Grandin for sharing ref!ectionsabout Emilia Viotti da Costa and Hannah Arendt that inspired parts ofthis essay.

ReclaímínB "the Political" 13

See, for example, Pierre Bourdieu's provocative correlation of social and intellecrualttends in "Neo-Liberalism, me Utopia (Becominga Reality) ofUnlimited Exploitation,"in Aets ofResistance: A,gainst the New Myths oIOur Time, transo Richard Nice (Cambridge:

Polity Press, 1998), 94-105.2 See the epigraph to Emilia Viotti da Costa's essay in this volume.3 See, for example, James Surowiecki, "Genovese's March: The Radical Reconstructions of

a Soumern Historian," Lingua Franca (Dec.-Jan. 1997): 36-51.4 In its second national conference in June 1000, the Historical Society took dead aim at

"me New Cultural History."See Linda Gordon's critique of(and exchange wim Joan Scott) in Signs 15,4 (r990): 851­59, for omer trenchant observations on mis danger, see Florencia E. Mallon, "ThePromise and Dilemma ofSubaltern Srudjes: Perspectives from Latín American History,"

American Historical Review 99, S (Dec. 1994): 1491-1515, John D. French and Daniel James,"Squaring me Cirele: Women's Factory Labor, Gender Ideology, and Necessity," inFrench andJames, eds., The Gendered Worlds ofLann American Women Workm: From Householdand Faetory te the Union Hall and Ballot Box (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), esp. 7­8; Leon Fink, "The New Labor History and me Powers of Historical Pessimism: Con­sensus, Hegemony, and me Case ofme Knights ofLabor," in In Search ofthe Working Class(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), esp. 135-36, and Emilia Viotti da Costa'sessay in mis volume.

6 See, for example, Lila Abu-Lughod, "The Romance ofResistance: Tracing Transforma­tions ofPower mrough Bedouin Women," American Ethnologist 17,1 (1990): 41-55; andSherry B. Ortner, "Resistance and me Problem of Emnographic Refusal," ComparanveStudies in Society and History 37 (Jan. 1995): 173-93.

7 Peter H. Smith, "Political History in me I980s: A View from Latín America," in Theo­dore K. Rabb and Robert 1. Rotberg, eds., The New History, the 1980s and Beyond: Studies inInterdisciplinary History (Princeron: Princeton University Press, 1981), 3-17 (quotationsfrom 4,16).

8 Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Emplre: Myths and Histories (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1985), xvii (emphasis mine).

9 In mis regard, Mallon's essay sheds important light on me mediated narure of oralhistories and testimonios, me issue which lies at me heart of me controversial debatebetween David Sto11 and defenders of Rigoberta Menchú Tum. See, for example, mespecial issue "IfTruth Be Told: AForum on Stoll and Menchú," Latin American Perspectives16,6 (Nov. 1999).

ro Frederick Cooper, Florencia E. Mallon, Steve J. Stern, Allen Isaacman, and Wi11iamRoseberry, Conftonnng Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System inAftica and Lann America (Madison: University ofWisconsin Press, 1993); Gilbert Josephand Daniel Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms ofState Formation: Revolunon and the Negotíation ofRule in Modem Mexico (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994); Joseph, Catherine C.LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore, eds., Close Encauntm oIEmpire: Wrinng the CulturalHistory ofU.S.-Latín American Relanons (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Joseph andSusan Deans-Smith, eds., "Mexico's New Culrural History: Una lucha libre? Special issueofHispanic American Historical Review 79, 1 (May 1999).

II Her argument here builds on earlier iterations: see, for example, Emilia Viotti da Costa,"Experience versus Sttuctures: New Tendencies in me History ofLabor and me WorkingClass in Latin America-What Do We Gain, What Do We Lose?" Intemanonal Labor andWorking-Class History 36 (full 1989): 3-14, and Crowns ofGlory, Tears qfBlood: The DemeraraSlave Rebe1lion of1823 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), esp. xiii-xix.

14 Gilbert M. joseph

11 See, for example, John Womack Jr., "Labor History and Work," paper presented at mesymposium "Industrial R.elations in Latin America: A New Framework?" Harvard Uni­versity, S November 1999· Womack is certainly correct about me need to reverse me ttendaway from research on the work process, ir is his disparagement of those labor histo­rians rhar do "culrural history" tout coart mat seems cause for alarmo

13 The quote is from Fernando Coronil 's foreword toJoseph et al., eds., Close Encoantm ofEm­pire, xi; a1so see William H. Sewe11 Jr., "Towards a Post-Materialist Rhetoric for Labor His­tory," in Leonard R. Berlanstein, ed., Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and ClassAnalysis (Urbana: University oflllinois Press, 1993), 15-38; Sewell, Workand Revolanoo: TheLangaage of Labor ftom the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997), Ricardo D. Salvatore, "The Normalization ofEconomic Lífe: Representations ofme Economy in Golden-Age Buenos Aires, 1890-1913," Hispanic American Historical Review,81,1 (Feb. 1001): 1-44; French and James, "Squaring me Cirde" and The Gendered Worlds;and me essays by Diana Paton, Thomas KIubock, and Heidi Tinsman in mis vol ume.

14 See, for example, William Roseberry, "Social Fields and Culrural Encounters," in Josephet al., eds., Close Encounters qfEmpire, 515-2 4.

15 Gilbert M. Joseph, "Close Encounrers: Towards a New Cultural History of U.S.-LatinAmerican Relations," in Joseph et al., eds., Close Encoanters ofEmpire, 3-46, esp. 14; AnneMcClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and SOOlality in the Colonial Contest (New York:Routledge, 1995).

16 For Viotti da Costa's role as a mentor, see Thomas E. Skidmore, "Studying the History of

Latin America: A Case ofHemispheric Convergence," Lann American Research Review 33, 1(199

8): 105-17, esp. u9-zo, amplified by personal communications wim me aumor.

The quotation is from Viotti da Costa's essay in mis volume.17 See Stern's essay in mis volume.18 See Weinstein's essay in mis volume.

19 Personal communication wim Maria Ligia Coelho Prado, 17 November 1999.lO Skidmore, "Studying me History OfLatin America," u5-I 7, quotation on IIl. Skidmore

focuses on me recent work ofFlorencia Mallon, Gilbert Joseph, and Steve Stem. He alsoalludes to me conttibutions mat Tulio Halperin Donghi of the University of California,Berkeley, and other exiled Latin American historians made to a "hemispheric con­vergence" in me way Latin American history is written.

2I Ibid., 111. It bears repeating mat many other Norm American scholars have played anactive role in such initiatives. In his contribution to mis volume, Stem draws our atten­tion, for example, to me catalyzing role me Social Science Research Council played inorganizing major international colIaborations to chart new directions in Andean andMexican history and anthropology. These projects were spearheaded on me North Amer­ican side by scholars such as Brooke Larson and Karen Spalding (Andes) and FriedrichKa¡z (Mexico).

22 For preliminary findings from mis project, see me essays by James and Lobato in Frenchand James, eds., The Gendmd Worlds ofLann Amencan Women Workm.

z3 Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, Guatemala: Memoria del silencio, I2 vols.(Guatemala City: Oficina de Servicios para el Proyecto de las Naciones Unidas, 1999);for an on-Ene version ofme report and an English-Ianguage summary, see htlp:/I hrdata

·-".aaas.org/ceh:---··'·· .'~~"~''''-',~-. 'oc'

Z4 On me creation ofme Latin American Subaltern Studies Group, see Mallon, "The Prom­ise and Dilemma ofSubaltern Srudies," 1504-6; for me group's "Founding Statement,"see me special issue on "The Postmodern Debate in Latin America," boundary 2, 20 (fuI!1993): IrO-ZI.

ReclaiminB "the Política'" 15

25 Por a recent sampling ofthe "new legal history," which discusses the emergence ofthisinternational community of scholars, see Ricardo D. Salvatore, Carlos A. Aguirre, andGilbert M. Joseph, eds., Crime and Punishment in Latin Ameriea: Law and Society Sinee LateColonial Times (Durham: Duke University Press, 20or).

26 Two recent collections ofthe new economic history scholarship are Stephen H. Haber,ed., How Larin Ameriea Fell Behind: Essa~s on the Economie Histories ofBrazil and Mexieo (Stan­

ford: Stanford University Press, 1997) and John H. Coatsworth and Ajan M.Taylor, eds.,Latin Ameriea and the World Eeonom~ Sinee 1800 (Cambridge: the David Rockefeller CenterSeries on Latin American Studies/Harvard University Press, 1998). Haber has been mostaggressively opposed to the new cultural/political history and postmodernism, which heinvariably lumps together in his attacks. See, for example, "The Worst ofBoth Worlds:

The New Cultural History of Mexico," Mexiean Studies/Estudios mexicanos 13, 2 (summer1997): 363-83; "Anything Goes: Mexico's 'New' Cultural History," Hispanie American

Historical Reuiew 79,2 (May 1999): 309-30; see a1so Susan Migden Socolow, "Putting the'Cult' in Culture," in the same issue, 355-65. Socolow labels the new political/cultural

history "the latest gringo intellectual contagion" and agrees with Haber that it has hadlittle impact in Latin America itself. For responses to Haber, see the commentaries byMallon and Claudio Lomnitz in the same issue of HAHR, and Stern's essay in thisvolume.

27 See, for example, Claudio Lomnitz, "Barbarians at the Gatel A Few Remarks on thePolitics ofthe 'New' Cultural History ofMexico," Hispanie American Historieal Reuiew 79, 2

(May (999): 367-83, esp. 382-83, for a suggestive discussion ofwhy many traditionalMexican historians have not embraced "the new cultural history."

28 See, for example, Francisco J. Carpintero, "Un proyecto académico exitoso? La nueva

historia cultural del campesinado mexicano," unpublished manuscript, 1999. OtherLatin American scholars who are in principie sympathetic ro a synthesís of politicaleconomic and materialist approaches have problems with the weighting that is oftengiven to them, particularly in scenarios where a preoccupation with gender and ethnicinequality impedes the historian's ability to critique underlying regimes of class and

imperial exploitation (personal communications with Maria Ligia Coelho Prado).29 l draw here on the eloquent discussion in Florencia E. Mallon, "Time on the Wheel:

Cycles ofRevisionism and the 'New Cultural History,' " Hispanie American Historieal Reuiew

79, 2 (May 1999): 331-51, esp. 349.30 Hannah Alendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1968), vüi.31 lbid., ix-x.

16 Gilbert M. ]oseph

Emilia Viotti da Costa

New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:

From Economic Reductionism to Cultural

Reductionism-in Search ofDialectics,

These times are times ofchaos, opinions are a seramble; parties are a jumble; thelanguage ofnew ideas has not been ereated; nothing is more diffieult than to give agood definition ofoneselfin religion, in philosophy, in polities.... The wodd hasjumbled its eatalog.-Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, 1790-18691

"May '68 we remade the world. May '86 we remake the kitchen." This jF'fj/y':; nc

:>

caption, which appeared in an advertisement published in the French d 7I'Sc;:~ '-'newspaper Le Mon~e, paid for b: a company that sells modern kitchens, i, ''k 1'r'1.d,,~ b) isuggests a change In people's attltudes from the 1960s to the 1980s: from a i / ~".t¡. 4--/./~rj9_~ ofpolitical militancy to the "yuppie" generation. It is true that one J PA.,_¡~~e-1 ~,might question the radicalism ofMay 1968 and doubt that it did, in fact, setout to remake the world-although there is no doubt that was the intentionofmany of the thousands ofyoung and not-so-young people that gatheredin the streets ofParis and other cities ofthe Western world. We might also¡ "

" . . 1 . . .. l' oc"" n:rlp ;,:("..,,-...cv)"'-'" doubt that the new generatlOn IS fundamenta ly consumenst, IndIVIdua IS-"",~ .r.-"'~~flll1,<..~ tic, and conservative. The advertisement probably expresses the hopes of ,-·)~:-,.vHL,d., sI

I entrepreneurs, not the attitudes of the consumers. But the advertisement- l (rv:S'r""V-rjve,

which was later reproduced on the cover of an issue of the Radical HistOT!JReview devoted to the study ofthe impact ofnew forms ofconsumerism on

, contemporary culture and politics-is a good metaphor to characterize the""" state ofmind ofmany historians and militants when they confront the new

trends both in the histories we live and the histories we write. 2 ~';:"C',,","'- _

One just has to look at some of the artieles published in recent yearsabout contemporary events to detect a tone of concern, if not pessimismand despair, reminiscent ofthe "mal du sickle" that affected Alphonse de

. 11 111,1,U'YI

" whid\ t11~CUSSC::-' the enu~rgt.'ncc=ofthis

vl't ,,' Illo .n.!" Il, S:,lvJWtc, Carlos A. Agllirre, and

"., 1'11111 ,llIn,"' 111 UJIII1 ¡\merien: Luw und Soeitly Sine, Lut.

ity 111,' '0, '001),

'''111111111 histnry scholarship are Stephen H. Haber,

11' onit,· E(OII~l11i[ Histories ofBrazil and Mexico (Stan-

tlJI! I ""llllh" H. Coarsworth and Alan M. Taylor, eds.,

" ,,,' 1M"" ICambridge: the David Rockefeller Center

11111' 11 d \ Inivcrsity Press, 1998). Haber has been most

,,11111 1I/I,ol1l'i(':1I history and postmodern.ism, which he

'1 ,,~ ve, fin cxample, "The Worst ofBoth Worlds:

¡,,,," M" .. "n" Studies/Estudios mexicanos I3, 2. (summeI¡, 11" 'Ncw' Cultural History," Hispanie American

;¡J: 'C" also Susan Migden Socolow, "Putting the

IUII' I~S ¡15. Socolow labels the new politicallcultural

HuI, I1I1Llgion" and agrees with Haber that it has had

hJr rcspunscs to Haber, see rhe commentaries by

¡, 11 ... '.'111" iSSllC of HAHR, and Stern's essay in this

1111111 . ")'"Irharians at the Gate? A Few Rcmarks on the

I"¡,,'V >Ir "kxk"," Hispanie American Historieal Review 79, 2

'<Ir 1 ,.l1ggcstive discussion of why many traditional

,1,1,1 JI t,I"¡he I1CW cultural histor'j."t Hlllulr'rll , llUn proyecto académico exitoso? La nueva

,di' ,nr<ic.lIlo." unpublished manuscript, 1999· Other

• II 11' ¡lrinóple sympathetic to a synrhesis uf political

I'h' ,,!t' . l1.Ive problems with the weighting that is ofi:en

" 11 tI" whcre :l preoccupation with gender and ethnic

1'.... ¡IlIIIIY In critique underlying regimes of dass and

I ""1 1" '1 11 Í<':1 tiú 11 S with ,vIaria Ligia Coelho Prado).

"" ,11'" in l'lorencia E. Mallon. "Time on the Wheel:Ne'" ;lIlllIr;1I History,''' Hispanie Ameriran Historieal Review

t 1.1 '\'~

Intr1 l'l'w VlI[k: ll~rcourt, Brace, and Company, I9 68), viii.

Emitía Víotti da Costa

New Publics, New Politics, New Histories:

From Economic Reductionism ro Cultural

Reductionism-in Search ofDialectics,

These times are times of chaos, opinions are a scramble; parties are a jumble; theIanguage of new ideas has not been ereated; nothing is more djffieult than to give agood definition ofoneselfin rcligion, in philosophy, in polities.... The world hasjumbled its eatalog.-Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine, 1790-1869'

"May '68 we remade the world. May '86 we remake the kitchen." Thiscaption, which appeared in an advertisement published in the Frenchnewspaper Le Monde, paid for by a company that sells modern kitchens,suggests a change in people's attitudes from the 1960s to the 19805: from ap.!:riod of polítical militancy to the "yuppie" generation. It is true that onemight question the radicalism ofMay 1968 and doubt that it did, in fact, setout ro remake the world-although there is no doubt thar was the intentionofmany of the thousands ofyoung and not-so-young peapie that gatheredin the streets ofParis and other cities ofthe Western world. We might alsodoubt that the new generation is fundamentaJly consumerist, individualis­tic, and conservative. The advertisement probably expresses the hopes ofentrepreneurs, not the attitudes ofthe consumers. But the advertisement­which was later reproduced on the cover of an issue of the Radica! HistoryReview devoted to the study of the ímpact ofnew forms ofconsumerism oncontemporary culture and politics-is a good metaphor to characterize thestate ofmind of many historians and militants when they confront the newtrends both in the histories we live and the histories we write. 2

One just has to look at some of the articles published ín recent yearsabout contemporary events to detect a tone of concern, if not pessimismand despair, reminiscent ofthe "mal du siecle" that affected Alphonse de

¡I,New Publics, New Politi,,,, Nrw IlislurI

11111 11:1Vl; :J1I;~cII'd [;111" sllL'icty ;lnd rhe conditions of inrelleetual produc­t 1111 L SiUIl!> ¡d' 11'1\ ,111\1', ,'alJ Iw I'-:leed b:1ck to the 1950S. The work ofJean­l' 1111 Sdrlll' (¡l.ltllllilllly 111" ¡"rilltjUC >Ir Dialertiral Reason) and also of his.1dvl'r... IIY ¡\k¡il 111 ",'1m' I('~P_" i.llly IlulJllllli\1TI and Terror and The AdventuresI IJIilIt, 1111) ,l1r.· 111\' '11111,11111 d 111l' 11(''1'¡''!i¡t.iI,;~ and doubts thar led to the

thénn:li, .11 il1lPOI,o,l' Wl'll1llfíl1l1l Ind '1\' 111 .111 <.:ssay published in the sixties,lvlcrlc:HJ-I'nnry 1VII 1. 1I1..1'r1 Ih 11 i11f ,tl.dl" tir I1.HI ¡IS own hjsrory. He calledattention tu tlll'; ivll"'OI1 IIlIWITII IIn'dlllll .IlHI nCl'C'ssity in the interior ofthe dialectic anu IIUI iced 111.11 dl'llll11lllll; Iln'flcL,l )lr.lxi~, historians wereled ro emphasize either impl'rsllll.lI IIld "111111'( Ilvr" 1Ii.'illlrical forces or therole ofthe hisrorical subjcc:t, .JI1d lhll" ,11 .llhJI'lllvity, will .. llld fret.:dom.

In fact, when we examint: I he ch.lllf:t''' (11,11 !¡¡¡v¡' I,¡I'\'II pl.,".t.: in rhhistoriography of rhe past thirty YC<H:;, WI' r1l11111 '1 f'l.ldll:tl -.hin 1IlJ.: 1rom

necessiry ro freedom: from an emphasi~ 011 w!l.lI W\.I'f' U111T tktllH:d as"objective" historical [orces to an emplusis UI¡ ¡he 111';(11111.11 .111111'" ~llb·

jectiviry, creativiry, and agency; from a prcaceup:.l1 ion WIl 11 111.llt'll.tI l'lIIHIt

tions of existence ro a preoccupation with pcrCCp[illll~. ~YJ1lht1'" 1111',111

ings, and rituals; and froID a preoccupation wirh whar in lhe I()("):. IV:I:.

characterized as infrastructure to what was then conceprualizt:L! as :,u[il'rstrucrure. What started as a healthy and necessary critiquc of mecha niSl \(;interpretations, economic determinism, structuralism (as in E. P. Thomp­son's critique of Althusser, for example): and the artificial separatianbetween infra- and superstructure (a separation skillfully criticized by Ray­mond Williams in Marxism and Literature) 5 ended, against the original inren­tions of the authors, in a complete inversion. Culture, polities, language,and meaning, instead ofbeing constiruted (determined) became constitu­tive (determinant). Consciousness was again seen as determining the so·cial being rather than the reverse-as posrulated by the historiography ofthe sixties (ieaving aside, ofcourse, the conservative historiography, which Ihas always asserted the transcendental nature ofconsciousness). I

The valid critique of essentialist notions of class and of meehanicalrelations between class and class consciousness (so well problematized inG0ran Therborn's The Ideolo,gy of Power and the Power of Ideolo,gy),6 and thenew parhs it opened for an investigation ofthe process ofconstruction anaarticulation of multiple and ofien conrradicrory identities (ethnie, reli­gious, class, gender, nationaliry, and so on), often led to the total neglect ofthe concept of class as an inrerpretive category. What started as a recogni­tion that historians construct their own objects, and a critique ohhe objcctivism characteristic of a positivist reading of marxism (which wrullr:1yassumed a total separation between subjeet and object, asserting l!le ~(it'l1

tific nature of historieal knowledge), has frequenrly led ro :1 CIIIII(,kl,'

Lamartine's and Alfred de MussCt';:; (r810-1852) generatian, whieh S:lW lh<.:early hapes of rhe Freneh Revnllltian lI10mentarily collapse during theRestaration. Even mor<: rcvealing are sorne ofthe boak reviews and essaysdiseussing new hisroriogrJphieal trencis. Concerned wirh rhe new tenden­cies thar have raken hisrorieal studies away from traditional paths, enlarg­ing rhe fronriers of hisrorical research to areas never explared befare andraising doubts abollt rraditional appraaches, methads, and interpretarians(tendencies rhat often go together with new palitical gaals and strategies),sorne hisrorians have reacted as ifrhese tendencies represent a dangerous

ruprure with the pasr and a rhreat to rhe future.The field is polarized. Gn one side are those who view the new tenden­

cies wirh suspicion and reservarian, and who, unwilling ta establish adialogue with the new, continue to write history as ifthey were stillliving inthe 1960s. Gn the ather side are those wha uncritically pursue the work ofdemolition of traditional approaches, embracing new fashians jllst be­cause they are new, withaut examining their limitatians and implications.Both positions are misleading. The first, because ir refuses ro incorporateat the theoretical level the extraordinary transfarmatians that have takenplace in the pasr thirty years, srubbornly clinging to theorerical schemesthat no langer account for the world around them. Nar surprisingly, thosewho adopt this pasition have lost the capaciry to recruit follawers amongnew generations. The second is misleading because, in irs quest for orig­inaliry and its sedllction by new fashions, it simply inverts the assumptiansafthe historiography ofthe 1960s instead ofintegrating them in a new andricher synthesis. 'Ihus, in spite ofall its claims to nove1ty, ir runs rbe risk ore-crearing a rype of history even more traditional than the one it repudi·~3!es. and-what is worse-in its eagerness to look for new themes, me-

new historiography" ignores aspects that are crucial for understandingsociety and history. Readers of mis new history are .often kft unable tósitua~(theñiSelves in relation ro past and present, henee incapable of con­srrucfing ¡he furore. h its best, this attitude converts history into a mererhetorical exercise aimed at entertaining the reader. At its worst, it trans­forms ir into an academic exercise that, in spite of its authors' intentions,serves purposes fundamentally conservativc. In this polarized field it isextremely important that we stop to think about rhese contradicrory ten­dencies, not with the purpose of returning ro approaehes and strategiesthat have been obviously superseded by history itself, ar to uncriticallycelebrare the new approaches, but ro open new parhs for a mueh-needed

synrhesis.'To understand rhe episremological ruprure thar has occurred in the past (

thirry years, we have to place it within its historical conrext: rhe changes

Ir' ,1· \

18 Emilia Viotti da Costa (

subjectivism, ro the denial ofthe possibility ofknowledge, and sometimeseven ro the questioning ofthe boundaries between hisrory and fiction, "factand fancy" (for example, Hayden White's emphasis on "the fictive natmeof historical narrative"). 7

Both the traditional and the new approaches are eminently anti­dialectical. They not only establish an arrificial separation (opposition)between objectivity and subjectivity (or freedom and necessity), forgettingthat one is implied in the other, but they also ignore a basic dialecticalprincipIe: that men and women make hisrory, but not under the conditionsoftheir own choosing.

The result of the shift from one theoretical position to another was aninversion: we simply moved from one reductionism to another, from eco­nomic ro cultural or linguistic reductionism. To one type of reification webave opposed another. Both are equal!y unsatisfacrory. Neither approach "does justice to the complexity ofdialectics and tbe theory ofhuman praxis,but thanks to sucb an inversion, it may be possible today to attempt a newsyntbesis. g

The demolition oftraditional approaches has bad several casualties. Onewas the notion of historical process. Dissatisfied, and witb good reason,witb a teleological history tbat saw each historical moment as a necessarystage in a linear process that automatical!y conducted to an end alreadyknown, a great number ofhistorians went so far as to deny that history badany logic ofits own. They also gave up any attempt at totalization. This led

to tbe discrediting ofal! tbeoretical models, whetber tbey originated in thetbeories of modernization, dependency, world system, or modes of pro­duction. Consequently, theoretical debates, whicb in the past often lackedempirical basis and risked becoming scholastic and sterile, have been post­poned if not abandoned altogether. Empiricism became fashionable again,not as a necessary moment in the elaboration ofany theory, but as an end initself, as if history would somehow reveal itself to whoever leans overdocuments. From a nondialectical, deductive appraach that demonstratedmore than investigated, and that seemed to know what it would find evenbefare it started looking for it, we have moved to an inductive approachLhat never reaches theoretical levels. Instead of emphasizing similarities,hIstl;lrians empbasize differences; instead of privileging regularities, tbeyprivikgt, the unpredictable, tbe accidental, the unexpected, the irrational,IJll' 'plIIlf.lnCOUS.

1111 "lli~llJire tableau" and the "historie de la vie quotidienne," whicbI¡,Id 111)1':11 11l11t1l1S in fr;mce in the 1950S but since buried, were resuscitated111 11 llf.\\ IIld !l1I1rC: refined rhetorical garbo So were tbeories of national'"¡¡ill¡lI,Iel', wltlcli ¡'WryOllC bclievcd had been put to rest with the defeat of

l/l" Vil/lli ,JIl r;'JIICl

~

) Nazisru ill 19·['i. hut whieh now reappear under the guise of"culrure" or"ethnieity." ~UllUll.UlCOu.sLy, memory often took the place of history. A

\ gro;¡ng nllITiiit:r.of hislori;¡;ls.scemed more imerested in gatheriog peo-ple's testimonie:. ¡¡[JI,] collt·l'tii1gilieirmemoirs than in wriring their his ro ry.So importanl h~lS lhi~ Il'l'nci hc.:cóme that in December 1997 the AmericanHistotical Reuiew t!L'dic~lll:d Ollt: of its "forum" sections to "History andMemory." In lhe inll'o(iII"t-ílJ!l, tile editor stresses that "collective memoryhas become ;1 cornrwllill¡": 'ill'llI oC historical analysis." FolIowing on thesteps oftbe French hislul"i:11I i'ic.:rrl' Nor:l, the adepts ofwhat soon becamean overwhelming gellrc h;¡v~ ne:llcd magazines, pramoted internationalgatherings, and nar surpnsingly I'clrllited ever more followers. Althoughmost historians cOlllinuc til 11~1: ilr:J! testimonies to supplement archivalmaterial, some haY<> c.:OIlIL' lo n.:Jy l.'xclusively on interviews; thus memorytakes the place ofhistory, ,IIHI oral ¡Ii~tury displaces archival research. Thisgenre has become espec.:i:i1ly Sllccessllll :1l1long gwups committed to mak­ing the voice of the voicc.:lcss h":1nl in rhc puhlic arena." But often, asSteven Watts put it, "c¡¡gcr ro dispense disclIrsive 'participation' to all ex­cluded cultural graups. lincuisl il kftisb fuikJ ro challenge the underlyingsocio-economic, politica!, :tnd clillllr:i1 SlrUCllln:s lhat have excluded thosegraups to begin with :1Ild havc suslaint.:d the il1usion of'choice.' "10

Because the tradition:i1 hi::.wri()graphy had neglected the subjectivity of 1historical agents (transfnrming it into an epiphenomenon, seeing peopleas "bearers" of hisroriea! (Ofl'CS r;:¡ther than as historical agents), the newrj historiography chose tn focus 0/1 human agency and ro write history fram \

~ the point ofview ofthose who h;:¡d been silenced or forgotten. Ihenumberof practitioners uf ora! history grew, as did the number of srudies basedexc1usively on testimonies and inrerviews-as ifthese conrained the wholehistory, or as if hisrory were nothing but a confusion of subjectivities andvoices, a sort ofTower of Babel. The extremists claimed that the only wayout was for each one to tell his or her own version of history. Hisrorianswould be limited to registering the many versions, and perhaps addingtheir own. There was a danger in this appraach, however, that some schol­ars were quick to poinr out. Witnesses' aecounrs are always partial; onecannot grasp historical pracesses by hearing one side. And even afterhearing many and contradictory testimonies, historians have to submitthem ro historical criticismo Otherwise they will miss the history behindthe words.

Under the infiuence of Foucault, hisrorians' attenrion moved fram theglobal strucrures ofdomination, the pracesses ofcapital accumulation, thestate, and the relations between social cJasses-an of \-vhich had been atthe center of traditional historiography-to the micropbysics of power.

New Publics. New Polities, New Histories 21

NrlV f'uvlif5, NCll' PUllllt\, N"II' Iltltori

gu~gc oC class rhat was constructed and inscribed within a complex rhet­orie (Ir IIler3phorica1 association, causal inference and imaginary construc­lioll "-sollll'rhing that is always good to remember, but in itself is not('llOugh lo understand class experience (as Neville Kirk has pointed Out inhis ¡illl' !"l'vil'w ofthe literature on Chanism)." Criticizing Stedman-Jones

llr 11lH ".Irrying his methodology to its ultimate consequences, Joan Scott,111 "( 111 I..IIlEu;lr~e, Gender, and Working-Class History,"'6 went on to pro­I'US l' ,1 IIIL'rhllc! 1h:Jl would sho\\' how "ideas such as class become throughI:JUI:II.Il::l', SlJ(."j;¡J n:;diries." This is a complete inversion ofthe traditional11l..:tlwt!D!uH). [111 ilis e;IS(:', 13nguage determines social relations rather thanthe r~verSl',l' In tll i:; t..:xt Scan seems to give priority to the concept ofc1assover c!;JSS cxpericlI(.;(:' whl'1l she says that "concepts like class are requiredbefi)re illdivic!u;¡Js can irlemitY themselves as members of such a group,befare they call :Icr colleerively :lS such. "'8¡ 1,\ <il ,.. \ \l~ ,...r~ eh- (! (>'; ~'11<¡

\ Discourse an;.l1l'sis is, ofeourse, fundamental 10 the historian's work. Infact, it would be f¡lir to say rtur rhere i5 no hi5torical research that does nor

~ start ~yith an analysis of di~our~e. But LO recognize this [act is not the

same as to sal' that discoursc anall'sis is sufficient for understanding his­tory. And certainly it does not mean, as sorne people would like to believe,that the only things that exist are texts upon texts, or that the work ofthe historian, like that of rhe ¡iterary critic, is nothing but an infinitedeconstruction.

Terry Eagleton, describing the events of1968 and the emergence ofpost­structuralism, commented on the irony that, incapable of subverring statepower, the generation of '68 subverted language. In a review of Furet'sbook about the French Revolution, Lynn Hunt noticed in 1981 that thehistory ofthe Great Revolution-whjch [or a long time had been associatedwith violence, hunger, and class conflict-had been transformed into a

'" "semiologica1 event." Furet had invented a new metaphysic in which 1an­guage creates human relations. '9

The new historiography has also shown a growing concern with episte­mologjcal problems; that is ro say, with the discourse ofthe historian. Thi:;tendency is not new. In "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of tlll'Human Sciences," Jacques Derrida observed that we need ro interprct thl'interpretation more than to interpret the things themselves. 20 His appc,dwould find many followers who were more concerned with discussill¡; 1hlimits of historical consciousness than with history itself Thc catL'gOJ'It'~

used by historians in their interpretations of the past were brollglll ¡lit"

question, leading to obsessive speculation about the validity o/ .11~pl) 111

our own categories to other cultures, and to other times ;lnc! pLICI", ( .nl W

appll' categories born out ofEuropean experience ro tlll' "Oril'lI"" COII\ tI"

,.22 Emilio Viotti da Costa

~

This led to an extraordinary expansion of rhe frontiers of history: crimi­naJity, prostiturion, homosexuality, wirchcraft, carnival, smells, proces­sions, rituals, the theater of p~er, myths and legends, cartography andother forms of representations (all ofwhich had interested historians onlymarginaJly in the past) absorbed the energies of the new generation ofhistorians. But only rarell' did they attempt to establish a connection be­

rween the ~acro- and the microphysics ofpower. In SODe rare and notableexceptions these rwo approaches carne together." More often they ra nparallel ro each other as alternative wal's of looking at history. The resultwas that in spite ofthe extraordinary expansion ofthe field ofhistory allJour understanding ofthe multipliciry and variety ofhuman experience. tI\(:macrophysics ofpower remained in the shadow. Although this mechod nl"

J analysis, derived from a simplistic reading ofFoucault, did help idcntify rhemanl' places where power is exerted-and this was a positive contributillnto our knowledge ofthe past-it refused to explain how and why power isconstituted, reproduced, and transformed. Contrary ro Foucélulr's originalintention, the micro-histories remained often as colorful pieees of a bro­ken kaleidoscope never coming together to produce a design, fragmenrs ofexperience without meaning.

(f) \ The politica1 strategies that in the past were based on the critique ofthe state and of economic and social structures \Vere not validated by thenew historiography. Other strategies found justification in the new his­tory, which celebrates spontaneity, negotiation, day-to-day resistance, the"weapons of the weak," and preaches the subversion of language. Butthese trends that mal' mean emancipation can easily lead to a dead end,since it is difficult to take a position before a history that is characterized asarbitrary, chaotic, and without meaning or direction.

None ofthe tendencies mentioned here has contributed as much to theinversion of dialectics as the emphasis on discourse, be it the discourse ofthe oppressed or of the oppressors, the discourse of the reformists or ofthe conservatives-a tendency that one author has defined as "vulgar lin­guicism." As Bryan Palmer stresses in Descent ¡nta DisCDurse,1.2 manl' authorswho have adopted this approach have imponed a rerminology that servesonly to decorate their historical texrs, which otherwise continue to follow

ívery conventional methods. "Discourse," "Ianguage," "symbolic," "de­construction"-all have become common expressions in historians' jar­gon, although often as part only oftheir vocabulary, not oftheir theory. Thenexr step, however, was the reification oflanguage. This tendencl' appearsclearly in influentia1 studies ofthe working class. 13 Gareth Stedman-Jones,for example, in Languages af Class, 14 after asserring that there is no socialreality ourside or befo re language, concludes that Chartism "spoke a lan-

\.1~

New Publics, New Politics, New Histories 25

de Bcallvoir, rJisl.:d I'he b:¡nncr ofthe new feminism." She was one ofthe Jfirst ro show h()w powcr is il1lplicared in the construction of the other. 26

Thus already in rhe fifrit.:s ane! sixties, one could dctect the perplexities, theconflicts, ancl rhe rrcnds lb.ll Gime ro dominate the new historiography.But the new gcnel~11i'lll ni hisrori:l\1s did not follow Sartre. 27 Their work iscloser ro FOllcall[t. Derrid.l, :Ind Ihe new French philosophers. 28 This led

"Y them to a confronra¡j()ll .11)(.1 ;¡ rllplllre with the historiographical traditionsofSartre' s era.

It is perhaps in rhe fidrl of laho!' his1'Ory rhat the conflict between the oldand the new is more visibk. Wilik in rile past hisrorians focused on con­flicts between capital :lIld 1:Jbur .Hld on rhe macrophysics of power, andwere concerned with ceollomiL Slrlll.:lurcs :Ind the role of the state and oftrade llnion leaders :1I1d lHJlil'i(.li [).Irl ic.:s in rhe formarion of the workingc!ass, the new hisLOrior,r.lf'hy tlIrnl.'d ro rhe study of rituals, language,family, leisure, and daY-lu-d.JY n:sisr.lncc. Whilc in the past hisroriansrasked what impacr illdll~ln,d l'il.lIlgl' :l1lcl rhe starc had on the workers'movement, the nt'w hiswry IIIVc.:IIL'U thL' (!ucstion and asked what impactthe workers' movemenr h:\(1 nn 1h(' t'COIlOI1lY ~ll((J 011 state formation. Whiletraditional hisroriography W.IS cOIlll-rncd Wilh "rhe working c!ass," whichwas assumed ro be rht.: revllllltilln.lry dlS~, tile new historiography prob­lematized and hisroriciztd IlI)UtJIIS nf c.:Iass :ll1d class consciousness, ques­tioning the essentialisl vicw n( llie w\.Jl'king class characteristie of tradi­tional historiograph)'. TIH' Ilc.:W hisl<lringraphy aJso raised doubts about the,alleged "natural" solicLlrilY of rhe working class and exposed the internalconflicts that iSSllCd fmllll hL' 111,111)-' Jnd sometimes competitive identities­national, religiolls, cthnit;, Sl'XU.J1, :lllll so on-undermining working-classsolidarity. Simultancollsly, lhe IlCW historiography repudiated teleologicalapproaches that in rht.: P:ISl h:,d assumed that history marched inevitablytoward socialisrn :lIld rh.lI' l':lch hisrurical moment was a new stage in thatdirection. The fOCllS of;¡llention moved from the labor movement ro theworkers, fmm the f:H:tnry lo the houselwld, from rhe working man ro theworking woman, Prum rile individual worker to his family, and from workto leisure and clllrure.

The new hisroriol-:r:lphy ofbhor reexamined rhe relations bet:ween lead­ership and the grass !'ours, bctwcen the trade unions and governments. Itchallenged rhose wilo hau Jssumed an alltomatic connection between theforms of conscinusnl:s~ :lIld types of activities workers were involved in,and it repudiJtt:d rht: cOl\ceprs ofhegemony and false consciousness oftenemployed by traditioll:,d (¡ístoriography. In this process of revision, histo­rians also incorpor;¡ted into their analysis the urban nonindustrial workerswho had scarcely cl:Jimce! attention in the past. As a consequence ofa11 this

l4. Emilia Viotti da Costa

colonizer speak for the colonized? Can we write the hisrory of the op- L'prcssed, or should they speak for themselves? Can che subaltem speak?21Can the theories about the sexual division oflabor that we use to study thecentral areas of capitalism be applied ro the periphery?Z2 Doubts mountand multiply. More and more, we talk about what historians can or cannotdo instead of talking about history. Here too, what started as a healthyreflection upon the distortions that historians' biases impose on the writ·ing of history, and a critique of Euroeentric or Westem-centric points ofview, can easily be tumed into a perversely gleeful denial of the possibilityof historical knowledge. We are far from the many certainties that charac·terized the sixties. This can be good, but it can also be bad, especially ifwe

become too certain of our uncertainties.That the historiography which carne out of a positivist reading of the

classics of the dialectic left much to be desired is something that has beenacknowledged for a long time, though the beating of dead horses remainsone of our favorite intramural sports. In fact, much of what appears today~under the labels of"postmodern" or "poststructuralist" found its roots in '-. ~?the work of a French philosopher who had a great impact in the sixties but 1:. ,ti 'a""J...was later ostracized, probably because ofhis political connections. Anyone ~who takes the time ro read the first two hundred pages ofSartre's Critique ofDialectical Reason (the section entitled "The Question ofMethod")" will finda keen critique of marxist historiography as it was written by Sartre'scontemporaries. Sartre criticized intellectuals who believed that they wereserving their party by simplifying the data, neglecting details, and concep-tualizing the event before they had studied it. He accused them of having

"" transformed what was supposed to be a method of research inro a newmetaphysic. Commenting on Daniel Guerin's La lutte des cIasses sous la Pre·miere République, Sartre said that "this method is a priori. The author doesnot construct its concepts from the experience he wants to decipher. Heknows the truth cven befare he has started. His only goal is to fit the events,the people and their actions inro pre-fabricated molds."" Sartre also crit- ""j-J~-L.icized the reduction of the political ro the social, and of ideology to c1assinccrests. He condemned historians for Dot being able ro integrate intogleir histories the perspective of the historical agenrs, and fOI dehumaniz·ing b.istory. Sartre also challenged those who established a mechanistic ~. - ..~telation between individuals and social c!asses, bet:ween social c!ass and (),__ c...¡consciousness, and between imaginary and real praxis. He insisted on the

I importance of mediations and condemned the teleological nature of his·torical explanations. Sartre also criticized the essentialist, functi~:JI1ali~t, 1)and static approaches that ignored the meaning of contradictions and the ";'-;Frl~

importance ofthe historical process. His friend and companion, Simon¡ ~

rhemselves unablc to assess critically rheir own situation and rheir ownvuloerabiliry.

What Schneider does not seem to visualize is thar whar today seems rohim so derivative may be a necessary moment ro correcr distorrions andinsuffieiencics of the past historiography, and that it might lead ro rheproducrion of a new and richer synthesis, and a new and more effecrivepolitical pr;:¡crice. 31 For rhat synthesis to happen, however, we need to payatrention ro both sides, and subjeet borh to a serious critique. The need forsuch a cririque seerns even more imporranr on rhe periphery, where intel­leetual fashions, instead of being a resulr of a reRecrion upon internalconditions, arc ofren imported from places where the realiry is profoundlydifferenr. When 1 hear Michelle Perrot, the famous Freneh feminist andlabor historian, say thar rhe posrmodern sociery is "a sociery in which rhepossibilities of individual cxpressiviry have actually mulriplied," that the"impacr of dominanr polirical and cultural models on people has beenexaggerated, rhat peopIe srill have rheir private lives, their critical facuIties,which are more and more important because peopIe are more and moreeducated," 1pause and wonder whether this rea11y applies ro Latin Amer­ica. But when she goes 00 to say that "after a11, posr-modern sociery is :1sociery in which class has a different meaning and in which people have.:

greater respect for each orher," 1 ask myself. in which world has she.:lived?32 It cerrainly is not the one I know. Racism, torture, massacres 01polítical leaders, dearh squads, increasing numbers of robberies and ~IS

saulrs, domes tic violence, probIems of survival rhar affect the day-to-d;IYlife of men and women of the periphery froro Mozambique ro El Salvatk>rand Guaremala, the SLX million abandoned children ofBrazil, the problclllofthe inner cities in the United Srares-rhese sorrs ofrhings do not S~'I'JlIro have entered the universe of Michelle Perror, or thar of many orhn ill

re11ecruals of the developed nations. Seen from the periphery. 'he: (d '

bratory narcissism and the forms of militancy of this new aV;lIll-¡:,lltl, ,which ignores what happens in their ex-colonies, and SOrnel illl~". t Y"I1

what happens in their own backyard, seem suspicious and forc<.: 111(' 1(1 1,11 ,/

questions about the validiry of applying analyticaI c:1tegoril's borll ltlJl ,,1

such a diverse experience to orher parts ofrhe world, and pérh.I¡1', (\r'1I l.,

our own.

The new tendencies of American and Europe:Jn Ili,'irlll'io/;ll lpil)' \\

born out ofconcrere situarions. Sorne are similar ro thu'i<.: 1Ve: fltld ill I hcalled Third WOrld; others are not. They are, in p:.lrt. re:l.llt'd lil lhthe Sovier system and ofa certain rcading ofrn.lrxiSl1J dlJrllJl: Ihperiod, and the ensuing critique offorrns nforg;llliz.llilJlI •. !lld Sit'.. !!followed by political parties associar<.:d wirll I/W 'illVÍt'! LJIJÍlIIJ, 1" lile ,1

revisionism, rhere was a grear expansion of the boundaries of the histo­riography oflabor, which carne to include social rnovements, women, andworkers in rhe service sector. This, too, has been a positive movemenr, burif carried ro its extreme, it can have negative consequences because itmakes people lose sighr of fundamental historical forces rhat affecr noronly rhe lives of IVorkers, bur also rheir own lives.

The new tendencies in rhe historiography of labor have triggered greatdebares and sorne negative reactions, parricularly because they are direcrlytied to conternporary polítical questions. This becomes obvious, for exar:n­pIe, in Michael Schneider's 1987 essay, "In Search of a 'New HistoricalSubject': The End of Working-Class Culture, the Labor Movernent, andProlerariar,"29 in which he shows the direcr connecrion berween rhe newhistoriography and polirical rrends in posrwar Germany-rrends whichhave led sorne wrirers to assert thar rraditional forms of prolerarian con­sciousness cannor emerge in rhe presenr time, and even to predicr the endof rhe prolerariat and of rhe labor movement, and rhe emergence in irsplace of social movemenrs such as peace rnovements, ecological move­ments, feminisr movemenrs, and so on. Confronting rhis challenge, orherslook wirh nostalgia to a past thar rhey describe as a rime when the working-lass culture was integrarive and radical, and blame rhe srrategies of social

democracy for irs disappearance. Schneider argues that rhe successes ofsocial democracy.and of rhe trade unions within rhe liberal democraricsystem and rhe marker economy in Germany did indeed irnprove the condi­tions of workers, leading to an erosion of class consciousness. 30 The nu­merical decline of the working class and the difficulties of creating classconsciousness led to a redefinirion of political strategies and, simulta­neously, to rhe search for new historiographical paradigrns orienred to­ward the study of the polirics of "ordinary" people's daily lives. Analyzingthe consequences of these new political and hisroriographical practices,Schneider remarks that the solidarity among small groups ofworkers, orthe inhabirants ofa neighborhood, may indeed create alternative islands ofculture and social reform, but cannor replace a more inclusive poliricalprogramo In his opinion, rhe projecrs that aim ar exploring the políticalporential in the lives of ordinary people, and which emphasize only thenegative aspecrs of more inclusive class and polirical party organizarions,may lead to a dead end. Afrer pointing ar rnethodological flaws in this newhisroriography, Schneider concludes thar rnany of the local and regionalstudies rhar are following the new rrends offer nothing more rhan anuncritical compilarion ofderails whose relevance is never questioned. Theyrem:lin a cemerery of sources, a museum of curiosities. There is also rhedanger, hc SJYS, rhar the hisrorians who cultivare rhis type ofhisrory will be

26 Emília Viotti da Costa

A slir:htly lhjkr~ lit VtlllC'll ,,1 rlll§ ~",lY \Vas presented as the keynote speeeh at the

sev~llth I"h"r '1IId,,·. 1 UIiI~"'Il'''', A[jama, Georgia, Oetaber 199I.

1 Citel! by l'I,lloru 1 .""1/ , I'hr Inl:rprelúllon oJCullures (New York: Basie Books, 1973). 22I.

2 RCldlcal IlnltJTI¡ RrUI"W 1 11I¡Il]i'll)-Ql.

This i< wh.IIII·.111 IlId 1101111 1'utrJarul1are lrying ta do in amhropology. See, for example,

Of !<torlntloll ulld 1l.J'l'lIlull~n: U1MllíunilY Llnd Consciousness in Soutn Afriea, 2 vols. (Chieago:

Univer81ry nfl'h .. 1f!1J I'r~"'''' 19')1, 1997).

4 E. 1'..¡ h'1lIlI1'''II. I",.l'lI~mll11rTh,"ry and Olner Essays (London, Merlin, 1978).

5 RaY111t111t\ Wtll'IIn&. Munlsm unJ Litaature (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1977.) See

.JI~(l Wdli~m'.. l'mblrml of MOlUl"ltsm and Culture (London. Verso. 1980) and Kt]jwards: AVnlllbulllry I~ (.uh'lrr Jnd ~oeirty lLondon: Fontana. 1988).

6 t .<')r,11I Iherilll' n. Ihr Itlrolu.9Y uJPower and tne Pawer afldealogy (London: Verso, 1980).

7 I i.1}'dell WllIlr. "111<' V:c1u~ ofNarrativity in the Representation ofReality," Critieal lnquiry1.11111111111 II¡Ro): h -17; "The StrueLUre of HistOriea! Narrativeo " Clia 1 (1972): 5-20; and

"'1 he Iti.I'''Il'.t1 ¡e~1 '5 Lirérary Artifaer," Clio 1 (1972): 41-62.

8 I h.IVlo .I'II·ll1pl'·" Ihis ~ynthesis in Crowns ofGlory, Tears ofBlood: The Demerara Sla", RlbellionuJ JI!! TI N.olV Yllrk, Oxford Universiry Press, 1994).

9 1).1I1i~1 i.llllr'., ill "Me'.Jrpackers. Peronists. and Collective Memory: A View from the

SUIIII,." 1I1l1i~es ll,:lr there is a new boom in che academy "eentered on the production ofII:Xr, .tI""11· rncmory. eommemoration, and forgening." He points our thar "there is

SOIIl~ ~lJIIl'ergence between rhe themaries of the aeadem)' and the wider popular cul­IlJr~." Amrrrwn Ilinorieal Review (Dec. 1997): 1404' For che ptoblems involved in working

New Pubtics, New Potities, New Histories 29

Note.s

re;rl!y was ;\ \V;III'rsh~d. Hur rhe opposition suggested by the advertisemenrwith which I st.lncd "¡\lby '68, \Ve remade the worldo May '86, we remakerhe kitcIICI1," Illilit.IIICY versus consumerism-may be more apparent rhanreal, :1I1d is L·crl.lillly rcversible. Recent events in Europe and rhe new andrecurrcnr ... ri~i, ill IIIl.' clpit;disr world, particularly felr in rhe periphery,suggest pcrh,lps Ih:lI Wl' :lIl' cnrering a new hisrorical periodo The momenrfavors a synll1l'sis Ih.lt will IVClid all forms ofreductionism and reificarion(wherher eco JI o 111 11 , l ulrJlL11. lll' linguistic), that wil! nor lose sighr of rhearticularion bcl\vt.'lO I I Ilw lI1it:'ro- :1I1d macrophysics of power, thar wil! rec­

ognizc rhar hUIll,111 ',uilICll1viIV is :.It rhe same rime constitured by andconstirllriw nI SIIt'l.iI 1"(';11111''', 01 synrhl:sis rhar wil! resulr in borh a newhisroriogr.1phy ,llld IlrW plllilil.il sll.lIcgicsY

Ler us hopc Ih;ll. ill I he: IICXI Cl:JlnIIY, i1isrori;lI1s wilJ be able to pick up rhepieces in this 11l:IJ hlll'll'ti WillJ rl;lf~ll1enIS :¡nd create a richer and lesschaoric vi s i()¡) Ih.IIIl1,IY ltlll' liJl'lll (:¡IIt! Cllill'l"s) In free themselves from rhestrairjacket nf' 1l;1Il j:i¡;j',ll1, ,,, Il'¡f1Vl'llI IlCIV fi,rms of wlidarity, and ro find

new roads 10:1 IIIPll' "¡Il'n .\ntl Illily dCI"ucrJLic warld, where al! peopleof differcnl gClItiVI.:i. (LI'.:>t'S, l'thnicities. rcligions, and nationaliries wil!come rOJ:!ctlll.:r lo p.¡rllllp.lll: l'lPI;i1ly jll rhc wealrh ofrhe world.

28 Emilia Viotti da Costa

11!'lll'IY, IIIIS pruccss was accelerared by political repression triggered byilllo' (:l'¡d W~Ir. The failure ofsoi-disant socialisr regimes in Africa and events111 Chil1;r generared doubrs and perplexities among the academic Lefr. Dur­

ing rhe pasr forty years, East-Wesr polarization and intense propagandaon borh sides made a critical assessmenr of contemporary and historical

cvenrs difficult. Ir was wirhin rhis conrexr rhar rhe new generarions lookedfor new forms of polirical action, and rhe historiography searchcd for newpaths. Bur this is only one side of rhe story. The other is much moredifficult ro analyze and has ro do with rhe growing internationalizarion of

the economy; rhe indusrrialization of rhe peripheries; the process of de­industrializarion in rhe cenrer; rhe adoprion of new rechnologies and rheshrinking and changing nature ofthe proletariar in the central areas ofthecapiralisr world (though nor necessarily in rhe periphery); rhe expansion of ,....J~the rertiary and ofrhe informal economy; the presence ofgrowing numbers, I~ \

of migratory workers (Arabs, Africans, Iralians, and portuguese working in~France, England, or Germany, for example, or Mexicans, Hairians, Sal-

vadorans, Guatemalans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, and orhers in theUnired States); rhe improvemenr of living conditions of sectors of rheworking class ar the expense of others (whites versus blacks in the Unired

States, narionals versus foreigners in England, France, or Germany) andthe consequent inrensification of erhnic conflicrs which makes it difficultto promore class solidarity; rhe expansion of rhe informal secrors (where

workers have no power or righrs); rhe exrraordinary increase in rhe par-

ticiparion ofwomen in the labor force (generating conflicrs in rhe domesticsphere); the renewal of putting-our systems (isolating workers); rhe multi-

plication of remporary workers (which makes ir increasingly difficulr toorganize them in traditional ways); rhe rransformations ofresidential pat-terns, wirh rhe disappearance ofworking-class neighborhoods (which tra-ditional!y had been centers ofworking-class acrivity); changes in forms of

leisure (isolating rhe workers in front ofTV sets); rhe growing impact of amedia in the service ofthe state and ofbusiness corporations; and, final!y,rhe generalization of a consumer mentality that inrensifies the tensionbetween privarion and desire, and emphasizes the individual at rhe expenseofthe social-al! this has led ro a redefinirion of practice and rheory.33 It is \wirhin rhis extremely complex scenario, which varies from one society ro

another, thar rhe new hisrory was bornoAfter a1l rhis, ir should be obvious thar the mere reproducrion of tradi­

rional inrerprerations cannor accoüñ"t f<;;this new realit]'. And since thework of the historian is always a dialogue between past and presentl it isnor surprising thar traditional ways ofloolgng ar hisrory seem inadequate

d.rhat.the_oastls rewritten.frolll~p'ersp'ectives.In this sense, 1968

Il

22

12

New Publics. Ni'lU 1'1!/ilil\. Nnu ¡Ii~low·. ~I

Capital. Larget numbers traveJcd in rhe ,ompany nf [:. P. Thompson, E. J. Hobsbawm or

Amonio Gramsci." ("Dialogues among rhe I'r.lgIl1Cnts: Rerrospect and Prospect," in

Frederick Cooper tt al., Co'1fTonting HistorirrJl Paradigm" Peamnts, Labor, and the Capitalist

World System in .'\frita and Latin America [Nl~distJn: University ofWiseonsin Press, '993),

372). If we continue following her metaphor, we wou[d sal' rhar rhe present generaríonhas gane to the field carrying Foucault and Derrida.

28 Ironicalll', in spite of their differences, these authors rend to be amihumanist and anti­

historical in rheir approach. See Kare Soper, Humanism and Anli-Humanism: Problems ofModern European Thought (London: Hutehinson, (986).

29 ILWCH (fal! '987): 4Ó-S8.

30 Similar improvemenr is noticed in England in rhe two decades after World War n, as

James CIonin has indicated. Cronin and Jonathan Schneer, eds., Social Confliet and Politica!Crisis in Modern Britain (London: Croom Helm, I982).

3I Alf Ludrke tries to esrablish a bridge between new and oId in "The Historiographl' of

Every-Dal' Life: The Personal and the Political," in Raphael Samuel and Gareth Sredman­

Jones, eds., Culture, Ideology, and 1'olit;cs (London: Rout:ledge and Kegan Paul, '983),38-54.

32 "New Subjecrs, New Social Commirmems: An Imerview with Miehelle Perrar by Laura

Frader and Victoria de Grazia." This interview was condueted by de Grazia in Paris,

20 September r986. Radical History R~view 37 (I987): 27-40.

33 Radical History Revi,w 37 is devoted te the studl' ofrhe impact ofeonsl.lmerism.

34 Walter Adamson, "Leftisr Transformations: A CJash between the Feasible and the Desir­able," Radical History Review 37 (I987): 94-100.

2'

I9

ro

'5

13

27

26

q

18

16

25

23

with memury~' hi,rnri~ 11 ,,,urce. ~,., ).1111"'. "TJles Told Out ofthe Borderbnds: Doña

María', Story. or.,1 IIi'lor}', .lIld h511C' ..,fGcnder," 31.-52, and John D. French, "Oral

H;sturl', Idenlll}' JiI!ttI1.1I 1"11 , .1,,,1 W"rkillg-Cl.1ss Mubilizatiun," in French and James,

eds .. The ritnrlrrrd World.l uf l.tJtin Ameritan Women Workm: From Household and Faetory to the

Union l/aH unO Ii<tllullJox IDurh~m: Duke University Press, 1997), 297-313.

Steven W..ITh. " Che [J.iocy nf American Studjes: Pos1structuralism, Language, and Poli­

lic, In lhe I\CC of ~cl¡:FulfilJmem,"American Quarterly (Dec. 1991): 652. For a sweeping

cr¡tiqu~ llfpostlTlodernism's influences on historical writing, see ElIen Meiksins Wood

JI1d Iohn Bcl1:unl' Fuster. eds., [n Difen.se of History: Marxism and the Postmodernist Agenda(New York: ,vlonthly Review Press, 1997).

See ml' commems abour Perer Winn, Weavers ofRevolution: The Yarur Workm and Chile's Road

to Soria!ism (New York: Oxford University Press, I986) in Viotti da Costa, "Structures

versus Exper;ence: What Do We Gain, Whar Do We Lose?" Internationa! Labor and Working­

Class History 36 (fall '989): 3-24.

Bryan Palmer, Desrent into Discoursz: The Reijiration ofLanguage and the Writing ofSocia! History

(Philadelphia: Temple Universiry Press, I990).

See R. Gral', "The Deconsrrucüng of the Working Class," Socia! History tI (I986): 363­

373, and J. FosreI, "The Declassing ofLanguage," New Ldt Review '50 (1985): 29-4Ó.

r4 Gareth Stedman-Iones, Languages of Class: Studies in Eng[ish Working-Class History, ,832­

1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiry Press, (983): 90-q8.Nevil!e Kirk, "In Defence of Class: A Cririque of Recem Revisionisr Writing upon the

Nineteenth-Cemury English Working Class," ¡nternational Reuiew of Social History 37

('987): 2-47. See a[so P. A. Pickering, "Class without Words: Sl'mbolic Commun;cation

in rhe Chartist Movement," Past and Present U2 ('986): '44-,62, and l. Epsrein, "Rethink­

ing the Categories ofWorking-Class History," in LabourlLe travail ,8 ('986): '95-208.

ILWCH 3I (spring I987): 1-14.

See the critiques oOoan Scott in the same issue, ILWCH 3' (spIing '987).

See Scott's repIl' to her critics in ILWCH 32 (fal! '987J: 39-45.

Lynn Hunt, Review ofPenser La Revolution Fran¡aise in History and Theory 20 (r98I): 3I3­

323, cited in Palmer, Descent into Discourse, 97.

Jacques Derrida, Writing and Dliference (Chicago, Universiry ofChicago Press, (978), cited

in Palmer, 33.

Gal'atri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern Speak?" in Cary Nelson and Lawrence

Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana: Universiry of l1linois

Press, '988), 27'-3'3.See, for example, Lynne Phillips, "Rural Women in Latin America: Directions for Future

Research," Latin American Research Review 25.3 (1990): 89-I08.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, precede de question de methode, vol. 1, Theori, des

ensembles practiques (Paris: GallimaId, '960).

24 This is a free translation.

Another author of the '950S and I960s whose work was very influemial was Roland

Barthes, particularly his Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, I957).

In the Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir argued that ir was "by constructing the woman

as 'other' thar men in Western culture have constituted themselves as subjects." See

Frances E. ,'vlascia-Lee, Patricia Sharpe, and CoIleen BaIlerino Cohen, me Posrmodernist

Turn in Anthropology: Cautionsftom a Feminist Pmpective, Signs '5, Ir (1989): 7-33.

Commeming on the experience of her generation in the 1970S, Florencia MaIlon wrote

thar "sorne carried [to the field] vo!ume 1 of Capital under their arms, others, Reading

30 Emilia Viotti da Costa

20